Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq War, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Census Bureau Case: Johnson v. Locke
Earlier this year, thousands of people of color who applied with the 2010 Census were deemed ineligible or deterred from the application process. The Center for Constitutional Rights co-counsel Outten & Golden and others filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against the Census Bureau for race and national origin discrimination in the hiring of temporary workers. In Johnson et al. v. Locke, CCR says that the U.S. Census Bureau’s practice of running job applicants’ names through the FBI criminal records database-a notoriously inaccurate and incomplete database-disproportionally excludes applicants of color and deters them from completing the application process. Basically, anyone with an arrest will not be eligible, including those arrested and not charged in a demonstration for example.
This practice directly undermines the Census Bureau’s self-avowed commitment to hiring temporary workers from within historically under counted communities, such as low-income people of color and immigrants.
African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are subject to exceedingly disproportionate rates of contact with the criminal justice system, from disparate rates of stops-and-frisks and arrests, to higher conviction rates and harsher criminal penalties. Lawsuit Website.
Sam Miller:
- I’m one of the litigators of a class action lawsuit against the Census Bureau based on its hiring practices for those who would be doing the counting process.
- The Census Bureau eliminates virtually anyone who has ever been arrested.
- I was arrested for civil-disobedience and if I were to go to the Census and apply for a job and I were to get a letter that your name popped up on the FBI database, you have to get an official court record of your arrest and if you can’t do it. You’re out.
- You get a form letter that says you’re flagged for having some criminal record. Roughly one quarter of the adult US population has a record in the FBI database. The FBI database is flawed with an enormous amount of errors in it. It includes things like an arrest without a prosecution, juvenile records, expungments.
- Tens and even hundreds of thousands of people effected by hiring policy.
- This is what we call a disparate impact lawsuit. The challenge to the policy is, here you have a policy that is checking people’s criminal background and excluding them on the basis of that background. The discrimination occurs because of the enormous disparity that’s in the criminal justice process.
- I believe this is the largest employment discrimination case for many years. We’re talking about 700 thousand were excluded from these jobs, just on the basis of this form letter that went out.
- This information came to us in the Spring 2010 and we got the litigation underway as fast as we could.
- What were looking for now is to change their policy and practice. They can’t deny people employment based on arrest records where there’s never been a prosecution, there’s never been a conviction.
- We’re also asking for damages. We have a class of over 100 thousand people who should be compensated for the jobs they should have gotten. My concern is it’s the tip of the iceberg, that there is a broader problem within the federal government. We learned that the Census Bureau did it the same way 10 years ago.
- The standard question employers should is has there ever been a conviction, it should not be has there ever been an arrest because that’s irrelevant.
- My hope is that word of how completely outrageous the policy in the Census Bureau is gets up high into the government, whether its the Secretary of Commerce, the White House. Credit history is also a very significant issue that’s related.
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander – furthering the under caste.
Guest – Attorney Sam Miller, with co-counsel Outten & Golden. For more than two decades, he has represented plaintiffs in individual and class action civil rights cases.Prior to joining O&G in July 2009, Sam was the Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he directed a twenty-person legal staff in domestic impact litigation (including a recent victory against the New York City Fire Department based on class-wide race discrimination), international human rights litigation (including a recent multi-million dollar settlement against Shell Oil for human rights abuses and environmental degradation in Nigeria), and the Guantànamo Global Justice Initiative.
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FBI Inappropriately Tracked Domestic Advocacy Groups
In the last year we’ve reported on the FBI’s over-reaching authority in cases that profile Muslims and the use of informants to entrap people on terrorism charges. Now, in a report released by the Justice Department the FBI is exposed for inappropriately targeting left leaning groups after 9/11. Among those groups surveilled are PETA, Greenpeace and the Catholic Worker. In the case of The Catholic Worker, the OIG report concluded that the FBI inappropriately characterized” certain “nonviolent civil disobedience” as terrorism-related. The Catholic Worker is a group committed to “nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer and hospitality for the homeless.
The four year internal investigation “found no evidence that the FBI had any information at the time of the event that any terrorism suspect would be present at the event.” There are many other examples. The report concluded, that FBI Director Robert Mueller “unintentionally provided inaccurate testimony to Congress” in 2006 about an anti-war rally in Pittsburgh four years earlier. Download PDF Copy of Report
Thomas Cincotta:
- This report was prompted by media reports of FBI surveillance of domestic political organizations.
- These reports came to light through several FOIA requests. The report illustrates a really broad scope of authority that the FBI has right now.
- This report covers from 2001-2006. Sheds a lot of light on what the FBI is doing and what they’re characterizing these days as terrorism. There seems to be some disconnect with reality here because of who the FBI is choosing to investigate.
- Half of the report focused on the investigation of a pacifist group in Pittsburgh called the Thomas Merton Center.
- Why did the FBI focus on an anti war group? These terms forceful and violent spelled out in FBI policy, so there’s a lot of discretion to slap this terrorism label on their investigations which can be extraordinarily prejudicial to their targets.
- An example of the broad definition of terrorism, the FBI made a determination in the case of the Catholic Worker, that spilling human blood on the walls and an American flag were forceful acts and damage to government property. They are immediately put on the VGTOF. The VGTOF list is used by all of the screening centers and by TSA, Customs Bureau. . .
- There’s a complete disconnect here in what the common notion of what terror is is. Michael Ratner: This verifies what we been thinking about for 10 or 11 years.
- There’s an emphasis on ideology, which is a very sloppy way to do criminal law enforcement work. It has a very predictive quality. Meaning, organization X has said this, espouses this in its philosophy that means we can expect that intends to do Y. This report demonstrates we can’t trust the FBI to police themselves.
- We need mechanisms in place so when people are targeted unfairly by the government they can be held to account. Minnesota blog on RNC arrests.
Guest – Thomas Cincotta, Project director with the Political Research Associates. A criminal defense lawyer, he led the Denver chapter of the National Lawyers Guild in support of peace groups and others during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and connected progressive lawyers with other community efforts around sentencing reform, immigrant rights, and police misconduct. He also represented migrant farm workers and served on the board of El Centro Humanitario, Denver’s first day laborer center. He currently serves on the NLG’s national board and international committee. Before becoming a lawyer, Cincotta worked as a labor representative for UNITE HERE Local 217 in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The United States and Yemen: Destroying Lives in the Name of National Security
We hear the voices of leading Yemeni activists and a Center For Constitutional Rights attorney speak on state violence, targeted killings, and human rights abuses enabled by the so-called “War on Terror” from the Brecht Forum event titled The United States and Yemen: Destroying Lives in the Name of National Security. The event was co-sponsored by the International Federation for Human Rights and the Brecht Forum. We hear first from Pardiss Kebriaei staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Pardiss is working on a lawsuit to challenge a U.S. government kill-list and the targeting of a U.S. citizen now in Yemen and far from any armed conflict with the United States.
We hear from Tawakkol Karman chairwoman of the Yemeni non-government organization Women Journalists Without Chains, which campaigns for freedom of the press in Yemen and against human rights violations. She is a very prominent young activist, and Reporters Without Borders chose her in 2009 as one of the top seven women who have led change in the world. Karman is among the activists who in 2007 launched the “Phase of Protests and Sit-ins” in Yemen, holding regular sit-ins in the capital’s Freedom Square to demand democratic reforms and an end to human rights violations—including the harassment and imprisonment of journalists and dissidents, closure of critical newspapers, and censorship of news articles. A special thanks to Leili Kashani Education and Outreach Associate for the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Also on the panel, to be heard soon, Ezz-Adeen Al-Asbahi, president of Human Rights Information & Training Center (HRITC), a non-governmental organization which seeks to enhance human rights in Yemen and the Arab World, focusing on the Gulf States in particular. HRITC has consultative status with the United Nations, offers training courses and forums on human rights, publishes a quarterly human rights magazine called Our Rights, and has published 30 books on law and human rights. Al-Asbahi is also the coordinator of a large regional network of human rights activists in the Gulf States and the Peninsula, and the president of a Yemeni network of human rights organizations which includes six Yemeni NGOs. A journalist and researcher, he has published eight books on literature and human rights. He is also the head of the civil society sector of the Supreme National Authority to Combat Corruption.
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Troops out of Iraq, Permanent Bases and Privatizing the Occupation.
While many reports claim most US troops are leaving Iraq, there will still be 50 thousand troops remaining, 4 thousand will be replaced by 7 thousand security contractors. These are armed private contractors, former military with specialized skills in weaponry, radar and explosives. They will have less accountability in war zones. Meanwhile, massive permanent US bases remain including the world’s largest US Embassy in Bagdhad, Iraq. As the occupation in Iraq is privatized, veterans return back to the US. We’re joined today by conscientious objecter and Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Jose Vasquez. Jose joined IVAW in June 2005 and co-founded the NYC chapter serving as the president. He also served on the interim board of directors and was elected to the first official board in 2006. He helped organize numerous actions and events including the Veterans’ and Survivors’ March to New Orleans, Operation First Casualty in NYC, and Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jose Vasquez:
- IVAW is a membership based organization, we are all folks who’ve served since September 11th.
- We call for the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq. We also have the same resolution for Afghanistan. We also want reparations for the Iraqis and full benefits for returning service members.
- I signed up right out of high school, graduated in ’92. I went straight in to active duty, I served 4 years as a Calvary Scout. Got out went to school and the Army Reserves as a medic.
- I had been in the military for a while before September 11th. I had a pretty good understanding of what our relationship was to Iraq. It was confusing to me, I was facing deployment. I stumbled across Democracy Now and I just started listening to that show religiously.
- By 2004, I was so upset about the Iraq War, I didn’t care what happened, I was not going to this.
- I started researching conscientious objection, six months later I filed for CO status. It took 27 months to get an answer.
- The Obama Administration has a finger on the pulse in terms of marketing hope. What they’re skimming over is how contractors are on the ground (in Iraq)
- From the perspective of an Iraqi, Americans running around with guns has not diminished that much.
- I think we owe the people of Iraq a lot. This mostly has to do with the US positioning itself to access the resources that they have.
- Stop the deployment of PTSD troops
Guest – Jose Vasquez, Jose was born in Bronx, NY and grew up in Southern California from the age of nine. After graduating high school in 1992, he enlisted in the U.S. Army serving over four years of active duty as a cavalry scout assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 24th Infantry Division at Fort Benning, GA, and the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, HI. He was honorably discharged in December 1996 at the rank of specialist (E-4).
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Cuba, Human Rights, Iraq War, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Climate Ground Zero – Update with Jimmy Tobias
We get an update from Mountaintop Removal activist Jimmy Tobias. Jimmy was arrested this summer with others for using direct action to shut down a coal mining mountaintop removal effort in Virginia. He was held on a 3500.00 bail and later released. A New York Times editorial states that movement to slow down and stop the mountaintop removal mining in that area is gaining traction and the Obama Administration is restricting permits for mountaintop removal mining. Recent Action.
Jimmy Tobias:
- I’m in Rockcreek, West Virginia where the campaign houses are located. The campaign houses have a big role, but there a million other things people work on.
- At the moment we’re gearing up for a mass mobilization in Washington, that will take place between the 25 and the 27 of September. Appalachia Rising. We’re focused on bringing national attention to the issue.
- I’ve been loathe to put my faith in the EPA to solve these problems. Their actions have been really ambiguous. They go back and forth and its really hard to get a sense of the ultimate outcome of their actions (EPA)
- My passion is for the local organizing, because that will make it or break it basically. We have four campaign houses, a big outdoor kitchen, everyone eats together, organizes together, works on different aspects of the campaign. The civil dis-obediance campaign is called Climate Ground Zero.
- Coal River Mountain Watch, Sludge Safety Project, Mountain Justice.
Guest – Jimmy Tobias, activist and direct action protester against Mountaintop Removal.
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Blackwater Reaches Deal on U.S. Export Violations
The private security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide has reached an agreement with the State Department for hundreds of violations of US export control regulations. The company now called US Training Services will pay the US government 42 million dollars in fines to avoid criminal charges on export violations. Violations include shipping weapons to Iraq hidden inside containers of dog food. There are other legal troubles facing Blackwater officials, but the company continues to obtain government contracts. Last June, Blackwater was awarded a 120 million dollar contract to provide security at a State Department regional office in Afghanistan and the CIA renewed the firm’s 100 million dollar security contract in Kabul.
Jeremy Scahill:
- This is a company that has been repeatedly involved with criminal activity, with murder and has gotten off scott-free. It has been shielded by its handlers at the State Department or at the DOD.
- The idea that this company can pay what amounts to 146 thousand dollars per violation is outrageous.
- The real meat of it is the murder they’re involved with, the human rights violations.
- What would it take for this company to be completely knocked off the US Government payroll?
- US operations in Afghanistan now, have become so dependent on Blackwater, both in the CIA and State Department. Eric Prince, the owner of Blackwater who has since fled to the United Arabs Emirates, which has no extradition with the United States. He moved there after five of his top deputies were indicted on conspiracy and weapons charges. This is a man who knows where the bodies are buried, he was working for the CIA, for the Joint Special Operations Command. They (Blackwater) could reveal details of action that would horrify the average American if they knew this was being done in their name.
- After 9/11, Eric Prince cut a deal with the number 3 man at the CIA, Alvin Buzzy Krongard. Find Fix and Finish Operation.
- There are also cases of I’ve heard of Blackwater working inside of Syria.
- Two former Blackwater employees, a man and a woman, the man worked in war zones, the woman worked on the financial side. They have filed a whistleblower case against Blackwater, alleging extrajudicial killings and bilking US taxpayers. Susan Burke recently deposed Eric Prince.
- Blackwater is involved with secret assassination programs in countries around the world, where we aren’t at war, where we aren’t informing those countries.
- The only serious challenges to Blackwater, aka Xe, aka US Training Services are people like Michael Ratner and Susan Burke. Bill: Stop Outsourcing Security Act.
Guest – Jeremy Scahill is the author of the international best-seller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he won twice. While a correspondent for Democracy Now!, Scahill reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
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Cuba Travel Ban
Will the Obama Administration come to a decision on how much to enable travel to Cuba. The Administration could simply reinstate President Clinton’s policy which is a costly case by case application or grant general licenses to the remaining 11 categories of travel to Cuba. General license would include schools, cultural institutions, Chambers of Commerce, religious bodies, World Affairs Councils, humanitarian organizations and more.
Sandra Levinson:
- The travel regs are not really travel regs. They are regulations set up by the US Treasury Department at the instigation of the US State Department. You can’t spend money in Cuba.
- President Carter lifted the travel ban, there were direct flights to Cuba during the brief time he was president.
- During the Clinton Administration, we were able to take a number of trips. Ban in effect for a number of rationales, we don’t wanna give money to Castro. It always surprised me that William F. Buckley was in support of ending the travel ban to Cuba.
- We can always do professional trips. I’m leading a trip for professional artists.
- Lawyers traveling to Cuba fall under the general license, it’s by assertion. You simply say as legal professionals you’re doing legal research.
- We’ve been to Cuba so much, our travel is not formal, it’s intimate.
- Although the food and medicine embargo was lifted several years ago, the regulations about payment are so tough on the Cubans, everyone else can buy on credit. The Cubans can’t, they have to buy up front, before a ship leaves US territory with the food, with the medicine.
- I fell in love with Cuba, I arrived on July 4, 1969. I was there for six weeks. Socialism with salsa.
- On the fifth day of my first trip, Fidel Castro taught me how to cut sugar cane. I think he is the one of the smartest leaders we’ve had in this hemisphere. I think he’s been in power that long, because we have not had relations with Cuba.
Guest – Sandra Levinson, Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City and Director of the Center’s Cuban Art Space. Facebook link
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Natsu Saito, Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law
Meeting the Enemy: American Exceptionalism and International Law is the title of Natsu Saito’s recent book, Natsu is an attorney and professor of Law at Georgia State University’s College of Law in Atlanta. The book boldly points out how the United States violated international law since its declaration of independence. As often discussed here on Law and Disorder, international courts and institutions have been at the forefront of holding the torture conspirators accountable. Meeting the Enemy gives disturbing insight into the origins of American exceptionalism.
Natsu Saito:
- The duality is that the US does exempt itself (from international law) very consistently and very frequently and yet promotes international law very strongly and relies upon it.
- It has relied upon certain premises that are fundamental to the whole outlook and paradigm of colonialism – which is that there is a higher good, a more civilized approach the US embodies.
- The law doesn’t apply because we have a higher aim of civilization and that justifies not playing by the rules.
- The United States making others comply with human rights standards while exempting itself.
- Moving humanity toward this higher goal is so critical because if you strip that away and you look at the realities on the ground, you see what has been termed Western civilization has been incredibly barbaric.
- In order to get around that analysis, you have to say it was for a higher good.
- I think the “left” tends to accept the general framework, and to make particular criticisms of policies and practices that are obviously problematic. The US government engaging in torture for example, but each instant is accepted as anomalous instead of the larger picture.
- It is too frightening even for the people on the left to deal with the reality that this is a country that sits on occupied land, illegally occupied by its own rules. People on the left want to make it a kinder, gentler colonialism.
- I started out thinking I was writing a book about the failure of the United States failure to comply with international law, as I got into it, the more interesting questions were the push / pull dynamics between reliance on international law
- The current system of international law evolved from the international law which was the agreement between the European colonial powers of how they were not going to destroy each other in the process of taking over the rest of the world.
Guest – Natsu Taylor Saito teaches international law and human rights, race and the law, immigration, criminal procedure, and professional responsibility, and is an advisor to the Asian American Law Student Association and the Hispanic Student Bar Association. Professor Saito’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in the United States, the plenary power doctrine as applied to immigrants, American Indians, and U.S. territorial possessions, and the human rights implications of U.S. governmental policies, particularly with regard to the suppression of political dissent. Read more.
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Elena Kagan and the Supremes – Brecht Forum
We hear excerpts from a discussion on the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan, and how her position may influence the direction of the Supreme Court.
Panelists:
Martin Garbus – one of the country’s leading trial lawyers. Mr. Garbus aggressively represents his clients in the courts and in the media. He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court as well as the highest state and federal courts in the nation. His devotion to ethics, justice and the law has earned him respect among the legal community and beyond as well as prominent awards. Time Magazine has named him “legendary . . . one of the best trial lawyers in the country,” while Newsweek , the National Law Journal and other media agree that Mr. Garbus is America’s “most prominent First Amendment lawyer,” with an “extraordinarily diverse practice.” The National Law Journal named him one of the country’s top ten litigators.
Margaret Ratner Kunstler – former Educational Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She’s an attorney and leads the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and heads the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice.
Anand Swaminathan – an associate at Vladeck, Waldman, Elias & Engelhard, P.C. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 2001 and the Harvard Law School in 2006. Prior to joining Vladeck he was a law clerk for the Honorable Theodore H. Katz of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Michael Steven Smith – Law and Disorder co-host, author and New York attorney. Michael Steven Smith is the author, editor, and co-editor of six books, including “The Emerging Police State,” by William M. Kunstler. He has testified before committees of the United States Congress and the United Nations on human rights issues. Mr. Smith lives and practices law in New York City with his wife Debby, where on behalf of seriously injured persons he sues insurance companies and occasionally the New York City Police Department.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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C0-host Michael Smith talks with attorney Jim Lafferty about the upcoming anti-war conference in Albany, New York, July 23-25. Noam Chomsky, internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Emeritus of Linguistics is the keynote speaker. Click here for flyer (PDF) Groups sponsoring the event: After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Bail Out the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campus Antiwar Network, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Citizen Soldier, Code Pink, Grandmothers Against the War, Granny Peace Brigade, International Action Center, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, May 1st Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Office of the Americas, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Project Salam, September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, The Fellowship of Reconciliation, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Voters for Peace,Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, The World Can’t Wait.
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Iraq War Veteran, Conscientious Objector and Musician Clifton Hicks
Clifton Hicks is an activist with the Iraqi Veterans Against the War. Hicks is disabled and enrolled as an Anthropology student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Appalachian State is a center for old-time music, and Hicks is also an accomplished musician and banjo player. Cliff Hicks is psychologically disabled and got out of the Army as a conscientious objector several years ago. In the Spring issue of The Veteran, published by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, there’s printed the following chant, that is repeated by soldiers in training to go to Iraq. “I went down to the market where all the people shop, I pulled out my machete, and I began to chop, I went down to the park where all the children play, I took out my machine gun and I began to spray.” This is the kind of psychological brutalization that our young men are forced to endure that turn them into creatures they never thought they’d become.
Clifton Hicks:
- I was in 9th grade when 9/11 happened. I called the recruiter when I was 16, to try and get in.
- I saw Muslim and Arabic people and thought they were all out to get us.
- I listened to a lot of daytime AM right-wing radio. I had the ole cliche patriotic notions going.
- I wanted to go combat arms from the start, I figured if I was going into the Army, I wanted to fight.
- My feet were on the ground in Iraq in October 2003. The guys I was with that had already been there for a while had gotten pretty nasty. Guys get nasty, because their friends get killed and you realized you can’t trust anybody.
- We were the first division in combat to be out there for more than 13 months.
- They would literally give us candy and toys to give out to Iraqi kids at schools, the next day you’re ridin’ around and you see a b unch of kids get shot.
- I became an anti-war activist while I was still in the Army. We started an IVAW chapter in Gainesville Florida
Guest – Clifton Hicks, Branch of service: United States Army (USA) / Unit: C Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st U.S. Cavalry Regiment / Rank: PFC / Home: North Carolina / Served in: Ft. Knox, OIF 1, Germany. Hicks a musician and is currently a student at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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Israeli Policy and Palestinian Children – Nora Barrows-Friedman
We talk today with the Nora Barrows-Friedman, she is the host of radio show Flashpoints at KPFA in Berkeley California. Nora spent the last month in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. She’s been investigating stories about the ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights and has been frequently traveling to Palestine since 2004. Today we look specifically at the Israeli policy against children from arresting, detaining, interrogating, torturing, imprisoning and beating children, some as young as 10. Nora says International laws designed to protect children — including the UN convention on the rights of the child are being circumvented and violated on a daily.
Nora Barrows Friedman:
- Kids randomly picked off the street, allegedly for throwing stones. The Israeli punishment is 10 years in prison for a child.
- Israeli military can arrest (Palestinian only) children as young as 12. Right now there are 300 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons.
- Hebron is a city where settlers have been given half of the old city, a settlement colony is inside the Palestinian community
- These two young children were followed and taken into a military center inside the settlement colony.
- This whole family had been destoryed by these illegal actions against these 2 brothers. The only recourse this family has is to take it to the Israeli military court. Motive: trying to get Palestinian families to leave.
- This family lives in an area where settlers have their eye on, seems to be very deliberate.
- There are hundreds of women in Israeli prisons, there’s a story where a woman gave birth in the prison, and the baby is now a prisoner.
Guest – Nora Barrows Friedman: Senior producer and co-host of KPFA’s Flashpoints.
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Obama’s Plan for Elimination of Nation-Controlled Nuclear Power
Nine nations now have a combined total of more than 22 thousand nuclear weapons. The United States has about 5 thousand nuclear weapons, 500 of them are land based warheads which can fly in three to four minutes after the order is given. President Obama recently hosted a nuclear security summit in DC with more than 45 foreign leaders, he traveled to Prague and signed a treaty that would cut the combined US and Russian stockpile by a third. Meanwhile, the US nuclear stockpiles have been shrinking for the last 40 years. We talk more about the current nuclear disarmament effort with attorney Peter Weiss is Vice-President, former President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
Peter Weiss:
- Leave the doomsday clock where it is. Reaffirming of the status quo. The agreement with Russia in reducing the nuclear weapons allowed to each country from 2200 to 1500. They count all the warheads on a bomber plane as one, instead of 10 or 12 weapons.
- Jimmy Carter: A single nuclear armed submarine had enough weaponry to destroy every Russian city of 100 thousand or more.
- Nuclear Posture Review – Zero document / “It’s difficult to operationalize a vision.”
- Obviously there is a great danger of loose nukes. No one seems ready to adopt an anti-nuclear convention except the countries that don’t have nuclear weapons.
- Conference in Riverside Church on May 1, 2010, United For Peace and Justice
- The anti-nuke movment will be re-energized.
- The US wants to be the sole repository of weapons grade nuclear material, committment from Chile, and Canada, to ship WGNM to the US. That’s kind of weird isn’t it?
Guest – Peter Weiss, former Vice President, Center for Constitutional Rights and Vice President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
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Why Human Rights are Indispensable to Financial Regulation
Today we speak with Radhika Balakrishnan, Professor of Economics and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College, about her recent article in the Huffington Post titled Why Human Rights are Indispensable to Financial Regulation. Balakrishnan enumerates the global human fallout from the world financial crisis. The World Bank estimates an additional 400 thousand children will die before their fifth birthday, while those responsible for the turmoil are benefiting from bailouts and promotions. She references the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its inclusion of economic and social rights, that is the right to work, to education, to rest, to an adequate standard of living. Dr. Balakrishnan has also outlined steps for meaningful reform that we will also examine today. She is currently working on a project trying to use human rights norms to evaluate and construct macroeconomic policy.
Radhika Barakrishnan:
- We pretend there is no criteria regulating (economic policies) We argue in our piece, that human rights have a way to set up an ethical basis and framework. Most people don’t know that human rights include economic and social rights.
- In the United States the assumption is you can vote the people in to give you social and economic rights.
- The idea that the market is this Greek Oracle that we can’t question. . . is a problem.
- We’re saying there is a form of biased market regulation, where the state has the interest of the financiers and the banks.
- and not those of the working people and the working class. One example is the minimum wage.
- The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate, one is to have price stability, the other is the right to work.
- In the United States, we have not signed the Convenant on Economic and Human Rights.
- The Federal Reserve is a government agency and the fact that they act in a cloak of secrecy is a real problem.
- I think there is a great case to be brought, as far as freedom of information.
- What kind of financial models are they using to make their decisions? This cloak of secrecy because you independence to make monetary policy? But independence doesn’t mean secret.
- Their Board of Governors are from the commercial banks, whose interest will they work for?
- Bailout Bill – TARP / This went to financial agencies to give them the money. 720 Billion dollars overnighted to the Federal Reserve has not gone out? The Stimulus Money, for employment creation, though it was used for tax cuts.
- Congress did not extend unemployment benefits for Spring recess.
- The United States is coming up for the Universal Periodic Review in the Human Rights Council of Geneva
- The Center for Women’s Global Leadership
Guest – Radhika Balakrishnan, Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. Previously, she was Professor of Economics and International Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. She has worked at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asia Regional Program. She is currently the Chair of the Board of the US Human Rights Network and on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She has published in the field of gender and development.
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