Law and Disorder March 12, 2012

Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power

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Updates:

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Nestlé Test Case: Charges filed on murder of Colombian Trade Unionist

In a previous show we discussed the lawsuit Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, a case pushing to hold corporations accountable for human rights violations. We talk today about a similar case. Recently a Columbian Trade Union filed charges against the Swiss company Nestle and members of its senior management.  They are accused of failing to take precautionary measures for the 2005 murder of Luciano Romero. Romero was murdered by paramilitaries in Valledupar, a north eastern part of Columbia. His body was found with 50 stab wounds. Romero worked for a the Columbian Nestle subsidiary company Cicolac. Cicolac is accused of being negligent in failing to prevent this crime. 

Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck:

  • We are presenting cases against European Transnationals who are involved in human rights violations.
  • One of our targets is Nestle’s, Switzerland whom we try to hold accountable for an assassination of a Columbian Trade Unionist Luciano Romero in 2005.
  • The Nestle subsidiary was very close to the paramilitary.
  • Columbia has a record of killing over 2000 trade unionists over the last 20 years.
  • The solidarity movement here in Switzerland was very active of the defense of the threatened trade unionists. They were threatened over years, some of them had to go into exile, some of them moved within Columbia.
  • What we accused them of is negligent killing through omission.
  • If you go into a conflict region and if you link with one of the conflict parties, you can be held accountable.
  • The companies have the duty of due diligence. You have the task to take a human rights risk assessment. Then you have as a mother company, you have a role to play for your subsidiaries.
  • That’s why we presented the case here in Switzerland, we’re not only talking about the murder in 2005, we’re also talking about future responsibilities of transnational companies.
  • That’s why the whole complaint here, got huge media coverage.
  • The managers who we are suing live in Switzerland, and are Swiss citizens.
  • We want the prosecutor in Switzerland to undertake an investigation.
  • In Columbia there is no real possibility to sue a transnational company, but this is why the Swiss judges and prosecutors have to act right now.
  • The spectacle in the German and Swiss media helped us put the problems on the table.
  • Havard Professor was appointed by the UN to elaborate principles to regulate the behavior of transnational companies and human rights. The principles are very general.
  • The prosecutor got quite a difficult criminal complaint. He has to decide in the next weeks or months to open this criminal procedure.
  • Nestle did the other way around, because they didn’t like the trade unionists. They were an obstacle.

Guest – Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck,  General Secretary and co-founder of ECCHR,  specializing in criminal law, he has established an international reputation as an advocate for human rights. He made a name for himself when he filed suit against the U.S. Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes and torture committed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
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Exposed: NYPD Surveillance of Muslims Spill Over Into Other States, Africa and Europe

We’ve covered a wide range of stories involving the FBI spying on Muslim students and using undercover agents at mosques.   Last month, news of this spying had broke into the mainstream news.  The New York Police Department’s ongoing surveillance operations of Muslims across the Northeast has exposed a broad spectrum of civil rights violations. Documents recently obtained by the Associated Press reveal the NYPD built databases showing where Muslims live, buy food, and where they watch sports. The NYPD municipal spy operations spilled out of New York City and reached into New Jersey, Long Island and to colleges across the Northeast.

Cyrus McGoldrick:

  • This program amounts to a comprehensive and warrant-less and invasive surveillance program of all Muslim life.
  • Not just here in New York City but now we have reports of cops going down to UPenn in Philadelphia.
  • Up to Yale in New Haven, Albany and Buffalo. It’s even worse than that. NYPD officers out in North Africa and Europe.
  • This is one of the worse things I’ve seen is people being scared out of their public activities. I think there’s a fear of speaking publicly about things.
  • We’re hearing reports of a network of up to 15 thousand informants feeding information to the NYPD.
  • One of the earliest documents that came out was a powerpoint presentation from the NYPD called the demographics unit. The third or fourth slide in this document is titled “ancestries of interest.”
  • Anyone who is trying to make the argument, “they’re trying to protect us” they need to see this slide.
  • It’s human mapping, community mapping, modeled off of how Israelis operate in the West Bank.
  • It’s essentially Muslim until proven innocent.
  • The documents are there, they’re online, we’ve seen them for ourselves. I would love to put Mayor Bloomberg in front of the power point presentation of the demographics unit and let him justify that.
  • They’ll trot out pictures of terrorists and say this is what we’re keeping you safe from .
  • You’re really in danger of honey bees than from a terrorist attack
  • And don’t let the NYPD tell you that that’s because they’re spying on Muslim students from Philadelphia to New Haven because that’s not the case.
  • There’s maybe two cases where the FBI was not the primary planner of that attack.
  • Within 200 miles of New York City, the NYPD are sending people just a shocking number of informants and sometimes undercover officers culling political speech, political activity, hearing what people are talking about.
  • So they’re watching everything they can, and anyone who is expressing some anger.
  • Watching for raising a dissenting voice, that’s what the rakers were.
  • Mosque crawlers played a similar role.
  • Rakers is a more general term for the invasion, infiltration.
  • We’re lucky that this got discovered.
  • The involvement of the CIA is very interesting. David Cohen from the CIA who came to the NYPD after 9/11. Sometimes they refer to him as a former CIA agent. I’m not sure that’s a type of club you can leave.
  • There are other CIA agents that were on CIA payroll but were posted in the NYPD.
  • Later, the CIA actually removed the officers that were in the NYPD because of a lack of supervision, they called it.
  • When you see these people lining up to defend this, you have to wonder why.
  • They’re using the fear of us to get to your rights.
  • It’s really amazing the assumptions of power that the government has justified with the war on terror.

Guest – Cyrus McGoldrick,  Civil Rights Manager with the Council on American-Islamic Relations-New York

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Law and Disorder February 13, 2012

Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power

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Heidi Boghosian Updates on Mumia’s Visit

 

Iran: Sanctions and Syria

Israel and the United States continue to assert that Iran is enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons. As we’ve recently reported, the main stream media has followed lock step with this assertion by printing false claims and half truths about Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hinged on these false assertions, and baseless assumptions, sanctions are now being imposed by the EU and the United States against Iran.

Phyllis Bennis:

  • The escalation of rhetoric, having nothing to do with reality, is boxing in a incredibly dangerous situation, in which political leaders are boxing themselves into situations they can’t walk back from.
  • It’s a little bit different than the weapons of mass destruction, when you had leading neocons in those positions, in the pentagon, in the CIA, saying there is no question, there are WMDs.
  • They were all lying.  The difference here is that the key people in these positions are saying directly we don’t even know whether Iran has even decided in this case to build a nuclear weapon.
  • At the same time, they’re allowing this unquestioned ratcheting up of the rhetoric for purely political motivations.
  • We’re seeing the same situation in Israel.
  • The main factor right now is Israel. The US Congress, the US press, are responding to these false claims from Israel that Iran represents an existential threat.
  • The role of the Israeli lobbies is an old story.
  • Republicans are saying Obama is soft on Iran. In that context an election year there’s no way that President Obama is going to be willing to walk back from this escalating rhetoric that we heard right before the superbowl on Sunday night.
  • I’m always astonished when I hear it from anybody, that after the war in Iraq, after the war in Afghanistan people somehow still have the idea that you can just go in with a few air strikes and that’ll be all it takes.
  • There are inspectors on the ground, they’re watching 24/7 video from inside the enrichment centers.
  • If Iran wanted to the divert the enriched uranium for weapons purpose, they would have to kick out the inspectors, or slash the locks that the inspectors put in, either way the world would know about it within hours.
  • War with Iran, should be off the table.
  • I don’t think its inevitable. I think its 70/30 right now. Meanwhile, nobody’s going to think about pressuring Israel on the issue of Palestine.
  • There ha’ve been 5 high profile assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.
  • Syria: On the one hand you have an incredibly repressive regime, responding to a domestic uprising with amazing horrifying levels of force.  And parts of the resistance taking up arms in response.
  • Syria is a strategic ally of Russia. For Russia that is the most important thing.

Guest – Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute For Policy Studies.  She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.  Phyllis has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. In 2001 she helped found and remains on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. Phyllis is also the author of many books including Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer (2009).

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3 Year Evaluation of the Obama Administration

The Obama Administration has expanded wars abroad from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. It’s continued and expanded detention policies for Guantanamo Bay prisoners and US citizens.  Wall Street and big banks have been bailed out and the Healthcare bill was used a bargaining chip for insurance companies. The cautious optimism that progressives and the African American community initially had for the Obama Administration is long gone. However, there were some that were never taken in or mesmerized by the possibility of hope. Our guest today, Nellie Hester Bailey calls this administration a browner hue of imperialism and asks how long can people be herded like sheep into this nightmare of compromise. We welcome her back to the show, she’s a long time human rights activist from early organizing with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, to tenant rights and anti-war demonstrations, to advocacy on behalf of women,  Bailey has been at the forefront of social justice and social change organizing. We look back at the last 3 years of the Obama Administration and take a look ahead.
Nellie Hester Bailey:

  • President Barack Obama, he is a gatekeeper for imperialism.
  • They chose him to be their standard bearer for this new era of redefined politics down to this humanitarian intervention I think has proven to be the worst of any forboding that in fact in goes beyond the right wing politics of President Bush.
  • Sidetracking OWS: This new movement Occupy the Dream making it an extension of the Democratic Party. This cooptation process is in full throttle.
  • One would hope that this Occupy Wall Street above all would retain its independency.
  • 2008 Presidential Election: Extremely promising because it gave the appearance of the attempt of the government to face head on the entrenched and historic racism in this country.
  • A very powerful symbol of the a black family in the Whitehouse and what that would mean in the public consciousness on race here in America.
  • Once Barack Obama was elected president to the US, it did give rise to a paralysis of the movement.
  • What we saw with the advent of the Occupy movement was the stimulation of white America to fight back against the anti-working class measures coming down.
  • The Occupy movement was our own Arab Spring, if you will by the communities coming under increasing assault.
  • There is a direct action working group within the Occupy Wall Street movement that recently announced it was laying out a six month plan of action.
  • One would hope that would be independent of the Democratic Party.
  • The conditions on the ground have began to organize people and effect their consciousness.
  • I do not believe that capitalism can be reformed.
  • We need a new political paradigm that is founded on principles of humanity, on principle of respect to the environment, an anti-war principle, the respect of sovereign nations.
  • Radio Show: Inside Housing on WHCR 90.3 FM. Mondays 6-7PM – The Voice of Harlem.

Guest – Nellie Hester Bailey, is a human rights activist who has worked in peace and justice movements for over forty years. From her early organizing with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, to tenant rights and anti-war struggles, to advocacy on behalf of women Bailey has been at the forefront of social justice and social change organizing. Bailey co-founded the Harlem Tenants Council (HTC) in 1994. She currently serves as Director of the tenant led grassroots organization based on the self-determination tradition of radical activism that provides anti-displacement organizing for poor and working class families primarily in Central Harlem.

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Law and Disorder January 9, 2012

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister

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Ten Year Anniversary of Guantanamo Bay Prison

Co-host Michael Ratner and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights gives listeners an overview of the habeas corpus legal battles to close Guantanamo Bay prison and an in depth look at the corrosive effect the offshore prison has had on civil rights, and the U.S. Constitution. Despite the fact that the U.S. government has itself cleared more than half of these men for release, and despite President Obama’s promise on his second day in office to close Guantánamo within a year, it has been almost twelve months since anyone has been released.

This is the longest period of time that has elapsed since the prison’s opening without a single person being set free.The Obama administration has also extended some of the worst aspects of the Guantánamo system by continuing indefinite detentions without charge or trial, employing illegitimate military commissions to try some suspects, and blocking accountability for torture.

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International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law

International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law” to be held on January 14, 2012 at 12 pm at Columbia Law School.  The event will provide an excellent opportunity for students interested in  gaining an understanding the theory and the practical application of international law in the real world.

Attorney Roger Wareham:

  • The genesis of the tribunal began during the intervention in Libya.
  • Back in May the December 12th movement always has a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday, May 19.
  • This is part an ongoing campaign to re-colonize the African continent.
  • Libya was important to that for a number reasons. Libya has some of the best crude oil in the world that requires the least amount of production in terms of transforming it into gasoline.
  • Col. Gaddafi stood for the proposition that there would be a United States of Africa.
  • Libya had the highest standard of living on the African continent.
  • What we hope to come out of this is fashion a petition to take before the International Criminal Court.
  • The plan is we’ll going to take at least a 400 people strong delegation to the Hague in June to present a petition to the prosecutor, requesting they prosecute the heads of NATO, Britain, Canada, Italy, for war crimes.
  • Saturday January 14, 2012 / Columbia University Law School / 435 West 116th Street / 718-398-1766 / iptribunal2012@gmail.com

Guest – Roger Wareham, lawyer and political activist of over four decades. He is a member of the December 12th Movement, an organization of African people which organizes in the Black and Latino community around human rights violations, particularly police terror. Wareham is also the International Secretary-General of the International Association Against Torture (AICT), a non-governmental organization that has consultative status before the United Nations.

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Cornell and The Technion of Israel To Build Campus On Governor’s Island

As many listeners may know, Cornell University is joining with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in a plan to build a campus in New York City.  Critics however, point out Technion’s involvement with the Israeli Defense Force in the development of repressive technology that would further perpetuate crimes against Palestinians. Through cooperative research with Israeli defense companies such as Elbit, Rafael, McGill and Concordia, Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.

To talk more about this, we’re joined today by David Klein,  a professor at California State University in Northridge and a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Professor David Klein:

  • It is a collaboration between Cornell University and Technion which is like Israel’s MIT.
  • There’s a 350 million dollar grant from a philanthropist, which has been supplemented with 100 million dollars in public money.
  • I’m a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. 
  • The demands that we have are ending the occupation and colonization all Arab lands and dismantling the apartheid wall.
  • Recognizing the fundamental rights of Arab / Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
  • Respecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and property as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
  • Technion is deeply complicit with Israel’s military and provides the military with technology to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
  • Participants in a joint military and university program for science students, who will later be integrated into the Army’s research and development units, wear uniforms throughout their years of study.
  • It’s particularly strong in developing robotic weapons systems, which include aerial drones, and unmanned combat vehicle technology.
  • I think Bloomberg is supportive of the apartheid system in Israel. He wouldn’t view this as a problem like much of the rest of the world does.
  • The crime of apartheid is an international crime against humanity.
  • In addition to aerial drones, Technion makes the Black D9 Bulldozer, it makes the Stealth UVA Drone, which is a drone that can fly almost 3000km without refueling.
  • It’s making something called the Dragonfly UVA mini-drone, which is a tiny drone with a 9 inch wingspan. It can fly into people’s bedroom windows and kill em.
  • Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.
  • Israel is arguably the most racist country at this time, due to the apartheid system that it has.

Guest – David Klein, member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (www.usacbi.org), and is a professor of mathematics at California State University, Northridge (CSUN).  He received  his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. His professional interests include mathematical physics, climate science, and mathematics education in the public schools.  He is the faculty advisor for the campus student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and the CSUN Green Party.  David Klein’s website

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CCR Lawsuit: Stop and Frisk NYC

Last year, a federal judge rejected a move by the City of New York to stop a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the New York City Police Department’s Stop and Frisk policy. Judge Shir Scheindlin pointed out the seriousness of numerous claims that the NYPD disproportionately and illegally targeting communities of color.   In 2009 New York City, a record 576,394 people were stopped, 84 percent of whom were Black and Latino residents — although they comprise only about 26 percent and 27 percent of New York City’s total population respectively. The year 2009 was not an anomaly. Ten years of raw data obtained by court order from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) show that stop-and-frisks result in a minimal yield of weapons and contraband.

Attorney Darius Charney:

  • Stop and Frisk is a city wide epidemic.  We’ve gone from 90 thousand in 2002 to 700 thousand this year. They’re stopping 2000 people a day, primarily young males of color but also females of color.
  • There are really know criteria as far as we can tell. There are guidelines that have been laid out by the courts in the last forty years. The police don’t follow those guidelines. They’re suppose to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
  • They’re stopping people for what’s called “furtive movements” whatever that means.
  • The other one is “high crime neighborhood.” The court had ruled that this is unconstitional, you can’t use the basis of a high crime neighborhood to stop and search them.
  • Yet again, the police are doing that hundreds of thousands of times a year.
  • The two allegations we made is that the NYPD has a widespread policy and practice of stopping and frisking New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion which violates the fourth Amendment of the Constitution and then on the basis of race which violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
  • The blacker or browner that neighborhood is, the more stops that are going to be done in that neighborhood.
  • The other part is the weapon recovery rate, the police department justifies this program by saying, we’re trying to get guns off the street.
  • Last year in 2010, they stopped over 600 thousand people. The number of guns recovered in those 600 thousand stops was 1200 guns.
  • Relief sought in class action suit: Outside independent oversight of the police department.

Guest –  Darius Charney,  senior staff attorney in the Racial Justice/Government Misconduct Docket.  He is currently lead counsel on Floyd v. City of New York, a federal civil rights class action lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s unconstitutional and racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices, and Vulcan Society Inc. v. the City of New York, a Title VII class action lawsuit on behalf of African-American applicants to the New York City Fire Department which challenges the racially discriminatory hiring practices of the FDNY.

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Law and Disorder July 18, 2011

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister

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Updates:

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The People’s Lawyer:  The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Fight for Social Justice, From Civil Rights to Guantánamo

The People’s Lawyer by author and Guild writer Albert Ruben, is the first comprehensive history on the Center For Constitutional Rights and tells the Center’s story from the civil rights era to today’s legal battles on habeas corpus, torture and Guantanamo Bay Prison. The book highlights critical legal fights taken on by CCR revealing innovative tactics that have evolved within the radical organization. Albert Ruben points how the Center for Constitutional Rights continues to fight with the same spirit, audacity and courage it was founded with.  As many listeners may know, CCR has been an important corner stone to this radio show because our own Michael Ratner has been with the Center for 4 decades.

Albert Ruben:

  • The founders (of CCR) were 4 in number. They were Arthur Kinoy, Morton Stavis, Bill Kunstler and Ben Smith. Smith was a Southerner, he had an office in New Orleans, and Stavis, William Kunstler, and Arthur Kinoy were northerners who were working for civil rights in the South.
  • They were all working their separate beats, they all knew each other and were in communication about the work they were doing. They decided that they needed something, primarily financially, to keep their work going.
  • So they got in touch with a lawyer they all knew with financial means named Robert Boem. They incorporated it in New Jersey, and it became ultimately the Center for Constitutional Rights.
  • They had a very small office at the beginning with one lawyer in Newark.
  • The anti-war movement, the McShirley Case. It threw the Center into the government misconduct orbit. It was in the course of litigating that the Center became aware that the Federal Government was not going to be on the side of the angels.
  • (From Wikipedia)  Dombrowski alleged that members of his organization, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, were subjected to continuous harassment, including arrests without intent to prosecute, and seizures of necessary internal documents. Furthermore, the State was threatening to use anti-subversion statutes to prosecute the organization, which was a group of Southern liberals dedicated to fighting for civil rights for Blacks in the South.
  • The Dombrowski case, allowed the Center and a lot of lawyers to use that decision to challenge cases that brought against civil rights attorneys and a lot of people who were working in the South and caught up in state laws, that were using anti-red laws to take them out of state courts and bring them into federal courts.
  • So, the Center lawyers were very acutely aware that they had on their side the federal courts. What happened with McShurley, was that it overturned that faith in the federal court system. The case led the Center to realize that government misconduct was an area that would be of interest. They could no longer count on federal court to be their allies.
  • There were women on the staff of the Center who were both Center lawyers as their occupation but they were also women, and as women they were caught up in the womens movement. They brought the two together.
  • It was the early days of the womens movement.  The Center didn’t see itself as a place that would take on criminal law, it was more of a movement organization.  The politics of the founders were central to their beings. They made their politics guide them in whether a case was something that they should adopt.
  • Part of the Center for Constitutional Right’s mission was educational, that’s not understood I think.

Guest – Albert Ruben, screen and television writer and has served as an officer of the Writers Guild of America East.

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TO END ALL WARS: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918

We welcome returning guest Adam Hochschild, historian and author of the new book TO END ALL WARS: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion 1914-1918. In the book, Hochschild has focused on the antiwar movement in Great Britain. Near the beginning of World War I, 20 thousand British men refused the military draft on principle, others were conscientious objectors and nearly 6 thousand of the men were sent to prison.  Hochschild relied on personal letters, diaries and memoirs to assemble this unique historic report on Britain’s powerful anti-war movement. The book also unearths how anti-war activists were monitored constantly by civilian and military intelligence as agent provocateurs bragged about their accomplishments. To End All Wars is a compelling account of the heroic anti-war struggle while top writers in that period such as Rudyard Kipling and H.G. Wells, contributed rhetoric to support the war propaganda.

Adam Hochschild:

  • I always like to think we can learn things from history.  I think you learn to be inspired by people who stuck to their ideals, even in very difficult times,
  • I thought it would be a challenge to write a book centering around people who I admire tremendously although they lost, the cause that they were struggling for. I’ve always been fascinated by the first World War, which remade the world for the worst in every conceivable way and killed around 20 million people in the process.
  • I’ve been particularly struck by those resisted that war on both sides, who said this war is not worth these millions of lives and we’re not going to fight.
  • I wanted to talk about 2 different people in this war, the generals who fought this terrible war filled with illusions, that the next battle would bring a great victory, and then I was also fascinated by these pacifists and war resistors.
  • 20 thousand men of military age, refused to go into the British Army.  The largest outright refusals in any of the warring countries.  Of that number many of them accepted alternative service under conscientious objector. Driving ambulances, or work in war industry factory.
  • Many men refused that and more than six thousand went to prison.
  • Aggression among Germany and Austria-Hungary did really ignite the war. You can’t really say its a war between good guys and bad guys, because the allies at first were Britain and France allied with Russia. The absolute last remaining monarchy in Europe.
  • Wonderful trilogy of novels by Pat Barker, The Eye In the Doors.  Had I been alive in that time in 1917, I would like so many people did at that time, who greeted the Russian Revolution with enormous hope.
  • I guess I’m thinking more than anything else, of the way the first world war, made the second world war almost certain.  There was something about the way the war ended that gave rise to bitterness and the Nazis in Germany.
  • Right up to the very last minute, the German people were fed a diet of totally triumphant propaganda.
  • Eugene Debbs got up of his sick bed to do a speaking tour against the war. The Wilson administration charged him with subversion, he was still in prison when got nearly a million votes for president of a Socialist party ticket.
  • Illusion that the war is going to solve more problems than it causes. Another illusion is that it will be over quickly, you remember George Bush on the aircraft carrier.

Guest – Adam Hochschild, award-winning author and journalist who has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. His books, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) and Bury the Chains (2005) were finalists for the National Book Award and have won numerous other prizes. Hochschild teaches narrative writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Law and Disorder July 4, 2011

Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Crony Capitalism, Supreme Court, Truth to Power

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Updates:

  • Food Not Bombs Plans To Sue  Orlando Mayor
  • Pelican Bay Hunger Strike

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Supreme Court Decision On Climate Change

Last month the Supreme Court, reaffirmed that it is the job of the Environmental Protection Agency to curb carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act. This was decided in the Connecticut v. American Electric Power case which doesn’t allow states to directly bring a lawsuit against five of the largest power companies to regulate their emissions as a public nuisance. As many listeners may know, power plants are the nation’s biggest climate polluters.  They can pump more than two billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. Other polluters include automobile emissions and housing stock.  Some of the world’s top scientists report that pollution has been linked to climate change.

Law Professor Eleanor Stein:

  • In the 2004 case, the court decided the EPA had to assess any air pollutant and decide whether it endangered public health and welfare and if it found that it did, it would have to set limits on that pollutant.
  • The EPA had refused to do that, this is the Bush era EPA and said we don’t have the authority under the Clean Air Act to do it, and even if we did, this is essentially a problem for the president to solve, and he’s doing a great job.
  • The court found that unsatisfactory and held that the EPA had an obligation to regulate if it found endangerment.
  • This case 2011, reaffirmed the central core of the Massachusetts decision, which is the EPA has the authority and the responsibility to regulate green house gases.
  • The 2nd Circuit in a ringing militant statement on climate, reversed the district court and squarely held that states could bring this lawsuit which is against the five biggest CO2 emitters in the country, under a common law theory of public nuisance.
  • The heart of the petitioners camp were a group of attorneys generals from several states, the fundamental authority of an attorney general is to bring lawsuits in a state against public nuisances of all kinds.
  • So they had this idea to elevated this authority into a federal common law claim.
  • The court endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon dioxide emissions.
  • For this they cite an article in the New York Times 2 years from Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson who said a lot of climate denier stuff and is kind of a gadfly, who is not a climate scientist.
  • In New York City for example, we burn a great deal of natural gas to heat our houses. #6 heating oil both heavy emitter of CO2
  • We’re creating a layer that is preventing reflection of solar rays back out into space.
  • Much more of it is being trapped into the atmosphere than pre-industrial times.
  • There’s uncertainty about how fast and what kind of changes, but there are some things that are confidently predicted. We’re already seeing tremendously fast melting of ice in Greenland and the polar cap.
  • There’s no question that this is a product of both rapid industrial development, of uncontrolled growth policies, without any consideration of the impacts of growth, especially when you talk about the disparity of impact.
  • www.350.org

Guest – Law Professor and Attorney Eleanor Stein teaches the Law of Climate Change: Domestic and Transnational at Albany Law School and SUNY Albany, jointly with the Environmental and Atmospheric Sciences Department at SUNY.

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Michigan Citizens File Suit Challenging Unconstitutional  Emergency Manager Law

Twenty-eight citizens of Michigan have filed a lawsuit in an effort to bring down the recently signed Emergency Manager Law, claiming it will give Governor Rick Snyder and his appointees vast, unlawful power over financially struggling cities and school districts.  Bill Goodman, an attorney with the Sugar Law Center of Detroit, the firm that filed the lawsuit called it a power grab by Lansing politicians. Goodman also said the law violates the state constitution by giving Snyder powers over cities normally granted to the state Legislature. Those powers include replacing elected officials, nullifying collective bargaining agreements, privatizing public services and dissolving cities. Earlier this year we interviewed Zainab Akbar,  Legal Fellow at the ACLU of Michigan about the same law being used the mostly black community of Benton Harbor.  Democracy Emergency

Attorney John Philo:

  • We think this is an important issue, not just for Michigan but nationally. We think this is so viable to our notion of fundamental constitutional rights that we could not let this pass without a legal challenge.
  • The first constitutional law violation that we see is that it attacks what is known as the democratic form of government. We all believe we have a right to a democratic form of government, that we can elect our officials at the local, state and federal level. This lawsuit is testing, where is that in the Constitution, where is it recognized?
  • We think that people would find it in absurdity that they don’t have that right to vote for their local officials.
  • We have a provision in our constitution that says that can’t pass unfunded mandates. They can’t put costs on a local government without providing some revenue stream or providing some mandatory adjustment.
  • This legislation puts all the costs on the local government that already find to be in distress.
  • In Benton Harbor alone, the salary of the “emergency manager” is running 11 thousand a month.
  • That’s before we even get to the consultants and the financial review people that they bring in, the staff.
  • There are a number of states looking to pass the emergency managers law.
  • This is a nationwide problem that everyone recognizes to regulate banks, and Wall St., and national economic policies that have hit the Midwest hardest and we would say below the belt.
  • What will the law do to pensions? Contract rights and pension funds.
  • There is a provision that says the state treasurer can request the communities to sort of enter into a consent agreement, before they’ve even been found in financial distress.
  • There are citizens, conservation folks, in various places who’ve request the state appoint an emergency manager in their community. This sends the mayor and the city council reeling because they don’t feel they have to.
  • They’re acting to prevent this because of the broad discretion given to treasurer and the governor, whether there is a financial situation where they could appoint a manager.
  • We’re asking for an order of the court that declares the provisions of Public Act 4 unconstitutional and then an injunction that prevents any further implementation.
  • I think people would be shocked if they realize people don’t have a right to elected government.

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Tova Perlmutter:

  • We see this litigation as one tool in a broader people’s movement. Here in Detroit we have some phenomenal leaders. The first day we filed was the biggest day in my career.
  • We with a lot of help with allies and friends held seven press conferences in cities across the state.
  • We blanketed the airways and the press, that’s how we got national coverage as well.
  • The Maurice & Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice
  • We’ve been around for 20 years, based in Detroit but we do serve folks nationally, our mission is to use legal and other public advocacy to advance the rights of working people and their communities.
  • One of the cities that has had the most extreme emergency managers is Pontiac.
  • There’s no coincidence here, this is a very clear effort to exert a paternalistic and corporate friendly control over communities that might otherwise be speaking out and exerting autonomy.
  • www.democracyemergency.org

Guest – Attorney John Philo -Sugar Law’s Legal Director, is responsible for litigation, legal research, delivery of training, and supervision of all staff and interns working on legal tasks. John is an attorney with over 18 years of experience representing and advocating for workers and other disenfranchised people.

Guest – Tova Perlmutter – Executive Director, has over 20 years experience in administration, communications, fund raising and public education for nonprofit organizations. She obtained professional certification as a Senior Human Resources Professional while working to promote fair employment practices at a major corporation.

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Law and Disorder June 6, 2011

Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

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Chicago Torture Cases and Jon Burge’s Deposition

Torture has cast a long shadow over Chicago and its past administrations. Yet in the past year, with the conviction and sentencing of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, Chicago has been a beacon of light in the fight against torture.  Many are waiting to see how the city’s new administration will handle the ongoing torture cases of African American men that number in the hundreds.  Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison for obstruction of justice and lying about torturing prisoners in the 1960s to obtain coerced confessions. Attorney Flint Taylor and the People’s Law Office in Chicago fought for decades to get prosecutions, and sentencing while the city poured millions of dollars to fund private lawyers for Burge’s defense.

Attorney Flint Taylor:

  • We’ve been working on these cases since 1986. Deposing Jon Burge: We were reaffirming to the African American community that he was in prison and he is a prisoner.
  • He was complaining about the lack of medical care and the kind of treatment he felt he should be getting.
  • The struggle to put him behind bars has come to fruition. Pin stripe patronage, the city funding Burge’s defense. Rahm Emanuel needs to change course, he’s very close to Daly.
  • Daly’s policy was not to settle these cases, not to apologize to the victims.
  • There’s another issue about Burge getting his pension even though he’s in the joint.
  • When you’re convicted you’re supposed to lose your pension.
  • There’s eight people on the pension board, 4 of them are former cops.
  • Several of the men who were responsible for Burge going to the penitentiary don’t have a claim civilly, never got a penny for the torture they suffered.
  • There are about 20 men still in jail, still in the prisons, based on tortured confessions by Burge and his men.
  • There is a demand to challenge these confessions, its been happening on a piece-meal basis.
  • You most often find that torture does not lead to information that is useful. In the situation here it is to punish African American people.
  • It’s a very racist type of torture in this city. There’s linkage here in what happened in Guantanamo, what happened in Abu Ghraib.
  • The Fraternal Order of Police: They’re a very reactionary force when reforming the police department generally. In the early nineties when they fired Burge, the FOP stood up and paid for his defense.
  • In case that has gotten him to prison now, the FOP paid a million dollars for 3 lawyers of his choice. Now, the same lawyers have switched hats, and the city is now paying them in the civil cases that we talked about.
  • When it gets to a point where the city can’t pay for his defense, the FOP steps in.
  • Burge deposition: I set up a series of questions for 3 hours where he consistently took the fifth amendment to all questions that would have implicated him if he answered truthfully.

Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University School of Law and a founding partner of the Peoples Law Office. More bio

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California Inmate Reductions

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling had ordered California to release 46,000 of its 143,435 inmates which has the state trying to figure out what happens next.  The SCOTUS ruling affirmed a lower court order that required California to reduce its inmate population to 137% capacity.  The state’s prisons are now at about 180% capacity and one cause of overcrowding problems is the state’s “three strikes law” which puts third time offenders in jail for life.  Meanwhile, under Governor Brown’s current “re-alignment” program, the tens of thousands convicted of non violent, non-serious, non-sex crimes will serve sentences under county instead of state supervision.  Our guest Professor Ruth Gilmore said to one media source, quote – “County jail expansion does not solve the underlying problems,”  – -These are goals we can achieve now if we take this opportunity to shrink prisons and jails. Building bigger jails to ease prison numbers is the same as rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic: wasting the same dollars in different jurisdictions.

Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore:

  • California is out of line with the rest of country when it comes to parole policy. California sends twice the number of people back to prisons than other jurisdictions, when the person has committed a technical violation, late for a meeting, that kind of thing.
  • For that reason, California prisons have been bulging.
  • We see that numbers are kept up by this one category, parole violation return to custody.  They have to start over and over and over again.
  • The Supreme Court ordered the Department of Corrections to reduce the number of people in its custody in its current physical plant. In the 33 prisons, prison camps and dozens of facilities.
  • One method to thin the prison population is shipping about 10 thousand prisoners out of the state of California, renting space in other jurisdictions. They’ve been shipping prisoners out of California for 2 and a half years.
  • Cost does not seem to have an important effect on the kinds of political decisions, that have been made about prison expansion throughout the United States for the last 30 years.
  • A year and a half ago the state presented a plan to the Ninth District court saying here are the changes that we will make to meet the 3 judges’ order that we reduce the number of people in the California State Authority Physical Plant.
  • Then, the 3 judges agreed to let California delay in implementing the plan, while they appealed to the Supreme Court.
  • California is the proving ground for a new relationship between the state and society.  California is a place that started turning its back on public education.
  • For some time, the union of California prison guards were a political force and continue to be quite powerful.
  • There are many alternatives to locking somebody in a cage for part or all of their life. We should be cautious in thinking GPS tracking is the answer, because one of the huge barriers, that people convicted of a felony face in their lives, is the impossibility of them reintegrating into society.
  • My colleague Michelle Alexander has put out a call in a campaign to end The New Jim Crow.
  • Criticalresistance.org / Curbprisonspending.org

Guest – Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.  Professor Gilmore has examined how political and economic forces produced California’s prison boom in Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), which was recognized by ASA with its Lora Romero First Book Award. Gilmore’s wide-ranging research interests also include race and gender, labor and social movements, uneven development, and the African diaspora. She comes to the Graduate Center from the University of Southern California, where she taught courses in race and ethnicity, economic geography, and political geography, was the founding chair of the department of American studies and ethnicity, and won the USC-Mellon Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. She also works regularly with community groups and grassroots organizations and is known for the broad accessibility of her research. She holds a Ph.D. in economic geography and social theory from Rutgers University.

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