Censorship, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Watch: Michael Ratner – Should High Gov’t Officials Be Investigated and Prosecuted? – Quicktime
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Mara Verheyden Hilliard: Inauguration 2009 and the Partnership For Civil Justice
Hosts talk with Mara about criminalizing dissent, surveillance, data mining, fusion centers and the ability to exercise first amendment rights. A recent example were the violations of free speech during the mass arrests of protesters at the 2008 Republican National Convention. The demonizing of protesters and their message in the media will usually allow for the use of military force by police. That combined with intelligence gathering and targeting of lead organizers squelched the voice of dissent in all age groups.
Mara Verheyden Hilliard:
- A lot of our work is at the intersection of first and fourth amendment rights.
- PCJ has a class action suit pending from the world bank IMF protest – 8 year drag out tactic.
- “What they want to do is stage-manage democracy.”
- Victory: After years of litigation the government has to lift regulations on number of people at the Great Lawn
- Is it important to say that we don’t want to go back to Jan 19, 2001 just the day before Bush took office- or is there more that we have to do?
- We think there has to be an audit of every agency’s databases to determine exactly what the databases are.
- Identify what has been collected, where it has been put, who has access to that information,
- Then to tell people in the United States individually, what has been collected on them and then to expunge it.
- For people in their United States, their government collecting information, maintaining information, in these massive database files, that can be used by law enforcement, pulled up in a moment’s notice is really a very dangerous practice.
- What they’ve done is misuse existing databases and data tools.
Guest – Attorney Mara Verheyden Hilliard co-founder of The Partnership for Civil Justice Legal Defense & Education Fund.
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Labor Law for the Rank and Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law
Law and Disorder hosts welcome back attorney, author and union activist Daniel Gross who has co-written with author, lawyer and historian Staughton Lynd the recently published, Labor Law for the Rank and Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law.
Daniel Gross:
- Led movement to unionize baristas at Starbucks
- Subtitle of the book –“building solidarity while staying clear of the law”
- We try to show in the book how the law represses and co-ops solidarity amongst rank and file workers.
- It is the rank and file that transform both work and society.
- A union is a group of workers standing together to take direct action.
- We shouldn’t let the government or employer define whether we are a labor union or not.
- Book chapter – No One Is Illegal – practicing solidarity unionism.
- The risks are so high for immigrants to come to this country, often you’ll see a tremendous willingness to fight back.
- In the current economic crisis, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for rank and file upsurges.
- We will also see repression at this time to avoid a fundamental transformation of society
- Organize for transformational demands – demands that spark more collective activity and also question the fundamental role of corporations in our lives.
- In the union solidarity model, workers themselves operate and control there own campaigns.
- A handful of shop workers on the floor who are challenging the boss, speaking out publically and a resource that other co-workers can go to. That’s a real power on the shop floor.
Guest – Daniel Gross, attorney, author and union activist. Daniel works with Brandworkers International, a New York-based not-for-profit organization powered by a global network of committed individuals, advocates, lawyers, and organizers who believe in holding corporations accountable to workers and communities.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Stephen Kinzer: The Reality of War in Afghanistan
In his recent article The Reality of War in Afghanistan, author and veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer describes how the current war strategy in Afghanistan is not really based in reality. Kinzer points to how history has shown that victory over the Taliban is near impossible and adds that peace through skillful negotiation among Taliban clan leaders could be the best approach instead of deploying more soldiers. He adds that Afghanistan civilians are collateral damage amid US bombings, helping to recruit new Taliban soldiers.
Stephen Kinzer:
“There is still an overwhelming feeling in the U.S. that we still need to take revenge for the crimes on September 11 and who are we going to take revenge against? Well, its the Taliban and Al-Quaeda is the answer that the people in Washington would give you. The Taliban and Al-Quaeda are very different forces. To negotiate with Al-Quada is morally repugnant but the Taliban is something different. They have a broad base inside Afghanistan.”
- Its not a surrender, its a cold calculated way to achieve an end outside of the military means.
- We need to put aside our emotions and look at this real politique.
- The war in Afghanistan is antiseptic – to compromise with a force that was our enemy is unpopular.
- The poppy crop in Afghanistan is almost the source of all the world’s heroin.
- To wipe out the poppy crop is not achievable.
- You can’t continue to spray and burn the crop and hope that’s going to end the problem.
“The yearly value of the Afghan poppy crop is about 4 billion dollars.” Kinzer’s idea is to not wipe it all out and impoverish Afghanistan communities. Instead, he says that NATO should purchase crop. “Because when people buy heroin on the street that money goes right to the coffers of terrorists to buy weapons. Kinzer says cut them all off, turn a portion into morphine and destroy the rest.”
Guest – Stephen Kinzer, a veteran New York Times correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries on five continents. He was the New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul. Stephen currently teaches journalism and United States foreign policy at Northwestern University.
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Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand
Author Benjamin Hett outlines the fascinating and tragic story of a young lawyer Hans Litten in his recent book Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. Before the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s, they incited calculated violence among the working class in German taverns. Four Nazi stormtroopers were charged with firing randomly into a dance hall where a communist hiking club were holding a party. Three young men were wounded. Hans Litton was the advocate for the 3 men.
Hans Litten called Hitler to the witness stand to show that the Nazi party was a violent party, and by cross examining Hitler he tried to prove that. Litten forced Hitler to contradict himself, reducing him to humiliating rage that revealed his true intention. At that time, Hitler wanted to be a legal party in Germany and of course you couldn’t be a party that was extra-constitutional and legal but at the same time he didn’t want to disappoint the base of his party which was this violent working class aspect. Two years later, the Nazi Party rose to power.
What came after the Reichstag Fire was the arrest of about 5 thousand people across Germany who the Nazis have identified as opponents or potential opponents. Hans Litten was among them and sent to a concentration camp. Author Benjamin Hett describes a powerful narrative of Hans facing torture yet still telling stories and teaching art to other prisoners.
Hans Litten was born in 1903 in Halle in Central Germany, his father was a law professor and Jewish but converted to German evangelical (Lutheran).
Guest – Benjamin Hett, author of Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. He’s a former trial lawyer, and now Associate Professor of History at Hunter College.
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Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Iraq Veterans Against The War: Jose Vasquez
The group Iraq Veterans Against The War or IVAW has emerged as the leading antiwar group in the United States. Recently, thousands of IVAW members held rallies and marches at the RNC and nearly 10 thousand marched at the DNC in Denver. The demonstrations urged presidential candidates to endorse ending the Iraq war and paying reparations to the people of Iraq.
The IVAW also calls for the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq, stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq, and full benefits, adequate healthcare for returning servicemen and women. IVAW chapters are in 48 states, Canada and DC, members include recent veterans and active duty servicemen and women from all branches of military service, National Guard members, and reservists who have served in the United States military since September 11, 2001.
Guest – Jose Vasquez, a 14 year US Army veteran and conscientious objector. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) serving as the New York City chapter president. Jose was also a key organizer of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Iraq War – Status of Forces Agreement: Anthony Arnove
Nearly 4,200 US soldiers and 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed in the US occupation of Iraq since 2003. .Right now there are 75 major US bases in Iraq, 140 thousand US troops and 180 thousand private contractors operating in Iraq. The cost of the Iraq War so far is 3 trillion and this year the monthly average expense is 12 billion dollars.
A pact recently negotiated in secret by the US government intends to extend the US occupation 3 more years in Iraq despite public and Congressional opposition. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have demonstrated against the pact that calls for full US withdrawal by 2012, but the agreement also leaves open the possible later date of withdrawal.
Anthony Arnove:
- Status of Forces Agreement; Orwellian slieght of hand – Combat troop withdrawal only.
- US is currently responsible for the detention of thousands of Iraqis who are being held without trial.
- 14 permanent US bases in Iraq: Areas to project power from in the future.
- Iraq: World’s second largest oil reserves, and world’s most strategic shipping routes.
- In the SOFA agreements, the US is making a condition to pass a national oil law.
- Iraq’s oil is distributed unevenly, leading to regional tensions between Kurdish and Shia regions.
- Obama rhetoric: Blaming the Iraqi people – the Iraqis haven’t spent money or achieved political reconciliation, or passed a national oil law
Guest – Editor and writer, Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic Of Withdrawal.
Anthony Arnove Wikipedia Entry:
Arnove is best known for his books on Iraq and the Iraq War. Arnove is the author of the book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, published in hardcover by the New Press and in paperback by Haymarket Books. Arnove toured the country promoting the book in spring 2006 as part of the New Press’ “End the War Tour”.
Arnove is also the editor of Iraq Under Siege, published by South End Press, the co-editor with Howard Zinn of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, published by Seven Stories Press, and the editor of The Essential Noam Chomsky, published by the New Press. He writes frequently for left-wing publications; he is a featured author at ZNet, a columnist for Socialist Worker, and on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review. He has also written for The Nation, In These Times, Le Nouvel Observateur, L’Humanité, and The Financial Times.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Federal Appeals Court Overturns Two Terrorist Convictions
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Sheik Mohammed Ali Al Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Zayed, convicted of supporting terrorists, can have new trials. The men were convicted in federal court in Brooklyn after a six week trial in early 2005 on charges of conspiring to support Al Qaida and Hamas.
National Lawyers Guild Lawyer, Robert Boyle: This case involved an FBI sting operation where the FBI and the Dept of Justice lured Sheik Mohammed Ali Al Moayad and Mohammed Mohsen Zayed from their native Yemen to Germany.
- They were lured on the promise (…and this was an FBI informant that told them this) that they would provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to Al Moayad’s charitable organizations. The issue was entrapment – set up by the FBI.
- The Sheik went to Germany arrested there in 2003 after meetings with the informant -all recorded. He was brought to trial in Brooklyn but imprisoned in a Florence, Colorado supermax prison.
- The trial judge allowed the government to introduce a host of prejudicial and irrelevant evidence.
- Robert Boyle – “Its rare that they find the cumulative prejudicial evidence as grounds for reversal. This decision is gratifying and unique, its rare to get a reversal in a case where there is alleged terrorism.”
- Extremely similar to Lynne Stewart’s case, if you don’t have direct evidence, prejudice the jury. Raise the spectre of Osama Bin Laden and you hope that the jury overlooks the weaknesses of the government’s case and convicts.
Guest – Lynne Stewart, has also helped set up the Muslim Innocence Project for Muslims caught in similar entrapment.
Guest – Robert Boyle, a national lawyers guild attorney who represented Sheik Mohammed Ali Al Moayad and former civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart who tells us why this brings other issues to light in her case.
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Luis Posada Carriles: A Tribunal
We hear a speech from Wayne Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy, he was among three speakers. We e will hear Brian Becker, Director of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition in the weeks to come.
Wayne Smith addressed the failure of the United States, specifically the Bush family to prosecute Luis Posada Carriles on charges of terrorism. The failure to charge Posada with terrorism is an open violation of the Resolution 1373 of the UN Security Council. A resolution George Bush pushed through on the days following the attacks on 9/11.
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Collateral Damage : Chris Hedges
Author, journalist Chris Hedges exposes the dark violence deep within the ranks of the Iraq War. The type of violence and eyewitness accounts you don’t hear about in the media. His book pulls together the 50 stories from by combat veterans as they describe the day to day carnage.
Chris Hedges:
- We wanted to give people a window into the sheer terror that has been visited on Iraqi civilians.
- Convoys have to keep moving: Running over children. If an IED goes off, soldiers lay down withering suppressive fire.
- The Sunnis are building a powerful force and will soon unleash a civil war
- Barack Obama speaks in the same toxic language of war bequeathed to us by the Bush Administration. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan, he talks about leaving behind troops in the green zone and the super bases and fighting terrorism.
- We have no rights as citizens of this country to debate the terms of this occupation, in post Nuremberg terms this war is a criminal war of aggression.
- Resistance. We find our spiritual worth in our ability to resist and to take moral stance n0 matter how lonely.
Guest – Chris Hedges, author of many books specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans and right now, he’s a senior fellow at The Nation Institue in New York City and a lecturer in the Council of the Humanities.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, RFID, Supreme Court, Surveillance
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Lawyer’s You’ll Like: Rhonda Copelon
Attorney Rhonda Copelon is a professor at the Law School of the City University of New York and director of the school’s International Human Rights Law Clinic. Rhonda is also the Legal Advisor to the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice.
From Article on New International Criminal Court: “The breadth and specificity of gender crimes in the court’s enabling statutes are directly attributable to a global caucus of women that formed in 1997 in the face of apathy and active resistance to prosecuting gender-based crimes. “Women made a huge difference,” said Rhonda Copeland, a professor at the Law School of the City University of New York and director of the school’s International Human Rights Law Clinic.
“They made it impossible to ignore that women have been left out of justice and that we have to be in it,” Copelon said. “If there were nobody there saying ‘this is violence,’ I don’t know how it would have happened.”Rhonda shares with listeners, her history of fighting for the constitutionality of the abortion cases in New York City and its effect on poor women in a pre-Roe v Wade climate. She also discuss the Harlem 6 case. This is the first part of the interview with Rhonda Copelon.
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Bill Would Let Insurers Track Where, When, How You Drive
A bill proposed by the California legislature would allow insurance companies to install black boxes on vehicles that track milage but also measure more sensitive information such as how aggressive you drive. The bill is structured so that insurance companies can encourage people to drive less with lower insurance. Consumer watchdogs say drivers shouldn’t have to choose between fair insurance rates and protecting their privacy when there are less intrusive ways to collect data.
Under the proposed bill titled AB 2800, the “black box†would allow insurance companies to track how fast drivers accelerate, where motorists go and which neighborhoods they drive through. The device would also monitor whether they come to a full stop at a stop sign; and when they apply their brakes. Privacy protection groups are also watching as similar proposals are being introduced in other states.
Guest – Carmen Balber, Consumer Advocate with Consumerwatchdog.org
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Bush Proposes To Bypass Endangered Species Act Experts
Currently under the Endangered Species Act, federal agencies are required to consult with federal wildlife experts to make sure activities such as mining, logging and road construction do not threaten endangered species. Now, the Bush administration has proposed a new plan that will give federal agencies the decision of whether they want expert consultation to determine if activities will affect endangered species.
Thousands of these consultations happen each year and federal wildlife experts have finely tuned their knowledge of protecting endangered species in the last twenty years. Critics say the proposal is a disturbing reversal.
Guest – Joel Kupferman, executive director and head attorney of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Iran, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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The Prosecution of President Bush and Other Administration Officials for War Crimes
This month, Larry Velvel, dean and co-founder of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will hold a conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other administration officials for war crimes. The conference will take on the issues of both domestic and international crimes committed by high level Bush officials, including Federal judges and members of Congress. A coordinating committee of legal groups will also be created, among the legal groups are the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild. Official Site
“This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred,” says convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. “It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.†related article
Velvel Interview Notes:
- Conference will be held in undisclosed location for the time being.
- Until people have the fear they will be brought to book if they violate the law in a very serious ways that cause tens of thousands of deaths, what will stop them from doing it in the future?
- Unless there is something to look back on, like the Germans and the Japanese apparently know, don’t do it again because people swung.
- Who’s to say it won’t happen 20 or 30 years in the future again.
Guest – Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean of Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law. Mr. Velvel is a 1960 graduate of the University of Michigan and a 1963 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, where he served on the law review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He was a law professor from 1966-1978, first at the University of Kansas and then at Catholic University. He has been a partner in major law firms in Washington, D.C., and was the first chief counsel of an organization established to write United States Supreme Court briefs in support of state and local governments. read more.
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New Guidelines Would Give F.B.I. Broader Powers
A Justice Department proposal which could be made public in a month, has given the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations, without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on racial or ethnic profiling. Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons, such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated, to investigate US citizens and legal residents. Last month, The Council on American Islamic Relations decried the forthcoming plan as “unconstitutional and un-American.â€
This proposal is among other aggressive plans the Bush administration has put in place such as new wiretapping regulations and authorizing greater sharing of intelligence information with the local police. The Director of National Intelligence has set up – Information Sharing Environment – where certain police authorities will have access to information produced by the FBI, by the intelligence community and also by police departments around the country.
It is “one stop shopping” for all these different police agencies and even private companies to have access to this highly speculative, accusatory, fragmented and often erroneous information.
Intelligence Fusion Centers – which I think is a real problem, particularly since there’s very little oversight of these centers
there’s no way to correct these watch files, – a main problem with the closed system, where no one has an opportunity to go in and say you got this piece wrong.
Related Article : Colorado ‘fusion center’ to step up intelligence gathering during DNC
Mike German Quotes:
- Giving the FBI more authority to collect more information isn’t helping the FBI be more effective.
- Gathering information about innocent people won’t help find guilty people.
- There is no terrorism profile, people are drawn to terrorism for all sorts of reasons.
- Terrorism watch list : 1 million individual records – clearly nobody believes there’s a million terrorists out there.
- The FBI don’t know to this day, how many national security letters they’ve issued.
Guest – Mike German, attorney with the ACLU and former FBI agent. Mike German is a recognized expert in terrorist group behavior, counter-terrorist operations, and right-wing extremism. He has appeared on Dateline NBC, Paula Zahn Now, CNN, and MSNBC and his commentary has been published in the National Law Journal and the Washington Post. Mike served for sixteen years as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is one of the few agents credited with actually having prevented acts of terrorism before it became the FBI’s number one priority.
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