CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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Central Park Five Civil Suit
On April 19, 1989 a group of five black and Latino teenagers were arrested and convicted for the brutal rape of a white female jogger in Central Park, New York City. It was one of the highest profile criminal cases in the city. A New York court overturned the convictions of the five teenagers after a serial rapist confessed to the crimes. By this time of this confession, the five defendants had already served sentences of 7and 13 years. Now, the city of New York is refusing to settle a $250 million decade-long federal civil rights suit brought by the defendants. Attorney Roger Wareham talks more about the case and the Ken Burns documentary on the Central Park Five that could provide footage for the federal civil lawsuit.
Attorney Roger Wareham:
- I’m part of a team of lawyers among five firms that represent the five defendants.
- She almost died. She lost 75 percent of the blood in her body that night.
- The police at some point arrested 30 youths who had allegedly been in the park earlier that night. Some of them were charged with attacking people jogging in the park.
- Most of them had been released, these five were in custody.
- Maybe four or five hours after they were arrested the police received word of this woman who was near death.
- So they held these five children for questioning which basically became and interrogation, which basically became a coerced false confession where each one of them implicated the other ones in the rape and attack of this woman.
- Even though none of them knew each other or what actually happened because they didn’t do it, they just wanted to go home.
- By the time the parents became part of the process, the false statements had already been elicited.
- Especially when a black man is a accused of touching, raping a white woman, logic, justice, objectivity, evidence goes out the window and there’s a presumption of guilt.
- They went to trial and were convicted even though there was no forensic evidence.
- Once they were released from prison they had to register as sexual predators.
- Thirteen years after their conviction, the person who actually committed the crime came forward and admitted he’d done it.
- He was arrested after a failed attempt at a rape. There was an m.o. that he employed with the rapes that he conducted.
- I’m part of a political organization called the December 12 Movement.
- Manhattan’s District Attorney’s office had done a very thorough investigation and this is the same office that had prosecuted them.
- They put forth a really damning affirmation in support of our motion basically admitting they had prosecuted the wrong people, errors had been made. It was clear that the one and only perpetrator was Mateas Raes and they were not going to retry the case.
- Their convictions were overturned 10 years ago, in December 2002.
- Why hasn’t it been settled? You look to Police Commissioner Kelly who endorsed the report.
- Subpoenaing the outtakes is a reflection of their desperation. See, they know the truth. They’re floundering around looking for different straws to grab at.
- Contact the December 12th Movement directly at 718-398-1766.
Guest – Attorney Roger Wareham is a 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.
Since 1989, he has annually presented evidence of human rights violations facing people of color in the United States and other parts of the world at assemblies of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council (formerly the Commission on Human Rights) and its other bodies that meet in Geneva, Switzerland. His work was instrumental in having Mr. Maurice Glele, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance; conduct the first U.N. investigation of the United States in history. Roger Wareham was an active organizer of and participant in the United Nations’ World Conference against Racism held from August 30 – September 7, 2001 in Durban, South Africa.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, War Resister
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Mass Incarceration Epidemic
On January 19, the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee 1199 SEIU activists presented the 17th Annual Dinner Tribute to the Families of our Political Prisoners & Prisoners of War. It was called Transforming Solidarity: Working Together to End Political Imprisonment and Mass Imprisonment and was held at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Labor Center in NYC.
Professor Johanna Fernandez:
- The Republican Party begins to craft an ideological backlash against an emerging civil rights and black power movement.
- The Republican presidential candidate at the time Barry Goldwater in a speech begins to link crime to the activism of civil rights protesters that are being incarcerated in the south.
- He is deploying one of the most atrocious fears of the white supremacist South in the post-reconstruction era to delegitamize these protests. That black men are going to rape white women.
- What we see happening in the 1960s is that fear is manufactured by these P.R. firms that are working in consultation with Republican leaders but also with police organizations, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the Police Benevolent Association.
- 1968 saw and huge amount of riots especially in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination.
- The criminalization of black and Latino protesters was the major strategy used to delegitamate the aspirations and the politics of this emerging revolutionary class.
- The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 legalized wire-tapping and bugging by federal agents and local police without a court order.
- It also legalized on the stop search and seizure by police.
- The police are exempt from the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
- What is the purpose of this crime mania and moral panic? It’s to delegitamize the influence of black and Latino radicals of the working class of color in the nation.
- In 1970s, the apparatus of mass incarceration emerges.
- This apparatus is being deployed against the most vulnerable sections of American society in urban centers. African-Americans and Latinos that are being devastated by a crisis of de-industrialization.
- The poorest people of color are likely to resist, and this class is going to be controlled.
- It was a fabricated crisis of crime that never existed.
- Fear atomizes people they don’t start thinking in terms of community but individual.
- Crime becomes a code word for African Americans, Latinos and increasingly immigrants.
- The Black Panther Party had an analysis of oppression and inequality that addressed its root causes. It identified capitalism which is driven by profit rather than need as the problem.
- But also they had a newspaper and this is important around the issue of mass incarceration.
- Crime is an ideological wedge that is crafted by the Republican Party and the new Right in this nation for the purposes of social control.
Guest – Johanna Fernández, a native New Yorker. She received a PhD in History from Columbia University and a BA in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University. Professor Fernández teaches 20th Century U.S. History, the history of social movements, the political economy of American cities, and African-American history. She has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, PA and Trinity College in Hartford, CT and is, most recently, the recipient of a Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa that will take her to Jordan in spring 2011, where she will teach graduate courses in American History.
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Policing Trends at National Special Security Events
On January 21, 2013, more than 3 thousand law enforcement officers and nearly 13 thousand military troops were activated and deployed to the Washington Mall. This magnitude of security at President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration raised the water mark of militarized police mobilization for National Special Security Events (NSSEs) High tech weaponry, mobile checkpoints and a large uniformed presence have become common sights at major sporting events, nominating conventions and international summits. NSSEs were created under President Bill Clinton, a designation that requires federal and local law enforcement to collaborate on event security under the management of the Secret Service. The report was issued by the National Lawyers Guild on NSSE trends is the Guild’s senior researcher.
Traci Yoder:
- The idea that this much security, this kind of multi-level, multi-agency is necessary is the assumption that these events are high profile, will have a lot of people and therefore are likely targets for terrorist attacks.
- There’s been about 40 NSSE’s since the designation was created and these include events like president inaugurations, state funerals, the annual State of the Union address, the Superbowl, Olympics, all International monetary organization meetings and of course the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
- All to often we’re finding that protesters who are engaging in constitutionally protected and legitimate protest activities are lumped into this security threat.
- Over time, we’ve (NLG) have not only done legal support, we’ve also done a lot of research and writing and analysis of the different kinds of trends we see evolving.
- We wanted to use the RNC and the DNC in 2012 as case studies to look at some disturbing changing trends and express our concern that these security measures are simply becoming more normalized.
- Several months before an NSSE, the local government overrides city codes to create exceptional circumstances for these particular events. That means creating a security zone around the event itself, then limiting How When and Where people can protest within that zone.
- That can lead to limiting the times of demonstrations, the amount of people, the special permitting processes to prohibiting everyday, household items being allowed in the zone.
- What we see leading up to NSSE and this has been very consistent is the DHS and FBI circulating unsubstantiated reports that violent anarchists and outside agitators are plotting to come to these cities really to cause harm and injury – to bring explosive devices, to injure police.
- FBI informants and agents and undercover police were crucial to both encouraging and helping to set up these plots which they then use as evidence later.
- We’re asking law enforcement to stop spreading these unsubstantiated threats of protester violence before NSSEs and acknowledge that most of the violence that has taken place at NSSEs in the past has been on the part of police and not the protesters.
- The combined total of the security budget for the RNC and DNC was 100 million dollars. 50 million dollars going to each city.
- We see the continuation of the militarization of police departments and the NSSEs are playing a part in them.
Guest – Traci Yoder, National Lawyers Guild senior researcher. Before coming to the National Office, she coordinated the NLG Philadelphia Chapter. She holds master’s degrees in Library and Information Studies and Anthropology, with a focus in the latter degree on gender studies and East Africa. In Philadelphia, Traci worked on many projects in addition to the NLG, including the Wooden Shoe Book Collective and the Radical Archives of Philadelphia.
Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Guantanamo Bay Prison 11th Anniversary
- Abu Ghraib Settlement: Defense Contractor Engility Holdings Pays $5M To Iraqi Torture Detainees
- Stop and Frisk Lawyers Praise Decision Finding NYPD Stops Unconstitutional
- Bradley Manning Case: Judge Gives 112 Days of Sentence If Convicted
- Law and Disorder Tip of the Hat: New Yorkers Respond to Hateful Subway Ads & Declare Them War Propaganda
- In Memory of Adnan Latif, A Cleared Guantanamo Detainee Who Was Found Dead In His Cell
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Obama to Nominate John Brennan, ‘Kill List’ Architect, as New CIA Chief
As many listeners know, President Barack Obama has nominated John Brennan as director of the CIA. Brennan is currently Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. In this capacity Brennan meets with the president daily and is governed the administration’s program of extrajudicial assassinations known as the “kill list.”
In 2011 and 2012, Brennan used his position to “re-organize” the process by which people outside of war zones were put on the list of drone targets. Basically, this “reorganization” gave the White House the power to secretly determine who would die in the US assassination program overseas.
We welcome back retired CIA officer, Ray McGovern, now a political activist. McGovern was a federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray McGovern’s article on Consortium News: The Grilling That Brennan Deserves.
Ray McGovern:
- After 9-11, the acceptance of things like torture has become even more widespread.
- I spent a little time in Germany and I know about Gestapo tactics, and it seem to me that enhanced interrogation techniques sounded very familiar, and indeed its right out of the Gestapo lexicon.
- The immediate post World War II experience was very vivid.
- Obama is very fastidious in looking over this “kill list.” He’s got his own priest.
- It did me great good to know there were a handful at least of Fordham students that stood with their back to Brennan and protested vigorously against not being the commencement speaker but awarded the Doctorate of Humane Letters.
- He openly advocated kidnapping, the euphemism there is extraordinary rendition.
- There are black prisons all over Europe and Asia where these people were kept and tortured.
- He was an open advocate of at least the kidnapping and he was there. He was at the right hand of George Tenet so to speak.
- I have good information that Brennan was among those in the White House basement supervising the demonstration of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that Condeleeza Rice arranged for all the personages there.
- It’s all a master weaving, webbing of deceit and John Brennan is at the bottom of it.
- He was a classis example of a failed analyst. Why did he get where he is?
- He made an important friend George Tenet.
- Is Brennan suggesting that Muslims are hard wired to want to knock down planes over Detroit.
- I have very good information in that report that Brennan is the prime mover in all these abuses.
- It’s not about success, it’s about principle here.
- I like Dr. King’s motto, there is such a thing is too late. Sometimes you really have to put your body into it.
- Unless we act, nothing will be achieved.
- There are 2 CIAs. The one that Truman set up to give him honest answers to what’s going on in the world.
- To speak without fear or favor, to tell ’em the truth. That’s the one I worked in. That’s the one I could with career protection knock noses out of joint in the Pentagon and the State Department. I could do that.
Guest – Raymond L. McGovern, retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray’s opinion pieces have appeared in many leading newspapers here and abroad. His website writings are posted first on consortiumnews.com, and are usually carried on other websites as well. He has debated at the Oxford Forum and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Newshour, CNN, and numerous other TV & radio programs and documentaries. Ray has lectured to a wide variety of audiences here and abroad. Ray studied theology and philosophy (as well as his major, Russian) at Fordham University, from which he holds two degrees. He also holds a Certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University.
A Catholic, Mr. McGovern has been worshipping for over a decade with the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and teaching at its Servant Leadership School. He was co-director of the school from 1998 to 2004. Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Green Scare, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, RFID, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- Khaled El-Masri and the European Court of Human Rights Decision
- European Court of Human Rights Labels CIA Interrogation Procedures as “Torture”
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Tariq Ali: Turning Points in the History of Imperialism
Today we’re joined by internationally renowned writer and activist Tariq Ali. Tariq is visiting from London where he is editor of the New Left Review.
A writer and filmmaker, Tariq has written more than 2 dozen books on world history and politics, including The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, The Obama Syndrome and On History. We talk specifically about several turning points in global history, the Occupy movement and US elections. .
Tariq Ali:
- The think the first World War was crucial but it wasn’t the war itself it was the consequences of that war. Here you had huge empires.
- The Russian revolution challenged capitalism frontally and its leaders said we want Europe to be with us, on our own we can’t do it. We need the Germans, we need a German revolution. That frightened the capitalist class globally.
- Woodrow Wilson, decided that the time had come to intervene. 22 countries came to intervene.
- This intervention made it impossible for the early infant Soviet Union to achieve what it wanted to achieve.
- The Second World War was an effort by the German ruling class to get its share of the world market in countries.
- The US helped rebuild Japan and Germany. They helped build France and Britain by the Marshal Plan and that has never been done by a big imperial power before.
- They managed to get the Soviet Union to implode by having an arms race. The Russians fell into their trap and decided to go for the arms race, had they not history might have been different.
- I hope the Chinese do not fall into the same trap, threatened by Obama’s puny little bases in Australia.
- People, early settlers in the United States got land totally free and they took it and that created the belief in the American psyche of private property.
- The Soviet Union imploded because the people lost faith in the system.
- The entire elite in the United States and Western Europe is wedded to the Washington consensus that emerged after the collapse of communism. The center piece of this consensus was a system which believed in market forces. I refer to it as market fundamentalism.
- We are confronting the extremism of the center and the result of this is no alternatives exist within mainstream politics. The effect that this is having is hollowing out democracy itself.
- Occupy: What we need is for these movements to call an assembly nationally and discuss a charter of demands for progressive America which need only be ten demands but something around which people can rally. I think its a movement that should be created bearing what the needs of ordinary people are.
- In order to understand the laws of motion of capital, you have to read Marx. It’s true capitalism has become much much more complex. Zombie capitalism, or fictitious capitalism, where money is used to make more money.
- It’s not money that’s creating productive goods.
- I had written a book on South American because I got very engaged in the Venezuela-Boliverian struggle and got to know Chavez very well.
- If Americans had access to Cuban medicine, the pharmaceutical companies would collapse, they would never let it happen.
Guest – Tariq Ali, writer, journalist and film-maker, born in Lahore and educated at Oxford University. He writes regularly for a range of publications including The Guardian and The London Review of Books. He has written more than a dozen books including non-fiction as well as scripts for both stage and screen.
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National Lawyers Guild 75 Years
Hundreds of National Lawyers Guild members and allies gathered to celebrate the organization’s 75th anniversary at the Law for the People convention in Pasadena, California. We hear excerpts from speeches from the National Lawyers Guild Convention by Attorney Jim Lafferty The 2012 Law for the People Award was given to Jim Lafferty.
Scholar and activist Angela Davis delivered the keynote address and among the convention honorees will be Margaret Burnham, a professor of civil rights law who, as a young lawyer, helped secure Davis’s 1972 acquittal on high-profile charges.
Founded in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar association in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has members in every state.
Jim Lafferty, Executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show on Pacifica’s KPFK 90. 7 FM.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
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Political Prisoner Lynne Stewart – December 2012 Update
Criminal defense attorney, political prisoner and good friend, Lynne Stewart continues to inspire people around her while serving a 10 year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth Texas. As many listeners know, Lynne was convicted on charges related to materially aiding terrorism, related to her representation of Omar Abdel Rahman. Her original 2 year sentence was increased to 10 years after the government pressured the trial judge to reconsider his sentencing decision.
Co-host Michael Smith reads a few paragraphs from a recent letter by Lynne. Lynne Stewart turned 73 this past October, she’s a breast cancer survivor and has recently come out of surgery. She says she’s feeling better and ready to take on the next step in her case.
“I am now beginning my fourth (4th) year of imprisonment. It does not get better and I have to gut check myself regularly to be certain that I am resisting the pervasive institutionalization that takes place. A certain degree of reclusiveness with the help of good books, interesting people to correspond with, writing on topics of public interest, seems to work for me. Of course I still am working with any woman who needs help but I know that my sometimes truth-telling self is not what folks here want to hear. I do try to give folks whatever comfort I can. An old timer here, 18 years in, has begun an initiative to mobilize for prison reform by getting people on the outside to sign off on her well written petition to the White House. She is straight out of the courage and style of the old southern civil rights struggle but has now dedicated herself to this. The demands are modest. I have placed her petition on this, my website. Please sign on.”
Guest – Ralph Poynter, activist and Lynne’s partner. Please write to Lynne Stewart: #53504-054 / Federal Medical Center, Carswell / PO Box 27137 / Ft. Worth, TX 76127
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Michael Ratner Speech On Bradley Manning in Washington DC.
We hear a speech by our own Michael Ratner delivered at the Bradley Manning support event. Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Attorney David Coombs also speaks about the case of his client, Bradley Manning. He is preceded by Emma Cape of the Bradley Manning Support Network. The event was held at All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington DC, December 2012.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- Heidi Boghosian: EyeSee Mannequins and Surveillance State: “In-Person Community” Destroyed
- Michael Ratner: Bradley Manning Case Update
- New York Times Fails To Cover Manning Testimony
- Michael Ratner: Julian Assange Ecuador Embassy Update
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Marijuana Laws: State Votes v. Federal Government
Washington State and Colorado are the first political jurisdictions to legally approved marijuana to be regulated like alcohol. However, federal laws explicitly criminalize marijuana transactions and the federal government can continue to enforce those laws by blocking the progress of state initiatives. For example, it’s likely that the federal authorities will step in when large transactions and large scale production begin in Washington or Colorado. Meanwhile, the Colorado provision allows personal possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and the growing up to six plants at home.
Ethan Nadelmann:
- Colorado and Washington are the first 2 political jurisdictions in the world to do this.
- The United States of America is emerging as the global leader of marijuana law reform.
- As of now it’s legal under state law to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and in Colorado legal to have up to six plants in the privacy of your own home.
- Parts of the initiative that authorize the state to set up a legal regulatory system like with alcohol that doesn’t kick in in Colorado until July, and in Washington state until next December.
- Not in public, let’s be clear.
- My colleagues at Drug Policy Alliance led a broad coalition effort and pushed back the mayor and police chief, rallied the DA’s to say this policy (stop and frisk) made no sense.
- The opportunity here for the federal government to say, let’s get Washington and Colorado a chance to figure this out; a way to effectively regulate this stuff.
- From the public health perspective if you have something that’s being consumed by millions of Americans you want authorities regulating quality and potency.
- The Federal Controlled Substance Act of 1970 is in conflict with this.
- There are now 18 states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Colorado already has a model of regulation on marijuana in respect to medicinal use.
- The fact is you hundreds if not thousands of dispensaries in many states, some are very open ended such as California.
- If the Feds prevent the state governments in Washington and Colorado from responsibly regulating this stuff, you’re essentially going to have a defacto alliance between the federal government on one side and an irresponsible elements of the marijuana community on the other.
- The worst possible thing in Mexico is the legalize drugs in the US. They would lose out just like Al Capone after the alcohol prohibition.
- Latin American leaders: They know that what Washington and Colorado did is the beginning of the ending of the global drug prohibition system which has wreaked havoc in that region for decades.
- People are realizing that among the other ingredients in marijuana, CBD which is the anti-anxiety and anti-inflammatory property of marijuana.
- It’s all about reducing the harms of drugs and the harms of failed prohibitionist policy.
Guest – Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.
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Egypt and Syria Update: Glen Ford
Protests and violence continue in Egypt as Islamist President Mohamed Morsi pushes toward ratifying a draft constitution. Egyptians who oppose the controversial new constitution argue it weakens human rights doesn’t guarantee women’s rights and that it was written by an Islamist dominated assembly. The opposition National Salvation Front says it will not recognize the draft constitution. We talk about that and the disturbing events unfolding within the ongoing conflict in Syria with Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report. We welcome him back to Law and Disorder. Glen Ford is also a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Glen Ford:
- In the Muslim world, the Left has been decimated not once, not twice, but over and over again in the last 50 years. That’s occurred in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq.
- It would be expected that in Egypt, the part of secular Egypt that is Left, secularized would represent 15-20 percent of the people.
- The language of politics in that world is spoken in an Islamic dialect.It’s difficult for Left folks here to understand it.
- Leftists here get confused by the corporate media which inflates business secularists in contests all over the world.
- How many people realize that the opposition party, party number two, in Russia is the Communist Party?
- Everybody is at work in Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and freelance millionaires from all over the region are sponsoring their own brigades and fighting forces.
- Before the CIA and the Pakistanis got together to create a force to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan no such thing existed as a national Jihadi network.
- Syrian situation really heated up after the fall of the “Libyan regime”. 600 to 900 of the Libyan Jihadis were then sent directly to Syria.
- It’s really not in U.S. hands.
Guest – Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report and many other media forums. Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities.
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