Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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The First 100 Days: Dismantling the Police State in a New Presidency – Part 1
This is the first of a three part special. Law and Disorder hosts bring a series of interviews with key attorneys, authors and activists from the front lines such as the Center For Constitutional Rights, Universities of Law and the National Lawyers Guild. Some of the police state policies are beginning to be reversed such as closing down secret CIA sites, a timeline to shut down Guantanamo, and mandating everyone CIA included follow US Army Field Manual Interrogation tactics.
We define the current laws in place that now constitute a police state. Then we look at the steps the Obama Administration must take to turn back the major breaches in civil liberties such as the Patriot Act One and Two, the Military Commissions Act, FBI Guidelines and legal provisions that allow for torture. As you’ll hear, some attorneys believe much of the dismantling can be done by executive order.
We begin with a description of what we have seen since September 11, 2001 and precursors such as the Effective Death Penalty Act, the earlier renditions under Clinton’s administration. Then, right after 9/11 came the overreaching of executive power in the form of signing statements that misuse the war powers resolution to detain, torture and try so_called enemy combatants. This includes racial profiling against Muslims here and abroad, massive surveillance capacities and warrant_less wiretapping.
The dismantling of police state blocks in the new presidency will take attention to detail to ensure a full restoration of democracy that will ultimately allow for social progress. In the next hour we look at some remedies and solutions to reverse laws that have created domestic enemy combatants, Guantanamo Bay prison, Renditions, Secret CIA sites, Torture, Kangaroo Courts: Special Trials, FISA, domestic surveillance, private military contractors.
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Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vince Warren discusses the abuse of preventive detention, torture, rendition and states secrets. Hosts cite recent examples of deep surveillance on peaceful protesters and the unprecedented collusion between federal, state and local law enforcement. Warren points out the importance of rolling back the police state measures put in place by the Bush administration, in that No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.
Vincent Warren:
- Torture/rendition/states secrets / right to dissent / the abuse of preventive detention.
- Torture top of list, the export of torture and CIA black sites.
- torture crimes at this time are unprosecutable adn its up to the president to
- Close Guantanamo prison – send prisoners back to countries they came from, repatriate.
- CCR and civil proceedings – hold accountable, the Bush administration to declare what they’ve done unconstitutional, damages to clients CCR represents and injunctive relief, future deterrents
- Universal jurisdiction stems from the Nuremberg principles that say a crime that is committed against a person anywhere is prosecutable anywhere.
- Countries such as Germany Spain and France have statutes for human rights abuse survivors to bring cases for prosecution.
- States secrets privilege, the privilige that the government has routinely invoked in a range of CCR cases, whenever the government says states secrets, the courts, including the supreme courts usually kick the case. The remedy?
- Congress can create a statute that limits the use of a states secrets power in order to make it consistent for truth telling and accountability.
- No president has ever given back the power a previous president has given him.
- The abuse of preventive detention, fusion centers – intelligence gathering and data mining – the concern is that no one can monitor and again its done in secrecy. no oversight, more preemptive law enforcement
- The irony here is that government usually acts as if one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, unless they’re coming down on our constitutional rights, then they’re all on the same page.
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Naomi Wolf : 10 Steps
We’re joined by author and activist Naomi Wolf. She is the author of seven books, and the groundbreaking book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. In the book, Naomi addresses ten steps that societies, dictators, and sometimes democracies use to close an open society to move it toward facsism. We want to re-visit those ten steps.
Naomi Wolf:
- A small group of people used the law to subvert the law. Reichstag Fire, then disembowel their own Constitution.
- Initial thinking inspired from my friend who is the daughter of holocaust survivors, she said the Bush strategies echo early 1930s Germany.
- Enabling Acts in Germany gave the power to the state to read a person’s mail, listen to their phone calls and read their telegrams. This, in the alleged interest of national security and the fight against terrorism.
- Nazis used to unload the coffins of the war dead at night.
- A would-be dictator sought to close an open society or crush a democracy movement. Mussolini in 1920, the great evil pioneer. Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler.
- I looked at Russia, studied Czechoslovakia in the 60’s, Pinochet’s coup in 1973, the Chinese crackdown on democracy in the 80s.
- What I saw was there was a blueprint. The blueprint has 10 steps. The 10 steps have been codified, they teach them at the School of the Americas.
- To help would be Latin-American dictators to overthrow their own governments. What terrified me is that those ten steps are being put in place by the Bush Administration.
- Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
- Create a gulag
- Develop a thug caste
- Set up an internal surveillance system
- Harass citizens’ groups
- Engage in arbitrary detention and release
- Target key individuals
- Control the press
- Dissent equals treason
- Suspend the rule of law
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Censorship, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Israel Attacks: Discussion with Author Joel Kovel and Guild Attorney Audrey Bomse
Last week Israel launched what has been described as one of the bloodiest attacks on Palestinians in Gaza since 1948. Protesters demonstrated worldwide as Israeli air strikes continued. Nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed and thousands injured from the bombing campaign. Targets of the strike include a Hamas building and an Islamic university. Gaza is approximately 146 square miles with a population density of 1.5 million, 2/3 of whom are refugees. Israel Lets Palestinians Flee; UN Warns of Crisis.
Guest – Author Joel Kovel, politician, academic, and eco-socialist. He has lectured in psychiatry, anthropology, political science and communication studies. He has published many books including the controversial Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine.
Guest – Audrey Bomse, a Lawyers Guild attorney working with the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Audrey has used her 25 years of civil rights legal experience to help establish training programs for attorneys representing prisoners in Israeli military courts and to produce ground_breaking public documents, such as a report published in conjunction with the Mandela Institute for Human Rights on the status of Palestinian prisoners. Audrey was also recently detained at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport for 4 days.
Joel Kovel:
- The Israeli invasion has been going on for 110 years.
- People have been mystified because of the power of the propaganda system.
- Zionism predates it Israel nearly 50 years, and is the driving force to remove non-Jewish from historic Palestine.
- The logic of the force of Zionism, moves back to the early settlers who were not armed, and relied on devious means and foreign powers. = Terror Strategy
- Balfour Declaration – To gather patrons for Israel. The US is the mega-patron.
- In 1937 when there was a great Arab uprising, the Peel Commission decided on partitioning the state into Arab/Muslim and Jewish/Zionist.
- There was consternation because the Zionists wanted the whole thing. Ben Gurion at the time, said don’t worry, once we get a state, we will continue the process of acquiring the whole thing.
- Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
- Unless you see it as a long range project, you’re going to be lost, with the notions of let’s have a cease fire or let the sides get together, negotiate.
- You can’t conceive that the Israelis will negotiate in good faith once you realize how embedded this drive to eliminate everything non-jewish from Palestine.
- So eventually, you have a concentration of a million and a half people in this very small part of southwestern Israel.
- Then you have a democratically elected Hamas, elected because it was militant, it wouldn’t go along.
- These 1.5 million people are now led by a group of people that can’t be bought off.
- The U.S. not only provide Israel with the F16s, helicopters and cluster bombs, but also impunity.
- This impunity includes the media, Hollywood, and universities.
- A great conservative political philosopher said, “in a society, power consists of the capacity to give names and enforce definitions.”
- Encouraging, boycott, divestment and sanction. Human Rights organizations release dependence on Israeli based funding. Human Rights groups do not condemn the occupation.
- The apparatus is woven through the society, not that it can’t be dealt with, but it must be dealt with in the manner of which it exists.
Audrey Bomse:
- Since the Hamas election in August 2007, there’s been a closure that’s getting tighter, first when Hamas took over,with the support of the quartet, the UN, the US, the EU and Russia.
- They started cutting travel in and out of Gaza, and cutting the basic necessities out of Gaza.
- This type of abuse was permitted by the world community.
- Special Rappateur Richard Falk called the abuse a crime against humanity.
- I see the cease fire as ending in November, not December. When Israel provoked a Hamas reaction.
- Israel investigated tunnels out of Gaza during cease fire, killed 6 Hamas militants.
- Hamas reacted with a flurry of rockets sent in to Israel. By the December 9 cease fire,
- More rockets came from Gaza and Israel was able to portray itself as the victim.
- I’m not supporting sending rockets into civilian areas, this is the inevitable situation Gaza is placed in.
- They have to accept the circumstances or resist in anyway they can, which they do, and Israel uses that as an excuse to escalate, which they’re doing now.
- I was involved with the Free Gaza Movement on the boat to Gaza, before the recent attacks. We brought in 5 tons of medical supplies and Palestinian doctors.
- Very limited food, no milk available, there’s just enough food brought in to prevent massive starvation and widespread disease. I want to emphasize that this is a man-made catastrophe, its the consequence of a political policy.
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Amnesty International USA: Gaza By The Numbers
Zahir Janmohamed, Advocacy Director with Amnesty International USA of the Middle East has posted a powerful article on the Amnesty International USA blog, where he’s documented the tremendous humanitarian catastrophe that the Israeli blockade has caused for the people in Gaza.
Zahir Janomohamed:
- Price of food: Palestinian families in Gaza spend 37 percent of their income on food in 2004, in 2007, households spent 62 percent on food.
- Prices of wheat rose 34 percent in a period of 2 months in 2008.
- Richard Falk called the Gaza occupation a crime against humanity before the bombings.
- In my mind the assault on Gaza was going on all of 2007 and 2008. Hospitals don’t have electricity, students dropping out of school because there are no textbooks.
- For Israel to commit these attacks on this population at this time, it’s like attacking New Orleans during Katrina’s aftermath.
- Gaza is basically a prison. They eat and move based on factors outside of their control.
- Amnesty Report of March 2008 – Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion.
- International law stipulates that these attacks be done so that civilian targets are severely avoided.
- This is not possible in Gaza. To my mind, Israel broke the cease fire agreement, in early December, there were tons of supplies headed to Gaza from Libya that were blocked.
- Number of Israelis killed by rocket fire in 2008 . . 11 , Nearly 400 Palestinians killed in seconds.
- Israel has sort of carte blanche by the international community. Israel: If you test us, we’ll engage in collective punishment.
- US supplies bunker buster bombs, approved by Congress in September 2008
- The US policy on Israel is whatever Israel wants to do it can do.
Guest – Zahir Janmohamed, Advocacy Director with Amnesty International USA of the Middle East. Zahir is also the associate editor of altmuslim since 2004, works as the advocacy director for Middle East Programs at Amnesty International USA, and is the co-founder of the Qunoot Foundation, a Washington DC non-profit that seeks to promote socio-political education within the Muslim community.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Host Updates:
- Dick Cheney, Stalin and Hitler Torture Guidelines Traced Back to Chicago.
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Naomi Wolf – Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries
Law and Disorder hosts welcome back Naomi Wolf to the studio. Naomi is the author of seven books, and the groundbreaking book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, which was also turned into a feature documentary now playing in theaters. In the book, Naomi addresses ten steps that societies, dictators, and sometimes democracies use to close an open society to move it toward facsism. Her new book is titled Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries which is a call to action for every person, activist or not. When you ask that question “What Can I Do?” The answers are outlined in Give Me Liberty.
Naomi Wolf:
- A small group of people used the law to subvert the law. Reichstag Fire, then disembowel their own Constitution.
- Initial thinking inspired from my friend who is the daughter of holocaust survivors, she said the Bush strategies echo early 1930s Germany.
- Enabling Acts in Germany gave the power to the state to read a person’s mail, listen to their phone calls and read their telegrams. This, in the alleged interest of national security and the fight against terrorism.
- Nazis used to unload the coffins of the war dead at night.
- A would-be dictator sought to close an open society or crush a democracy movement. Mussolini in 1920, the great evil pioneer. Hitler studied Mussolini, Stalin studied Hitler.
- I looked at Russia, studied Czechoslovakia in the 60’s, Pinochet’s coup in 1973, the Chinese crackdown on democracy in the 80s.
- What I saw was there was a blueprint. The blueprint has 10 steps. The 10 steps have been codified, they teach them at the School of the Americas.
- To help would be Latin-American dictators to overthrow their own governments. What terrified me is that those ten steps are being put in place by the Bush Administration.
- Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
- Create a gulag
- Develop a thug caste
- Set up an internal surveillance system
- Harass citizens’ groups
- Engage in arbitrary detention and release
- Target key individuals
- Control the press
- Dissent equals treason
- Suspend the rule of law
Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries
Naomi Wolf:
- I like most Americans felt frustrated, helpless and powerless, I saw that they felt depressed and as if they had no authority. More depressed than in baby democracies like Sierra Leone
- I went back, just as I studied closing societies, I looked at how people dismantled tyranny and win back a republic.
- I drew on some remarkable historians who have established that this idea of liberty were brought forth by ordinary people. They meant to bequeath us with these core American values.
- What I’ve learned is that we’ve (U.S) been brainwashed for the last 30 years, as part of a systematic effort from a vested interested to get us to forget our leadership role as citizens.
- We’re really expected to lead the nation and have a whole arsenal of tools at our disposal.
- There’s a section called fake patriotism, where I talk about the false ideology that leads you away from core texts such as the Bill of Rights that tells you how to overthrow the government to dismantle tyranny.
- The message I categorically got from the founders was . . we were expected to totally take over the power and not leave it to the pundits to have the debates, not leave it to constitutional scholars, or politicians.
- Just calling your congressperson isn’t enough, you conform yourself into democracy commando teams of 20 to 30 people.
- Strategically intervene into the election cycle so you have more power, than lobbyists and special interests.
- You can stop complaining about the media and become the media, write your own op eds.
- Tools and information are deliberately kept out of people’s hands.
- People think there’s a brick wall whenever they pick up these tools, but its a Potemkin village.
- They don’t want us to engage.
- A Constitutional amendment that would drive a national referendum to bypass corrupt Congress to make law such as capping Campaign Finance
- Direct Action Activism. It always works to have thousands of people in the streets.
- But the kind of protest that always works is illegal. The thing that broke up the Soviet Union, we’re not allowed to do in the United States.
- Political Marches Today: I went from point A to point B but I feel like I didn’t do anything. You didn’t. The only protest that’s effective is protest that stops traffic. By definition, you can’t get a permit for stopping traffic.
- These horrible laws in the ten steps are still on the books and its going to take a mass movement to reverse them because Obama is not powerful enough to dismantle them.
- We need to legislate on the city council level and on the federal level, that our police can’t accept Homeland Security money, tasers, microwave technology and rubber bullets.
- All the cold war weapons manufacturers have shifted into building surveillance and security technologies. Their lobbyists sit down with Homeland Security and write the laws. That pressure is not going away.
- Barack Obama does not have the power to stop Boeing, Raytheon and AT&T. The population is the back bone for what the next president can do.
Guest – Naomi Wolf, American author, political consultant and intellectual. She is the author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. It’s an impassioned call to return to the beliefs of the Founding Fathers. In the book, Wolf shows how events in the last six years echo those taken throughout history to build some of the worst dictatorships. A documentary film titled End of America was released this fall along with her follow up book Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries.
Naomi Wolf is the co-founder of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership.
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Related News Stories:
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Impeachment, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Verdict Against Holy Land Charity Could Have a Chilling Effect on the Muslim Community
Last month, a jury in Dallas, Texas found five Palestinian men guilty of more than 100 charges in the nation’s largest terrorism financing trial since 9/11. We talk with Laila Al-Arian, a Washington based journalist, who recently wrote a powerful Alternet article about this case and its impact on Muslim charities.
As many listeners may know, Holy Land was the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the the Bush administration shut it down after the September 11th attacks, and arrested five officials from the charity. In her article Al-Arian describes how the prosecution use unrelated video of suicide bombers to emotionally sway the jury. We’re later joined by Linda Moreno, a defense attorney in the case.
Laila Al-Arian:
- One of the witnesses (in this recent case) was an expert witness, he was a Shin Bet agent.
- The way the US government is trying to prove that these Zakaat Committees are funding Hamas is through the testimony of this Israeli witness. The testimony can’t be authenticated.
- The first time in a US court room that an expert witness, not a fact witness, testified under a pseudonym.
- How do you detect perjury, or how does the defense cross-examine without background.
- Expert witness lied to the jury about the Zakat committees being tied to Hamas
- What you’re really doing is prosecuting an Israeli Palestinian conflict in an American courtroom.
- For Muslims giving charity is a religious obligation.
- There will be an appeal on the grounds of the expert witness Shin Bet agent.
- Joe Lieberman and George Bush commented on the verdict of this case.
- All this does is punish people who are suffering, and punishing those who want to help them.
Linda Moreno:
- The government began its exhibit with a photograph of a bombed out bus, which had nothing to do with the accused in the Holy Land case.
- They also showed video of children doing skits, an art form that is a result of culture under occupation.
- Children in the US get to play violent video games, but they get to turn that off and go back to the safety of their home, go into your bedroom and shut the door. When you’re a Palestinian child, you don’t have that luxury.
- We know because we proved in both trials, that the US Government through USAID and other organizations was giving to the exact same Zakat Committees that were at issue in the indictment of this case.
- And the notion that you have to vet the recipient of charitiable donations, I believe is un-American.
- There’s just something wrong about criminalizing humanitarian aid. Charities under fire.
Guests – Laila Al-Arian, a Washington DC based journalist. Linda Moreno, high profile defense attorney.
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Legislation To Stop Preemptive Pardons
So far George W Bush has issued nearly 170 pardons, they include a Missouri farmer who unintentionally poisoned three bald eagles. Pardons give the recipients greater leeway to find jobs, live in public housing and vote. Many expect that President Bush will pardon himself and other high officials as a shelter from criminal charges and that’s what New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler is trying to prevent. Nadler is the Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, and he’s recently introduced House Resolution 1531 demanding that Bush refrain from issuing pre_emptive pardons of senior officials in his Administration during the final 90 days of office.
New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler:
- No pre-emptive pardons, the president should not do it, it’s a dangerous abuse of pardon power.
- HR 1531 also says that we believe an attorney general should appoint an independent counsel to investigate alleged various crimes, such as warrantless wiretapping, torture, renditions and so forth committed during the Bush administration.
- Premptive Pardons: President Ford pardoned Nixon, for any crimes that he might have committed.
- President H W Bush pardoned Casper Weinberger and various other people for any crimes they might have made. President Carter pardoned anyone who violated the draft laws in evading the draft during the Vietnam War.
- My feeling is the reason for pardons or give the pardon power in the first place is you want to temper justice with mercy.
- It would be an abuse of power before they get convicted of a crime. If he pardoned all the people well, then how do you develop a case.
- I think there should be a commission with supoena power, that can get at the facts, that can have people testify, that can develop more information for prosecutors to use.
- Right now the narrative will be: Nobody did anything wrong, we protected the American people from terrorism.
- We need to educate the American people about why these prosecutions must be done.
- It’s very important for the people in a democratic country to know what was done in their name.
- One of the problems we have in this country today is that everything is secret.
- The resolution will not be passed in this Congress. If Bush exercises pardons, then there’s very little we can do about those pardons. I’m going to introduce a constitutional amendment to restrict the pardon power in the future.
Guest – Congressman Jerrold Nadler – He represents New York’s Eighth Congressional district. The Eighth, one of the most diverse districts in the nation, includes Manhattan’s West Side below 89th Street, Lower Manhattan, and areas of Brooklyn including Borough Park, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Sea Gate, Bay Ridge, and Bensonhurst.
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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration
We hears excerpts from 2 speakers in the panel. Our own Michael Ratner President, Center for Constitutional Rights and Burt Neuborne, Legal Director, Brennan Center for Justice, New York University. The event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.” We will hear more from the other speakers in the coming weeks.
- Elizabeth Holtzman, Author, The Impeachment of George W. Bush
- Scott Horton, Contributing Editor, Harper’s Magazine
- Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, House Subcommittee on the Constitution
- Antonio Taguba, Major General (U.S. Army Ret.)
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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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Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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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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