Targeting Muslims | Law and Disorder Radio

Law and Disorder May 17, 2014

CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture

Chicago Torture Update And Another Chicago Cover Up

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We follow up on the Chicago torture cases and the aftermath. Listeners may recall the sentencing of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge in 2011 which helped created a model within Chicago criminal courts in seeking justice for crimes of torture. The Civil Rights Act was used to litigate the Chicago torture cases, specifically the Anti Klu Klux Klan Act and now, the People’s Law Office is working to get a statute passed making torture a federal crime. In our last interview with attorney Flint Taylor he questioned how the Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel will handle the hundreds of ongoing torture cases of African American men. The type of torture that was involved include electric shock, bagging, beating and burning to get confession. The city continues to fund Burge’s defense paying private lawyers millions to date. Meanwhile, a recent unraveling of a murder cover up involving former Mayor Daley’s nephew makes headlines.

Attorney G. Flint Taylor:

This is a scandal that’s gone on for 20 years now. Burge came back from Vietnam and he was quickly made a detective on the South side of Chicago in the early 70s. He started to use electric shock, bagging people to suffocate them, mock executions – all the torture techniques you hear about in third world and that kind of thing.
He tortured over the next 20 years, we now document more than 120 African American men.
Those men, many were sent to the penitentiary, some to death row. Many of them gave false confessions, all of them confessed under the torture techniques and during this 20 year period, Burge was promoted from detective, to sergeant, to lieutenant, to commander.
During this period of the time the prosecutor was Richard M Daley who went on to be mayor of course. This evidence was presented to him early on by the superintendent of police and they decided to cover it all up rather than pursue Burge.
Because of that, the torture went on for another 10-15 years.
Burge was fired in the 90s but was never prosecuted until the critical mass of evidence reached a peak in the mid-2000s. Burge was convicted and sent to a penitentiary where he’s now serving a four and half year sentence with Bernie Madoff down in Butner.
The city of Chicago has paid over 20 million dollars to defend Burge and his co-horts.
Another 20 million has gone out to pensions. Burge now still gets his pension down in the penitentiary. There’s another 65 million that paid out to the men who were fortunate enough to have lawsuits who were wrongfully convicted by Burge and his associates.
You add it all up and you get 125 million dollars in taxpayer money that’s been spent in this scandal.
There are still men behind bars after all these years, based on tortured confessions.
We were appointed recently a special master to find men in the penitentiary who haven’t had the ability to have a hearing to have their case re-litigated based on the torture evidence.
There’s an ongoing battle to try and take Burge’s pension away.
David Koschman was a 21 year old college student from the suburbs who had the misfortune of being on Rush street in Chicago late at night, and getting into a verbal altercation with a group of thugs that included the mayor’s nephew.
A man by the name of Venecko. Venecko was 6″3′, 230lbs and he punched David square in the face. Koschman went down, hit his head against the curb, went into a coma and died 12 days later.
The mayor’s nephew ran from the scene so they didn’t know who it was. Somehow through back channels they let the highest officials in the police department know that it was the mayor’s nephew was involved and so a massive cover up went on in the police department and at the state’s attorneys office – to make Koschman 5″5′ 120lbs into the aggressor.

Guest – G. Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern Law School, is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, an office which has been dedicated to litigating civil rights, police violence, government misconduct, and death penalty cases for more than 40 years.

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Goliath: Life and Loathing In Greater Israel: Max Blumenthal Speech In Brooklyn

We hear part of speech by award winning journalist and author Max Blumenthal delivered at a Brooklyn For Peace meeting. Operation Cast Lead in 2008, is a starting point in the book Goliath: Life and Loathing In Greater Israel where award winning journalist and author Max Blumenthal shows the reader how a right wing government in Israel rose to power. His book takes hard look at Israeli authoritarian politics through a cross section of interviews from the homes of Palestinian activists to the political leaders behind the organized assault against civil liberties.

Speaker – Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Guardian, The Independent Film Channel, The Huffington Post, Salon, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a former Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for The Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.

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The Kiev Putsch: Rebel Workers Take Power in the East

In his recent article The Kiev Putsch: Rebel Workers Take Power In the East, returning guest Professor Jim Petras describes the immense complexity and shifting outcomes within the NATO, US and European violent seizure of the Ukraine. He asserts that the US-EU power grab in the Ukraine is part of a strategic goal to place neo-liberal political proxies in power in Moscow. In order to do this, one objective is to undermine Russia’s military capability. However, things have not gone according to plan. There’s growing opposition to the Ukraine power grab in the EU, and Russia. Professor Jim Petras asserts that the real struggle is not between the US and Russia, it’s between the NATO-imposed junta composed of neo-liberal oligarchs and fascists – that’s on one side, and on the other side is the industrial workers, their local militias plus democratic councils.

Professor James Petras:

Ukraine had kind of an oligarchical electoral system where competing oligarchs competed in the electoral arena. One set of oligarchs was closer to the NATO powers and one set was closer to Russia, more or less pursuing a non-alignment policy.
This came to a head recently. I believe in February.
The opposition backed by NATO overthrew the government and a coup seized power and the U.S. under the Secretary of Foreign Affairs Victoria Newland appointed the president and the prime minister who then formed a coalition government with neo-fascists openly embracing the heritage of the Nazi collaborators.
These people then tried to impose a different kind of policy, and different kind of orientation to the country essentially aligning it to NATO and trying to undercut any pluralism or diversity that existed up til then.
They moved ahead and outlawed the pro-Russian speaking minority and that provoked people in the east who were long time critics of centralism and the imposition of policies from the west (Kiev).
The Kiev junta sent military groups out there to repress them, culminating with the neo-fascists going to Odessa and incinerating 40 people who were taking refuge in a trade union center.
You have to realize the dynamic of the sectors in the east. There’s the steel, coal. The most productive sector of the country. They pay a disproportionate amount of taxes and get very little in return.
So there is a regional hostility here, and the issue has nothing to do with being pro-Russia. It’s a question of people in the east opposing a military take over, a junta. They oppose a government appointed by foreign powers.
They oppose the outlawing of bilingualism.
The authoritarians in the east want to break with Russia. It has nothing to do with the so called transition government. The west’s account is absolutely bizarre.
The cover up (in western press) of the massive incineration is comparable to Nazi press when Hitler was incinerating Jews, telling people they were just taking showers.
The western press has lined up in the most . . I would compare it to the worst part of McCarthyism in Cold War. I would say 1950-51.
The Kiev dictatorship can’t even count on its own troops. They send troops over there and they fraternize with their own people. So they have to send special forces and they recently got a big inflow of mercenaries from what used to be called Blackwater. They call themselves the Academi now.
There were over 400 of them that were shipped in to the eastern part of the country to do the dirty work.
I think this is an indication of how isolated this government is and how much the demands for democracy, maintaining industry and resisting the IMF, how much fear they have of the contagion, the democratic self determination agenda of the east resonates with the west.
There’s no great wall of China separating the east and west when it comes to economic improvement and democratic representation.
Essentially their idea is to turn Russia into a vassal state.
The same thing with China, they’re encircling China with bases all over the Pacific, provoking conflict.
They don’t want a powerful competitive economy that’s displacing them in Latin America and Asia.
What happened to the peace movement that went into the Democratic Party to support Obama?

Guest – Professor James Petras, author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet.

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Law and Disorder May 12, 2014

Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister

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The Muslims Are Coming

Since the so called war on terror, thousands of innocent Muslims have been entrapped, surveilled, and their communities infiltrated while spending untold resources in search for the radicalized terrorist. In Arun Kundnani’s recent book titled the Muslims Are Coming, he carefully looks at the ideologies and strategies of law enforcement used to create the domestic war on terror. He unveils the disturbing processes of radicalization theories and racial profiling followed by law enforcement.

Arun Kundnani:

There wasn’t any reflection of what the political causes might be of 9/11 or the political context that might give rise to Al-Qaeda.
That discussion was basically censored at least in the United States.
The war on terror has basically failed.
Radicalization is the chief lens that security officials in Western government lock up Muslim populations.
The idea of radicalization is that there’s this kind of ideology out there that turns ordinary Muslims into terrorists.
The FBI and the police department both have the same model of radicalization which they claim tells you the process that someone goes through from being an ordinary member of the public to becoming a terrorist.
Within that there are various indicators such as behavior or things that people might say or believe that are supposed to be signs that someone is traveling on this path to becoming a terrorist.
This provides the basis for the very aggressive practice of surveillance that we’ve seen from both of those law enforcement agencies.
It enables them to have a frame of reference to intervene within Muslim populations within the United States, to tackle the ideology that they see is the root driver for this.
There are 4 stages in this model. Growing a beard, wearing Islamic clothing, changing the mosque that you attend, being active in a pro-Muslim in a social or political group.
They often correspond to expression of political opinion.
The FBI as of 2008 had 15,000 paid informants on its books. That’s a huge number given that half of the FBI’s budget is given to counter-terrorism. The sting operations using informants are the key method of dealing with this.
The Stasi in Germany had one spy for every 66 East German citizens. It’s that kind of ratio that you can talk about a totalitarian system of surveillance.
Muslims in America are probably experiencing the same level of surveillance that East Germans faced under the Stasi.
The liberal take on the war on terror is not the same as the neoconservative take.
As a Muslim you’re potentially bad and you need to prove that you’re not by the kind of ideology you express. That’s characterized the Obama period in the war on terror.
The way that the word terrorism or the word extremism or radicalization works is that is serves to criminalize and demonize people who have radical political opinion, irrespective if they’re involved in any kind of violence.
The structures of surveillance that have been set up in the war on terror, get recycled for all kinds of other purposes.

Guest – Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political violence, and surveillance. His latest book The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror was published by Verso Books in March 2014. Born and bred in London, he moved to New York in 2010 on a fellowship with the Open Society Foundations and now lives in Harlem. He is the author of The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain, which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year in 2007. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he was miseducated at Cambridge University, holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University, and teaches at New York University

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Ukraine’s Neo Nazis

We look at Ukraine’s neo-Nazis and Stepan Bandera and the legacy of World War II. Every important ministry in the Ukraine is now held by ultra-nationalists. The Ministry of Education, social policy, policing, prosecution and national defense are all headed up by people whose party is a direct descendant of the Stepan Bandera movement in the Ukraine during World War II. Bandera and his movement were responsible for the genocide of more than 500 thousand including Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. This fact is played down by the U.S. government, the mainstream media in the United States, the state of Israel and its defenders amongst the Jewish establishment including Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.

Joel Kovel:

I think its important to recognize this utterly illegitimate US puppet government I think in large part because it doesn’t have any standing for the Ukrainian people as a whole – has to be defended by neo-Nazi elements which aren’t enormously plentiful, but plentiful enough and they will do the bidding of their masters.
It started (Odessa, Ukraine) as a quarrel in a soccer stadium, and moved to Odessa. Odessa is an extremely important town it was one of the centers of world Jewish culture for a long time, still has 30 thousand Jews in it.
The Ukrainian loyalists overwhelmed the other people and drove them into this building, they set fires within the building which led to a hideous massacre.
One on one violence but also people jumping out of the windows, smoke inhalation.
Watching it on youtube you saw the total savagery and unspeakable brutality of these thugs, they were laughing, having the time of their lives.
There were police around, military around, they did nothing to stop this.
Utterly mystified and denied by the mainstream media, including the main springs thereof, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times.
My parents were both born in the Ukraine. In the early years of the last century, one third of the Jews in the world lived in the Ukraine.
You have a blood strewn, contentious history marked by an enormous amount of hatred and vindictiveness. I think all nationalisms are pathological frankly.
Ukrainian nationalism was particularly virulent. We’re dealing with another brand of ultra-nationalism with the state of Israel, and they’re not unconnected with all this.
Fascism being a right wing alliance between large bourgeois and nationalist forces using some kind of mythic or racist ideology to legitimate itself.
Ukraine: there’s never been a solid national identity there’s a tremendous complex mixture of things.
There’s a book called Organized Antisemitism in Contemporary Ukraine: Structure, Influence and Ideology.
Of course the US thinks they’re manipulating the puppets so they can control them. You go down that road, there’s going to be a lot of tragedies as the puppet turns on the master.
The number of Rabbis quoted as saying we’re getting ready to evacuate, we have plans. We’re ready to go in a half an hour. We’re afraid its going to happen again. Meanwhile, this Foxman is saying, don’t worry.
New York Times had a headline about 3 or 4 weeks ago how this was all overblown Ukraine’s Jews say that Putin not antisemitism is the problem.
That’s the headline in the New York Times. How could they do that?
We need a massive onslaught against the program of lies and deception that is being waged by our national media in total lockstep with the imperial interest of the United States. I’ve never in my life seen journalism sink to such an abyss as it has and in the very least this is a front that we can occupy.
It means a lot because the American don’t want this to be happening. This is something that our power system. One front is the ruthless critique of the media and the lies that our government is putting out.

Guest- Joel Kovel, scholar and an activist. In the former capacity he has published nine books and over a hundred articles and reviews. His books include White Racism, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1972; A Complete Guide to Therapy; The Age of Desire (in which his work in the psychiatric-psychoanalytic system is detailed); Against the State of Nuclear Terror; In Nicaragua; The Radical Spirit; History and Spirit(1991) – Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism

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Law and Disorder May 5, 2014

CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Hydraulic Fracturing, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

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Updates:

John Kerry Middle East Peace Talks And NY Times Propaganda
There is no ‘Palestine Exception’ to free speech rights’: Northeastern overturns Students for Justice in Palestine suspension
CCR: Palestine Solidarity Legal Support Project
Host Attorney Micheal Smith Retraction On Abe Foxman Update

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Torturous For-Profit Medical Care in Prisons

The medical care in private prisons is often provided by a sub contracted for profit entity. Today we look at a specific case involving Corizon, a prison health management corporation serving 530 prisons in 28 states. Corizon has been sued for malpractice 660 times in the past five years. We talk today about “Bradley’s” case. He’s 67, and was out on parole after serving 34 years in California’s state prisons. Bradley was on 100mg of morphine 3 times a day for surgical complications from knee injury. While on parole, THC was detected in his system, and officers brought him back to prison. However, under the care of Corizon, he was not given his medication and forced to painfully withdraw from the morphine.

Dr. Robin Andersen:

My brother who we call Brad is at Santa Rita jail who Corizon is under contract with.
He went in on April 17, and after a week of being in there, my lawyer and my sister said he was on death’s door.
The reason was he was being forced to withdraw from medications. His medications are morphine and high blood pressure medication.
He was given no medications for pain, and he basically did cold turkey inside that jail and is still being mistreated there.
This is a parole violation where its alleged he might have smoked some pot.
He was in San Quentin and some other California prisons. He served 34 years. When he was finally paroled one of the parole board members said – well we assess that the crime that you did to be about 11 years.
Just the thought of him in that jail without medication for that time, it was agony.
What the jail has told me is they don’t give out controlled substances.
What my lawyer said is their policy to save money, they don’t have proper medication.
They’re putting him through a forced cold turkey withdrawal and laughing at him.
They keep using the word protocol, and it rings in my ear. Oh, he’s on a withdrawal protocol. One wonders what that protocol might be.
I’ve been asking people to call the jail. It’s very interesting, they thrive in secrecy and brutality within these places.
Call the Santa Rita County Jail – 925-551-6500. Lawrence (Bradley) Benetto – Prisoner # BKB172

Guest – Dr. Robin Andersen, is the brother of “Bradley” and Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Director of the M.A. Program in Public Communication. She is also Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Fordham University.

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Lawsuits Against Prison Health Management Corporations

Class action lawsuits against prison health management corporations are becoming very common. There are many cases and stories of mistreatment and negligence which critics say stem from profit making and cost cutting protocols. We take a deeper look at the recent litigation involving lawsuits against private, for profit prison health care companies.

Attorney Sarah Grady:

Corizon, they’re a multi-billion dollar company. They’ve operated under many names throughout the years.
They’re whole model is to provide as little health care as possible in order to continue to drive a profit. They take into account in their profit, how often they’re going to be sued.
They gamble in effect on how much money they’re going to lose in lawsuits and whether that can keep them profitable by continuing to deny care to prisoners.
When Corizon contracted with Arizona to provide care (in prisons) in the first 8 months there were 50 deaths in Arizona Department of Corrections in their custody, that’s in a single state.
There are multiple stories of substandard care being provided by nurses and doctors who have not been trained, who have been trained at a suboptimal level.
The states, county or municipality cannot contract away the 8th Amendment.
The individual doctors get bonuses based on their ability to stay under budget.

Guest – Attorney Sarah Grady leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project. Ms. Grady graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. At Northwestern, she worked on civil rights cases with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in the Bluhm Legal Clinic.

Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.

Ms. Grady graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. At Northwestern, she worked on civil rights cases with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in the Bluhm Legal Clinic, served on the board of the Public Interest Law Group and the American Constitution Society, and received Northwestern’s annual Public Service Award for her commitment to serving the public interest in her legal work.

– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf

Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.

– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf

Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.

– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf

Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.

– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf

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Attorney Anand Swaminathan:

We a broad spectrum of issues both in terms of types of facilities where these things are occurring and the actual kinds of medical problems that are not being dealt with or ignored.
There are states, counties and municipalities all engaged in this form of privatization which are outsourcing medical care to these private companies.
It includes, large prisons people who are convicted of crimes, it includes people who are being held in custody, that includes county jails which are a hybrid facility that holding people long term and people in short term custody.
It’s everything down to the local police station.
We’re seeing a lack of adequate medical care across that entire spectrum.
There’s a complete failure to treat chronic conditions, some of the chronic conditions that are so prevalent in our society now.
These people (prisoners) are not consumers and cannot choose and say I find your product subpar, I’m not interested, I’m going to choose the other guys’ product.
We’re starting to see a push back. Courts are starting to attack specific protections that companies are invoking.
Here you have courts identifying market forces as a reason to deny the protections that some of these companies are trying to invoke.

Guest – Attorney Anand Swaminathan, has worked on a broad range of constitutional and civil rights cases, and has worked extensively on False Claims Act litigation, where he has represented whistleblowers alleging defense military and other government contractor fraud, bid-rigging, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, construction/contractor (MBE/DBE) fraud, and tax fraud.

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Rubin “Hurricane” Carter 1937-2014

In April of this year, celebrated boxer and prisoner-rights activist Rubin “Hurricane” Carter died at the age of 76. He had become an international symbol of racial injustice after his wrongful murder conviction forced him to spend 19 years in prison. Carter was arrested for a triple murder in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey. He said he was innocent, was convicted by an all white jury, and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. In 1976, the New Jersey State Supreme Court overturned his conviction on grounds the authorities withheld material evidence from the defense. But Carter was convicted again in a second trial in 1976. In 1985, that conviction was overturned by a U.S. district court judge, who concluded the state made an unconstitutional appeal to racial prejudice. In 1988, the Passaic, New Jersey, Prosecutor’s Office dropped all charges against Carter.

Attorney Myron Beldock:

He was a defendant in a criminal case in New Jersey involved the triple shooting and three murders of 3 people in the Lafayette bar in Patterson, New Jersey.
He and his co-defendant John Artis were represented at the first trial and they lost, (convicted) and Rubin started his campaign to get out of jail and wrote his book the 16th Round.
He was charismatic and powerful, a great thinker, very very intellectually strong person as well as being spiritually strong.
Almost a typical case, high profile case, where you get people who are vulnerable and easily manipulated because of their need for their own benefits to falsely testify.
We set aside the convictions when we learned about the benefits that were given to the witnesses.
We went again to trial in 1975. At that time the atmosphere had changed. There was a new prosecutor, they came up with a theory that it was actually a racial revenge killing.
Earlier that night, a white former bar owner had shot and killed the black purchaser of the bar from him.
That was always known and there was no motives attributed to the killings in the first trial but the second trial really based on speculation and bias, they argued persuasively to the jury that this was a racial revenge killing.
Mr. Bellow who was the supposed eye witness who testified, there were two of them in the first trial, was being questioned by me on the stand as to why he recanted his recantation. The prosecutor persuaded him to again tell the story he told at the first trial, identifying Rubin and John and I was trying to establish that they had falsely manipulated him when I was pulled into the chambers along with my co-counsel Louis Steele who represented John Artis and told that if I question him further, the jury would learn that he passed the lie detector test, supporting what he said at the first trial. Supporting his identification (of Rubin Carter)
We did have that test. It seemed like that was the result because that’s the way it was written. In fact that was a fraud.
The polygraph results were completely opposite of what they were purported to be.
The prosecutors in that case, two of them became judges, rewarded for what they did.
Rubin was not a popular person, he had been an outspoken civil rights person. It was a cesspool of rumors without any evidentiary basis.
The entire community there almost in Passaic New Jersey treated us like we were the devil.
It was the coldest community reception I ever encountered in any place.
Rubin would call every year (from Canada) on the anniversary of his release. He got a group of Canadian do-gooders and free thinkers to join him in fighting to set aside convictions for people who were wrongly convicted in Canada.
He would vet the briefs that we sent. He was a very unusual client.
Rubin refused to act as a prisoner because he wasn’t anyone who was guilty he said.
So, he didn’t eat prison food, he didn’t take prisoner assignments, he didn’t wear prison clothes and somehow or other he was able to pull that off.
People think of it as being another time, I’ve been practicing law long enough and I don’t think anything changes.
The same kind of bias runs deep throughout the community its just masked somewhat differently.
You make your luck in these cases, you have to forge ahead.
His insistence on being an innocent person and will not compromise with the system is the kind of inspiration that pushes us on as lawyers.

Guest – Attorney Myron Beldock, graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in 1946, Hamilton College in 1950 and Harvard Law School in 1958. He served in the U.S. Army from 1951 to 1954 and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York from 1958 to 1960. After several years as an associate with a small New York City firm and as a single practitioner, he brought together two friends and former Assistant U.S. Attorneys, Elliot Hoffman and Larry Levine, to form Beldock Levine & Hoffman in 1964. He is best described, by his own definition, as an old-time general practitioner. He concentrates on trial and appellate litigation, in state and federal courts, in defense of criminal charges and in pursuing plaintiffs’ civil rights actions based on police and prosecutorial misconduct and employer and governmental discrimination. He regularly consults and defends charges of professional discipline. He represents plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of personal and business related matters, working with others in the firm’s various practice areas.

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Law and Disorder April 21, 2014

CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister

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Updates:

NLG Students at Boston’s Suffolk University Urge Disinvite Of Abraham Foxman Commencement Honorary Law Degree.
Spanish Court Refuses to Close Guantánamo Torture Investigation
When Radical Lawyers Take the Airwaves

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U.S. Agency Infiltrates Cuba With Fake Twitter Account

Consistent with the NSA’s deceptive strategies in creating fake social networks, the U.S. Agency for International Development masterminded the creation of a “Cuban Twitter: The communications network was designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba. It was financed through foreign banks and constructed through shell companies. The Associated Press learned that the project lasted more than 2 years and had tens of thousands of followers. The content initially was non political such as soccer, music and weather, but it was learned that once a critical mass was reached, political content would be introduced to organize “smart mobs” that could trigger a Cuban Spring.

Jane Franklin:

When Obama speaks about Cuba you have to read between the lines always and be very careful about what you think he’s saying.
He said the notion that “the policies we put into place in 1961 would somehow be as effective as they are today in the age of the internet and google and world travel doesn’t make sense.
We recognize that the aims are always going to be the same and what we have to do is continually find new mechanisms and new tools to speak out on behalf of the issues that we care so deeply about.”
That’s what he was considering back in November and of course before that this plan to use creative and thoughtful methods to infiltrate Cuba and try to create what the Associated Press calls “smart mobs” which could lead to the downfall of the Cuban government.
It was called ZunZuneo and was budding in 2009, then it was launched full scale in 2010 with a campaign to use a half a million cell phone numbers that U.S. aids have gotten and sent what they call blasts to those half a million receivers.
Those people would be told that they could sign up for this program and get news and so on. News that at first would be trivial, and then gradually according to the documents that the AP has – this would increase until they could develop smart mobs – that is street protest that would help lead to the overthrow of the Cuban government.
They used foreign countries to disguise where the messages came from. They set up a bank account in the Cayman Islands which is a tax haven to use that for money.
When there was a concert in Havana in 2009 which is described in the report by the AP and the US Aid people blasted the cell phones with questions.
One of the questions was do you think the two bands that were not in favor of the Cuban government should be on the stage with the band that’s there today?
If you answered yes, you were what’s called “receptive” to their ideas.
A few months later they launched this full scale campaign and eventually they had 60 thousand receivers using their program. That’s not many in the population of Cuba. It was a failure and they closed it down.
They were paying tens of thousands to Cuba Cell, which regulates the cell phones.
They get millions of dollars from Congress every year to create such programs and try to overthrow the government of Cuba which they’re supposed to do according to U.S. law The Helms-Burton Act requires that.
It (the report) says that a researcher from Mobile Accord which was the main private contractor was building a mass database about the Cuban subscribers including gender, age, receptiveness and political tendency.

Guest – Jane Franklin is a historian, she has written two books about Cuba: Cuban Foreign Relations 1959-1982 (Center for Cuban Studies, New York, 1984) and Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History (Ocean Press, Melbourne, Australia, 1997). She is co-author of Vietnam and America: A Documented History (Grove Press: New York, 1985, enlarged edition 1995). Her chronology of the history of Panama is in The U.S. Invasion of Panama (South End Press: Boston, 1991). She has published numerous articles, poems and film reviews and has lectured extensively about Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama. She is a frequent radio commentator about Cuba.
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50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act prohibits prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation. In a speech on June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy unveiled plans to pursue a comprehensive civil rights bill in Congress, stating, ‘‘this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

Professor of Law John Brittain:

Yes, I do believe Lyndon Johnson deserves credit, although he had such allies like Martin Luther King. They released some of the unacknowledged tapes by President Johnson in his office in talking with Dr. King both about the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well as he went on to usher in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
These acts were a response to a condition on the ground, and the condition was apartheid in the United States, in particularly in the South, but as Malcolm X said anything below the Canadian – US border was the South.
We’re also celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Summer in Mississippi.
The demonstrations in the streets no doubt had an effect upon the Congress in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act to shall we say, let some of the steam out of the kettle.
He (LBJ) came out of the Lone Star state, the only state that came into the union as a slave state and the state that promoted the white primary, that unless you were white you couldn’t vote in the primary.
The Missouri Compromise we’d have slave states and free states. After the civil war we’d have a great period of radical Republican reconstruction in the South to give the black former slave equal rights but that died by the 1890s and ushered in a period what we call Jim Crow.
Coming up to that point in the 1960s and with the riots, to his credit LBJ, notwithstanding that dark cloud over his head, that war in Vietnam which Dr. King called immoral, unjust and illegal and took a lot of criticism for daring to talk about international affairs and indeed talk about a war.
The minute lawyers went to work in representing the poor, they were cut off by restrictions. The war on poverty and neighborhood legal services was started in 1965-66 but a decade later it was cut off at the knees.
Johnson said when he was first presented with the idea of legal services – hell I’m not going to pay lawyers to sue the government and win but he was convinced otherwise.
By the time 65 came around and they created this compromise and started this new federal agency funding called Legal Services corporation to take the political veto out of governors but they had to agree to restriction.
Legal Services lawyers couldn’t take criminal cases, abortion cases, agitation for labor rights cases, immigration cases, school desegregation cases.
Just last year 2013, on the eve of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John Roberts and the right wing on the Supreme Court – Shelby County v Eric Holder
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the same Civil Rights Act of the 1860s. The only difference is they based on a different constitutional provision, not the 14th Amendment which gives Congress the right to enforce the Constitution to provide equality for the former slave, now African American, but instead in 1964, they based it on commerce clause by saying that any segregation interfered with interstate commerce. The act in essence provided for equal accommodation.
It broke the back of Jim Crow segregation where an African American could go shop, go eat, go live and go play and go to any access in parts of America.
It would later take the 1968 Fair Housing Act in order to provide equal housing.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act gave Congress, gave the Justice Department, the Department of Education too, and others the tools to go in and to stop Jim Crow or “colored only” segregation in our mainly southern states.
That was the same Justice Department that went on to enforce 1964 Civil Rights Act by bringing legal claims against hotels and restaurants, government facilities that continued to bar blacks from equal access.
Kennedy said where are the lawyers? By current tort terms, he falsely imprisoned them in the White House and told them they couldn’t leave until they created an organization and out of that grew the Lawyers Committee and immediately they went down to Jackson, Mississippi and created the Jackson Litigation Office.
I happen to come along in 1969 fresh out of law school to become one of the lawyers in the Jackson litigation and throughout the history of the lawyers committee. The only national legal organization dedicated to equality for African Americans and other people of color have gone on to litigate in education, in voting, in housing and employment discrimination as well as criminal justice.

Guest – Professor John Brittain, tenured professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law. In the past he served as dean of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston, was a veteran law professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law for twenty-two years and was the Chief Counsel and Senior Deputy Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, DC, a public interest legal organization started by President John F. Kennedy to enlist private lawyers to take pro bono cases in civil rights.
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Law and Disorder April 7, 2014

Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

Ruling In Teenager’s Facebook Case
Family of Homeless Man Repeatedly Shot By Police Reached $725, 000 Settlement
Supreme Court Strikes Down Campaign Contribution Limits
Kerry Cancels Visit to PA after Abbas Asks to Join 15 UN Agencies

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The ARNCA Urges US President and Congress To Stop Attacks on Kessab

In the early hours of march 31, 2014 civilians in the ancient Armenian settlement of Kessab and surrounding villages were attacked by forces opposed to the Syrian government crossing the border from Turkey. Kessab is an Armenian-populated town situated in northwestern Syria. The cross border attacks, which included church desecrations, forced immediate civilian evacuation of the area, alarming Armenians around the globe concerned about the safety of their relatives. Considered safe haven for refugees fleeing nearby war torn cities in recent years, the local Armenian population in Kessab has increased. In response to the recent multi-pronged attack, the Armenian National Committee of America has called on President Obama and Congress to press Turkey to stop facilitation attacks on civilians in Kessab, to investigate Turkey’s reported assistance to foreign fighters associated with the U.S. designated terrorist groups and to direct humanitarian aid to victims in the Armenian settlement.

Aram Hamparian:

Kessab holds tremendous meaning for Armenians around the world. It’s essentially the last Armenian village that remains on the territory of the former Ottoman Empire. The territory that was emptied of Armenians during the genocide of 1915.
A portion of those survivors settled in this village which is right on the Turkish border and for 9 decades they lived in safety but in the shadow of Turkey, until recently when extremist militants invaded the village from Turkey and drove out about 2000 residents who are essentially homeless today.
I think that a decision was made in Ankara, Turkey to allow extremists to use their territory to drive the Armenians out of that village. I think there’s an element of intent on the part of the Turkish government, which has been consistently anti-Armenian for more than half a century.
Only one person we understand was killed by a sniper as reported by the Washington Post but the overwhelming majority have fled.
We’ve worked very hard to encourage the U.S. government to protest not only the attack but also Turkey’s role.
Congress didn’t condemn what we thought was the key element Turkey allowing the soldiers to cross this border and make this attack.
There are parts of Kessab that are a 100 yards away from a highly militarized, highly monitored border.
It’s inconceivable that soldiers would’ve crossed that border had they not been supported by or at the very least ignored by the Turkish government.
They simply can’t go home if there is a fear of repetition. If the precedent is set that, well if Turkey did this once and they were not challenged at all and given a free pass.
We’re trying to get a message from the Washington to Ankara, saying this is out of bounds. You have the right to protect your border but you also have to make sure your border isn’t crossed by militants who are doing harm to innocent civilians.
President Obama came in to office with a pledge to recognize the genocide. Soon after he came into office he turned 180 degrees, not only didn’t honor his pledge to recognize the genocide but blocked Congress from doing what he said he would do.
Turkey has banned Youtube, Turkey has banned Twitter because its leaders are not happy with what’s being said.
Armenian Relief Fund

Guest – Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) is the largest and most influential Armenian American grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters and supporters throughout the United States and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCA actively advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues.

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Max Blumenthal At “Against Israeli Apartheid” in New York City

We hear a speech by award winning journalist, and best selling author Max Blumenthal speaking at the event Against Israeli Apartheid along with Palestinian journalist Ali Abunimah. Max’s new book Goliath: Life and Loathing In Greater Israel shows the reader how the Netanyahu right wing government is actually moderate compared to most other institutions in Israel. His book takes a hard look at Israeli authoritarian politics from a cross section of interviews, from the homes of Palestinian activists to the political leaders behind the organized assault on democratic rights.

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Law and Disorder March 31, 2014

CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Cuba, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

President Barack Obama Lies About NSA Bulk Collection and Retention of Personal Metadata.
Der Spiegel Reports on U.S. Spies On Huawei Telecommunications in China
New York Times Reports That U.S. Spying on China Is In Retaliation From China Spying
Michael Ratner: New York Times Spin Is Ridiculous In Justifying Spying

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Obama’s Ukrainian Power Grab, Sanctions and the Boomerang Effect

The unfolding of the US-EU-Russian conflict over the Ukraine will have far reaching consequences and will ultimately define the global configuration of power. While the Western power grab was largely ignored, the US-EU propaganda machine kicked into gear, focusing on Russia’s defensive action in the autonomous region of Crimea. The citizens of Crimea organized a self-defense militia and pressured the Putin administration to help protect them from armed incursions by the NATO backed coup regime in Kiev. We’re joined today by returning guest Professor James Petras who has written several articles on the crisis in the Ukraine. He identifies it as the most recent cycle of US empire-building in a 3 phase system including Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Professor James Petras:

The U.S. according to UN Sub-secretary of Foreign Affairs stated it very clearly. We’ve poured 5 billion dollars into the Ukraine building up organizations and politicians who are favorable to NATO and the European Union and hostile to Russia and eager to oust it from the bases in the Black Sea.
I think it was a long term project in building client organizations there, mainly in terms of electoral politics in the beginning.
So you have a target of a vassal state building and encircling Russia in line with what happened through the Baltics through central Europe and into the soft underbelly of Russia.
At the same time this is going on Russia is cooperating with the U.S. in many spheres including the over-flight caper in Libya, supporting the sanctions in Iran,
You have on one hand Washington aggressively encircling Russia, Russia essentially cooperating with the U.S. to gain good merit points, hopefully to get accepted in the G8.
Two thirds of the so called Ukraine Army decide to stay in Crimea as an annex state of Russia. This is a fact that tells you something about the hostility they feel to the people that grabbed power in Kiev.
The Russian threat that’s been manufactured has to do with the fact that in southern Ukraine there have been massive demonstrations against the coup makers.
What they’re doing is reenforcing repressive authority against the internal opposition which is hostile to the coup.
The internal opposition now doesn’t want to join Crimea but do want a federal structure in which they elect their own governors and legislators and not be forced to accept oligarchs in line with the EU policies.
I think its clear its to encircle Russia and return Russia to the status of the 1990s.
With the rise of Putin you have a semblance of a state once more. You have a political economic order which is functioning which has raised living standards which allows Russia to play a modicum of political role in world politics in particular the border area.
Venezuela: Democratic protesters don’t burn down 500 businesses and installations administering social welfare programs.
Democratic protesters don’t assassinate 7 national guard and policemen trying to maintain order.
Democratic protesters don’t blow up electrical grids and light up the national forests in a 360 degree circumference.
Kerry is lying, the U.S. is supporting violent terrorists. Those people that are engaged in this activity are engaged in trying to overthrow the government by force and violence. They resorted to this because they lost the last 10 elections in Venezuela including a resounding defeat this last December.
They’re going for a civilian based terrorist operation which they (U.S.) will hope will precipitate a military coup.
The New York Times is a propaganda organ for the U.S. government whenever there is a serious conflict particularly from a left wing or progressive government.
The New York Times has not shown any of the charred buildings that the so called democratic protesters have burned down.
They haven’t shown the experimental school that was blown up in Tachira, Venezuela.
Let’s be clear Michael, the targets of the terrorists, not a single U.S. business has been effected. Not a single major bank has been effected.
This is profoundly a class war directed against anti-imperialist communities.
China holds 3 trillion dollars in U.S. treasury notes. All the major 500 U.S. corporations are involved with China. It’s very much linked into the production chain of goods that go from Asia to China to the U.S. Walmarts, etc.
On the other hand Washington is very concerned with not being able to compete with China in world markets.
The Chinese have displaced the U.S. in Latin America, in the Asian field.

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Boycott Divestment Sanction Awareness Gains Traction On University Campuses

Members of the group Students for Justice in Palestine at Northeastern University in Boston were disciplined and banned from serving on the inaugural board of the new organization plus their members must attend a university-sanctioned “training.” This is one of 50 cases of repression the SJP has documented across the country in universities since 2013. As the SJP gains momentum, it faces aggressive campaigns to shield Israel from public scrutiny. The repression campaigns are driven by organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Organization of America, StandWithUs, the Amcha Initiative, American for Peace and Tolerance and the Bradneis Center. Recently the Northeastern University School of Law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild had publicly declared support for the Northeastern chapter of the SJP and formally opposes the administration’s decision to suspend the group and sanction its members.

Attorney Dima Khalidi:

We started Palestine Legal Support a little over a year ago.
The major backlash has been on campuses because that’s where the activism is most vigorous and spirited.
What we’re seeing is a lot of effort by students, even academics to raise awareness about the Israel – Palestine issue.
There’s also a lot of movement around Boycott, Divestment Sanction. The BDS movement is really growing and I think that’s been the case since 2008-2009 with Operation Cast Lead.
We’re seeing students doing a lot of awareness raising, unique and creative things.
We’re seeing things like mock walls to illustrate what the apartheid wall is doing.
We’re seeing things like mock eviction notices being distributed in dorms to illustrate the way Israel demolishes Palestinian civilian homes.
We’ve working with Northeastern students since last year. This year when students, some affiliated with SJP distributed mock eviction notices under dorm room doors, the university, right away, suspended the entire group.
The reaction is typical but its unique in the type of pressure that’s been put on this university.
The reaction was disproportionate and inappropriate.
They sent university police to student’s homes, they interrogated a couple of students. They filed disciplinary charges against 2 students for allegedly allowing students to enter the dorms.
Title IV of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, national origin and color by educational institutions.
This has been used by Jewish groups to allege that universities are discriminating Jewish students by tolerating a hostile anti semitic environment.
Accusations of anti semitism underlie this backlash. We saw this with mock eviction notices in several places, at Florida Atlantic University last year. The ADL accused the SJP of targeting Jewish students with these notices saying they only put them under Jewish student’s doors.
The same accusations at Rutgers, that Jewish students were targeted.
The burden has fallen on those advocating for Palestinian rights.
What sustains us is really the activists themselves who are really inspirational in their dedication to this issue.
There are number of student groups that are trying to pass divestment actions at their schools and there’s a sustained attack and we know that Netanyahu himself has said this is a prime threat to the state of Israel.

Guest – Attorney Dima Khalidi, founder and Director of Palestine Solidarity Legal Support (PSLS), and Cooperating Counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Her work includes providing legal advice to activists, engaging in advocacy to protect their rights to speak out for Palestinian rights, and educating activists and the public about their rights.

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