Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Update:
- Michael Smith: Newt Gingrich Attacks Capitalism
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Occupy Wall Street Parody Papers Spark Legal Action From Big Newspapers
Occupy Wall Street Newspapers such as The Occupied Wall Street Journal or The Occupied Chicago Tribune have prompted lawyers to take Occupy protesters to court. In Chicago, a law firm is attempting to prevent the OWS movement from using The Occupied Chicago Tribune. We’re joined today by attorney Michael Deutsch with the People’s Law Office who has been involved with this issue in Chicago.
Attorney Michael Deutsch:
- The Chicago Tribune contacted some of the OWS people and threatened to shut down their website and facebook page and to go into federal court and sue them for trademark infringement.
- They said the word “Chicago Tribune” is a trademark that belongs solely to the Chicago Tribune and no one else can use it for any purpose or any way.
- Even if they do sue them I think the publicity not be good for the tribune and good for the occupy people.
- There is the Lanham Trademark Act that protects them from people appropriating them.
- There’s also this Dilution Act which prevents people from using or diluting their trademark by using it some unnecessary or dismissive way.
- When the people of Occupy were first contacted they were fearful of being sued by the Chicago Tribune.
- They offered to change it to the Occupy Chicago Times but they turned it down and said you can’t use any name that references a newspaper.
- With Peter Weiss’s help we realized this is a classic parody case, that’s basic First Amendment rights.
- The law isn’t that clear but the courts usually balance whether there will confusion of the name against First Amendment rights.
- In their masthead they’re now saying they’re not affiliated with the Chicago Tribune Corporation.
- Their website is still up, facebook is still up, they haven’t gone to court, so maybe they realize for us its a win / win situation.
- If we go to court we’re going to win on the legal grounds, plus we’re going to get a lot of publicity.
Guest – Attorney Michael Deutsch, partner with the Peoples Law Office.
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Inside the CIA Black Site in Bucharest
Reporters for German network ARD’s Panorama news magazine and the Associated Press have pieced together key details surrounding the CIA’s operation of a black site in Bucharest, Romania. AP’s Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo write:
In northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the center of Romania’s capital city, is a secret that the Romanian government has tried for years to protect. For years, the CIA used a government building — codenamed Bright Light — as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There, it held Al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison until 2006, the year some were sent to Guantánamo Bay, according to former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the location and inner workings of the prison.
John Goetz:
- We’ve had a description of the CIA site, which is where one of the secret prisons were located.
- We had a description from some that worked there.
- The prison we’re talking about was used by the CIA in 2004 / 2005.
- The CIA secret prison was held in a Romanian government organization which gets called either ORNSS or NSA.
- It’s an organization that is used to get Romania up to speed on NATO classification rules.
- It’s a building that has a big NATO flag on top of it.
- In the back section of the building is where the secret prison was located.
- What I understand is that in Poland, when Bush came over, right after the beginning of the Iraq War.
- When they didn’t find weapons of mass destruction, he was there in May and early June 2003.
- We know that Al-Nashiri in his various times in CIA prisons, that his family members, I believe his mother was threatened with rape. He was water boarded, a drill was used on him.
- There was a mock execution, things like that. We’re not exactly sure what happened in Poland and Bucharest.
- There’s a little known site in Bosnia, that was used in days and weeks, right after 9-11.
- In Bagram, there’s a military prison there and there’s a CIA prison.
- I do know that in Africa there are prisons that run under a new model, where the state runs the prison and is quarterbacked, is the expression that’s used by the CIA who asks questions through others.
- It makes it easier to deny. Many people think . . .oh, the secret prison story is over.
- The facts are that outside of flight logs and some locations of prisons, no one really knows what happens inside these places.
- No one knows how they were run, no one knows perimeter security, how food was brought in, it remains a real black box in American history.
Guest – John Goetz, reporter with the German network ARD’s Panorama news magazine.
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70th Anniversary of the First Smith Act Prosecution: Proto-Thought Crime Legislation
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the first Smith Act trial of revolutionaries accused of wanting to overthrow the government. The law was intended to destroy the 100,000-strong American Communist Party however, the Smith Act was first used against the much smaller, revolutionary rival to the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party. Our returning guest, author and activist Joe Allen writes about this 70th anniversary. The Alien Registration Act of 1940 is also known as the Smith Act after its sponsor Rep. Howard Smith of Virginia, a Democrat and leader of the anti-labor bloc in the House of Representatives. The Smith Act became the legal weapon against critics of the government and stipulates that:
Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof–
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.
Joe Allen:
- For many people in the United States, the defense of civil liberties, has always been an important and constant feature of our history and most of that time the defense of civil liberties has not been primarily against vigilantism, or rogue elements of the government or corrupt public officials. While that’s an important part of that, it has always been dealing with the actual laws that have been attempting to undermine civil liberties most of the time they’ve been federal laws.
- You can go back to the Alien Sedition Act of the Adams Administration, the Espionage Act of WWI. They were always used against opponents of the government and not spies as they were sold to people.
- James Canon was one of the most important figures in American Socialist history, his life traverse the history of the American far left.
- He began in the IWW. The radical militant trade union that organized the most oppressed sector of American workers.
- He was a founding member and later a national chair of the American Communist Party. Like many Wobblies and members of the Communist Party he was very concerned of the civil liberties of radicals and trade union organizers and was the head organizer of International Labor Defense in the 1920s.
- Canon developing a criticism of and his descent within the American Communist Party as the ILD moved away from its original mission and Canon himself to begin along with a number of significant figures of the American Communist Party and other people who sided with Trotsky in the dispute with Stalin over not only the Soviet Union also the International Communist Movement. He was the founder of early American Trotskyism in the 1920s and 1930s.
- It was the broad layer of people who were ultimately indicted under the Smith Act in 1941 primarily for advocating the overthrow of the United States government.
- Smith Act – Proto-Thought Crime Legislation
- It’s also in a sense a response to a dispute inside the labor movement.
- The first that a prosecutor tries to do is get a jury that is predisposed of the prosecution and not the defense.
- That’s one of the great travesties of the Smith Act, not only can you be indicted by the things you do but by the things you say.
- In that sense it really is a thought-control crime.
- The most important part of the Smith Act in this country is it effectively destroyed the left in this country during the late 1940s and the early 1950s.
Guest – Joe Allen, a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review and a long-standing activist, based in Chicago.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Ten Year Anniversary of Guantanamo Bay Prison
Co-host Michael Ratner and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights gives listeners an overview of the habeas corpus legal battles to close Guantanamo Bay prison and an in depth look at the corrosive effect the offshore prison has had on civil rights, and the U.S. Constitution. Despite the fact that the U.S. government has itself cleared more than half of these men for release, and despite President Obama’s promise on his second day in office to close Guantánamo within a year, it has been almost twelve months since anyone has been released.
This is the longest period of time that has elapsed since the prison’s opening without a single person being set free.The Obama administration has also extended some of the worst aspects of the Guantánamo system by continuing indefinite detentions without charge or trial, employing illegitimate military commissions to try some suspects, and blocking accountability for torture.
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International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law
International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law” to be held on January 14, 2012 at 12 pm at Columbia Law School. The event will provide an excellent opportunity for students interested in gaining an understanding the theory and the practical application of international law in the real world.
Attorney Roger Wareham:
- The genesis of the tribunal began during the intervention in Libya.
- Back in May the December 12th movement always has a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday, May 19.
- This is part an ongoing campaign to re-colonize the African continent.
- Libya was important to that for a number reasons. Libya has some of the best crude oil in the world that requires the least amount of production in terms of transforming it into gasoline.
- Col. Gaddafi stood for the proposition that there would be a United States of Africa.
- Libya had the highest standard of living on the African continent.
- What we hope to come out of this is fashion a petition to take before the International Criminal Court.
- The plan is we’ll going to take at least a 400 people strong delegation to the Hague in June to present a petition to the prosecutor, requesting they prosecute the heads of NATO, Britain, Canada, Italy, for war crimes.
- Saturday January 14, 2012 / Columbia University Law School / 435 West 116th Street / 718-398-1766 / iptribunal2012@gmail.com
Guest – Roger Wareham, lawyer and political activist of over four decades. He is a member of the December 12th Movement, an organization of African people which organizes in the Black and Latino community around human rights violations, particularly police terror. Wareham is also the International Secretary-General of the International Association Against Torture (AICT), a non-governmental organization that has consultative status before the United Nations.
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Cornell and The Technion of Israel To Build Campus On Governor’s Island
As many listeners may know, Cornell University is joining with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in a plan to build a campus in New York City. Critics however, point out Technion’s involvement with the Israeli Defense Force in the development of repressive technology that would further perpetuate crimes against Palestinians. Through cooperative research with Israeli defense companies such as Elbit, Rafael, McGill and Concordia, Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.
To talk more about this, we’re joined today by David Klein, a professor at California State University in Northridge and a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Professor David Klein:
- It is a collaboration between Cornell University and Technion which is like Israel’s MIT.
- There’s a 350 million dollar grant from a philanthropist, which has been supplemented with 100 million dollars in public money.
- I’m a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
- The demands that we have are ending the occupation and colonization all Arab lands and dismantling the apartheid wall.
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of Arab / Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
- Respecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and property as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
- Technion is deeply complicit with Israel’s military and provides the military with technology to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
- Participants in a joint military and university program for science students, who will later be integrated into the Army’s research and development units, wear uniforms throughout their years of study.
- It’s particularly strong in developing robotic weapons systems, which include aerial drones, and unmanned combat vehicle technology.
- I think Bloomberg is supportive of the apartheid system in Israel. He wouldn’t view this as a problem like much of the rest of the world does.
- The crime of apartheid is an international crime against humanity.
- In addition to aerial drones, Technion makes the Black D9 Bulldozer, it makes the Stealth UVA Drone, which is a drone that can fly almost 3000km without refueling.
- It’s making something called the Dragonfly UVA mini-drone, which is a tiny drone with a 9 inch wingspan. It can fly into people’s bedroom windows and kill em.
- Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.
- Israel is arguably the most racist country at this time, due to the apartheid system that it has.
Guest – David Klein, member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (www.usacbi.org), and is a professor of mathematics at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. His professional interests include mathematical physics, climate science, and mathematics education in the public schools. He is the faculty advisor for the campus student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and the CSUN Green Party. David Klein’s website
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CCR Lawsuit: Stop and Frisk NYC
Last year, a federal judge rejected a move by the City of New York to stop a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the New York City Police Department’s Stop and Frisk policy. Judge Shir Scheindlin pointed out the seriousness of numerous claims that the NYPD disproportionately and illegally targeting communities of color. In 2009 New York City, a record 576,394 people were stopped, 84 percent of whom were Black and Latino residents — although they comprise only about 26 percent and 27 percent of New York City’s total population respectively. The year 2009 was not an anomaly. Ten years of raw data obtained by court order from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) show that stop-and-frisks result in a minimal yield of weapons and contraband.
Attorney Darius Charney:
- Stop and Frisk is a city wide epidemic. We’ve gone from 90 thousand in 2002 to 700 thousand this year. They’re stopping 2000 people a day, primarily young males of color but also females of color.
- There are really know criteria as far as we can tell. There are guidelines that have been laid out by the courts in the last forty years. The police don’t follow those guidelines. They’re suppose to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
- They’re stopping people for what’s called “furtive movements” whatever that means.
- The other one is “high crime neighborhood.” The court had ruled that this is unconstitional, you can’t use the basis of a high crime neighborhood to stop and search them.
- Yet again, the police are doing that hundreds of thousands of times a year.
- The two allegations we made is that the NYPD has a widespread policy and practice of stopping and frisking New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion which violates the fourth Amendment of the Constitution and then on the basis of race which violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
- The blacker or browner that neighborhood is, the more stops that are going to be done in that neighborhood.
- The other part is the weapon recovery rate, the police department justifies this program by saying, we’re trying to get guns off the street.
- Last year in 2010, they stopped over 600 thousand people. The number of guns recovered in those 600 thousand stops was 1200 guns.
- Relief sought in class action suit: Outside independent oversight of the police department.
Guest – Darius Charney, senior staff attorney in the Racial Justice/Government Misconduct Docket. He is currently lead counsel on Floyd v. City of New York, a federal civil rights class action lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s unconstitutional and racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices, and Vulcan Society Inc. v. the City of New York, a Title VII class action lawsuit on behalf of African-American applicants to the New York City Fire Department which challenges the racially discriminatory hiring practices of the FDNY.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Updates:
- Michael Smith: Obama Balance Sheet 2011
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Year End Look Back 2011 – Jim Lafferty
Looking back on 2011, amid the colossal economic failure and compounded erosion of civil liberties, there were slivers of bright light to note, such as the wonderful activism and momentum of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The subsequent pulling together of activists, unions and lawyers marked this year in launching the foundation of a vital movement. Will this emerging movement continue to build and hold together to counter and restructure a corrupt and crumbling edifice of democracy?
Attorney Jim Lafferty:
- I’m now 73, I’ve not been as excited and optimistic about a movement since the sixties as I am around the occupation movement.
- It’s very exciting, it’s very broad and a lot deeper than the 1 percent would like to acknowledge.
- We don’t have a great sense of history in this country, we certainly don’t learn it in our high schools.
- Many of the young people that are at the heart and soul of this new movement are not the beneficiaries of a historical context of which to organize ourselves.
- It’s proven that you don’t need that to make a splash.
- When you go to the heart of capitalism itself which is what this movement does, its not surprising that they were met with fierce and brutal police reaction.
- They were ignored by the press in the first week or two, much of the press has been a distortion of it since.
- Reading the picket signs alone would tell you damn well what they want.
- This is an economic injustice movement. Capitalism can’t produce the type of economic justice that these tens of thousands are demanding.
- When Bonnie and I were arrested in New York at OWS, we even had cops saying to us, we’re part of the 99 percent.
- People aren’t making it and can’t make it in this country given the skewed and unjust economic system that capitalism represents.
- The US Census Bureau acknowledges that 100 million people are living in poverty or are in danger of slipping into poverty.
- When a presidential election cycle comes up, anti-war movements, civil rights movements, womens’ rights movements, tend to leave the streets.
- Don’t fall for the trap of electoral politics.
- Phase 2: I don’t know if that (encampments) are a sustainable way of operating a movement in this country.
- Here in L.A., one of the unions SIEU offered an indoor space to the movement where they can organize.
- Last week we shut down a number of home foreclosure auction sales.
Guest – 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 to reflect back on 2011 and a look ahead.
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Occupy Wall St and the Brecht Forum
Kazembe Balagun, an activist and cultural organizer from the Bronx discusses the activism within the Occupy Wall Street movement through the Education and Empowerment Committee. Kazembe is also the program director at the Brecht Forum.
Kazembe Balagun:
- When I went down to Zuccotti, what I found was a vibrant community that had already started.
- It did really speak to the frustration of the current economic and political climate.
- As a public educator at the Brecht Forum you want to provide a context for these demonstrations.
- You want to have a conversation with them, in that this is not the first time this happened.
- We brought our comrade, Rick Wolff down there, and had a talk with almost 300 people. All great movements have great literacies.
- We have a movement where people are not only learning to speak in public but we’re all listening to each other.
- Wall Street has been the site of oppression for all people. Primarily because the wall that was built outside Wall Street was built to keep the Native Americans outside the business district.
- Black and brown communities have been the hardest hit in terms of foreclosure rates, stop and frisk. So what we have now is Occupy the Bronx, Occupy Sunset Park.
- We can occupy ourselves, that we can step into a new way of public life.
Guest – Kazembe Balagun, program director at the Brecht Forum.
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Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012
Continuing the look back and now ahead to 2012, we’re glad to have back with us, Jim Petras, author and former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York to discuss his latest article published on Global Research Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012. In this article Petras enumerates key events that will inevitably shape the next 12 months. He starts with – The Collapse of the European Union, then the recession deepens in United States, new wars erupt in the midst of this crisis.
These events, will lead to coming wars that will end America as we know it, meanwhile Europe sinks deep into austerity and class warfare intensifies. Petras says, that in response mass movements will continue to build, recede and re-emerge. Protests and rebellions, social revolutions and political power across the globe will be important catalysts.
Jim Petras:
- The economy has never really recovered from the recession. All the trends from the early Spring have been on the negative side. Instead of take off in 2012, we see the opposite taking place, slow down in investment, slow down in overall exports, slow down in financing the employment.
- What we do see is a big profit for the speculators. The speculators are back with a vengence. Carlyle has reported over 12 billion dollars in profits for the first 11 months.
- The speculators are working, the housing market is terrible.
- The debt has skyrocketed so much, so much was thrown at the bank bailouts, that there arent’ enough resources to pull us out of this recession.
- The Democrats are making deals with the Republicans to actually cut back on federal spending because of the deficit. I see us moving into recession by the end of Spring and heading toward worse a depression by the end of the year.
- This is all going to be exacerbated by a move toward a war with Iran, which will push oil prices up over 150 USD/barrel. The powers that are moving toward that war particularly, the Zionist power configuration.
- The consequences will be very very catastrophic for the economy of the United States.
- Speculators are back in power, the housing market is negative, the job employment is negative, 2011 trends are moving down toward recession, I don’t see any counter moves.
- Cumulative debt payments are negative, I don’t see any possibility of a injection of major public spending of which would turn this around or at least ameliorate it. Keep it at zero growth.
- Keep us at stagnation, rather then negative territory.
- Obama did nothing to stimulate a new structure in America which could take government support and move forward. What he did is pour the money into the people who caused the crisis on Wall Street.
- After Obama gets elected you’re going to see the most horrendous attack on the social security programs, medicaid, medicare. He’s holding back because he wants to get elected.
- He’s looking to slash and burn the only social programs that sustain American living standards for millions of workers who paid into this fund.
- This isn’t an entitlement program, this social insurance that has been paid for by American workers.
- He’s going to go into Iran, because he told the reformed Jews, all options are on the table, and he stationed an armada of Air Force smack facing Tehran. That’s a move toward war.
- Read Netanyahu and Barack, the defense minister of Israel and the Prime Minister of Israel, then the message gets transmitted to the New York Times, then it gets transmitted to Washington, you get a third hand.
- Why not look at the press releases coming out of Tel Aviv, if you want to know what tomorrow’s news is going to be.
- I think we’re going to see something new coming out of this great discontent.
Guest – James Petras, author and former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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National Defense Authorization Act Update
Co-host Michael Ratner expounds on National Defense Authorization Act. The Act has passed both houses, despite Obama threatening to veto the Act. Obama thought that various provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act concerning detentions, might impinge on his authority as the executive. Obama was more concerned about Congress telling the President how to treat those captured or kidnapped in “war on terror.”
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UPDATE: Political Prisoner Lynne Stewart
Political prisoner and good friend, Lynne Stewart continues to uplift people around her while serving a 10 year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth Texas. Lynne, as many listeners know, was prosecuted for representing her client the blind Egyptian Sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman. In trying to negotiate a return to Egypt out of solitary confinement, she made a press release public. She was tried and found guilty for materially aiding “terrorism.” She received a 2 and half year sentence, instead of 30 years that the government wanted. Then, the Second Circuit Court sent the case back to the Judge. Judge John G Koeltl sentenced defendant, Lynne Stewart: 120 months incarceration on five counts to be served concurrently. Lynne Stewart is now 72 years old, she’s a breast cancer survivor with other pending health issues. She’s called them the usual brush fires of aging, yet many are concerned. SAVE THE DATE FEBRUARY 28-29
Ralph Poynter:
- She is looking forward to her attorney Herald Price Fahringer to presenting to the court once again testing the law. We are planning a Occupy the Court Room and the park, the night before on February 28 through to the 29.
- The lawyer will be talking about the laws used to extend Lynne’s sentence. He said any lawyer that wouldn’t want this case, doesn’t understand law. He looked forward to doing it. He went for a one hour visit with Lynne at MCC and stayed all day.
- No matter what happens, Lynne will continue to fight for her license.
- She’s is Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Big airbase there. It’s an enormous prison, but she’s in the hospital ward.
- Even though I’d been on the list visiting her (in New York prison) I was not on the list (Texas prison)
- I just went down there, and she said, you’re not on the list but I’m going to go to floor supervisor and she says, you just come.
- That Saturday morning I was in front of the prison and they told me I was not eligible to go in. They said it was like an airbase, so I walked outside the gate and stood there. The guard came over and said what are doing here? I said, I’m waiting.
- Around 10:30 an official car came down and said you’re denied admission.
- I said, I understand, but I’m going to wait.
- Around Noon, the woman came back and she says, fill out an application.
- She said I knew if you fought from the outside I was going to fight from the inside and it only took 4 hours.
- You can’t imagine after sleeping on a 2 inch exercise mat on a steel platform for a year, and they showed me the hospital bed.
- She is Miss S, in the prison. Everybody brings her their papers.
- She heard noise outside her room at 5 o’clock in the morning, they were lined up some with papers stacked 3 feet high.
- There is an oxymoron – prison health care. There is no such thing.
- She’s lost about 45 pounds.
- She’s very sick, she can’t sit down. In the visiting room she has to sit sideways.
- Thanks again for all of the people sending bucks for me to go see Lynne.
- Write her a letter. The letters pick her up.
- They gave her medicine and she couldn’t get out of bed. We have a system now when they give her medicine she calls me up. I call my daughter the doctor and she tells me whether Lynne should take it or not take it.
Guest – Ralph Poynter, Lynne’s husband, father, activist. Please write to Lynne Stewart – LYNNE STEWART / 53504-054 FMC CARSWELL / FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTER / P.O. BOX 27137 / FORT WORTH, TX 76127
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Photo by flickr user G20Voice
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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Appeal Denied In Holy Land Foundation Case
Last week, the Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal for the Holy Land Foundation case. This decision affirmed the conviction of Ghassan Elashi, the co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. As many listeners may know, the Holy Land Foundation was considered the largest Muslim charity in the United States before the Bush administration shut it down after the September 11 attacks. In May 2009, a federal judge in Dallas handed down sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years in prison to five of the charity’s founders and former fundraisers. Over a year before, a federal jury returned guilty verdicts on all 108 counts against the Foundation and the five former officers on charges of providing material support to Hamas after the U.S. government designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1995. During that trial, the prosecution used unrelated video of suicide bombers to emotionally sway the jury.
Ghassan Elashi was then sentenced to 65 years in prison for giving material support in the form of humanitarian aid to Zakat committees – Palestinian charities in the West Bank and Gaza, that prosecutors were alleging were fronts for Hamas. Ghassan is being held in the Communications Management Unit in Marion, Illinois.
Noor Elashi:
- One of the arguments the defense lawyers made is that USAID, which is a government agency sent money to the same exact Zakat Committees which are these distribution centers in Palestine that the Holy Land Foundation sent charity to.
- That was their main charge, they were charged with giving material support in the form of humanitarian aid to Zakat Committees which the prosecutors were claiming were fronts for Hamas.
- In their appeal, one of their main arguments is that these Zakat Committees received money from many NGOs including an American agency.
- Another argument in the appeal was for the first time in US history, an expert witness who was an Israeli intelligence officer who testified under a fake name was allowed to testify under a pseudonym.
- My father recently had a phone call ban, because he put his name on a yoga mat, and it was considered destruction of government property.
- Our defense attorneys are not going to quit. They will ask the entire panel of appellate judges to re-hear the case, if that is denied, they’ll take the case to the Supreme Court.
- The foreign policy and politics of this country have been very favorable to Israel.
- FreedomToGive.com
Guest – Noor Elashi – the daughter of Holy Land Foundation prisoner Ghassan Elashi. She is a writer based in Dallas, Texas. After receiving a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Texas, she worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In July 2008, she won the 3rd place Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Award for her manuscript titled “Displaced,” which she plans to expand into a memoir about the displacement of three generations of Palestinians: her grandmother, father, and herself. She can be reached at noorelashi@gmail.com.
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Event In Philadelphia Marks 30 Years of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Incarceration
On December 7, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office announced that it will not seek another death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Under Pennsylvania law, Mr. Abu-Jamal will now be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. The National Lawyers Guild commented that while there is overwhelming doubt about what the state claims to be the facts in this case, even those allegations never supported a capital charge. That it has taken three decades to remove death from the table is astonishing.
The Guild has long maintained that Mr. Abu-Jamal is entitled to a new and fair trial. Procedural irregularities plagued his case from the outset, including blatant constitutional violations, from the judge allowing the prosecution to admit evidence of his affiliation with the Black Panther Party, in violation of the Supreme Court case Dawson v. Delaware, to the use of a faulty sentencing form that misled jurors during the penalty phase, in violation of the Supreme Court case Mills v. Maryland.
A great deal of relevant evidence has never been reviewed by any court, much less presented to a jury. This evidence includes several photographs of the crime scene which impeach the testimony of a police officer who was a key eyewitness and proof that another individual was present, and fled, the scene of the shooting.
Mr. Abu-Jamal was charged at a time when, it was later revealed, there was extensive corruption within the Philadelphia Police Department. In 1995, then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham promised the city that she would dismiss any case in which there was evidence of police perjury or purposeful misreporting of facts. Given the history of police misconduct in Philadelphia when Abu-Jamal was arrested, and the specific instances of police perjury in his case, the National Lawyers Guild has urged current District Attorney Seth Williams to act on his predecessor’s unfulfilled pledge.
Two days after the DA’s announcement, and commemorating International Human Rights Day, a free forum was held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to mark the 30th anniversary of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s incarceration, justice. Twelve-hundred Mumia supporters met to reinvigorate the movement for justice for Abu-Jamal and to say no to life in prison for the political prisoner. “Because for 30 years Abu-Jamal has been unconstitutionally imprisoned in death row torture, justice for Mumia will not be served by life imprisonment, but by freedom,” said Dr. Johanna Fernandez, professor of history at Baruch College of the City University of New York and a co-producer of the forum. Fernandez wrote and produced a documentary, which debuted at the Constitution Center in 2010 on Abu-Jamal’s case. “Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal,” examines evidence pointing to Abu-Jamal’s innocence and exposes the inequities of the American justice system.
Speakers:
The December 9 forum was co-sponsored by Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the National Lawyers Guild and International Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- IAE Report On Iran’s Nuclear Program
- New York Mayor Bloomberg Brags About Having Army of 7000 Police
- Federal 1033 Program, Pentagon Arms Local Police
- Zucotti Park Mini Police State
- New York Mayor Fines Street Musicians $250.00
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The Israelification of American Domestic Security
We’ve discussed on an earlier show the massive coordinated effort among the federal, state and local police involving a consulting organization called the Police Executive Research Forum. In Max Blumenthal’s recent article From Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American Domestic Security, he digs deep and reveals critical connections at every level of law enforcement with Israel’s national security tactics. Recently the New York Police Department disclosed its use of “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters at Zucotti Park. There are more connections yet to be made says Blumenthal.
Max Blumenthal:
- Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police said no experience had more impact on her life and doing her job than going to Israel.
- She said she designed her entire Homeland Security Program for the DC Police based on her experience being trained in Israel.
- Yamam is the elite force of the border police in Israel which is one of the most thuggish elements of the Israeli military. It’s a quasi-police force that is also active in the West Bank.
- We’ve never had Congressional Hearings on why elements from an autocratic dictatorship like Bahrain which was shooting demonstrators at the time, which was shooting people as they entered hospitals to get treatment-was allowed to train with our police forces.
- There’s not just a sharing of tactics, there’s a sharing of weaponry that’s being used against American civilians, against kids who think their birthright was sold, that was first tested on Palestinians.
- They’re studying with some kind of “Harvard Professors” of anti-terrorism.
- The bridge for American police officers to go to Israel is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. (JINSA) A Washington DC based think tank with an arm in Jerusalem I think. A lot of the people making the case for the Iraq War were in JINSA.
- They claim to have had trained through Israeli led training sessions, over 9000 American law enforcement officials.
- One of the things they learned was how to secure large venues, like sporting events, shopping malls and concerts.
- They also learned to look out for and take down suicide bombers.
- You’re supposed to think of the Anti-Defamation League as a Jewish civil rights group that fights the defamation of the Jewish people and humanity. This is not the extent of the ADL’s work.
- All new FBI agents are required to be taken to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC by the ADL, according to official FBI recruiment material that I found.
- The Mall of America, an Israeli security team stops and interrogates 1200 American shoppers a year.
- The NYPD under the leadership of Ray Kelly who has been to Israel repeatedly to speak an Israeli neoconservative conferences set up a demographic unit to spy on Muslim communities around the city.
Guest – Max Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and bestselling author. His articles and video documentaries have been in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Guardian, The Independent Film Channel, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is declared a bestseller among major newspapers.
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Class Action Lawsuit On Behalf Of Women Farmers
They’ve always had a presence in the fields, but in recent years women have come to run a quickly increasing share of America’s farms. Of the 3.3 million U.S. farm operators counted in 2007 census data, more than one million, or nearly one third, were women. That number represents a 19 percent increase in just five years, significantly outpacing overall growth in the profession. And the proportion of women who are the principal operators of the farms they work on has also increased over the past decade—women now manage 14 percent of the nation’s 2.2 million farms.
Yet throughout this time, women farmers have faced routine and systematic discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2001, female farmers filed a lawsuit against the USDA for gender discrimination in its farm loan programs. In the years leading up to the lawsuit, having been repeatedly denied loans by the USDA Farm Service Agency and its predecessor the Farmer’s Home Administration, many women plaintiffs had given up farming entirely. The lawsuit claimed that many who applied or tried to apply for farm loans were turned down because of their gender.
The government’s own reports confirm claims of widespread gender discrimination. In 2003, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report highlighting the inadequate civil rights record of the USDA.
Attorney Kristine Dunne:
- The loans provided are for last resort, where farmers have been unable to obtain loans from traditional commercial lenders.
- The women farmers lawsuit which is now Love v. Vilsack. It was filed initially as a class action on behalf of women all across the country.
- The courts have not granted it class certification, which may not be a surprise to your listeners if they’ve heard about the Walmart litigation.
- The USDA has had an office of civil rights. That office was effectively dismantled, so that women farmers or any farmers had a complaint of discrimination or how they were being treated with regard to their farm loans, could call up to office of civil rights in Washington DC and complain
- That was actually a requirement to preserve their discrimination complaint rights.
- The woman farmer is going to be offered up to 50 thousand dollars if she has a successful claim under the USDA proposed program. In past programs, these are for the African American farmers, and now the ongoing Native American farmers claims programs, those amounts have been different. There is a category that they could get up to 50 thousand but also up to 250 thousand. That is very troubling to women farmers that they’re not offered the same relief.
- Women are finding that there are opportunities for them, in the past its been a man’s job.
- Women have been at the forefront in advances of organic farming and other types of niche farming.
- Our lead plaintiff Rosemary Love suffered terribly, she had her animals literally dying on her farm because the USDA wouldn’t release the funds that she had been awarded through a farm loan.
- There are other examples where USDA officials at the local level have propositioned women, have told them to their faces, farming isn’t for women.
- The case is on hold, its been on hold for a number of years while the government and women farmers try to mete out a resolution.
- A woman farmer can be successful in establishing that she indeed was discriminated against. She was wrongly denied a farm loan 30 years ago and all that mounting debt from that discrimination may not all be forgiven.
Guest – Kristine Dunne with the law firm Arent Fox in Washington, DC. Kristine’s focus is on litigation and counseling relating to employment, labor and OSHA matters, in addition to providing legal advice to educational institutions and other non-profit organizations. She currently serves on the firm’s Pro Bono Committee.
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