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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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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CIA Sponsored Terror, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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US Boat To Gaza Violence November 2011
Earlier this month, two civilian boats destined for the Gaza Strip and carrying medical cargo set sail from Fethiye, Turkey. As many listeners may know, the boats, one Canadian (“Tahrir”) and one Irish (“Saoirse”), carried 27 people–including journalists and crew—from nine different countries were met with a violent take over by Israeli military. The crew of both boats were attacked by high pressure hoses, there was heavy damage. The crew of the Canadian boat were beaten and tasered. Passengers remain in the Givon detention center. President Obama says the passengers are defying Israeli and American law. Past Law and Disorder shows last year’s flotilla. June 7, 2010 / June 21, 2010 / October 2010 / June 13, 2011
Felice Gelman:
- Some are still in prison, the process of getting people out is very opaque. The Israeli courts told them if they wouldn’t sign a false confession, to confess they had entered Israel illegally that they could be held for 2 months in jail. There were 18 people still left in Israeli jail.
- I would like to point out that this is exactly what happens to Palestinians every day.
- There are more than 6 thousand Palestinian political prisoners who go through this same opaque legal process, tortured. 90 percent of the people who have been arrested by the Israelis, Palestinians, have been tortured.
- Forty percent of the male population at one time has been held by the Palestinians for more than a week. We’re talking about a little over 3 million people.
- It’s endemic process its happening to foreigners at this point. The little kids are hit and shouted at and hooded. I think the Israelis taught the Americans.
- The Israelis are regarded as experts in with what they call terrorists.
- These boats were eagerly anticipated in Gaza. Thousands of people came down to the Gaza harbor and hundreds went out on boats hoping to greet the boats.
- Since 2006 Gaza has been under complete siege and blockade, everything that is allowed in is under Israeli control, almost nothing is allowed out.
- There is no economy, without exports, you really can’t have much of an economy. You’ve got 40 percent unemployment. 90 percent of the population is drinking polluted water because the crucial parts of the water treatment plants have not been allowed in by Israel.
- There’s only one reason Israel has been able to maintain this occupation, and that is because the United States abets it.
- There are no consequences for expanding settlements (from the Obama Administration)
- Right now the Israeli government is trying to get the US to attack Iran.
- Instead of Israel being regarded as an out of control, militarized bully is regarded as a close US ally who should determine our foreign policy.
- Endtheoccupation
Guest – Felice Gelman is with the Steering Committee that organized The Gaza Freedom March and has traveled to Gaza twice since the Israeli invasion.
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Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
Co-hosts Michael Smith and Michael Ratner discuss their upcoming book Who Killed Che? A groundbreaking examination based on documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act requests filed in 1995. This new information helps dispel the stories that the US was not involved with the murder of Che Guevara. Morning Star Review
“Ratner and Smith cut through the lies and distortions to provide a riveting and thoroughly documented history of the murder of Che Guevara. In an era when ‘targeted assassinations’ and ‘capture and kill operations’ have become routine, and are routinely glorified by the mainstream U.S. press, their examination of the U.S. role in Che Guevara’s death could not be more timely.” —Amy Goodman, host and executive producer, Democracy Now.
Michael Ratner / Michael Smith:
- One day when I was a baby I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all the documents the FBI and the CIA had about Che Guevara.
- You and I had received the first documents 15 years ago and we wrote the first book Che Guevara and the FBI
- Ten or twelve years later I get another document drop from the CIA and these are the documents that are the most important in my view, relating to Che’s killing in Bolivia.
- The government had changed in Bolivia since 1819, 189 times.
- The book tells his story in Bolivia, and what the US did starting the counter intelligence process against him and supported the Bolivian government.
- Michael and I enjoyed working on it because we got to really know Che in a way we haven’t before.
- This book had its origin first in a document drop that was about Che’s murder and Che’s time in Bolivia. There are maps we put in the book of the last battles, where he was captured.
- The idea of the book really came from Michael Smith.
- A lot of people bought the story that was put out by the CIA agent on the ground.
- We demonstrate that the US was deeply involved in his murder.
- Ricardo Alarcon who is the president of the Cuban National Assembly, wrote the introduction to our book.
- During the Cuban Revolution, it was the Bastista troops that killed tens of thousand of revolutionaries.
- The book follows Che when he’s in Africa and various places, but then we have him going to Bolivia on November 5, 1966.
- There was a split between Che and Fidel. Fidel was worried about Che every single day.
- The first half of the book is a 25 thousand word essay by Michael Smith and Michael Ratner. It links together what happened with Che once he left Cuba.
- It’s also a biography of the US counterinsurgency program and the characters in that program that tried to make sure they would stop the Cuban revolution from spreading to other countries.
- We dedicated this book to our friend, the great movement attorney Len Weinglass. Len was the attorney for the Cuban Five.
- The Cuban Five are an important part of this story, 44 years after Che’s death.
- The US has attempted to completely destroy Cuba, and squeeze it so it could not carry out the social and economic reforms that really would’ve made it a shining example for the world.
Hosts – Michael Steven Smith is the author, editor, and co-editor of six books, mostly recently “The Emerging Police State,” by William M. Kunstler. He has testified before committees of the United States Congress and the United Nations on human rights issues. Mr. Smith lives and practices law in New York City with his wife Debby, where on behalf of seriously injured persons he sues insurance companies and occasionally the New York City Police Department. Michael Smith also organizes and chairs the Left Forum. Check out Michael’s blog here.
Host- Michael Ratner NewYork civil-rights lawyer Michael Ratner was in the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday,flanked by the mother of one of the Guantánamo detainees he has represented for the past two years, unsure what to expect. After an hour, he was pleasantly surprised. First, Sandra Day O’Connor, and then Justices Souter, Breyer, Kennedy and even Scalia, indicated through their questions that they were skeptical of the government’s argument that the men Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls “the worst of the worst” have no legal right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
- UN Votes 186-2 To Lift Cuba Embargo – US and Israel
- Anxiety Over Economy: Concentration Of Wealth Seen As Key Issue At A Volatile Time
- OWS Albany Arrest Controversy
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Occupy Des Moines Arrests
Police abuse of authority including excessive use of force are on the increase as more Occupy movements around the country are forced to disperse. Last week, 37 demonstrators were arrested in Des Moines, Iowa when 24 state troopers closed in on the Occupy movement there, arbitrarily enforcing curfew in a local park. Still more people were arrested in the downtown area that same night. While capturing his friend being pepper sprayed in the face on video, and then arrested, an officer directed Justin Norman to back off the sidewalk into another area. Justin was then arrested for trespassing and interfering with official acts. The officer grabbed his camera, but other protesters were able to wrestle it away from him.
Justin Norman:
- There’s an 11:00 PM curfew at the park that’s normally not enforced. Some of the people said they would walk their dogs in the park after 11:00 and no one cared. The Iowa State Patrol brought out about 24 state troopers.
- I was down there doing some video taping. The protesters began to sit as the police approached.
- The police began to be strangely brutal with some of the protesters.
- One of the leaders of the chant was asked if would like to be arrested or go. He said he would go. As he was leaving they shoved him on the ground and cut open his knees.
- They dragged him off to a police van anyway. Another person was shoved to the ground, the state trooper stepped on his head and struck him the face multiple times.
- Another guy I believe is a ten year Air Force veteran, was refusing to leave the park, arms linked with another protester, in response, one of the state troopers maced him in the face.
- I was videotaping him from the edge of the sidewalk, the state trooper told me to step back, back into the park. I’m about 20 feet from the trooper and he’s still telling me to move back.
- He tells me if I don’t continue to move back, I’m going to be charged with interference and trespassing.
- They arrested me and tried to take my camera. They took the camera and I yelled out to one of my friends and ran up and tore the camera out of the troopers hands.
- I do a demonstration against torture on a regular basis in west Des Moines.
- People got a bit frightened by the police brutality they witnessed and they decided to apply for a permit in the park. They stayed there for about 3 days, the permit expired in 3 days.
Guest – Justin Norman, activist who has filmed police misconduct, including recent raid on OWS movement in Des Moines, Iowa.
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Guantanamo Murder Case: Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld
Last week, Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pardiss Kebriaei present oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the case of Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld. The case is a civil action filed on behalf of two men who died at Guantanamo Bay Prison in June 2006. There deaths, highly questionable and last year, four soldiers came forward with eye-witness accounts suggesting a cover up of the cause of the deaths and that they may have killed at a black site in Guantanamo. The military has maintained that the deaths were suicides, having once famously called them “acts of asymmetrical warfare.” Also, CCR attorneys have pointed to other documented examples of deaths and killings covered-up by the military in the recent past, including the falsification of records in the death of former football player Pat Tillman and the premeditated murders of Afghan civilians by members of the Army’s Bravo Company. Our own Michael Ratner has recently returned from Norway after meeting with family members of one of the men. Scott Horton article
Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei:
- This case is on behalf of the families of 2 of the 3 who died in June 2006. They were high profile deaths, the military came out immediately and said they were suicides that the men had died from creating nooses from bed sheets and hung themselves in their room.
- Then there were offensive remarks made by government spokespeople, they called them asymmetric warfare.
- They saw this as an attack, the fact that these men for having taking their own lives, from having been detained without charge in solitary confinement for 4 years, as an attack on the US government.
- They were characterized as a good PR move. These were military and Department of State spokespeople.
- Yasir was 17, he was from Saudi Arabia, he was, almost like everyone there not charged, held for almost 4 years. He was apparently a long time hunger striker.
- Along with the torture and solitary they were subjected to in terms of their condition, just the torture they were subjected to in general, they were forced into restraint chairs. Restrained at five points, their forehead, shoulders wrists and ankles, had a tube inserted up their nose and a liter of fluid pumped into their stomachs.
- In 2008 from a Freedom of Information Act litigation, the government was finally compelled to produced its information, investigation into these deaths. Supporting the claim that the deaths were suicides.
- Our clients were really disadvantaged to find out what’s really going on. I don’t think they believed these were suicides.
- The case was dismissed because the case raised special factors of national security and the military and foreign policy that were issues that were within the realm of political branches and basically not the business of courts to interfere in.
- It’s not enough to criticize the administrations anymore because the courts are accepting those arguments.
- If you’re DC, the district courts and the circuit courts in particular have been accepting those arguments.
- In 2010, 4 soldiers stationed at Guantanamo at the time came forward with eye witness accounts and were actually on duty on the night of the deaths.
- One of the soldiers came forward with direct evidence of a cover up of the actual cause the deaths. They were transported to “Camp No”
- Hickman reported hearing screams for Camp No. They reported seeing plain clothes officers sometimes going there. It was thought to be a site possibly run by the CIA or used by the CIA or Joint Special Operations Command forces of the military who are again, not accountable.
- The disdain from the DC Circuit Court for this case and every case coming out of Guantanamo was absolutely evident from the moment I opened my mouth.
Guest – Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, she joined the Center Constitutional Rights in July 2007. Since then, her work has focused on representing men detained at Guantánamo Bay in their habeas corpus challenges, before international human rights tribunals, in diplomatic advocacy with foreign governments to secure resettlement for men who cannot return home, and in post-release reintegration efforts. Her clients have included men from Yemen, Syria, Algeria, and Afghanistan. Her work includes seeking accountability for torture and arbitrary detention at Guantánamo.
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