Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Irvine 11 Case Update
Earlier this year 11 Muslim students were arrested on charges for disrupting a speech of the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren. The incident took place last year on the campus of the University of California at Irvine. The local District Attorney claims that the students had no right to disrupt the event, charging them with conspiracy to shut down the ambassador’s speech, even though he was able to complete the speech. Supporters claim that the Muslim students’ actions are protected by the first Amendment, and that are being charged for being vocal critics of Israel.
Last month, an Orange County court has found 10 Muslim students guilty of two misdemeanors. Facing up to one year in jail on multiple misdemeanor charges, they were sentenced to three years of probation, 56 hours of community service and fines. Each was convicted of one misdemeanor count of conspiring to disrupt Oren’s Feb. 8, 2010 speech and a second count for disrupting it.
Attorney Lisa Holder:
- I knew there were some very difficult challenges in this case. The students modeled their protest after a protest that took place in Chicago.
- There 11 students who stood up serially, one after the other, with about 3 or 4 minutes in between.
- Each student made a short statement of protest. None of the protesters in Chicago were arrested.
- A lot of the students who had a pro-Palestine perspective were targeted.
- The prosecutor framed his whole case on the notion that the students shut down the First Amendment rights of the speaker.
- This is the way they framed it at the beginning; in the statements they made to the media.
- In terms of their framing, it makes no sense from a legal perspective.
- The way the Bill of Rights work, is to protect individuals from the government. In terms of the First Amendment which protects free speech, the Fourth Amendment that protect against unreasonable searches and seizure.
- It protects the individual from the government impeding on those rights.
- An individual can’t impede or violate another individual’s First Amendment rights, only the government can do that.
- The prosecutor should not have been allowed to argue to the jury, these students violated Mr Oren’s free speech rights.
- These are wonderful young men, they’re very gracious people and there’s no way that the judge could lose sight of that. It was outrageous, because really what was being prosecuted in their conspiracy charge was their First Amendment right to assemble.
- Penal code section 403a violates the First Amendment essentially says you can’t disrupt a meeting, violates our First Amendment to free speech.
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Attorney Dan Stormer:
- Islamophobia is really taking hold.
- I tend to believe it is Islamophobia, 9/11 hysteria, more Arab / Muslim focus than Israeli / Palestine focus.
- The use of conspiracy in this case allowed them to get in all sorts of evidence that might not otherwise be admissible.
- Penal Code 403 says if you upset a meeting and substantially interfere with its progress, you can be criminally prosecuted.
- I think the statute is unconstitutional and that’s going to be a primary basis for our appeal.
- The district attorney was calling for jail time. The D.A. attacked the judge subsequently for failing to give jail time. I think it is a severe sentence but given Orange County, and given the nature of hysteria against our clients, I’m ultimately please with the sentence.
- The background is they actually took this to a Grand Jury, and alleged they might file a felony conspiracy and felony allegation against them.
- Its shocking and horrifying that this prosecution went forward.
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Guest – Attorney Lisa Holder, Los Angeles, criminal trial attorney since 2000. Ms Holder is a member of the California Bar, The National Lawyers Guild and the California Employment Lawyer’s Association. She is a member of the board of directors for the Southern California ACLU. In addition she is an adjunct professor at Occidental College, teaching pre-law classes. Ms. Holder graduated from New York University School of Law in 2000 after obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree at Wesleyan University.
Guest – Attorney Dan Stormer, a Civil Rights, International Human Rights and Constitutional lawyer for thirty-five years and has been recognized internationally, nationally and locally as one of the top attorneys in the United States. A graduate of New York University School of Law and Wagner College, Stormer has lectured and published extensively and has taught law school at Hastings College of Law and Loyola Law School. He has obtained a number of large verdicts in gender discrimination in employment, civil rights violations, and age discrimination. He has appeared before the U. S. Supreme Court and is currently one of the attorneys on a Guantanamo Bay case.
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People Wasn’t Made to Burn – Joe Allen
People Wasn’t Made to Burn is a shocking personal story of a Mississippi Black share cropping family that faced incredible hardship and tragedy after moving to Chicago in 1947. Within the year, 4 of their infant children perished in a massive blaze in an overcrowded tenement. The father sickened with grief took justice in his own hands and shot the landlord, thought to have the set the fire. James Hickman was jailed and facing murder charges. The story takes off, author Joe Allen gives the reader an inside look into the strategy to defend Hickman in the most racist area of the country.
Joe Allen:
- I think his story is really symbolic of a whole generation of African Americans who left the South for the North or the West to find a better life and a measure of dignity and freedom.
- He came to Chicago and permanently settled here in 1945. He got a job in the steel industry which was very typical of African American men who came to the Midwest.
- While you were sort of welcomed here for the hard work and labor you would give particularly to the big steel plants, finding a home was the thing which was a source of incredible frustration and humiliation.
- Housing is the whole that Joe Hickman’s trial really revolves around.
- The African American population really up until the second world war, was really confined to a thin sliver of land on the south side of the city (Chicago)
- It was overcrowded, and what the banks do is try to use this limited space to make as much money as possible.
- Kitchenette apartments, one room hovels, that didn’t have running water, no electricity, rat infested.
- Richard Wright’s book – Native Son.
- James Hickman would go from one end of the city to the other looking for a place and would have the door slammed in his face each time.
- Black landlords were not very common at that time. Coleman took his money and never gave the apartment that he wanted. When James Hickman raised the issue of what happened with the money, Coleman threatened to set fire to the place.
- On January 16, 1947, a fire breaks out, it spread so quickly that Annie Hickman, the mother and wife, and one of the eldest sons, made it out of their attic apartment and jumped to safety.
- Because of the speed of the fire and incredible smoke, the four youngest kids, they suffocated and burned to death.
- Six months to the day of the death of children, he confronted Coleman at his home.
- The police acted very quickly in this case. He faced execution in the electric chair or minimum 14 years in prison.
- They pulled together a Hickman defense committee. They organized a very broad based campaign.
- Even though he was a man racked by grief he went out to find some measure of justice for his children when he couldn’t get that from the criminal justice system.
- Housing is still a crucial issue for working class people.
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, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Mother Jones: The Informants
Since 9-11, the FBI now spends more than 3 billion dollars a year on counter-terrorism, the bureau maintains a team of 15 thousand spies in a nationwide network of informants. Many of these informants are tasked with infiltrating Muslims communities in the United States. We’ve discussed in the past, the expanded FBI guidelines plus the broad over reaching powers and underhanded tactics the FBI use when targeting Mosques and Muslim Americans. We talk with investigative reporter, Trevor Aaronson, about his recent article titled “The Informants” in Mother Jones Magazine. The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. Aaronson asks “are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?”
Trevor Aaronson:
- There are as many as 45 thousand hip pockets. A hip pocket is somebody who isn’t on the FBI’s books.
- Could be a store clerk, – you should go check out this guy. It’s never information that can be used in court or any sort of criminal affidavit. It’s what the FBI could use to build information and get tips.
- It’s all part of the FBI’s effort to build a larger network of people, that could provide information to the FBI of potential terrorist threats.
- Money is the incentive for informants. In the case of the Newburg Four outside of New York City, the informant earned 100 thousand dollars for his role in that case.
- What the FBI has been particularly fond of is using immigration as a form of leverage.
- To find people who are trying to get family over from overseas and use that as leverage, saying well, if you work with us as an informant. . .
- In the 500 defendants we looked at, 49 involved what we considered an agent provocateur, which is an informant which provided the opportunity and/or the means to move forward with a terrorist plot.
- We were able to identify by name, 13 informants who were these high level operators who moved from case to case, in some cases state to state.
- When someone pleads guilty a lot of the information about the behavior of the informant and the actions of the FBI never sees the light of day.
- Domain Management was a program that took crime data and looked for trends.
- In 2004, the FBI hired a man from the CIA named Phil Mudd to help it transition to an intelligence gathering organization.
- It started to allow the FBI to create demographic maps of specific cities. The technology that the FBI uses today are small transmitters. Informants: One thing we did find is that they usually have checkered pasts.
- They tend to be economically desperate, if not poor. In many cases they’re converts to Islam, with such an elementary understanding of Islam that the informant is able to use that against them.
- What we tried to do is build a database that we could draw conclusions from.
- I think at the this point the FBI has gone too far the other way, bringing in people who don’t have the capacity to commit these crimes.
- The FBI would admit they create a hostile environment for people who would commit terrorism. You engender this fear among the potential terrorist.
- The problem is that you create fear in the community of people that aren’t terrorists either.
Guest – Trevor Aaronson, an Investigative Reporter and Program fellow at the University of California-Berkeley.
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Fear Inc., The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America
As many suspected, the attacks on September 11, 2001 didn’t drive anti-Muslim sentiment by itself. There was some help, a lot of help. In a shocking new report, seven foundations have been part of a 10 year campaign to spread Islamophobia in the United States. The 130 page report by the Center for American Progress titled Fear Inc., The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America (PDF link) names the foundations and key individuals who have promoted Islamophobia from 2001 to 2009. The report mentions that the funds from these foundations such as Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust, Russell Berrie Foundation went to think tanks and grassroots organizations to spread messages of hate and fear as far as they can. The Donor Capital fund was the single biggest contributor donating 18 million out of the 42 million in the 8 year span.
Attorney Wajahat Ali :
- This is an investigative report, an expose on how 7 funders had given 43 million dollars over 10 years to a small interconnected group of individuals and organizations responsible for mainstreaming fear bigotry and hate against Muslims and Islam in America.
- What we do for the first time is dissect and expose this network, categorize it, name the names, connect the dots.
- The network is broken into five categories.
- There are 7 funders. The next group is what I call the Islamophobia scholars and experts, which is the nerve center of this Islamophobia network. A group of about 5 individuals and organizations that are primarily responsible for creating the manufactured talking points we just heard.
- Some were mislead by these individuals, within the network who are by the way very successful, by posing as legitimate experts and scholars on Islam.
- Rush Limbaugh from the hate radio section.
- Bridget Gabriel said a practicing Muslim can’t be a loyal American.
- This group is so effective because it is so self reliant and incestuous.
- Islamophobia is an exaggerated fear, hatred and hostility toward Islam and Muslims, that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political and civic life.
- The report is intended for a mainstream audience. This report inoculates Americans. Inoculates them from the fear and misinformation. This report has gone viral. It’s all over facebook, its all over twitter.
Guest – Wajahat Ali, a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Wajahat is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and Attorney at Law, whose work, “The Domestic Crusaders” is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America, and was published by McSweeney’s in 2011.
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Audio Collage – Muslim Surveillance
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Green Scare, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Medical Professionals Complicit In US Torture Policy
As many listeners know, health professionals were front and center and complicit in the US policy of torture. The torturers relied heavily on medical opinion. Medical professionals provided sanitizing and rationalization for the infamous torture memos. During water boarding procedures, a doctor would be present. Psychologists were directly involved in the supervision, design and execution of torture at US military and intelligence facilities. This is a violation of state laws and professional ethics. These “health professionals” that were involved with torture still hold their professional licenses to practice. Meanwhile a legal battle continues against the Louisiana Psychology Board for refusing to investigate professional misconduct allegations against Dr. Larry James. He’s a retired US Army Colonel and high ranking adviser on interrogations for the US military in Guantanamo Bay.
We talk more about this case and the breach of ethics in the medical profession since 9/11 with Dr. Stephen Soldz, former president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. Stephen is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and public health researcher in Boston, he is also co-author of PHR’s report in Experiments in Torture.
Stephen Soldz :
- Psychologists played a central role, there were 2 professions, one was lawyers, the other less well known was psychologists. It turns out that it was psychologists that designed and implemented, the enhanced interrogation torture program, who monitored it, who trained others in it and who researched it and provided all the legal protection.
- It’s believed that it was psychologist James Mitchell who was present there, who was in charge.
- There’s the CIA program that was for so called high value detainees in CIA custody in various secret prisons called black sites. This is where the psychologists were central, they designed the whole thing.
- There was a black site at Guantanamo where a few people were held at various points.
- Guantanamo was technically under the military control, not CIA control.
- The CIA: like I said the psychologists designed this stuff, it was quite brutal. Forcing people to stand, shackling them up, with their arms out, naked in cold air. For 7 days at a time.
- Being forced to stand day after day is extraordinarily painful. Think about having to do that without using the toilet, with liquid food being forced into you. They at times used small boxes where a person could neither stand or sit.
- The boxes were banged on at times, they would throw people against walls, with special devices around their neck supposedly to protect them from permanent damage. There were various slaps that were authorized.
- The American Psychology Association has an ethics code and its binding on all members. Not all psychologists are members, but all the states base their own ethics code for licensed psychologists upon that of the APA, some mandate it exactly some adopt their own.
- The CIA and military insist that the psychologists that do this stuff be licensed by the state.
- Many of them are APA, so the APA ethics are intimately involved here.
- The APA equivocated and formed a task force. They said that psychologists had an obligation to keep interrogations, safe legal and effective. This language it turns out was taken from the Bush torture memos at the Justice Department. The task force was dominated by the military.
- They claim to be resolutely against torture, they make statement after statement. Psychologists shouldn’t be safety officers.
- In all 3 states, lawyers have joined my colleagues to force the APA board to do their job. The board doesn’t have the leeway to dismiss claims of torture without clearly investigating them.
- Larry James was a Biscuit 1 and later served at Abu Ghraib after the scandals there, he claims to have been the person who cleaned it up.
- He admits that he observed abuse by other people and didn’t report it to the commanders.
- He’s now out of the military and the Dean of the School of Psychology at Wright State University in Ohio.
- It’s rather sad, instead investigating what did or did not happen, they attack those who raise issues about Colonel James.
- Physicians For Human Rights / When Healers Harm
Guest – former President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Stephen Soldz is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and public health researcher in Boston, and was a co-author of PHR’s report Experiments in Torture. He is the Director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology (Psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School, and has taught at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston College, and Boston University.
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Guantanamo Bay and Offshore Prisons
The Obama Administration has allowed the Bush policy to continue allowing for the practice of torture, rendition and secret prisons to continue. We talk about the ongoing practice of torture, secret sites and Guantanamo Bay. There are 3 groups at Guantanamo, the first is 2 dozen that are genuinely Al Qaeda. The second group shouldn’t have been there in first place, around 200 of them will be sent home. The third group are refugees who are from countries with horrible human rights records.
Attorney Vince Warren:
- What role do the people play in order to stop this? (wars) We are at war to make war is what the public has bought into. By using the war paradigm, the president seized power that belonged to Congress, seized power that belonged to the Courts and seized power that belonged to the people.
- You can’t be at war with the “concept” of terror.
- Prior to 9-11 when terrorism would happen. There was an investigation, an indictment, prosecution and if there was a case, they were to be convicted.
- As of 2011, more people in Guantanamo have died than have been referred for criminal charges.
- We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that this was a genuine reaction to a tragic event.
- This aggressive war(s) that are based on lies, without any legitimate security threat, is a crime.
- The other piece since 9-11 is the interesting double speak. Torture and aggressive war become justifications since 9-11.
- The Bush Justice Department said that the law simply does not just apply to the President, when he’s acting as Commander In Chief. It doesn’t matter if Congress passed a law that we expect the President to be bound, the Justice Department said he could ignore it if it didn’t fit in to what he wanted to do.
- That led to the Bush lawyers counseling him that he could ignore a law that said torture was illegal or could ignore a law that says the government can’t wiretap without a warrant.
- President Obama talked very big about ending torture and about ending these policies.
- What is happening now in the United States is that local police forces, immigration forces, private contractors are colluding and conspiring to infiltrate political movements and largely peaceful political movements.
- – in order to “uproot the terrorist.”
- Course there are no terrorists there, what there are are people who have a very vibrant and credible claim.
- Myself and a number of other human rights people went to a meeting with President Obama in May 2009. I was shocked at how President Obama completely understood the legal issues we were raising.
- The very next day he essentially came out with a preventive detention scheme. An indefinite detention scheme in Guantanamo.
- What really troubled me is that he knows. He knows precisely what the right thing to do is.
- This thing is not going to fix itself. CCR Facebook – Twitter @theCCR
Guest – Attorney Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a national legal and educational organization dedicated to advancing and defending the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Vince oversees CCR’s groundbreaking litigation and advocacy work which includes using international and domestic law to hold corporations and government officials accountable for human rights abuses; challenging racial, gender and LGBT injustice; and combating the illegal expansion of U.S. presidential power and policies such as illegal detention at Guantanamo, rendition and torture.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Green Scare, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq Veterans, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The State of Perpetual War
Since September 11, 2001 the US global war on terror has reached beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. The US constructed the largest embassy ever in Baghdad to control the resources of Iraq. Meanwhile strikes against Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, led an air war against Libya without any Congressional authorization continue as pointed out by author Anthony Arnove. In his article titled The 10th Anniversary of 9/11 Arnove describes US foreign policy of preventive war and how the US continues to use drone strikes against Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Now other countries are adopting the preventive war idea to fight (quote) terrorism. Today, the Obama Adminstration has gone beyond the Bush policies as trillions are spent on perpetual war while schools, health care and social needs crumble.
Anthony Arnove:
- 911 was seized upon by the Bush Administration as an opportunity. Condoleezza Rice specifically used the word opportunity to describe the geo-political shifts that she saw occurring in the wake of 9-11.
- We’ve seen the invasion of Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan, covert operations and Arab bombardment of dozens of countries. There’s an estimate now that this year the US will be operating in 120 countries in some capacity through use of commandos.
- You’ve seen increased troop levels in Afghanistan so that even with the current so called draw down of the troops in Afghanistan, even with the reductions that are currently being undertaken, we’re still going to be ahead of the number of troops that were in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush Administration.
- Withdrawal, the word no longer has any meaning. It actually means slight reduction of troops after they’ve been increased.
- There are 46 thousand active duty troops in Iraq. The claim is that those 46 thousand will leave at the end of 2011 after an agreement reached under pressure from social movements in Iraq.
- Then you look at the military installations that scatter the country, they’re not going to walk away from that easily.
- In Afghanistan, they’re literally talking about dates as far as 2024 in terms of troops on the ground involved in a number of capacities.
- I think Libya is truly an opportunistic action by the United States concerned its losing control in the middle east. You’ve had uprisings and revolutions that have toppled governments aligned with the United States.
- The US has been so contemptuous of the freedoms of people around the world. So contemptuous of democracy, so contemptuous of people fighting for self determination.
- So contemptuous of nationalist movements that would have put resources into the control of the people.
- The actions of the Bush Administration and now Obama have only made us more hated, and made the world more dangerous.
- They claim they’re making the world more safe, and protecting us. The reality is the opposite.
- At least Barack Obama will be more responsive to social movements, we’ll be able to pressure him. It is clear that is not the case, there has been a demobilizing of sections of the anti-war movement who define the political horizons as the debate between the Republicans and Democrats.
- The anti-war movement has been silenced.
- The people who most vociferously supported invading Iraq, claimed there would be weapons of mass destruction, all of those things we now know to be lies, those people are regularly asked to be commentators on Iraq and Afghanistan.
- Yet the people who got it right, saying this is what will happen if we invade, those people are never heard from.
- The gap between what the elite are doing and what they are saying, and what is in their interest and the interest of ordinary people has never been wider.
- On October 6, 2011, a number organizations have called for demonstrations in Washington DC and solidarity actions in other cities. On October 15 actions have been called for by the United National Anti-War Coalition. NationalPeaceConference.org
Guest – Editor and writer Anthony Arnove. He is best known for his books on Iraq and the Iraq War. Arnove is the author of the book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, published in hardcover by the New Press and in paperback by Haymarket Books. Arnove toured the country promoting the book in spring 2006 as part of the New Press’ “End the War Tour”.
Arnove is also the editor of Iraq Under Siege, published by South End Press, the co-editor with Howard Zinn of Voices of a People’s History of the United States, published by Seven Stories Press, and the editor of The Essential Noam Chomsky, published by the New Press. He writes frequently for left-wing publications; he is a featured author at ZNet, a columnist for Socialist Worker, and on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review.
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The Guantanamo Syndrome
Attorney Michael Ratner:
- Pinochet’s Operation Condor was to round up opponents all over the world to torture and imprison them. This is now an American Operation Condor.
- AUMF and Military Order #1 allow the administration to use drones around the world. This is the key piece of legislation. Out of the AUMF came military order # 1, November 13, 2001. The president can arrest anybody, they can be kept anywhere, American citizen or not.
- From there flows the Guantanamo Syndrome. Habeas Corpus, a person who’s the prisoner of the executive can go to court and say put the executive on the defensive. Why am I being held? You have to have a legal basis.
- After many years of litigation representing this incommunicado people at Guantanamo, we ended up representing their parents or relatives, because we couldn’t represent them, the Supreme Court finally said, it’s a Constitutional right to go to court to test your detention. They said that about the people in Guantanamo in particular, they didn’t say that about the people in Baghram or other places.
- Once we won that right, the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration went into court and completely opposed that right having any meaning. It is really an unrecognizable world from what we had ten years ago.
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Audio Collage
- Surveillance State: The 51st State
- Targeting Muslims Since 9-11
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Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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A Setback For Obama’s War On Whistleblowers
The Department of Justice’s campaign to stigmatize whistle blowers and force reporters to open up their notebooks under the Espionage Act is failing. Recently, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in an opinion released a couple weeks ago, said prosecutors could not force author and New York Times reporter to testify about how he learned certain classified information for a book on the Central Intelligence Agency. In another example, a former senior NSA official was charged under the Espionage Act and accused of leaking classified information to a newspaper. He recently walked out of court a free man, sentenced to a year’s probation and community service, after hearing the judge excoriate the government for its handling of the case.
Attorney Scott Horton:
- Obama criticized the oppression of whistle blowers on the campaign trail.
- He talked about how early in his career he had represented whistle blowers, and they play a part in our society and they need our protection. When confronted now, he shoots back I was talking about whistle blowers in areas other than national security.
- There have dozens of whistle blowers in the national security area, but I would say the pattern that unfolds, is there’s an internal investigation, the person is stripped of their security classification, they usually lose their job.
- These prosecutions don’t lead to long prison terms.
- I think what we see is a turn to the Espionage Act in order to justify far more serious terms and have a 10 or 20 year sentence.
- The Espionage Act can be used to justify going after reporters. Access to their internet accounts, phone records, and compelling reporters to give evidence against their sources.
- The Drake case and the Sterling case are two most important ones right now. The NSA took the position that Drake was disclosing secrets by revealing all of this.
- At least half a dozen senior figures in the Obama Whitehouse provided extremely sensitive and classified information to Bob Woodward for that book. No investigation, no prosecution.
- You can open the New York Times and the Washington Post everyday and find some national secret that’s been leaked by a member of the administration to help score a point for the administration. There’s never any investigation.
- Nothing is more clear that only political motivations drive these cases. The cases that are most embarrassing are the cases that are most rigorously prosecuted.
- The person prosecuted Thomas Drake was a selfless civil servant, spent his entire life serving the government, served in the Air Force, the Navy, the NSA and had sacrificed through his life to advance the interest of government.
- He was being prosecuted because of his concern for taxpayers. He saw fraud and waste in contractor management he tried to stop. He went through every proper channel and then when he went to the press, he’s prosecuted for doing that.
- The prosecutor William H Welch is the man known for having bungled the prosecution of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. The Washingtonian did a whole career profile on William Welch.
- The Obama Administration came in, it made certain promises. You see inside the DOJ, they’ve assigned people to change the policy guidelines. And they have, if you go back and look at the policy guidelines for state secrets invocations and the policy guidelines, they’re there for these whistle blower cases and the guidelines have been changed.
- What I hear from lawyers there (DOJ) is that the attitude they have now toward the CIA and the NSA are that these two agencies are their clients. They do the bidding of these agencies, they never question their characterizations or assessments.
- I think that’s what we see in the prosecution decisions here. We see senior officials at the CIA and NSA who have been embarrassed by these disclosures and they want to get even with the people who have embarrassed them and the Justice Department is perfectly happy to go out there and do their bidding.
Guest – New York attorney Scott Horton, known for his work in human rights law and the law of armed conflict. Scott is also the contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine.
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BDS Movement Ignites Amid U.S. Food Co-ops
An emerging BDS movement is making waves at a Food Coop in Brooklyn, similar to the successful Boycott Divestment Sanction effort last summer in Olympia, Washington. The Olympia movement was pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the home city of the Corrie family. The Brooklyn BDS protest is causing backlash amid the Jewish community. Some Jewish leaders opposed to the movement say it reveals antisemitism and that the assumption of Israel’s right to exist isn’t shared.
The boycott, in this case urges people around the world to stop buying products that support Israeli infrastructure such as Loreal, Motorola, Caterpillar, and many more. Sanctions, would target those companies exporting to Israel and applying tariffs or trade barriers. Divest or disinvestment, is the call to divest from companies, institutions and universities that support Israel’s occupation and lobby power.
Attorney Dennis James:
- I’m a co-op member and the co-op has been around since the seventies. It’s the oldest and largest food co-op in the United States, it’s got 16 thousand members and a waiting list.
- In the past 2 or 3 years, there has been a running dispute reflected in the editors of the Linewaiters Gazette of counter charges and charges regarding the issue of handling Israeli produced goods.
- There has developed a movement to try to resolve this. To do it in a democratic way that’s provided for by the procedures of the co-op which was founded in a political sense. It’s had about 11 boycotts.
- The proposal made by the proponents of the boycott is that it should be by referendum of all 16 thousand members rather than at a general membership meeting in which 3 or 4 hundred people attend.
- Where we are now, slogging our way through the procedures of the co-op is that there has been a meeting specified in the process is a pure discussion of whether or not there should be a referendum.
- There’s the Hava products and people are doing research on what particular products there are.
- There are certain fresh foods that come in off season. Two principle objectives come up, why Israel? – meaning while there’s this misery around the planet of the Chinese imposing on the Tibetans, Turks imposing on the Kurds and the other one is – it will destroy the co-op.
- The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about and that is US support for everything Israel does, which is not characteristic of almost any other conflict as bad as it might be of majorities vs minorities throughout the world.
- We support this, we finance this. We back it up with a guaranteed veto in the U.N. whenever Israel wants it.
- There is 81 Congressmen in Israel right now on vacation. Paid for by AIPAC. They give Netanyahu 29 standing ovations, no president gets that. They’re shaking in their boots, whether AIPAC is going to come to their district.
- The anti-boycott people (co-op) are saying we’re going to walk out, we’re going to destroy. (the very people who want to prevent the vote – referendum)
- They don’t want to debate you, they want to destroy you. They want to shut you down to shut you up.
- In Israel: People can lose their tax exempt status if they are of an organization like an NGO that has advocated boycotts of say settlement produced goods as do a number of Israeli NGOs.
- They can be fined. There is a number of particular civil sanctions that are available to those who advocate a boycott.
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Attorney Barbara Harvey:
- The BDS movement really took off after calls went out for a global BDS in 2005 from Palestinian Civil Society.
176 of the major civil society Palestinian organizations issued a joint call for a global BDS. They asked for non-violent economic resistance to occupation.
- The U.S. Zion organizations, AIPAC, the Jewish Federation, the JCRC and other Jewish organizations in this country would not have jointly created a six million dollar fund dedicated to defeating the BDS movement in the United States.
- Something we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by in my opinion. It is an effort to revive, reenact anti-boycott provisions of an old export administration act. These anti-boycott provisions expired a decade ago, but they were continued by presidential emergency orders including one signed by President Obama.
- They intend to prohibit collaboration by U.S. people that includes corporations, with the Arab League Boycott Against Israel. If intended to prevent exporters from cooperating with and supporting the Arab League Boycott. It is not directed against human rights campaigns such as BDSs.
- The Olympia Food Co-op is actually an important story. Olympia, Washington is the hometown of Rachel Corrie who was the young Evergreen College student who was bulldozed to her death by the Caterpillar D9 weaponized bulldozer.
- (The Olympia Food Co-op) adopted a boycott on the purchase for re-sale all goods from Israel, in accordance with the goals of the BDS movement a year ago. It has been successful, it has been under the gun ever since. The fact is, it hasn’t hurt business and it hasn’t backed off.
- This highlights the hysteria fomented by the opponents of the BDS that they’d like us to lose sight of. The majority of American Jews in this country, genuinely want a fair and peaceful resolution of the conflict.
- The whole Netanyahu Administration has been a real trauma for American Jews.
- TIAA-CREF is a retirement behemoth. It has more than 400 billion dollars assets. The goal is to persuade TIAA-CREF to divest its portfolios from the occupation.
- WeDivest.org / WhoProfits.org / BDSMovement.net / Al-Shabaka.org
Guest – National Lawyers Guild attorney Dennis James. Dennis has been active in anti-war, civil rights, and social justice issues. He recently traveled to Gaza with a UN delegation in 2009.
Guest – Attorney Barbara Harvey in Detroit who has worked with BDS activists and a former JVP Board Member
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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A People’s History of the Egyptian Revolution
Egypt’s revolution didn’t suddenly happen overnight, there was long important history. Beginning with Egypt and Israel signing the Camp David Accords in 1979 Egypt was rewarded with billions in US military aid that paved the way for neo-liberal style policies under Hosni Mubarak. By 2000, the first signs of widespread opposition started in solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada. The protests centered around poverty, corruption and need for democracy. A second wave of mass opposition ignited in 2003 in response to the US invasion of Iraq and Egypt’s support for the war. Then the April 6 movement rose in 2008, protesting against rising food costs and low wages. By 2010 social media and blogs were outlets for organizing and dissent.
Guest – Co-writer of the article and founder of Left Turn Magazine Rami El-Amine.
Guest – Activist Mostafa Henaway who also contributed to the article A People’s History of the Egyptian Revolution.
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Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on War of Aggression in Libya
As many listeners know, the military operation in Libya is not a humanitarian intervention, it is part of the global war and effort to militarize North Africa. The Chinese have sizable interests in Libya in the battle for oil. Meanwhile, the Gaddafi leadership has continued to function despite the NATO bombing campaign in the last four months and the loss of significant parts of the the country. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney had recently returned from a fact finding mission in Tripoli during a time of intense bombing. She has organized speakers to discuss how billions are spent in this military operation while we’re being told there are no funds available for jobs, health care and education. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was among the speakers, he’s been following the US and NATO involvement in brutal attempts to overthrow the Gaddafi government.
Attorney Ramsey Clark:
- The reality is that its a war of aggression, which the Nuremberg charter and judgement defined as a supreme international crime.
- What we’ve done is used the appearance of a civil war, people rising up against their own government, to wage a massive assault. – really unrelated to their activities, the first place we hit was Tripoli, they were no where near Tripoli and we bombed the daylights out of it.
- The bombing is spreading away from the compound, its hitting areas outside of the city. Interesting to note, people are still fleeing from Iraq to Syria. It’s safer in Syria, we read in our newspapers it’s violent in Syria.
- If you go back to Rwanda, and remember how everybody was outraged afterward but nobody intervened.
- A clearer illustration is what’s happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have died and are dying by armed troops. Nobody bothers to intervene.
- What you do is, you want to go in anyway, you use humanitarian intervention as justification.
- The poor Congress is defaulting on its responsibility. The military budget exceeds all of the civilian budget. They can gloss over it but until we address the issue of US military expenditures, our country will be a threat to peace in the world.
- We spend more on the military then the rest of the world combined. It’s almost impossible to think that the United States will curtail its foreign aggressions, while the military expenditures are at what they are.
- We’ve got in the Pacific Ocean today, 8 Trident nuclear submarines, the cost is enormous each one carries 140-145 nuclear warheads, anyone of which can destroy the biggest city in the country and go beyond it, their largest warhead will leave a crater with a 25 mile diameter.
- Hard to sleep in Tripoli and other places that are under direct attack by us.
- We tolerated him for 40 years while he created the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Highest per capita income, highest levels of education. Health care and more public housing then they can use for their own citizens. – almost enough for their foreign labor. He doesn’t submit to the will of the United States.
- Sub-Sahara Africa primarily, all the places on Earth are dying. It’s not just the conditions of weather in East Africa, but everyplace you go, structure’s crumbling. The chaos seems to be spreading and we seem to prefer it.
- Rebel Forces: It’s a group that doesn’t always know each other and doesn’t always like each other.
- We took out all of Gaddafi’s planes which was easy to do. It’s easy to hit his armor.
- They’ve held their own against the might of West Europe and the United States for months and months.
- We (U.S.Government) agreed to pay without admitting liability 300 million dollars for the people killed in 1986 by our bombing.
- People have to organize and rise up. I don’t think we’re going to get anything accomplished as far as peace and reduction of US militarization except by an enormous demand by the people.
- We can cut 90 percent of the military spending in my opinion and be safer, and not be engages in all these interventions – which we can’t handle anymore.
Guest – Attorney Ramsey Clark was the former Attorney General of the United States, under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was the first Attorney General at the Justice Department to call for the elimination of the death penalty and all electronic surveillance. After he left the Johnson administration, he became a important critic of the Vietnam War and continued defending the rights of people worldwide, from Palestinians to Iraqis, to anyone who found themselves at the repressive end of government action.
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National Lawyers Guild Lawyers Victorious in Internet Free Speech Case
At a 2008, Sunday Service at the Mount Hope Baptist Church in Lansing, Michigan, members of the queer rights group Bash Back! disrupted the service to protest anti-gay policies. Months later, the church and the Alliance Defense Fund, a reactionary Christian nonprofit organization, sued Bash Back! and 15 named activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The church and Defense Fund subpoenaed identifying information in an attempt to find out the protesters’ identities; Risup.net, a provider of online communication tools for individuals and groups working for social change, was the only email provider to challenge the subpoenas. Federal judge Richard A. Jones ruled that Riseup.net did not have to turn over the records, finding that “the Users’ First Amendment right to speak anonymously online outweighs Mount Hope’s right to discovery.” National Lawyers Guild members Larry Hildes of Bellingham, Washington, Devin Theriot-Orr of Seattle, and Mark Sniderman of Indiana successfully defended several activists who received subpoenas from Mt. Hope Baptist Church demanding they turn over their internet account records. Once again, this shows how readily corporations share private personal data on activists with the government or other private entities.
Attorney Larry Hildes:
- This church is particularly virulent with their ministry aimed at turning gay people straight.
- The group picketed outside and tried to pass out leaflets inside. Two women ran to the front of the sanctuary and kissed each other at the alter.
- Mount Hope Baptist Church called the police. The police showed up and said there’s no criminal activity here.
- The Alliance Defense Fund, a huge fundamentalist law firm and fund raising empire in Scottsdale, Arizona contacted the church and said we’ll take on your case.
- They sued the Bash Back folks under the “Faith Act” – Freedom To Access To Clinics Act. They sued them and settled for 2500.00 and a consent decree that they would never disrupt a religious service in the United States again.
- In the meantime they went to look for anyone connected with Bash Back in any way. They went to Yahoo and subpoenaed records from list-serves and Yahoo without telling anybody gave them what they wanted.
- Then they went after RiseUp and RiseUp prides themselves on two things, the internet voice of the left and privacy for their subscribers.
- Riseup attorney Devin Theriot-Orr outlined the internet case law, there is some good law.
- In order to engage in free speech you need to have some degree of security and safety that your privacy is going to be protected otherwise, it chills the climate so that very few people are going to be able to take that risk.
- The victory is that there is a first amendment right to be on a list-serve of a group, even a group whose actions can be seen as civil disobedience or illegal. Your information is still protected and private and the Freedom of Association Privilege goes to that.
- We were awarded by the court 28 thousand dollars in fees.
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Attorney Devin Theriot-Orr:
- I’m the pro-bono lawyer for RiseUp.net. The identity information of subscribers is protected by a longstanding precedent going back to 2001.
- Obviously the first amendment has its limits, you can’t speak anonymously about threatening to kill people.
- One of the caveats of the first amendment is that if you have a bona fide law suit and you’re trying to uncover the identity of the defendants there’s a whole balancing test to go through before you should be able to identify the defendants.
- They also provided identical subpoenas to Yahoo and Google, and even though these companies are located in silicon valley with very good federal benches, and they’re in the ninth circuit, its kind of amazing to me that other companies don’t take a stronger stance to protect their users privacy.
- We’re hoping this is a warning to overly zealous attorneys who are abusing discovery process.
Guest – Attorney Larry Hildes, National Lawyers Guild attorney in the case, Bellingham Washington.
Guest – Attorney Devin Theriot-Orr, National Lawyers Guild attorney in Seattle and pro-bono attorney for RiseUp.net.
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