Torture | Law and Disorder Radio

Law and Disorder May 5, 2014

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

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

——

Torturous For-Profit Medical Care in Prisons

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

Dr. Robin Andersen:

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

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

——–

Lawsuits Against Prison Health Management Corporations

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

Attorney Sarah Grady:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——–

Attorney Anand Swaminathan:

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

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

———

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter 1937-2014

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

Attorney Myron Beldock:

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

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

——————————————————————————-

Please help support Law and Disorder, the show is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Law and Disorder must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Law and Disorder April 28, 2014

Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Armenian Genocide Survivor Stories: 99 Years Later

Around the world, April 24 marks observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire, Talaat Pasha, ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. The date is widely considered to be the starting date of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15^th century.

As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940, nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community. Meeting together to share memories in conversation are Jennie Garabedian, Harry Mazadorian, Roxy Garabedian, Lucy Simonian, Roxie Maljanian, Mary Abrahamian, John Maljanian, Agnes Karanian, Ruth Swisher, and Artie Shahverdian.

The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings—beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients—render oral histories particularly difficult. As you will hear from the stories of these first generation Armenian survivors who continue to live in New Britain, a shared history –a shared identity—emerges.

Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. A concerted plan of deportation and extermination was allowed to be carried out, in large part because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government “their sole opportunity, one unprecedented” to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.

Some learned about the massacres directly from their parents or family members, while others were not told at all. Often, surviving women were ashamed to talk about what they had experienced because so many of them had been raped or forced into harems. For others, conjuring visual images of the atrocities was too painful to bear. When parents did speak about the crimes they experienced or witnessed, they frequently spoke in Turkish or Syrian, instead of English or Armenian, so that their children couldn’t understand. Most children of survivors say that the subject was a secret, even forbidden.

————————————————————————

Law and Disorder April 21, 2014

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

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

——

U.S. Agency Infiltrates Cuba With Fake Twitter Account

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

Jane Franklin:

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

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

50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act

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

Professor of Law John Brittain:

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

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

Law and Disorder is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Law and Disorder must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Law and Disorder April 14, 2014

CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

Court Dismisses Lawsuit Challenging U.S. Drone Killings of Three Americans
Al Jazeera: Revealed: Senate Report Contains New Details On CIA Black Sites

——

The Dallas 6: Abuse In Solitary Confinement

In April of 2010, a group of inmates locked in solitary confinement at SCI Dallas prison in Pennsylvania were suffering so much abuse and brutal treatment by prison guards they had placed their bedding over the window of their cell doors to attract attention of the prison administrators. Instead of receiving assistance, the inmates were brought up on riot charges. Last December the inmates known as the Dallas 6 defended themselves and presented testimony describing the details of their abuse in solitary confinement.

Shandre Delaney:

This case, the Dallas 6, began in April 2010. These men were all in the RHU at SCI Dallas, in Dallas PA.
The RHU is the restrictive housing unit, its an acronym for solitary confinement.
All of these men had been victims of abuse and torture during their stay in solitary confinement.
The Dallas 6 are Andre Jacobs, Anthony Kelly, Anthony Locke, Dwayne Peters, Derek Stanley and my son Carrington Keys.
Most of these guys went into solitary for minor infractions, maybe to stay 60-90 days. My son stayed in there for 10 years, and I think all of the other guys about the same.
These guys were jailhouse lawyers. These guys were people who spoke up and sent word to the outside about what was going on in solitary confinement.
Once you do that – they call it misconduct, which are write ups, they’ll give you false write ups, and all types of things just to keep you in there longer.
The cells are 6X9. In solitary, they might have a window to the outside. There is a bunk that they sleep on. There is only a slot for food to come in and out.
You’re supposed to come out of your cell for one hour a day. They may get a shower 2 or 3 times a week.
They lied to me for years and told me he wasn’t allowed visits. I later found out that they’re allowed one visit per month.
The group that I work for Human Rights Coalition, some of the information that was sent from SCI Dallas, a 93 page report was written called Resistance and Retaliation.
They sent a copy back in (to SCI Dallas) they didn’t mark out the guys’ names, so once the guards got a hold of this, and saw the guy’s names, they started one by one beating guys.
They took one guy and put him in a restraint chair. You’re only supposed to be in the restraint chair for 2 hours, they kept there over night.
They (the guards) told the guys (Dallas 6) we’re comin for you. In order to bring attention from a lieutenant or a superior officer, you have to cover your cell window.
They covered their cell windows. The guards put on riot gear and one by one they beat these guys very bad.
It’s all on video tape. They tasered a lot of the guys on their genitals.
They have you like a hog or something, I saw it on the video.
They cut their clothes off and left them for hours in cages.
May 5, 2014 is supposed to be the official trial date. The official trial date has been going on for 2 years.
I was praying every night hoping the phone didn’t ring and they tell me they killed him.
They took out to shower and threw him down the steps and broke his nose, they busted his teeth out with a stick before.
They put glass in his food.
HRCoalition.org
Dallas 6 Blog
Petition to Indict Luzerne County Officials
Summary in Support of Petition to Indict

Guest – Shandre Delaney, a powerful activist with HRCoalition and the mother of Carrington Keys, one of the Dallas 6.

—–

Rutgers University Plans to Give Condoleezza Rice Honorary Degree

Students and faculty at Rutgers University have rejected the idea to invite former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to speak at this year’s commencement ceremony and receive an honorary degree. The Board of Governors in February of this year unanimously voted to award Rice the invite for a fee of 35 thousand dollars. They also voted to give the national security adviser under former President George W. Bush an honorary degree. Resolutions signed by the university faculty and staff calls for Rice to be disinvited.

Professor Deepa Kumar:

Historically our process at Rutgers University has involved having 20 some faculties, students, involved in the process of selecting the commencement speaker, typically by canvasing students and canvasing faculty and then making a recommendation to the president as to who to invite.
When president Barchi came to your university in 2012 he completely violated this open and democratic process, formed a committee of 6 people including himself. Then they decided to go ahead an invite Condoleezza Rice.
We believe that this was actually politically motivated. What suspect is that Chris Cristi who was riding high at that time in 2012, before bridge-gate, very likely wanted to have Condoleezza Rice as Vice Presidential candidate when he runs.
So far we have taken out a petition drive, the students have their own petition drive, hundreds of people have signed up. We’ve also talked about holding a protest outside should our efforts fail.
The last time Dr. Rice was invited to be a commencement speaker was at 2006 at Boston College, when everybody turned their back to her when she started to speak.
Condoleezza Rice was very much a part of the systematic lying to the American public and quite frankly we at Rutgers teach our students to ethical to be responsible citizens.
At Rutgers we have a 44 percent minority student enrollment. It’s a very diverse school and I welcome African American women as commencement speakers but I think there are better people like Anita Hill or Angela Davis.
In 2002 we know from a Senate Committee Intelligence Report of 2009 that when Rice was chair of the National Security Council she gave a verbal approval to then CIA director George Tenet to go ahead and use enhanced interrogation techniques.
She’s been quite steadfast in defending the use of torture. She gave a speech at Stanford University where she argued that if torture is authorized by the president then it doesn’t violate the Geneva Convention against torture.
Commencement at Rutgers – May 18, 2014.
Senator Feinstein called the use of torture a dark chapter in the history of this country.
Clearly torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Convention and I think to confer a Doctor of Law degree to someone who has been intimately connected with this “dark chapter” in our history I think is a serious embarrassment for Rutgers University.
I’m really proud to be among the hundreds of faculty members and students who are actually standing up against this to disinvite her.
Dick Cheney comes out and defends the torture program even now.
If I Was Allowed To Speak

Guest – Deepa Kumar, an Associate Professor of Media and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. Her latest book is Islamophobia and The Politics of Empire by Haymarket Books and is in response to the events of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a “war on terror,” ushering in an era of anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia. Her first book, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike (University of Illinois Press, 2007), is about the power of collective struggle in effectively challenging the priorities of neoliberalism.

———————————————————————–
Help Support Law and Disorder Right Here

Law and Disorder April 7, 2014

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

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

——

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

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

Aram Hamparian:

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

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

——–

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

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

—————————————————————————-

Help Support Law and Disorder Right Here

Law and Disorder March 31, 2014

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

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

—-

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

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

Professor James Petras:

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

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

——

Boycott Divestment Sanction Awareness Gains Traction On University Campuses

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

Attorney Dima Khalidi:

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

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

———————————————————————-

« Older Entries

Next Entries »

Law and Disorder May 5, 2014

Law and Disorder April 28, 2014

Law and Disorder April 21, 2014

Law and Disorder April 14, 2014

Law and Disorder April 7, 2014

Law and Disorder March 31, 2014

Search Site

Show Archives

Articles

Links

Law and Disorder May 5, 2014

Law and Disorder April 28, 2014

Law and Disorder April 21, 2014

Law and Disorder April 14, 2014

Law and Disorder April 7, 2014

Law and Disorder March 31, 2014

Search Site

Show Archives

Show Topics

Articles

Links