Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Ten Year Anniversary of Guantanamo Bay Prison
Co-host Michael Ratner and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights gives listeners an overview of the habeas corpus legal battles to close Guantanamo Bay prison and an in depth look at the corrosive effect the offshore prison has had on civil rights, and the U.S. Constitution. Despite the fact that the U.S. government has itself cleared more than half of these men for release, and despite President Obama’s promise on his second day in office to close Guantánamo within a year, it has been almost twelve months since anyone has been released.
This is the longest period of time that has elapsed since the prison’s opening without a single person being set free.The Obama administration has also extended some of the worst aspects of the Guantánamo system by continuing indefinite detentions without charge or trial, employing illegitimate military commissions to try some suspects, and blocking accountability for torture.
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International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law
International People’s Tribunal on “War Crimes and Other Violations of International Law” to be held on January 14, 2012 at 12 pm at Columbia Law School. The event will provide an excellent opportunity for students interested in gaining an understanding the theory and the practical application of international law in the real world.
Attorney Roger Wareham:
- The genesis of the tribunal began during the intervention in Libya.
- Back in May the December 12th movement always has a celebration of Malcolm X’s birthday, May 19.
- This is part an ongoing campaign to re-colonize the African continent.
- Libya was important to that for a number reasons. Libya has some of the best crude oil in the world that requires the least amount of production in terms of transforming it into gasoline.
- Col. Gaddafi stood for the proposition that there would be a United States of Africa.
- Libya had the highest standard of living on the African continent.
- What we hope to come out of this is fashion a petition to take before the International Criminal Court.
- The plan is we’ll going to take at least a 400 people strong delegation to the Hague in June to present a petition to the prosecutor, requesting they prosecute the heads of NATO, Britain, Canada, Italy, for war crimes.
- Saturday January 14, 2012 / Columbia University Law School / 435 West 116th Street / 718-398-1766 / iptribunal2012@gmail.com
Guest – Roger Wareham, lawyer and political activist of over four decades. He is a member of the December 12th Movement, an organization of African people which organizes in the Black and Latino community around human rights violations, particularly police terror. Wareham is also the International Secretary-General of the International Association Against Torture (AICT), a non-governmental organization that has consultative status before the United Nations.
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Cornell and The Technion of Israel To Build Campus On Governor’s Island
As many listeners may know, Cornell University is joining with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in a plan to build a campus in New York City. Critics however, point out Technion’s involvement with the Israeli Defense Force in the development of repressive technology that would further perpetuate crimes against Palestinians. Through cooperative research with Israeli defense companies such as Elbit, Rafael, McGill and Concordia, Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.
To talk more about this, we’re joined today by David Klein, a professor at California State University in Northridge and a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
Professor David Klein:
- It is a collaboration between Cornell University and Technion which is like Israel’s MIT.
- There’s a 350 million dollar grant from a philanthropist, which has been supplemented with 100 million dollars in public money.
- I’m a member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
- The demands that we have are ending the occupation and colonization all Arab lands and dismantling the apartheid wall.
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of Arab / Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
- Respecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and property as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
- Technion is deeply complicit with Israel’s military and provides the military with technology to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
- Participants in a joint military and university program for science students, who will later be integrated into the Army’s research and development units, wear uniforms throughout their years of study.
- It’s particularly strong in developing robotic weapons systems, which include aerial drones, and unmanned combat vehicle technology.
- I think Bloomberg is supportive of the apartheid system in Israel. He wouldn’t view this as a problem like much of the rest of the world does.
- The crime of apartheid is an international crime against humanity.
- In addition to aerial drones, Technion makes the Black D9 Bulldozer, it makes the Stealth UVA Drone, which is a drone that can fly almost 3000km without refueling.
- It’s making something called the Dragonfly UVA mini-drone, which is a tiny drone with a 9 inch wingspan. It can fly into people’s bedroom windows and kill em.
- Technion is involved in asymmetrical robotic warfare with faceless human targets who can be killed by remote control.
- Israel is arguably the most racist country at this time, due to the apartheid system that it has.
Guest – David Klein, member of the Organizing Committee of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (www.usacbi.org), and is a professor of mathematics at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University. His professional interests include mathematical physics, climate science, and mathematics education in the public schools. He is the faculty advisor for the campus student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and the CSUN Green Party. David Klein’s website
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CCR Lawsuit: Stop and Frisk NYC
Last year, a federal judge rejected a move by the City of New York to stop a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the New York City Police Department’s Stop and Frisk policy. Judge Shir Scheindlin pointed out the seriousness of numerous claims that the NYPD disproportionately and illegally targeting communities of color. In 2009 New York City, a record 576,394 people were stopped, 84 percent of whom were Black and Latino residents — although they comprise only about 26 percent and 27 percent of New York City’s total population respectively. The year 2009 was not an anomaly. Ten years of raw data obtained by court order from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) show that stop-and-frisks result in a minimal yield of weapons and contraband.
Attorney Darius Charney:
- Stop and Frisk is a city wide epidemic. We’ve gone from 90 thousand in 2002 to 700 thousand this year. They’re stopping 2000 people a day, primarily young males of color but also females of color.
- There are really know criteria as far as we can tell. There are guidelines that have been laid out by the courts in the last forty years. The police don’t follow those guidelines. They’re suppose to reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
- They’re stopping people for what’s called “furtive movements” whatever that means.
- The other one is “high crime neighborhood.” The court had ruled that this is unconstitional, you can’t use the basis of a high crime neighborhood to stop and search them.
- Yet again, the police are doing that hundreds of thousands of times a year.
- The two allegations we made is that the NYPD has a widespread policy and practice of stopping and frisking New Yorkers without reasonable suspicion which violates the fourth Amendment of the Constitution and then on the basis of race which violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
- The blacker or browner that neighborhood is, the more stops that are going to be done in that neighborhood.
- The other part is the weapon recovery rate, the police department justifies this program by saying, we’re trying to get guns off the street.
- Last year in 2010, they stopped over 600 thousand people. The number of guns recovered in those 600 thousand stops was 1200 guns.
- Relief sought in class action suit: Outside independent oversight of the police department.
Guest – Darius Charney, senior staff attorney in the Racial Justice/Government Misconduct Docket. He is currently lead counsel on Floyd v. City of New York, a federal civil rights class action lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department’s unconstitutional and racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices, and Vulcan Society Inc. v. the City of New York, a Title VII class action lawsuit on behalf of African-American applicants to the New York City Fire Department which challenges the racially discriminatory hiring practices of the FDNY.
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Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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National Defense Authorization Act Update
Co-host Michael Ratner expounds on National Defense Authorization Act. The Act has passed both houses, despite Obama threatening to veto the Act. Obama thought that various provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act concerning detentions, might impinge on his authority as the executive. Obama was more concerned about Congress telling the President how to treat those captured or kidnapped in “war on terror.”
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UPDATE: Political Prisoner Lynne Stewart
Political prisoner and good friend, Lynne Stewart continues to uplift people around her while serving a 10 year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth Texas. Lynne, as many listeners know, was prosecuted for representing her client the blind Egyptian Sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman. In trying to negotiate a return to Egypt out of solitary confinement, she made a press release public. She was tried and found guilty for materially aiding “terrorism.” She received a 2 and half year sentence, instead of 30 years that the government wanted. Then, the Second Circuit Court sent the case back to the Judge. Judge John G Koeltl sentenced defendant, Lynne Stewart: 120 months incarceration on five counts to be served concurrently. Lynne Stewart is now 72 years old, she’s a breast cancer survivor with other pending health issues. She’s called them the usual brush fires of aging, yet many are concerned. SAVE THE DATE FEBRUARY 28-29
Ralph Poynter:
- She is looking forward to her attorney Herald Price Fahringer to presenting to the court once again testing the law. We are planning a Occupy the Court Room and the park, the night before on February 28 through to the 29.
- The lawyer will be talking about the laws used to extend Lynne’s sentence. He said any lawyer that wouldn’t want this case, doesn’t understand law. He looked forward to doing it. He went for a one hour visit with Lynne at MCC and stayed all day.
- No matter what happens, Lynne will continue to fight for her license.
- She’s is Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Big airbase there. It’s an enormous prison, but she’s in the hospital ward.
- Even though I’d been on the list visiting her (in New York prison) I was not on the list (Texas prison)
- I just went down there, and she said, you’re not on the list but I’m going to go to floor supervisor and she says, you just come.
- That Saturday morning I was in front of the prison and they told me I was not eligible to go in. They said it was like an airbase, so I walked outside the gate and stood there. The guard came over and said what are doing here? I said, I’m waiting.
- Around 10:30 an official car came down and said you’re denied admission.
- I said, I understand, but I’m going to wait.
- Around Noon, the woman came back and she says, fill out an application.
- She said I knew if you fought from the outside I was going to fight from the inside and it only took 4 hours.
- You can’t imagine after sleeping on a 2 inch exercise mat on a steel platform for a year, and they showed me the hospital bed.
- She is Miss S, in the prison. Everybody brings her their papers.
- She heard noise outside her room at 5 o’clock in the morning, they were lined up some with papers stacked 3 feet high.
- There is an oxymoron – prison health care. There is no such thing.
- She’s lost about 45 pounds.
- She’s very sick, she can’t sit down. In the visiting room she has to sit sideways.
- Thanks again for all of the people sending bucks for me to go see Lynne.
- Write her a letter. The letters pick her up.
- They gave her medicine and she couldn’t get out of bed. We have a system now when they give her medicine she calls me up. I call my daughter the doctor and she tells me whether Lynne should take it or not take it.
Guest – Ralph Poynter, Lynne’s husband, father, activist. Please write to Lynne Stewart – LYNNE STEWART / 53504-054 FMC CARSWELL / FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTER / P.O. BOX 27137 / FORT WORTH, TX 76127
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Photo by flickr user G20Voice
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- IAE Report On Iran’s Nuclear Program
- New York Mayor Bloomberg Brags About Having Army of 7000 Police
- Federal 1033 Program, Pentagon Arms Local Police
- Zucotti Park Mini Police State
- New York Mayor Fines Street Musicians $250.00
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The Israelification of American Domestic Security
We’ve discussed on an earlier show the massive coordinated effort among the federal, state and local police involving a consulting organization called the Police Executive Research Forum. In Max Blumenthal’s recent article From Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American Domestic Security, he digs deep and reveals critical connections at every level of law enforcement with Israel’s national security tactics. Recently the New York Police Department disclosed its use of “counter-terror” measures against Occupy protesters at Zucotti Park. There are more connections yet to be made says Blumenthal.
Max Blumenthal:
- Cathy Lanier, the Chief of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police said no experience had more impact on her life and doing her job than going to Israel.
- She said she designed her entire Homeland Security Program for the DC Police based on her experience being trained in Israel.
- Yamam is the elite force of the border police in Israel which is one of the most thuggish elements of the Israeli military. It’s a quasi-police force that is also active in the West Bank.
- We’ve never had Congressional Hearings on why elements from an autocratic dictatorship like Bahrain which was shooting demonstrators at the time, which was shooting people as they entered hospitals to get treatment-was allowed to train with our police forces.
- There’s not just a sharing of tactics, there’s a sharing of weaponry that’s being used against American civilians, against kids who think their birthright was sold, that was first tested on Palestinians.
- They’re studying with some kind of “Harvard Professors” of anti-terrorism.
- The bridge for American police officers to go to Israel is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. (JINSA) A Washington DC based think tank with an arm in Jerusalem I think. A lot of the people making the case for the Iraq War were in JINSA.
- They claim to have had trained through Israeli led training sessions, over 9000 American law enforcement officials.
- One of the things they learned was how to secure large venues, like sporting events, shopping malls and concerts.
- They also learned to look out for and take down suicide bombers.
- You’re supposed to think of the Anti-Defamation League as a Jewish civil rights group that fights the defamation of the Jewish people and humanity. This is not the extent of the ADL’s work.
- All new FBI agents are required to be taken to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC by the ADL, according to official FBI recruiment material that I found.
- The Mall of America, an Israeli security team stops and interrogates 1200 American shoppers a year.
- The NYPD under the leadership of Ray Kelly who has been to Israel repeatedly to speak an Israeli neoconservative conferences set up a demographic unit to spy on Muslim communities around the city.
Guest – Max Blumenthal, award-winning journalist and bestselling author. His articles and video documentaries have been in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Guardian, The Independent Film Channel, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is declared a bestseller among major newspapers.
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Class Action Lawsuit On Behalf Of Women Farmers
They’ve always had a presence in the fields, but in recent years women have come to run a quickly increasing share of America’s farms. Of the 3.3 million U.S. farm operators counted in 2007 census data, more than one million, or nearly one third, were women. That number represents a 19 percent increase in just five years, significantly outpacing overall growth in the profession. And the proportion of women who are the principal operators of the farms they work on has also increased over the past decade—women now manage 14 percent of the nation’s 2.2 million farms.
Yet throughout this time, women farmers have faced routine and systematic discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2001, female farmers filed a lawsuit against the USDA for gender discrimination in its farm loan programs. In the years leading up to the lawsuit, having been repeatedly denied loans by the USDA Farm Service Agency and its predecessor the Farmer’s Home Administration, many women plaintiffs had given up farming entirely. The lawsuit claimed that many who applied or tried to apply for farm loans were turned down because of their gender.
The government’s own reports confirm claims of widespread gender discrimination. In 2003, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report highlighting the inadequate civil rights record of the USDA.
Attorney Kristine Dunne:
- The loans provided are for last resort, where farmers have been unable to obtain loans from traditional commercial lenders.
- The women farmers lawsuit which is now Love v. Vilsack. It was filed initially as a class action on behalf of women all across the country.
- The courts have not granted it class certification, which may not be a surprise to your listeners if they’ve heard about the Walmart litigation.
- The USDA has had an office of civil rights. That office was effectively dismantled, so that women farmers or any farmers had a complaint of discrimination or how they were being treated with regard to their farm loans, could call up to office of civil rights in Washington DC and complain
- That was actually a requirement to preserve their discrimination complaint rights.
- The woman farmer is going to be offered up to 50 thousand dollars if she has a successful claim under the USDA proposed program. In past programs, these are for the African American farmers, and now the ongoing Native American farmers claims programs, those amounts have been different. There is a category that they could get up to 50 thousand but also up to 250 thousand. That is very troubling to women farmers that they’re not offered the same relief.
- Women are finding that there are opportunities for them, in the past its been a man’s job.
- Women have been at the forefront in advances of organic farming and other types of niche farming.
- Our lead plaintiff Rosemary Love suffered terribly, she had her animals literally dying on her farm because the USDA wouldn’t release the funds that she had been awarded through a farm loan.
- There are other examples where USDA officials at the local level have propositioned women, have told them to their faces, farming isn’t for women.
- The case is on hold, its been on hold for a number of years while the government and women farmers try to mete out a resolution.
- A woman farmer can be successful in establishing that she indeed was discriminated against. She was wrongly denied a farm loan 30 years ago and all that mounting debt from that discrimination may not all be forgiven.
Guest – Kristine Dunne with the law firm Arent Fox in Washington, DC. Kristine’s focus is on litigation and counseling relating to employment, labor and OSHA matters, in addition to providing legal advice to educational institutions and other non-profit organizations. She currently serves on the firm’s Pro Bono Committee.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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US Boat To Gaza Violence November 2011
Earlier this month, two civilian boats destined for the Gaza Strip and carrying medical cargo set sail from Fethiye, Turkey. As many listeners may know, the boats, one Canadian (“Tahrir”) and one Irish (“Saoirse”), carried 27 people–including journalists and crew—from nine different countries were met with a violent take over by Israeli military. The crew of both boats were attacked by high pressure hoses, there was heavy damage. The crew of the Canadian boat were beaten and tasered. Passengers remain in the Givon detention center. President Obama says the passengers are defying Israeli and American law. Past Law and Disorder shows last year’s flotilla. June 7, 2010 / June 21, 2010 / October 2010 / June 13, 2011
Felice Gelman:
- Some are still in prison, the process of getting people out is very opaque. The Israeli courts told them if they wouldn’t sign a false confession, to confess they had entered Israel illegally that they could be held for 2 months in jail. There were 18 people still left in Israeli jail.
- I would like to point out that this is exactly what happens to Palestinians every day.
- There are more than 6 thousand Palestinian political prisoners who go through this same opaque legal process, tortured. 90 percent of the people who have been arrested by the Israelis, Palestinians, have been tortured.
- Forty percent of the male population at one time has been held by the Palestinians for more than a week. We’re talking about a little over 3 million people.
- It’s endemic process its happening to foreigners at this point. The little kids are hit and shouted at and hooded. I think the Israelis taught the Americans.
- The Israelis are regarded as experts in with what they call terrorists.
- These boats were eagerly anticipated in Gaza. Thousands of people came down to the Gaza harbor and hundreds went out on boats hoping to greet the boats.
- Since 2006 Gaza has been under complete siege and blockade, everything that is allowed in is under Israeli control, almost nothing is allowed out.
- There is no economy, without exports, you really can’t have much of an economy. You’ve got 40 percent unemployment. 90 percent of the population is drinking polluted water because the crucial parts of the water treatment plants have not been allowed in by Israel.
- There’s only one reason Israel has been able to maintain this occupation, and that is because the United States abets it.
- There are no consequences for expanding settlements (from the Obama Administration)
- Right now the Israeli government is trying to get the US to attack Iran.
- Instead of Israel being regarded as an out of control, militarized bully is regarded as a close US ally who should determine our foreign policy.
- Endtheoccupation
Guest – Felice Gelman is with the Steering Committee that organized The Gaza Freedom March and has traveled to Gaza twice since the Israeli invasion.
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Who Killed Che? How The CIA Got Away With Murder
Co-hosts Michael Smith and Michael Ratner discuss their upcoming book Who Killed Che? A groundbreaking examination based on documents obtained from a Freedom of Information Act requests filed in 1995. This new information helps dispel the stories that the US was not involved with the murder of Che Guevara. Morning Star Review
“Ratner and Smith cut through the lies and distortions to provide a riveting and thoroughly documented history of the murder of Che Guevara. In an era when ‘targeted assassinations’ and ‘capture and kill operations’ have become routine, and are routinely glorified by the mainstream U.S. press, their examination of the U.S. role in Che Guevara’s death could not be more timely.” —Amy Goodman, host and executive producer, Democracy Now.
Michael Ratner / Michael Smith:
- One day when I was a baby I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all the documents the FBI and the CIA had about Che Guevara.
- You and I had received the first documents 15 years ago and we wrote the first book Che Guevara and the FBI
- Ten or twelve years later I get another document drop from the CIA and these are the documents that are the most important in my view, relating to Che’s killing in Bolivia.
- The government had changed in Bolivia since 1819, 189 times.
- The book tells his story in Bolivia, and what the US did starting the counter intelligence process against him and supported the Bolivian government.
- Michael and I enjoyed working on it because we got to really know Che in a way we haven’t before.
- This book had its origin first in a document drop that was about Che’s murder and Che’s time in Bolivia. There are maps we put in the book of the last battles, where he was captured.
- The idea of the book really came from Michael Smith.
- A lot of people bought the story that was put out by the CIA agent on the ground.
- We demonstrate that the US was deeply involved in his murder.
- Ricardo Alarcon who is the president of the Cuban National Assembly, wrote the introduction to our book.
- During the Cuban Revolution, it was the Bastista troops that killed tens of thousand of revolutionaries.
- The book follows Che when he’s in Africa and various places, but then we have him going to Bolivia on November 5, 1966.
- There was a split between Che and Fidel. Fidel was worried about Che every single day.
- The first half of the book is a 25 thousand word essay by Michael Smith and Michael Ratner. It links together what happened with Che once he left Cuba.
- It’s also a biography of the US counterinsurgency program and the characters in that program that tried to make sure they would stop the Cuban revolution from spreading to other countries.
- We dedicated this book to our friend, the great movement attorney Len Weinglass. Len was the attorney for the Cuban Five.
- The Cuban Five are an important part of this story, 44 years after Che’s death.
- The US has attempted to completely destroy Cuba, and squeeze it so it could not carry out the social and economic reforms that really would’ve made it a shining example for the world.
Hosts – Michael Steven Smith is the author, editor, and co-editor of six books, mostly recently “The Emerging Police State,” by William M. Kunstler. He has testified before committees of the United States Congress and the United Nations on human rights issues. Mr. Smith lives and practices law in New York City with his wife Debby, where on behalf of seriously injured persons he sues insurance companies and occasionally the New York City Police Department. Michael Smith also organizes and chairs the Left Forum. Check out Michael’s blog here.
Host- Michael Ratner NewYork civil-rights lawyer Michael Ratner was in the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday,flanked by the mother of one of the Guantánamo detainees he has represented for the past two years, unsure what to expect. After an hour, he was pleasantly surprised. First, Sandra Day O’Connor, and then Justices Souter, Breyer, Kennedy and even Scalia, indicated through their questions that they were skeptical of the government’s argument that the men Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls “the worst of the worst” have no legal right to file habeas corpus petitions in U.S. courts.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
- UN Votes 186-2 To Lift Cuba Embargo – US and Israel
- Anxiety Over Economy: Concentration Of Wealth Seen As Key Issue At A Volatile Time
- OWS Albany Arrest Controversy
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Occupy Des Moines Arrests
Police abuse of authority including excessive use of force are on the increase as more Occupy movements around the country are forced to disperse. Last week, 37 demonstrators were arrested in Des Moines, Iowa when 24 state troopers closed in on the Occupy movement there, arbitrarily enforcing curfew in a local park. Still more people were arrested in the downtown area that same night. While capturing his friend being pepper sprayed in the face on video, and then arrested, an officer directed Justin Norman to back off the sidewalk into another area. Justin was then arrested for trespassing and interfering with official acts. The officer grabbed his camera, but other protesters were able to wrestle it away from him.
Justin Norman:
- There’s an 11:00 PM curfew at the park that’s normally not enforced. Some of the people said they would walk their dogs in the park after 11:00 and no one cared. The Iowa State Patrol brought out about 24 state troopers.
- I was down there doing some video taping. The protesters began to sit as the police approached.
- The police began to be strangely brutal with some of the protesters.
- One of the leaders of the chant was asked if would like to be arrested or go. He said he would go. As he was leaving they shoved him on the ground and cut open his knees.
- They dragged him off to a police van anyway. Another person was shoved to the ground, the state trooper stepped on his head and struck him the face multiple times.
- Another guy I believe is a ten year Air Force veteran, was refusing to leave the park, arms linked with another protester, in response, one of the state troopers maced him in the face.
- I was videotaping him from the edge of the sidewalk, the state trooper told me to step back, back into the park. I’m about 20 feet from the trooper and he’s still telling me to move back.
- He tells me if I don’t continue to move back, I’m going to be charged with interference and trespassing.
- They arrested me and tried to take my camera. They took the camera and I yelled out to one of my friends and ran up and tore the camera out of the troopers hands.
- I do a demonstration against torture on a regular basis in west Des Moines.
- People got a bit frightened by the police brutality they witnessed and they decided to apply for a permit in the park. They stayed there for about 3 days, the permit expired in 3 days.
Guest – Justin Norman, activist who has filmed police misconduct, including recent raid on OWS movement in Des Moines, Iowa.
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Guantanamo Murder Case: Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld
Last week, Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Pardiss Kebriaei present oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the case of Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld. The case is a civil action filed on behalf of two men who died at Guantanamo Bay Prison in June 2006. There deaths, highly questionable and last year, four soldiers came forward with eye-witness accounts suggesting a cover up of the cause of the deaths and that they may have killed at a black site in Guantanamo. The military has maintained that the deaths were suicides, having once famously called them “acts of asymmetrical warfare.” Also, CCR attorneys have pointed to other documented examples of deaths and killings covered-up by the military in the recent past, including the falsification of records in the death of former football player Pat Tillman and the premeditated murders of Afghan civilians by members of the Army’s Bravo Company. Our own Michael Ratner has recently returned from Norway after meeting with family members of one of the men. Scott Horton article
Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei:
- This case is on behalf of the families of 2 of the 3 who died in June 2006. They were high profile deaths, the military came out immediately and said they were suicides that the men had died from creating nooses from bed sheets and hung themselves in their room.
- Then there were offensive remarks made by government spokespeople, they called them asymmetric warfare.
- They saw this as an attack, the fact that these men for having taking their own lives, from having been detained without charge in solitary confinement for 4 years, as an attack on the US government.
- They were characterized as a good PR move. These were military and Department of State spokespeople.
- Yasir was 17, he was from Saudi Arabia, he was, almost like everyone there not charged, held for almost 4 years. He was apparently a long time hunger striker.
- Along with the torture and solitary they were subjected to in terms of their condition, just the torture they were subjected to in general, they were forced into restraint chairs. Restrained at five points, their forehead, shoulders wrists and ankles, had a tube inserted up their nose and a liter of fluid pumped into their stomachs.
- In 2008 from a Freedom of Information Act litigation, the government was finally compelled to produced its information, investigation into these deaths. Supporting the claim that the deaths were suicides.
- Our clients were really disadvantaged to find out what’s really going on. I don’t think they believed these were suicides.
- The case was dismissed because the case raised special factors of national security and the military and foreign policy that were issues that were within the realm of political branches and basically not the business of courts to interfere in.
- It’s not enough to criticize the administrations anymore because the courts are accepting those arguments.
- If you’re DC, the district courts and the circuit courts in particular have been accepting those arguments.
- In 2010, 4 soldiers stationed at Guantanamo at the time came forward with eye witness accounts and were actually on duty on the night of the deaths.
- One of the soldiers came forward with direct evidence of a cover up of the actual cause the deaths. They were transported to “Camp No”
- Hickman reported hearing screams for Camp No. They reported seeing plain clothes officers sometimes going there. It was thought to be a site possibly run by the CIA or used by the CIA or Joint Special Operations Command forces of the military who are again, not accountable.
- The disdain from the DC Circuit Court for this case and every case coming out of Guantanamo was absolutely evident from the moment I opened my mouth.
Guest – Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, she joined the Center Constitutional Rights in July 2007. Since then, her work has focused on representing men detained at Guantánamo Bay in their habeas corpus challenges, before international human rights tribunals, in diplomatic advocacy with foreign governments to secure resettlement for men who cannot return home, and in post-release reintegration efforts. Her clients have included men from Yemen, Syria, Algeria, and Afghanistan. Her work includes seeking accountability for torture and arbitrary detention at Guantánamo.
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Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Saul Landau – Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up
We welcome back internationally known scholar and film maker, Saul Landau. We talk with Saul about his recent article, A Judge Grants Dubious Probation and his film, Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up? In his article, Saul writes about the release of Cuban Five member Rene Gonzalez who was released on parole in Miami for 3 years. Miami isn’t a good place for an admitted Cuban agent, Saul writes, and he’s a man who infiltrated the anti-Castro Brothers to the Rescue; his life would be in danger from Cuban exile terrorist groups. Earlier this year, Gonzalez had asked the court to allow him to return to Cuba where his family lives. As many listeners may remember the Cuban Five are five Cuban men who are in U.S. prison, serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively after being wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court. They were accused of committing espionage conspiracy against the United States.
Saul Landau:
- The classification of terrorist fall into 3 categories. The good, the bad and the crazy.
- The good terrorists are freedom fighters. Those are people still walking around Miami because they’ve directed their violence against Cuba, who is a bad guy.
- Then there are the bad terrorists and of course they’re all Muslims. Then there are the other terrorists who are neither good or bad, simply crazy like the guy who did the Oklahoma City bombing and this Norwegian guy who did this massacre.
- The idea in the film “Will The Real Terrorist Please Stand Up” is that people don’t know what the Cuban Revolution was and they don’t much about US policy. Ironically, Cuba is now showing this film in their high schools having found out their own students are ignorant about their own history.
- Cuba had very little recourse over terrorism for decades, other than to infiltrate the groups that were planning violence against Cuba and try therefore to impede their terrorist actions.
- The Cuban Five were looking for information that would help them stop bombings in Cuba.
- They were spying on Cuban exile groups that were based in south Florida.
- When the Soviets went away in 1991, Cuba had very little recourse in terms of economic survival other than tourism. As she began to get her tourism revved up, so to did the Cuban exiles in Miami start to level their guns; deterring tourists from going.
- Posada Carriles: We have interviews of him in the film, and of course he denies he did any of it in the New York Times.
- He gets honored, he got the keys to Hialeah, Florida for doing things he denies he has done. If he hasn’t done all these things, why would they honor him?
- Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch hired two Venezuelans to plant bombs in an airplane bathroom, which would go off after the two bombers left the plane.
- The Venezuelans confessed they were hired by Posada and Orlando. The Venezuelan police arrested them. They both got out for weird reasons. Posada escaped with the help of a 50 thousand dollar bribe to the warden of the prison.
- When Posada got out he went to work for Col. Oliver North. His next job was financed by the Cuban American National Foundation, which was the heart of the anti-Castro lobby. Orlando Bosch died after getting honored at the University of Miami. Orlando Bosch was pardoned by George HW Bush.
- Rene Gonzales: Essentially she’s put a bulls eye on his chest.
- After the United States assassinates a U.S. citizen abroad because it is said he planning terrorist acts against the United States. Under that precedent would Cuba not have the same right to send assassins into Miami and gun a whole bunch of people who are Cuban citizens in the United States who are plotting against Cuba?
- People can screen the film at CinemaLibreStudio.com
Guest – Saul Landau, a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, has produced more than 40 films in his career, most concerned with human rights. His latest documents 50 years of US-Cuba relations in which violent Cuban exiles–backed by the CIA–tried to dislodge Cuba’s government, and of five Cuban spies, now in US prisons, who tried to stop this US-sponsored terrorism.
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Occupy Wall Street: Liberty Square, New York City
We go now to hear a wide range of voices from One Liberty Plaza at the Occupy Wall Street encampment. During these interviews, the Occupy Wall Street movement remained a collective with people of many political persuasions. In this early period of austerity measures, they call themselves the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1% and claim they’re using the revolutionary Arab Spring strategy to achieve results and encourage the use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.
Our own Heidi Boghosian spoke with activists, union workers, a lawyer and many more about where the movement is going, the support for it and a focus on demands such as pushing for the redistribution of wealth from the top 1 percent of Americans.
