CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power, War Resister
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- Much like the Russian Revolutionaries who opened the books on the Czars’ secret diplomacy and like the Pentagon papers on the Vietnam War, Wikileaks has done a great public service.
- US citizens now have access to the truth, that’s the basis of democracy.
- Julian Assange denied bail.
- Documents show utter duplicity of US government: Hypocritical and lying about fundamentals of democracy.
- Amazon / Paypal / Mastercard quit Wikileaks.
- Isolating, labeling, calling terrorists, but there’s a huge groundswell of support for Wikileaks.
- Wikileaks have struck a real blow against an imperial government.
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US Congress to Increase Aggression against Venezuela, ALBA Countries
Last week, members of the extreme Latin American right wing held a meeting in Washington with high-level representatives of the US Congress. The event is evidence of an escalation in US aggression toward the region, writes Eva Golinger in her article US Congress to Increase Aggression against Venezuela, ALBA Countries.
The countries in the region include Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua – all members of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and they were the topic of debates in the meetings that centered around 3 main questions. – and included “debates” centered around three primary questions:
- Are democracy and human rights in danger under the “21st Century Socialism” of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia?
- Does the ALBA Alliance of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua constitute a threat to US interests and inter-American security?
- Is current US policy toward the region equipped to respond to the erosion of democracy and the pernicious influence of such hostile actors as Iran, foreign and domestic terrorist groups, and narcotics traffickers?
US Congress members at the meeting include House Foreign Affairs Committees, including Elliot Engel, New York democrat and current chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere; Connie Mack, Florida republican and incoming chairman of the same committee; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and many more who met with the extreme Latin American right wing responsible for coup d’état’s terrorism and destabilzation.
Eva concludes in her article that this event is proof following the November 2 elections, that Washington’s policies toward Latin America will be more aggressive in the near future.
Eva Golinger:
- The meeting took place in the US Capitol Visiting Center on November 17th 2010, and it was titled Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights and Inter-American Security.
- The meeting counted on the participation of several figures, personalities in Latin America from the extreme right.
- There were some people from Bolivia who attempted to overthrow the Morales administration.
- One member participating in the meeting at the US Congress in November was involved with directly in an attempt to assassinate the president of Bolivia. Louis Nunez
- In Latin America there’s been a shift toward more progressive governments and policies, regional integration but at the same time an increased assault on Latin American stability and democracy coming from forces that either held power in prior years or want to take power in the region.
- We’ve seen five coups in the past ten years. Venezuela in 2002, Haiti in 2004, Bolivia in 2008, Honduras in 2009, and Ecuador this year.
- Two of those were successful, Haiti and Honduras. All right wing coups backed by the United States.
- The decision that they (Latin American right wing) came to at the meeting is that the US isn’t doing enough.
- The policy toward Cuba is equated directly with Venezuela, and the policy of Venezuela is going to Ecuador and Bolivia because they all form part of this regional block called ALBA.
- If we have people like Connie Mack running the Subcommittee on Foreign Relations on Latin America who declared in that conference in the Congress last month that with the new Republican majority they need to take action and confront Hugo Chavez head on.
- There are right wing governments in Latin America, we’ve got Peru, Columbia and Chile, but they also rejected the coup attempts.
- Honduras Wikileak memo: The document was an internal memo sent from a US ambassador to the US Secretary of State. It said that the coup that took place June 2009 against President Manuel Zelaya was completely illegal, had no constitutional foundation. It is completely the contrary position the US assumed publicly. The US State Department never declared formally the events as a coup d’état.
- The basis of my work is to use the US Freedom of Information Act to try to declassify US documents, not obtained illegally. One piece of evidence that was demonstrated irrefutably is the increase in funding coming out using US tax payer dollars to fund organizations and political groups in Latin America that are trying to destabilize democratically elected governments.
Guest – Eva Golinger – winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named “La Novia de Venezuela” by President Hugo Chávez, is an Attorney and Writer from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, “The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela” “Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela” ,“The Empire’s Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion.” Since 2003, Eva, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and CUNY Law School in New York, has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about the US Government’s efforts to destabilize progressive movements in Latin America.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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A Kidnapping In Milan: The CIA On Trial
A Kidnapping In Milan: The CIA On Trial is the title of Steve Hendricks’ new book. It is a fast paced account of the realities of counter terrroism. Hendricks gives the reader a beginning to end view of international Islamist terrorist networks in Europre while examining the questions of justice and the rule of law. He writes in detail on the February 2003 disappearance of the radical imam Abu Omar and how under the leadership of prosecutor Armando Spataro, Omar was kidnapped, and sent to be tortured in Egypt. Hendricks traces Omar’s roots in the jihadist world of the Middle East and his travels to Pakistan, Albania and eventually the rundown fringes of Milan. Rivalries, mistrust and bad communication is chronicled amid the CIA, the FBI and the Italian counter terrorism agencies as operatives snatched Abu Omar from the streets of Italy.
Steve Hendricks:
- The Italian counterterror police had this imam, Abu Omar under tight surveillance, under suspicion of terrorism. He was one of the ring leaders of a terrorist cell. They were about a month away from arresting him. But one fine day in February 2003, he sets off for his mosque and disappears.
- The CIA had grabbed him off the street literally at high noon. They roughed him up, gagged him, drove him several hours across northern Italy –sent him to Cairo were for months and months he was savagely tortured.
- The Muslim Brotherhood, which really might thought of as the godfathers of radical Islam, got its start in Egypt and toehold in Alexandria. Islam is not going to be re-born simply on its goodness, we have to fight for it.
- The Egyptian authorities cracked down on the radicals and a great number of them fled all over the world, they scattered. Europe was tolerant of foreigners, Italy was one of those countries.
- Abu Omar was tortured for about a year and then they let him out and said don’t talk about it.
- Armando Spataro is this charismatic figure. He did his formative work as a magistrate prosecuting terrorists of the left.
- When the kidnapping in Milan (by the CIA) happened on his watch, he treated it like anything else. He put his foot down on the rule of law.
- SIM Card – Subscriber Identity Module. It’s not just reading the radio waves, it’s in constant contact with the cell tower back and forth. Most cell companies keep record of those interactions. What these kidnappers sloppily did is use their cellphones like teenagers.
- The Italian prosecutors were able to find these kidnappers, they were able to track their movements everywhere they went. Armando Spataro eventually brought charges against 25 CIA agents and one US Air Force Colonel that coordinated the arrival of agents at Aviano Air Base.
- 23 of the 26 of the accused were convicted of kidnapping. They recieved five to eight years depending upon their degree of involvment. What moved me to write this book, over everything was outrage over our inhumanity.
- America has been conducting renditions for about a century.
Guest – Steve Hendricks, a freelance writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Helena, Montana. He is the author, most recently, of A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial. His previous book, The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country, made several best-of-the-year lists in 2006.
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Noam Chomsky – Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians
Here on Law and Disorder we’ve chronicled the events of Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Today we’re delighted to have with us Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s foremost social critics, institute professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy and author of many books including Failed States and Hegemony or Survival, but we talk with him today about his latest book Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians. Noam Chomsky wrote Gaza In Crisis with Ilan Pappé, professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK. This book surveys Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza from Operation Cast Lead to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in a very sobering analysis.
Noam Chomsky:
- Let’s start with wikileaks. One of the interesting cables from the Tel Aviv embassy and it was to Clinton.
- It was giving her talking points, about the attack on Gaza, and it tells her Israel had to attack on December 2008 in self defense because Hamas had violated the truce.
- In December 2008 Hamas called for a renewal of the truce that Israel had broken. Israel considered it and rejected it. I should say US/Israel because these are joint activities.
- The fact that this can pass without comment, tells you quite a lot.
- In the whole wikileaks episode, in my opinion is the remarkable fact is the absolute contempt of democracy that’s revealed by the embassies.
- The most critical issue is did Israel have any right to use force in the first place? Any right?
- Why have a border cutting Galilee in half?
- The only way I know how to proceed is to get the United States to join the rest of the world and stop its rejectionist opposition to the overwhelming international consensus, agree to a two state settlement.
- The strongest support for Israeli crimes is coming from the business world.
- The most rabid supporter of Israel in the media is the Wall Street Journal. They’re not part of AIPAC, that’s the business world.
- US military intelligence are tightly integrated with Israel. Israel destroyed secular Arab nationalism, that’s when US / Israeli relations took off in their current form.
- It’s about expansion of settlements. Israel already controls 42 percent of the West Bank.
- The issue is the settlements, they are all illegal.
- It designed so that there will be no Palestinian self determination.
Guest – Noam Chomsky, n American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident and an anarchist, referring to himself as a libertarian socialist. Chomsky is the author of more than 150 books and has received worldwide attention for his views, despite being typically absent from the mainstream media.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Drone Based Targeted Killings of U.S. citizens. Anwar Al-Aulaqi
Can the Obama Administration or any future administration use lethal force against US citizens who the executive office unilaterally determines as a threat to the nation? Not yet, but in recent government arguments, in the Anwar Al-Aulaqi case, the executive branch would have unreviewable authority to carry out targeted killings of Americans deemed to be enemies of the state. The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on August 30, and the government filed its reply brief on September 25.
The ACLU and CCR were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government’s decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have targeted for death.
Pardiss Kebriaei:
- This will be our first chance to defend our motion for a preliminary injunction and respond to the government’s arguments. The sum and substance of the government’s arguments is that there should be no rule for the court at all in the question we presented. Whether the government has authority to execute one of its citizens without any kind of due process.
- There should be absolutely no judicial review at all. They have not got into the merits of why they believe they should have this authority. They assert the US is involved in a global war against Al-Qaeda, by virtue of the war the US has the ability to target any suspect of Al-Qaeda.
- Outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, the question of whether armed conflict exists, is a factual objective question. It’s not a matter of which the president declares and that the level of hostilities and the organization of groups in Yemen are just not such that they to the level of war.
- Anwar Al-Alwaqi is not Al-Qaeda, he is associated with Al-Qaeda.
- The US is not only claiming broad authority geographically but global authority in terms of any and all groups they deem somehow linked to Al-Qaeda.
- They’re claiming AUMF but they’re also claiming a very vague principle of self defense which is tricky. They are claiming self defense under article 51 of the UN charter.
- They’re going around criminal law and claiming un-reviewable authority to carry out global assassination. This is an escalation of what we saw under the Bush Administration with global detention authority, this is global killing authority.
- The authority could reach any citizen they deem a threat to national security. It could reach someone in the United States, the full contours of the government’s arguments would be that the decision to kill is for the executive to determine and that should be an un-reviewable decision.
- The mechanized disconnected nature of the killing is alarming, both by an accountability point of view and a moral point of view.
- The drone project is operated by the CIA and by a covert unit in the Department of Defense called the Joint Special Operations Command.
- Documenting them is incredibly hard, but yet you have the expansion of the war and killings, in this shadow war way. You have this parallel secret war being conducted by the CIA and JSOC largely through the use of unmanned drones. What we have here is the pre-determination of the ability to kill.
- There’s been a steady increase of rhetoric about Yemen and an escalation in the language of war.
Guest – 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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Justice On Trial: Documentary on Mumia Abu-Jamal
We’re pleased to have with us today the director Kouross Esmaeli of the new documentary Justice On Trial. The film focuses on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, one of the most scrutinized and contested legal cases in American history. Justice on Trial examines the facts of the case, the judicial bias, racial discrimination in jury selection, prosecutorial misconduct and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction. The injustices and problems in Mumia’s case as many listeners know, are common within the criminal justice system in the United States.
Kouross Esmaeli:
- I tried to get an interview with the wife of the police officer who was killed on the night of December 9, 1981
- I thought it was important to show what drives that side I came to realize that Tigre Hill was making a film (about Mumia, titled Barrel of A Gun) that was propaganda for the other side.
- We had to make sure that film doesn’t become the voice of the nation.
- (Film includes photos 12 minutes after shooting occurred)
- The photos were discovered by an activist and scholar in Germany. He found them online, Michael met the photographer in the US, and realized there were 22 photographs from that night.
- They were offered to the prosecution, they refused.
- What the photographs show is incredible, they show a roving police hat.
- Officer Faulkner’s hat is placed in different spots on the crime scene.
- They show police handling the gun that was supposedly used in this crime. Handling it without gloves.
- There’s this push to kill Mumia and silence him physically. I’m interested to know what drives these people.
- For a screening in your area contact – – Kouross by email – – Kouross@bignoisefilms.org
Guest – Kouross Esmaeli, independent filmmaker and journalist.
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Final Verdict : What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case.
In 1965, Walter and Miriam Schneir published Invitation to an Inquest, it was among the first critical accounts of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. They were executed in 1953 for passing atom bomb secrets to Soviet Russia. In that book the Schneirs presented exhaustive evidence that key witnesses in the trial had changed their story after prompting from prosecutors. Their conclusion was, the Rosenbergs were innocent. Now after 30 years, Walter Schneir returned to the case with new evidence. Schneir had found that Julius Rosenber was marginally involved in the atom bomb spy ring and Ethel wasn’t involved at all. However they both lied about not knowing about espionage because of their earlier activities in World War II. All of this unravels in the Final Verdict : What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case.
Miriam Schneir:
- The case began in 1950, 60 years ago. American cities were vulnerable to nuclear attacks. In that climate the Rosenbergs were arrested. The legal charge was conspiracy to commit espionage. During the trial, they were charged with stealing the secrets of the atomic bomb.
- The principle witnesses were Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass and his wife Ruth.
- David was in the Army and serendipitously was sent to Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was being constructed.
- Julius was a spy during the wartime years. Ethel did nothing, she was not a spy.
- In a report by the Atomic Energy Commission, Greenglass was ranked as the least effective atomic spies back then. There was a lot of effort on the part of the Department of Justice to convict these people.
- This case is relevant today in a larger frame work.
- We can see that the Rosenberg case is like the Dreyfus case or the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
- It’s essential that leftists of each generation should keep that history alive.
- Now it’s Islam fundamentalism. That’s not to say there was no danger.
- You see the government use the courts to advance policies.
- On a personal level, Walter and I learned from the Freedom of Information documents we recieved, on the basis of the Meeropol suit, that while we were researching an Invitation to an Inquest, the FBI had been track our activities.
- We were just two writers who were trying to research a book, they were tapping our phones, and finally they placed us as well as thousands of others on an index of people who would be detained in the event of a national emergency.
- After the book was published, an FBI memo, directed that the book should be smothered and forced out of the public eye.
Guest – Miriam Schneir, editor of Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present and Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings. In addition to Invitation to an Inquest, she is also the co-author of “Remember the Ladies”: Women in America, 1750–1815.
Walter Schneir, a freelance writer on law, politics, and science. He is the co-author, with his wife Miriam Schneir, of Invitation to an Inquest, long considered the definitive book on the Rosenberg case. He is also the editor of Telling it Like it was: The Chicago Riots, an early account of the 1968 Democratic Convention. He died in April 2009 soon after completing this work.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Oklahoma:Voters Approve Sharia Law Ban
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French Labor Activism, US Labor Passivism
In the United States, unemployment rose from its level in 2008 (5.8 %) to its level in the second quarter of 2010 (9.7 %). These are numbers never seen before. However, by comparison, French unemployment rose from 7.4 % in 2008 to 9.2 % in the second quarter of 2010. This data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show unemployment had risen further and faster in the US than in France across in the last 3 years. This is found in Economics Professor Rick Wolff’s article French Labor Activism, US Labor Passivism.
Yet French workers are in the streets by the millions demonstration against anti-worker “austerity policies.” Government policies that could cut workers payroll or the services that are provided to the public. Meanwhile US workers are taking it sitting down, there’s no resistance. In California, there’s now a 22 percent unemployment and it takes the average unemployed American about 35 weeks to find a job. US states and towns cut payrolls and public services and as President Obama’s special commission gets ready to reduce social security benefits to the American people. Consider that in September 2010, according to the BLS, while the total US private sector added 64,000 jobs, state and local governments fired 77,000 people.
Rick Wolff:
- This is a tsunami of a political movement. All the six different organizations of trade unions have unified in organizing and moving these demonstrations. They haven’t unified on anything for a long time. They’ve drawn in students.
- Sarkozy almost in a way provoked the students to join the demonstrations in huge numbers.
- The students quickly understood that if the older workers stayed in their jobs an extra 2 years, those are jobs they’re not going to get. 70 percent of the French people support demonstrations. What we see now is a minority government, isolated, entrenched.
- If you want to see a movement that is doing something, mobilizing mass opinion, you got it.
- If you read what the French are saying, it’s this. We’ve already paid for the crisis, with unemployment, lost homes, insecure jobs.
- We’ve done our part, we’ve accepted that. We’ve drawn our line in the sand. We’re not gonna pay for fixing this mess from which have suffered. Why is this relevant? It is exactly like the United States.
- The atrophy of left here is much more palpable, then what happened there. We’ve had a much worse decline of our trade union movement then they did.
- We have to create anew the organizations that could bring people together into an effective coalition. The last thing we need is 800 single issued groups, cultivating its own garden and not talking to the other.
Guest-Richard D. Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
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Entrapment and Conviction of the Newburgh Four
Last week, the four men accused of planting bombs outside synagogues in the Bronx and plotting to fire missiles at military planes were convicted in a case that was the test of the entrapment defense. The jury of the Newburgh 4 trial convicted James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen of plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot military planes. Cromitie and David Williams were also convicted of conspiring to kill officers and employees of the government. Sentencing is scheduled for March. The four face life sentences.
It wasn’t difficult for Shahed Hussain, a government agent provocateur who was facing incarceration, to offer food, money, marijuana, cars and vacations to the four men and ultimately coercing them to collaborate on so-called “terror plots.”
According to a press release by Project Salam (Support And Legal Advocacy for Muslims) The defendants had absolutely no intention to commit any terrorist crimes until the FBI agent provocateur, Shahed Hussain, promised them each $5,000––and in one case $250,000––if they did his bidding. He posed as a rich man who could give the defendants everything they’d ever wanted. He chose the targets, he told them how it would all work, and the FBI paid for everything. The four defendants were petty criminals, none of whom had a car or even a driver’s license. When the so-called leader, James Cromitie, decided to back away from Hussain’s scheme and refused to answer his calls for about a month, Hussain said, “Brother, I told you you could have $250,000, but you don’t want it.” Cromitie’s response: “OK, I’m in.”
Attorney Steve Downs:
- We were really surprised, we thought the edge had been reached here. They (Newburgh Four) were convicted of participating in this plot that had been cooked up, manufactured by the FBI
- These are four individuals who had no way to undertake any kind of terrorist plot. They had no automobile, no driver’s license, no money, no training, they had nothing. The FBI simply provided everything, including driving them to a spot where all they had to do is deliver a package, outside of building to complete this crime which the FBI concocted. There’s no other way to look at it.
- There is the pre-disposition idea and that comes from the ready-response argument. That has simply been misused.
- Example: Would like a loan of 5 thousand dollars, or a gift of 5 thousand dollars? Then only afterward you find out this “gift” has to do with money laundering.
- In the meantime, the person is being asked to make a ready-response. In the Newburgh case, Shahed Hussien, the informant, suggested an illegal plot. The main person he was working on James Crominic, essentially backed out of it.
- There’s a six week period that James didn’t correspond with the government at all. Then finally, Shahed called and said look you’ve got 250 thousand dollars here if you go through with this.
- These people had been somewhat exposed to Islam in prison, but didn’t know much about the religion.
- One of them had a crack-cocaine problem, another had mental problems, very serious mental problems.
- You could’ve gone to any place in upstate New York and found somebody who would grab at a deal like this.
- It was a lot of money for potentially very little activity.
- The building that was going to blow up would be unoccupied, the plane was on the ground without people in it.
- They were paid to make a political statement and not to kill anybody.
- These things are very very cleverly crafted by the FBI.
- Because people don’t know much about Islam, the government is free to play upon stereotypes and fears that people have.
Guest – Attorney Steve Downs, retired chief attorney with the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct, is a founder of Project SALAM (Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims).
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Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman, Detroit, and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights
The Color of Law recreates the compelling story of Ernie Goodman, one of the nation’s preeminent defense attorneys for workers and the militant poor. Author’s Steve Babson, Dave Riddle and David Elsila tell the story from the beginning, starting at Goodman’s early years as a corporate lawyer to his conversion to labor law during the Great Depression. From Detroit to Mississippi, Goodman saw police and other officials giving the “color of law” to actions that stifled freedom of speech and nullified the rights of workers and minorities. The Color of Law demonstrates that the abuse of power is non-partisan and that individuals who oppose injustice can change the course of events. Published by Wayne State University Press.
Bill Goodman:
- The book goes beyond my Dad as just an individual person who led a wonderful life and talks about the experience of going through the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s.
- His awakening as a political person, came about out of the formation of the labor movement in the United States.
- He was one of the key people that provided legal counseling to the UAW.
- The sit down strike in Flint, Michigan: Governor Frank Murphy refused to send in the National Guard troops.
- Literally taking power and grabbing these factories from huge corporations was enormously important and symbolic. Ernie Goodman and others ended up representing UAW during McCarthy period.
- George Crockett was one of the most courageous people I’ve ever known in my life. He would not bend.
- My Dad got one of those Attica grand jury cases.
- Colman Young was highlighted in this period. Our law firm took the lead in the National Lawyers Guild saying this has to be the priority of the guild to represent the civil rights movement.
- Ernie Goodman grew up in the Jewish ghetto in Detroit
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Steve Babson:
- When Ernie Goodman died in 1997, his wife Frieda wanted some way of chronicling his life. She contacted Dave Elsila and he contacted Dave Riddle, and began writing the book. Dave Riddle became ill. We saw what a wonderful start he made to the book so, we picked it up and I became the lead writer in 2005 and 2006.
- Ernie was not unlike millions in the US that confronted the collapse of capitalism.
- They were collecting the cadavers off the streets every morning (in Detroit, during Depression)
- He was a repo-man, repossessing furniture, which brought him face to face with the unemployed councils and some of the early organizing in response to the Depression.
- He finally has a conversion crisis, where he finds his way to the other side of barricades, where he joins those contesting the outcomes of the Great Depression. It’s the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the UAW and this upsurge of worker mobilization on the job on behalf of industrial unions to turnback the Great Depression that leads to the black and white unity in the workplace.
- The Civil Rights Federation was supported by these new unions. It was the Civil Rights Federation that not only questioned segregation in neighborhoods and on the job, but the role of these vigilante groups. (The Black Legion) that were trying to roll back the New Deal and the CIO.
- The Lawyers Guild represented a progressive alternative and on that basis quickly grew in the late 30s to about 5000 members. 90 percent of the Guild was driven from its ranks from this concerted and fabricated web of lies, typical of the McCarthy era.
- Ernie Goodman takes the Guild to the South, first Virginia, then Mississippi.
Guest – Steve Babson, one of the 3 authors, Steve is a labor educator and union activist living in Detroit for the last 32 years with his wife, Nancy Brigham. He received his doctorate in U.S. History in 1989 from Wayne State University, where he also worked as an instructor in the Labor Studies Center from 1985 to 2006. Steve has published six books, including Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town and Lean Work: Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry.
Guest – Bill Goodman, former legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights has been an extraordinary public interest lawyer for over 30 years, and has served as counsel on issues including post-Katrina social justice, public housing, voting rights, the death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights, human rights work in Haiti, and civil disobedience.
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Foreclosure Scandal: Last Stage of Mortgage Scams
Big banks have resumed the foreclosure process in 23 judicial states after a temporary suspension. Judicial states require a judge and court hearing for foreclosure proceedings, not so, for the remaining 27 non judicial states. Faulty databases that track mortgage foreclosures electronically have made big mistakes amid the high volume of mortgage defaults. Meanwhile, Bank of America started to file new paperwork for 102,000 foreclosures. Consumer advocates and lawyers for homeowners doubt Bank of America completed an accurate review of the paperwork. Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, expressed his skepticism to one media source, “These are lawyers. These are banks going to court and committing fraud,” he said. “For them to say this is a minor technical problem is mind-boggling.”
This is part 2 of the mortgage crisis. The same banks the public bailed out stand to make hundreds of billions more on these foreclosures of homes.
Ira Rheingold:
- We have a broken mortgage system. The same system that created all those terrible mortgages, that led people into default and losing their homes also created a mortgaging servicing that’s completely broken.
- Anything that would stop them from moving quickly they avoided, they figured they weren’t going to get caught.
- You have GMAC, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup.
- As a lawyer I’m offended by the law firms who are involved and really are knowingly committing fraud.
- These affidavits that they were putting before the court, the person signing them, said I have knowledge we are proper owner of the mortgage. I have knowledge this is the amount that’s owed.
- That person that was signing that affidavit was signing 500 that same day. They’re not going to suddenly have a staff to track down the original documents saying they have proper ownership.
- We’ve seen time and again those industries, those banks add fees they’re not allowed to charge, mis-ordering payments like we’ve seen in the credit card industry.
- The bottom line is what does this demonstrate? It demonstrates the banks can’t be trusted.
- What the foreclosure crisis has done is devastate communities across this country.
- The way we rebuild our economy is allowing homeowners to actually capable of affording thier house and stay in their homes. We’re talking about 3 million foreclosures across the country.
- FHA is a mortgage that the federal government insures.
- http://www.foreclosurelegalassistance.org. You need to clean this mess up.
Guest – Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. (NACA), an organization dedicated to protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive business practices. At NACA, Mr. Rheingold has testified before both Houses of Congress on various mortgage lending and consumer finance issues, offered commentary before federal agencies charged with regulating financial service industries and protecting consumers, and helped draft amicus briefs on issues of great concern to consumers before the nation’s highest courts
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
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Rachel Corrie Lawsuit In Israel
Rachel Corrie, an American student activist and human rights defender from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003, by a Caterpillar D9R bulldozer while nonviolently protesting Palestinian home demolitions with fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement.
The first phase of the trail began in March 2010, when the Corrie family presented its witnesses, including several of Rachel’s colleagues from ISM who witnessed her killing. During the second phase of the trial, which began last month, the government presented several witnesses, including the Israeli military police investigator who headed the investigation into Rachel’s death, and the bulldozer operators who struck and killed her.
The lawsuit charges that Rachel’s killing was intentional. It also charges that the Israeli government was negligent for allowing Israeli soldiers and military commanders to act recklessly using an armored military bulldozer without regard to the presence of unarmed, nonviolent civilians in Rafah, Gaza Strip. Lastly the lawsuit alleges that the Israeli military failed to take appropriate and necessary measures to protect Rachel’s life, in violation of obligations under Israeli and international law.
Katherine Gallagher:
- Rachel had been serving as a peace activist with the Palestinian International Solidarity Movement.
- The case is unfortunately taking quite a while, it was filed back in 2005, then the evidentiary phase opened in 2010. At that point the Corrie’s were able to call their own witnesses. They also called an expert who could speak about how to conduct a proper investigation.
- The investigator testimony revealed huge errors in the way the investigation was carried out.
- Errors include: The bulldozer was removed from the scene of the killing. There were investigators in the case who never went to the scene of the crime.
- On October 7, right before testimony, it was permitted that soldiers involved in the incident be allowed to testify behind a screen.
- This is an extraordinary step, the family if unable to see those soldiers who are able to provide some answers even through their body language as they testify.
- For the Corries who have waited 7 and a half years for some answers, that they won’t be able to assess the credibility by his body language is a significant blow.
- When you say the name Rachel Corrie in Israel, people know who she is.
- CCR Lawsuit: Caterpillar had aided and abetted war crimes and other serious violations of international law.
- It struck how Jerusalem has changed. There’s been a massive amount of construction in the old city and particularly around East Jerusalem.
Guest – Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she focuses on holding individuals, including US and foreign government officials, and corporations, including private military contractors, accountable for serious human rights violations. Among the cases she is working on are Arar v. Ashcroft, Matar v. Dichter, Saleh v. Titan and Estate of Atban v. Blackwater.
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You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America
John Rick MacArthur is the president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine. He’s an award winning journalist and author. We want to talk with Rick about his third book titled You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America and explore the topic of who finances the Republican and Democratic parties. A recent book review states, that it (quote) advances a familiar argument: that moneyed and privileged interests, rather than the needs and opinions of ordinary citizens, dominate contemporary American politics. MacArthur, begins by lamenting the lack of basic comprehension of the Constitution and American government on the part of the political and media elite. The book also criticizes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Rick MacArthur:
- There are two balance sheets, there’s one with regard to the people of the United States and the other which I talk about in You Can’t Be President is the internal party structure.
- The balance sheet for the people is bad, we are now enmeshed even more in a self destructive war if possible than Iraq was. Afghanistan is a disaster and you don’t have to ask a peacenik.
- You have a fake health care reform which really reinforced the power of the insurance companies.
- You have a very feeble reform of Wall Street. You have a continuation of anti-labor,orthodox “free trade” policies. You have the continued corruption of the lobby system in Washington.
- Coming from Chicago, if Obama attacked the lobby system it would be like committing political suicide.
- Obama broke every record in corporate fund raising, PAC fund raising. He raised money from Jack Abramoff’s old law firm.
- In sum, he’s (Obama) has been an anti-reformer, anti-progressive.
- On civil liberties, if you criticize Bush it’s great, if you criticize Obama, you can hear a pin drop.
- I met someone who did a tour of the new prison in Baghram, Afghanistan. He said it was terrifying.
- You have to understand that the Chicago machine, is the most powerful local machine in the country.
- Almost every important job in the county is held by a Democrat. The mayor of Chicago is very much like the dictator of Chicago. Obama came out of the most intolerant, the most monopolistic, one sided political machine in the country.
- Murdoch’s bundled campaign contributions were 50/50 between Clinton and Obama.
- I don’t see why we can’t organize around an opposition candidate, raise some money.
- I think what you’re seeing is disillusionment among the party leadership with Obama, because he hasn’t delivered the goods.
- They wanted Obama to deliver the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
- Obama is a tremendously prudent and cautious politician, there’s no audacity at all.
Guest – John Rick MacArthur, an American journalist and author of books about US politics. He is the president of Harper’s Magazine. MacArthur has been a reporter for The Wall Street Journal (1977), the Washington Star (1978), The Bergen Record (1978–1979), Chicago Sun-Times (1979–1982), and an assistant foreign editor at United Press International (1982).
