Welcome to Law and Disorder Radio

Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 150 stations and on Apple podcast. Law and Disorder provides timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.

Listen To Our Latest Show

Law and Disorder March 12, 2012

, , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

——–

Nestlé Test Case: Charges filed on murder of Colombian Trade Unionist

In a previous show we discussed the lawsuit Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, a case pushing to hold corporations accountable for human rights violations. We talk today about a similar case. Recently a Columbian Trade Union filed charges against the Swiss company Nestle and members of its senior management.  They are accused of failing to take precautionary measures for the 2005 murder of Luciano Romero. Romero was murdered by paramilitaries in Valledupar, a north eastern part of Columbia. His body was found with 50 stab wounds. Romero worked for a the Columbian Nestle subsidiary company Cicolac. Cicolac is accused of being negligent in failing to prevent this crime. 

Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck:

  • We are presenting cases against European Transnationals who are involved in human rights violations.
  • One of our targets is Nestle’s, Switzerland whom we try to hold accountable for an assassination of a Columbian Trade Unionist Luciano Romero in 2005.
  • The Nestle subsidiary was very close to the paramilitary.
  • Columbia has a record of killing over 2000 trade unionists over the last 20 years.
  • The solidarity movement here in Switzerland was very active of the defense of the threatened trade unionists. They were threatened over years, some of them had to go into exile, some of them moved within Columbia.
  • What we accused them of is negligent killing through omission.
  • If you go into a conflict region and if you link with one of the conflict parties, you can be held accountable.
  • The companies have the duty of due diligence. You have the task to take a human rights risk assessment. Then you have as a mother company, you have a role to play for your subsidiaries.
  • That’s why we presented the case here in Switzerland, we’re not only talking about the murder in 2005, we’re also talking about future responsibilities of transnational companies.
  • That’s why the whole complaint here, got huge media coverage.
  • The managers who we are suing live in Switzerland, and are Swiss citizens.
  • We want the prosecutor in Switzerland to undertake an investigation.
  • In Columbia there is no real possibility to sue a transnational company, but this is why the Swiss judges and prosecutors have to act right now.
  • The spectacle in the German and Swiss media helped us put the problems on the table.
  • Havard Professor was appointed by the UN to elaborate principles to regulate the behavior of transnational companies and human rights. The principles are very general.
  • The prosecutor got quite a difficult criminal complaint. He has to decide in the next weeks or months to open this criminal procedure.
  • Nestle did the other way around, because they didn’t like the trade unionists. They were an obstacle.

Guest – Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck,  General Secretary and co-founder of ECCHR,  specializing in criminal law, he has established an international reputation as an advocate for human rights. He made a name for himself when he filed suit against the U.S. Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes and torture committed at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
———

Exposed: NYPD Surveillance of Muslims Spill Over Into Other States, Africa and Europe

We’ve covered a wide range of stories involving the FBI spying on Muslim students and using undercover agents at mosques.   Last month, news of this spying had broke into the mainstream news.  The New York Police Department’s ongoing surveillance operations of Muslims across the Northeast has exposed a broad spectrum of civil rights violations. Documents recently obtained by the Associated Press reveal the NYPD built databases showing where Muslims live, buy food, and where they watch sports. The NYPD municipal spy operations spilled out of New York City and reached into New Jersey, Long Island and to colleges across the Northeast.

Cyrus McGoldrick:

  • This program amounts to a comprehensive and warrant-less and invasive surveillance program of all Muslim life.
  • Not just here in New York City but now we have reports of cops going down to UPenn in Philadelphia.
  • Up to Yale in New Haven, Albany and Buffalo. It’s even worse than that. NYPD officers out in North Africa and Europe.
  • This is one of the worse things I’ve seen is people being scared out of their public activities. I think there’s a fear of speaking publicly about things.
  • We’re hearing reports of a network of up to 15 thousand informants feeding information to the NYPD.
  • One of the earliest documents that came out was a powerpoint presentation from the NYPD called the demographics unit. The third or fourth slide in this document is titled “ancestries of interest.”
  • Anyone who is trying to make the argument, “they’re trying to protect us” they need to see this slide.
  • It’s human mapping, community mapping, modeled off of how Israelis operate in the West Bank.
  • It’s essentially Muslim until proven innocent.
  • The documents are there, they’re online, we’ve seen them for ourselves. I would love to put Mayor Bloomberg in front of the power point presentation of the demographics unit and let him justify that.
  • They’ll trot out pictures of terrorists and say this is what we’re keeping you safe from .
  • You’re really in danger of honey bees than from a terrorist attack
  • And don’t let the NYPD tell you that that’s because they’re spying on Muslim students from Philadelphia to New Haven because that’s not the case.
  • There’s maybe two cases where the FBI was not the primary planner of that attack.
  • Within 200 miles of New York City, the NYPD are sending people just a shocking number of informants and sometimes undercover officers culling political speech, political activity, hearing what people are talking about.
  • So they’re watching everything they can, and anyone who is expressing some anger.
  • Watching for raising a dissenting voice, that’s what the rakers were.
  • Mosque crawlers played a similar role.
  • Rakers is a more general term for the invasion, infiltration.
  • We’re lucky that this got discovered.
  • The involvement of the CIA is very interesting. David Cohen from the CIA who came to the NYPD after 9/11. Sometimes they refer to him as a former CIA agent. I’m not sure that’s a type of club you can leave.
  • There are other CIA agents that were on CIA payroll but were posted in the NYPD.
  • Later, the CIA actually removed the officers that were in the NYPD because of a lack of supervision, they called it.
  • When you see these people lining up to defend this, you have to wonder why.
  • They’re using the fear of us to get to your rights.
  • It’s really amazing the assumptions of power that the government has justified with the war on terror.

Guest – Cyrus McGoldrick,  Civil Rights Manager with the Council on American-Islamic Relations-New York

—————————–

Law and Disorder March 5, 2012

, , , , , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

——-

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Filed Over Boycott of Israeli Goods

Last month, a judge in Olympia, Washington dismissed a lawsuit tailored to force the Olympia Food Co-op to rescind its boycott of Israeli goods. The judge ruled that the lawsuit brought by opponents of the boycott violated a Washington State law designed to prevent abusive lawsuits which are aimed at suppressing lawful public participation. Interestingly, an investigation by ElectronicIntifada had unearthed that the lawsuit against individuals with the Olympia Food Co-op Board was also planned in collusion with a national anti-Palestinian organization called StandWithUs that was working with the Israeli government. Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that the lawsuit qualified as a SLAPP, that stands for – – Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.  SLAPPs are lawsuits that target the constitutional rights of free speech and petition in connection with an issue of public concern.

Attorney Maria LaHood:

  • The Olympia Food Co-op is a non-profit in Olympia Washington, that not only makes good food accessible to people, but also encourages economic and social justice in other ways.
  • So it has a long history of doing social justice work, including adopting boycotts.
  • The board decided to boycott Israeli goods in 2010 by consensus. A few months after that there was a co-op election. Three of the five plaintiffs who ended up bringing the lawsuit, members of the co-op, the co-op has about 22 thousand members. They ran for the election opposing the boycott and they lost.
  • They ran for the board on an anti-boycott agenda and not voted in by the members.
  • The board decided to boycott Israeli goods and divest from any Israel investment.
  • One Israeli product: Gluten free ice cream cones,
  • Obviously it had symbolic significance so that the five plaintiffs decided to send a letter to the board promising litigation that would be complicated, burdensome and expensive if the board didn’t end the boycott.
  • CCR got involved and CCR cooperating council to represent the board members and decided to file an anti-SLAP motion as well as a motion to dismiss.
  • Plaintiffs were also seeking discovery which of course they had promised. They started out serving 200 pages of discovery on all 16 defendants and trying to depose all 16 defendants. After we file the anti-SLAPP motion which actually stays discovery, they sought to depose three of the defendants as well as additional document requests.
  • We challenged that discovery request.
  • Olympia, Washington, is where Evergreen College and that’s also where Rachel Corrie is from.
  • Stand With Us is basically an anti-BDS organization.
  • The lawsuit against the co-op board members was actually identified by Stand With Us as one of its projects months before the case was even filed.
  • Stand With Us also produced and posted online an anti-BDS video with four of the five plaintiffs in the case.
  • They described themselves as an international organization ensuring Israel’s side of the story is told.
  • They also have apparently connections as well to the Israeli government.
  • The hearing was last Thursday, there was a great turn out, they had to move us to a bigger court room.
  • The judge ruled that this lawsuit did challenge public participation so it did fall under the anti-SLAPP statute.
  • Boycotts are constitutionally protected under the first amendment.
  • This kind of suit is exactly what this statute was meant to address.
  • We argued that the board under the bylaws has the authority to adopt any policy essentially it wants, that promotes the co-opts mission.
  • He (the judge) did say that it was a nationally recognized movement.
  • The victory here sends a message that you cannot sue to chill free speech issues.

Guest – Senior staff attorney Maria LaHood, who specializes in international human rights litigation, seeking to hold government officials and corporations accountable for torture, extrajudicial killings, and war crimes abroad. Her cases have included Arar v. Ashcroft, against U.S. officials for sending Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria where he was tortured and detained for a year; Al-Aulaqi v. Obama, to prevent the “targeted killing” of a U.S. citizen in violation of constitutional and international law;  Matar v. Dichter, against an Israeli official responsible for a “targeted killing” that killed 15 Palestinians; Belhas v. Ya’alon, against a former Israeli official responsible for the 1996 shelling of a United Nations compound in Qana, Lebanon, that killed over 100 civilians; Corrie v. Caterpillar, on behalf of Palestinians killed and injured in home demolitions, and Rachel Corrie, a U.S. human rights defender who was killed trying to protect a home from being demolished; and Wiwa v. Royal Dutch/Shell, for the torture, detention and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other human rights activists and protestors in Nigeria. After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School in 1995, Maria advocated on behalf of affordable housing and civil rights in the San Francisco Bay Area.

—————————————————————————–

Law and Disorder February 27, 2012

, , , ,

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Updates:

———-

Egypt Places Travel Ban On US Citizens: NDI / IRI and Freedom House

Egypt Places Travel Ban and Charges Against US Citizens Working With NDI / IRI and Freedom House In the last few weeks, the military backed Egyptian government has targeted the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and Freedom House–U.S. government funded groups working in Egypt. These groups have often come under attack as tools of US foreign policy. For example the IRI was blamed for playing a role in the coup against President Aristide of Haiti. As part of its crackdown, the Egyptian authorities raided the offices of some of these organizations and brought charges against at least 16 US citizens, six of whom remain in Egypt.

Three of them including the son of the US Transportation Secretary, Sam LaHood have taken refuge at the US embassy. They’re cases have been referred to criminal courts in Egypt. Recently, Egypt refused to back down despite a US threat to cut aid. We bring you two perspectives on the NDI/IRI and the charges against them.  Paul Sullivan from the National Defense University raises serious questions as to whether these US funded organizations should be in Egypt at all.  Then,  Sally Sami, a human rights activist, is unwilling to be as critical presumably because she sees the crackdown as past of a larger crackdown on democracy advocates in Egypt even if NDI and IRI are not playing a constructive role.

Professor Paul Sullivan:

  • Essentially these NGOs are not registered in this country. There was an NGO law in 2002 that required these NGOs to register. 
  • These NGOs state they did put in the documents to register and they didn’t hear anything back and assumed everything was going well.  
  • They’re also unlicensed. That is also true.
  • They’re funded by the US government. The required duties is to train people in exactly what voting is, what is democratic development.  
  • One of the charges that has been leveled against them is paying political certain parties and of course both these groups deny it. Freedom House, the third one involved also denies it.
  • There are certain charges that neither the IRI or the NDI deny.
  • The emotions are very high, and the issues are becoming more hardened on both sides.
  • When Mubarak was in charge, these organizations were in a wink and a nod were allowed to be in the country.
  • Now some of the NGOs that had nothing to do with anything political are now having a difficult time even on the streets of Egypt.
  • There has always been a certain degree of anti-Americanism in Egypt.  This is starting to stoke anti-Egyptian sentiment on the Hill and in the public. . .many of whom don’t understand Egypt as people who’ve live there, such as I understand Egypt, really quite wonderful people.
  • It’s much more important to build friendships, to build relations, to help them get jobs. Investment, education, and human development, and leave the politics to the country.

Guest – Professor Paul Sullivan, professor of economics at the National Defense University (NDU) since July 1999. He is an Adjunct Professor of Security Studies and Science, Technology and International Affairs at Georgetown University, where he teaches classes on global energy and security, energy security in the Middle East, and natural resources and conflict in Africa and the Middle East. Dr. Sullivan was the Vice President, Programs, for the United Nations Association, National Capitol Area, where he was a strategic leader and adviser for the many programs and committees run by UNA-NCA during June 2010 to June 2011.

——

We get another perspective on the ground in Cairo, Egypt. Sally Sami, former director with the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies and human rights activist.

Sally Sami:

  • We’re talking about a moment, a time when the essence of the revolution itself is being stolen.
  • We see a revolution that is being arrested, attacked, harassed.
  • It seems like we’re being punished for taking the stand, for continuing it to be outspoken about the violations that are taking place, even after the revolution.
  • One of the worst attacks was during a Christian protest, and people were killed enmass, we’ve seen this becoming more and more frequent.
  • The continued denial of taking the responsibility to the protect the lives of Egyptians.
  • We want it clear that should not be any double standards, its a human rights thing, ok? There shouldn’t be any double standards.
  • Some countries deserve human rights, some don’t, it depends on the concept of national security, until now we don’t know what it means.

Guest – Sally Sami, former director with the Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies and human rights activist.

——————————————————————

Show Archives

Articles