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Law and Disorder October 10, 2011

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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.

 

Law and Disorder October 3, 2011

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Irvine 11 Case Update

Earlier this year 11 Muslim students were arrested on charges for disrupting a speech of the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren. The incident took place last year on the campus of the University of California at Irvine. The local District Attorney claims that the students had no right to disrupt the event, charging them with conspiracy to shut down the ambassador’s speech, even though he was able to complete the speech. Supporters claim that the Muslim students’ actions are protected by the first Amendment, and that are being charged for being vocal critics of Israel.

Last month, an Orange County court has found 10 Muslim students guilty of two misdemeanors. Facing up to one year in jail on multiple misdemeanor charges, they were sentenced to three years of probation, 56 hours of community service and fines. Each was convicted of one misdemeanor count of conspiring to disrupt Oren’s Feb. 8, 2010 speech and a second count for disrupting it.

Attorney Lisa Holder:

  • I knew there were some very difficult challenges in this case. The students modeled their protest after a protest that took place in Chicago.
  • There 11 students who stood up serially, one after the other, with about 3 or 4 minutes in between.
  • Each student made a short statement of protest. None of the protesters in Chicago were arrested.
  • A lot of the students who had a pro-Palestine perspective were targeted.
  • The prosecutor framed his whole case on the notion that the students shut down the First Amendment rights of the speaker.
  • This is the way they framed it at the beginning; in the statements they made to the media.
  • In terms of their framing, it makes no sense from a legal perspective.
  • The way the Bill of Rights work, is to protect individuals from the government. In terms of the First Amendment which protects free speech, the Fourth Amendment that protect against unreasonable searches and seizure.
  • It protects the individual from the government impeding on those rights.
  • An individual can’t impede or violate another individual’s First Amendment rights, only the government can do that.
  • The prosecutor should not have been allowed to argue to the jury, these students violated Mr Oren’s free speech rights.
  • These are wonderful young men, they’re very gracious people and there’s no way that the judge could lose sight of that.  It was outrageous, because really what was being prosecuted in their conspiracy charge was their First Amendment right to assemble.
  • Penal code section 403a violates the First Amendment essentially says you can’t disrupt a meeting, violates our First Amendment to free speech.

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Attorney Dan Stormer:

  • Islamophobia is really taking hold.
  • I tend to believe it is Islamophobia, 9/11 hysteria, more Arab / Muslim focus than Israeli / Palestine focus.
  • The use of conspiracy in this case allowed them to get in all sorts of evidence that might not otherwise be admissible.
  • Penal Code 403 says if you upset a meeting and substantially interfere with its progress, you can be criminally prosecuted.
  • I think the statute is unconstitutional and that’s going to be a primary basis for our appeal.
  • The district attorney was calling for jail time. The D.A. attacked the judge subsequently for failing to give jail time. I think it is a severe sentence but given Orange County, and given the nature of hysteria against our clients, I’m ultimately please with the sentence.
  • The background is they actually took this to a Grand Jury, and alleged they might file a felony conspiracy and felony allegation against them.
  • Its shocking and horrifying that this prosecution went forward.

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Guest – Attorney Lisa Holder, Los Angeles, criminal trial attorney since 2000. Ms Holder is a member of the California Bar, The National Lawyers Guild and the California Employment Lawyer’s Association. She is a member of the board of directors for the Southern California ACLU. In addition she is an adjunct professor at Occidental College, teaching pre-law classes. Ms. Holder graduated from New York University School of Law in 2000 after obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree at Wesleyan University.

Guest – Attorney Dan Stormer, a Civil Rights, International Human Rights and Constitutional lawyer for thirty-five years and has been recognized internationally, nationally and locally as one of the top attorneys in the United States.  A graduate of New York University School of Law and Wagner College, Stormer has lectured and published extensively and has taught law school at Hastings College of Law and Loyola Law School.  He has obtained a number of large verdicts in gender discrimination in employment, civil rights violations, and age discrimination.  He has appeared before the U. S. Supreme Court and  is currently one of the attorneys on a Guantanamo Bay case.

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People Wasn’t Made to Burn – Joe Allen

People Wasn’t Made to Burn is a shocking personal story of a Mississippi Black share cropping family that faced incredible hardship and tragedy after moving to Chicago in 1947. Within the year, 4 of their infant children perished in a massive blaze in an overcrowded tenement. The father sickened with grief took justice in his own hands and shot the landlord, thought to have the set the fire. James Hickman was jailed and facing murder charges. The story takes off, author Joe Allen gives the reader an inside look into the strategy to defend Hickman in the most racist area of the country.

Joe Allen:

  • I think his story is really symbolic of a whole generation of African Americans who left the South for the North or the West to find a better life and a measure of dignity and freedom.
  • He came to Chicago and permanently settled here in 1945. He got a job in the steel industry which was very typical of African American men who came to the Midwest.
  • While you were sort of welcomed here for the hard work and labor you would give particularly to the big steel plants, finding a home was the thing which was a source of incredible frustration and humiliation.
  • Housing is the whole that Joe Hickman’s trial really revolves around.
  • The African American population really up until the second world war, was really confined to a thin sliver of land on the south side of the city (Chicago)
  • It was overcrowded, and what the banks do is try to use this limited space to make as much money as possible.
  • Kitchenette apartments, one room hovels, that didn’t have running water, no electricity, rat infested.
  • Richard Wright’s book – Native Son.
  • James Hickman would go from one end of the city to the other looking for a place and would have the door slammed in his face each time.
  • Black landlords were not very common at that time. Coleman took his money and never gave the apartment that he wanted. When James Hickman raised the issue of what happened with the money, Coleman threatened to set fire to the place.
  • On January 16, 1947, a fire breaks out, it spread so quickly that Annie Hickman, the mother and wife, and one of the eldest sons, made it out of their attic apartment and jumped to safety.
  • Because of the speed of the fire and incredible smoke, the four youngest kids, they suffocated and burned to death.
  • Six months to the day of the death of children, he confronted Coleman at his home.
  • The police acted very quickly in this case. He faced execution in the electric chair or minimum 14 years in prison.
  • They pulled together a Hickman defense committee. They organized a very broad based campaign.
  • Even though he was a man racked by grief he went out to find some measure of justice for his children when he couldn’t get that from the criminal justice system.
  • Housing is still a crucial issue for working class people.

Guest – Joe Allen, a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review and a long-standing activist, based in Chicago.

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Law and Disorder September 28, 2011

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Mother Jones: The Informants

Since 9-11, the FBI now spends more than 3 billion dollars a year on counter-terrorism, the bureau maintains a team of 15 thousand spies in a nationwide network of informants. Many of these informants are tasked with infiltrating Muslims communities in the United States. We’ve discussed in the past, the expanded FBI guidelines plus the broad over reaching powers and underhanded tactics the FBI use when targeting Mosques and Muslim Americans. We talk with investigative reporter, Trevor Aaronson, about his recent article titled “The Informants” in Mother Jones Magazine.  The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. Aaronson asks “are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?”

Trevor Aaronson:

  • There are as many as 45 thousand hip pockets. A hip pocket is somebody who isn’t on the FBI’s books.
  • Could be a store clerk, – you should go check out this guy. It’s never information that can be used in court or any sort of criminal affidavit.  It’s what the FBI could use to build information and get tips.
  • It’s all part of the FBI’s effort to build a larger network of people, that could provide information to the FBI of potential terrorist threats.
  • Money is the incentive for informants. In the case of the Newburg Four outside of New York City, the informant earned 100 thousand dollars for his role in that case.
  • What the FBI has been particularly fond of is using immigration as a form of leverage.
  • To find people who are trying to get family over from overseas and use that as leverage, saying well, if you work with us as an informant. . .
  • In the 500 defendants we looked at, 49 involved what we considered an agent provocateur, which is an informant which provided the opportunity and/or the means to move forward with a terrorist plot.
  • We were able to identify by name, 13 informants who were these high level operators who moved from case to case, in some cases state to state.
  • When someone pleads guilty a lot of the information about the behavior of the informant and the actions of the FBI never sees the light of day.
  • Domain Management was a program that took crime data and looked for trends.
  • In 2004, the FBI hired a man from the CIA named Phil Mudd to help it transition to an intelligence gathering organization.
  • It started to allow the FBI to create demographic maps of specific cities. The technology that the FBI uses today are small transmitters.  Informants: One thing we did find is that they usually have checkered pasts.
  • They tend to be economically desperate, if not poor. In many cases they’re converts to Islam, with such an elementary understanding of Islam that the informant is able to use that against them.
  • What we tried to do is build a database that we could draw conclusions from.
  • I think at the this point the FBI has gone too far the other way, bringing in people who don’t have the capacity to commit these crimes.
  • The FBI would admit they create a hostile environment for people who would commit terrorism. You engender this fear among the potential terrorist.
  • The problem is that you create fear in the community of people that aren’t terrorists either.

Guest – Trevor Aaronson, an Investigative Reporter and Program fellow at the University of California-Berkeley.

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Fear Inc., The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

As many suspected, the attacks on September 11, 2001 didn’t drive anti-Muslim sentiment by itself.  There was some help, a lot of help.  In a shocking new report, seven foundations have been part of a 10 year campaign to spread Islamophobia in the United States. The 130 page report by the Center for American Progress titled Fear Inc., The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America (PDF link) names the foundations and key individuals who have promoted Islamophobia from 2001 to 2009. The report mentions that the funds from these foundations such as Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust, Russell Berrie Foundation went to think tanks and grassroots organizations to spread messages of hate and fear as far as they can. The Donor Capital fund was the single biggest contributor donating 18 million out of the 42 million in the 8 year span.

Attorney Wajahat Ali :

  • This is an investigative report, an expose on how 7 funders had given 43 million dollars over 10 years to a small interconnected group of individuals and organizations responsible for mainstreaming fear bigotry and hate against Muslims and Islam in America.
  • What we do for the first time is dissect and expose this network, categorize it, name the names, connect the dots.
  • The network is broken into five categories.
  • There are 7 funders. The next group is what I call the Islamophobia scholars and experts, which is the nerve center of this Islamophobia network. A group of about 5 individuals and organizations that are primarily responsible for creating the manufactured talking points we just heard.
  • Some were mislead by these individuals, within the network who are by the way very successful, by posing as legitimate experts and scholars on Islam.
  • Rush Limbaugh from the hate radio section.
  • Bridget Gabriel said a practicing Muslim can’t be a loyal American.
  • This group is so effective because it is so self reliant and incestuous.
  • Islamophobia is an exaggerated fear, hatred and hostility toward Islam and Muslims, that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political and civic life.
  • The report is intended for a mainstream audience. This report inoculates Americans. Inoculates them from the fear and misinformation. This report has gone viral. It’s all over facebook, its all over twitter.

Guest – Wajahat Ali,  a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Wajahat  is a playwright, essayist, humorist, and Attorney at Law, whose work, “The Domestic Crusaders” is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11 America, and was published by McSweeney’s in 2011.

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Audio Collage – Muslim Surveillance

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