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Law and Disorder August 24, 2009
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Remembering Marilyn Clement – Health Care Now
As many listeners may know, Marilyn Clement, a great social activist and founder of Healthcare-NOW died on August 3. Early in her social activism career Marilyn Clement joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and worked with Martin Luther King in Atlanta. She moved to New York City after King’s assassination, she was the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and was active with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Philadelphia. Video Of Marilyn’s Speech June 2009
Mrs. Clement became one of the strongest voices for passing a single payer health care bill. She founded the New York based advocacy organization Health Care Now in 2004. We’re joined by long time friend of Marilyn Clement, Reverend Lucius Walker, founder of Pastors for Peace and executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization.
- It’s pleasure to talk about someone so rare and wonderful as Marilyn, I first met her in late 1967.
- She joined the IFCO staff in those early years. I met her in the interview process and felt that she was a remarkable person.
- She came directly to IFCO from being on a staff with Martin Luther King in Atlanta.
- She was drafting an program to do outreach to black ministers, black pastors.
- She sought out the influences that made her radical philosophy possible.
- She quickly became associate director of IFCO and in the thick of some of the most dynamic movements among people of color and poor whites in the country.
- She was very key staff in IFCO in helping to stop COINTEL PRO from trying to break IFCO’s back.
- The IRS ask to audit IFCO’s records. It took them 3 years to examine 18 months of our financial records.
- It was pure harassment, and she was key in helping us move through that whole process.
- Founded Health Care Now, that phase of her life began in 1970. She was the first person I heard articulate the concept of single payer healthcare.
- It (Health Care Now) started in her apartment, that was her office.
Guest – Reverend Lucius Walker – Executive Director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO). He was the founding director from 1967 to 1973. He served as Associate General Secretary of the National Council of Churches from 1973 through 1978. In January of 1979 he returned to IFCO, which has the distinction of being the only national ecumenical foundation committed exclusively to support community organizing.
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Victory for Vulcans in NYC Firefighters Case
Last month US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled in favor of the fraternal order of black firefighters, in that New York City has been discriminating against minorities in firefighter hirings. The case, similar to other firefighter cases, brought to light the disparities in the results of hiring 5300 firefighters from 1999 to 2007. Out of the 3,100 black applicants and 4,200 Hispanic applicants who took the exam, only 184 black firefighters and 461 Hispanic firefighters were ultimately appointed. These practices help make New York City the least diverse fire department of any major city in America. 09.07.22_Garaufis Vulcans Opinion.pdf
Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney Darius Charney says, “This is a tremendous victory that we’ve been fighting towards for over seven years and we applaud the court for recognizing that the FDNY written examination has no bearing on whether or not a firefighter is qualified.”
Darius Charney:
- No other major city worse than NYC. Most civil service jobs were using written tests since the seventies.
- New York has continued to use a paper and pencil multiple choice test.
- A reading comprehension test, more akin to SAT. The city says its not feasible to structure other types of tests.
- Charney: That’s a bogus answer because other cities such as L.A. incorporate other testing methods.
- the case started in 2002 because we filed a complaint with the EEOC.
- EEOC found probable cause that New York City had discriminated, made under the Bush Administration.
- Vulcan society also brought a lawsuit against the fire department in the seventies
Guest – Darius Charney, Staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights 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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Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America’s Dirty Work
Were the fights and disruptions during the town hall meetings this month carefully organized and meticulously planned? A breaking news story at Alternet titled Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America’s Dirty Work unearths the massive right wing strategy. Anti government fringe groups have aligned with the health care industry, the GOP and Rupert Murdoch to create the town hall riot spectacles.
- I do think its important to look at the conflagration of interest in this whole thing.
- You have the corporate health care interest, you have Wall St., you have big media in the form of Rupert Murdoch, you have a Capitol Hill PR firm, that serves all these interests, and then you have these folks on the ground espousing anti-corporate personal belief.
- Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader, former Congressman from Texas, who works for a lobbying shop called DLA Piper and runs the non-profit called Freedom Works.
- Freedom Works is one of the major organizers of these town hall protests. DLA Piper, Dick Armey’s day job, represents a number of medical and oil interests.
- Resist Net – really caught my attention. It’s part of a network called Grassfire.org, and really organizes the far right. Milita types, anti-taxers, etc.
- Grassfire.org has solid connections to the institutional Republican Party. William Crystal, Peggy Noonan (You Are Terrifying Us)
- You’ll go to these sites and it will say, Stop Obama care now, and you’ll see a listing of the town hall meetings.
- Restoretherepublic.com at bottom of protest signs, connects to ResistNet. It’s clever and hard to find the tentacles.
Guest-Adele Stan, AlterNet’s Washington Bureau Chief
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Law and Disorder August 17, 2009
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Naomi Wolf – Guantanamo Bay: The Inside Story
Has President Obama begun to honor his promise to close Guantanamo detention camp and undo secretive detention and interrogation policies within the year? Author and political consultant Naomi had to find out for herself. She is back from Cuba and wrote a highly descriptive narrative-style article of the trip titled Guantanamo Bay: An Inside Story. Naomi takes the reader into a surreal world where detainee handlers and lawyers flatly contradict each other and prisoners are viewed from a safari-tour distance.
Naomi Wolf:
- In order to close down an open society, you need secret prisons where torture takes place to create a police state.
- I’ve admired the work at CCR, and I thought since we have a new president I should go down to Guantanamo and see for myself if anything has changed.
- Getting off the plane in Cuba: It was like the Soviet Union in 1948, I was immediately separated from Pardiss Kebriaei. (CCR Attorney)
- Journalists are shadowed, literally every they’re there. Not only do they keep lawyers from doing their jobs, they keep journalists from doing their jobs.
- They literally treat detainees like animals in a cage. Any action that would humanize the detainees is categorically forbidden. They showed us camp x-ray first – the dog kennel-like cages.
- Running around these cages are rats the size of bulldogs.
- I went into another room and there was a huge pile of chairs. I looked closely at the legs and arms of chairs, there were duct tape marks as if someone were taped to the chair for interrogation.
- It was clear that the Obama Team wanted to communicate there was a kinder, gentler Guantanamo.
- Mohammad Al Anashi – alleged suicide. Banality of Evil
- Their bodies are crimes scenes but they can’t talk about what happened to them because it’s classified.
Guest – Naomi Wolf, author of seven books, and the groundbreaking book The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, which was also turned into a feature documentary. In the book, Naomi addresses ten steps that societies, dictators, and sometimes democracies use to close an open society to move it toward facsism. Her new book is titled Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries which is a call to action for every person, activist or not. When you ask that question “What Can I Do?” The answers are outlined in Give Me Liberty.
Listen to past Law and Disorder shows with Naomi Wolf.
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The Obama Administration proposed a new strategy last week for continuing the detention of Mohammed Jawad, he’s an Afghani being held for allegedly wounding two US soldiers with a grenade in 2002. Jawad may have been as young as 12 when he was picked up in 2002. Last month, the Obama administration conceded defeat when US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told Justice Department lawyers that the case for holding Jawad was quote riddled with holes. Now, the Obama administration under pressure to release Jawad to Afghanistan, is asking to hold Jawad and try the case in a US District Court. A military judge has already ruled that his confession to Afghanistan authorities had been coerced by torture because they threatened to arrest and kill his family.
Jonathan Hafetz:
- Mohammed Jawad, arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade in a crowded market place that injured 2 US service members and their Afghan interpreter.
- Following his arrest, he was beaten and tortured by corrupt Afghan police who also threatened to kill him and his family if didn’t confess to throwing grenade.
- He was then turned over to Americans who continued to torture and terrify him. They then obtained a different false confession.
- He was taken to Bagram Prison at the peak of torture and abuse in December 2002.
- He was then rendered from his home country and taken to Guantanamo in February 2003.
- Mohammad Jawad suffered psychological stress, was observed to be in a trance state, then psychologists saw this as an opportunity to completely break him.
- He was sleep deprived, moved 110 times during a 2 week period.
- Fall of 2008, a military judge threw out false confessions that Jawad made to Afghan and US officials.
- By the end of 2008, the military commissions case was literally on life support, meanwhile Jawad enter’s his seventh year of detention.
- Even after a judge dismissed the coerced torture evidence, Obama administration still tried to use this evidence against Jawad.
- The case now under US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle; had granted Habeas petition, ordered Jawad to be released.
- New law: Before transferring a detainee from GTMO to another country, the president must provide notice to Congress. The power to decide release of Guantanamo prisoners still in Executive Branch of US Government.
Guest – Jonathan Hafetz, attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project and one of Jawad’s lawyers. Jonathan Hafetz blasted the Obama administration for its “pathetic attempt to prolong an outrageous case and to manipulate the court system.”
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Law and Disorder August 10, 2009
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Is the Afghanistan War less over terrorism than it is over energy? It’s a high stakes chess board writes Conn Hallidan, a foreign policy analyst, and if the US controls the sources of energy of its rivals, Europe, Japan and China, and other nations, they win. Hallinan, says strategic energy alliances are forming between Russia and China. China is planning a 4 thousand mile pipeline from the Caspian Basin to the Guangdong Province while Russia is locking up natural resources such as natural gas in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Conn Hallinan:
- It’s about the United States attempting to control energy sources at a time when world oil reserves are beginning to drop.
- In fact there’s going to be a sharp drop in world oil reserves while Brazil India and China are growing fast. There’s a growing sharp competition for controlling those energy resources.
- The United States pretty much has its thumb on the Middle East oil reserves and has been maneuvering to control natural gas and oil coming out of Caspian Basin.
- Follow the roadways for Pipelanistan, looking at energy resources as looking at a map.
- This is a battle for control of energy resources. Whoever holds the high ground in the next half century will have their hand on jugular vein of their competitors.
- Tremendous expansion of NATO into former Soviet areas and into Central Asia creates the counter-response. Shanghai Cooperation Organizations
- The SCO is on a roll. China loaned Turkmenistan 3 billion dollars.
- Long term goals for current administration not very different from past administration.
- I want to go the White House and sit down with Obama and say, “ok, look just read Kipling, read Kim, the poem, Arithmetic on the Frontier.”
- The situation is a complete disaster, we’re destabilizing India and Pakistan, the most single dangerous flash-point in the world right now.
Guest – Conn Hallinan , a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Animal Rights Annual Conference 2009 Speeches
We hear four speeches from the Animal Rights Annual Conference this year. The speakers are our own co-host Heidi Boghosian, Attorney Matthew Strugar, Social Justice Attorney Bob Bloom, and Will Potter. Full list of speakers.
- Operation Backfire – A Survival Guide for Environmental and Animal Rights Activists
- New laws are based on a template provided by corporations.
- The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act is made to instill fear, it is vaguely written, it is impossible to note what speech will be prosecuted.
Bob Bloom:
- One of the defense attorneys for the Animal Terrorism Enterprise Act 4.
- What I learned defending the Black Panther Party, in the criminal justice system, is that there is a particular mechanism to control people who want to make things better, who want to change things. Courts are not for justice, they’re for repression.
- Under the animal enterprise act, you can have a business enterprise that uses and tortures animals. It just doesn’t seem right.
- Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is quote – because the animals are like us.
- Ask the experimenters why its morally ok to experiment on animals and the answer is quote because the animals are not like us.
Will Potter:
- GreenIsTheNewRed
- Communication enhancement facilities are political prisons for those who have been widely connected with others. When you have secretive facilities and special legislation or so-called second tier terrorism inmates, you’ll soon have secretive facilities and special legislation or so-called third tier terrorism inmates and secretive facilities and fourth tier terrorism inmates, until brick by brick, the barriers of what is being labeled a protester and an activist and a dissident and a terrorist have completely crumbled.
Matt Streuger:
- The SHAC 7 and Utah 2 cases
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The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) is a United States federal law It was signed by the President of the United States November 27, 2006. Earlier versions of the bill were known as S. 1926 and H.R. 4239. The bill is described by the author as being intended to “provide the Department of Justice the necessary authority to apprehend, prosecute, and convict individuals committing animal enterprise terror.”
Analysis of The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act
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