Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Updates:
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UN Human Rights Report Finds Israel Committed War Crimes and Unprecedented Devastation in 2014 Gaza War
Recently the United Nations issued a report on Israel’s attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014. The results were devastating again for Israel. The report also covered illegal Israeli settlements as well as house demolitions. Another section dealt with rockets that came from Gaza and went into Israel. What can we expect the result of this report to be? Will it be like the other ones, simply good reading or bad reading and shelved again? Will the UN act to do something with it? Will it go to the International Criminal Court? Again, we don’t know.
Guest – Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Best known for her work as a legal adviser and a participant in peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian organizations, she has since been associated with Stanford University, Harvard University, and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU).
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ICE Detention Center Standards Improve, Being Released is Now More Difficult
When women and children from Central America seek asylum and are captured at the US border, some are arrested and sent to a detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. Run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there are no legal services providers in the state funded to represent persons in detention. The Obama administration has made clear that immigrants’ cases must be processed as quickly as possible, and that most should be deported, increasing the likelihood that detainees are deprived the chance to exercise their rights.
To help ensure that women in detention get legal help in navigating a complex and difficult-to-understand process, a small group of volunteer attorneys organized by the American Immigration Lawyers Association works at the center 12 hours a day. The court process in Artesia has been described as a “s#%*show” where judges refuse to let lawyers speak during hearings, detainees clearly worthy of asylum are denied, and no one will articulate the legal basis for judges and asylum officers’ decisions. Most women in detention do not understand that they can ask for time to locate an attorney or that they cannot be deported without having an opportunity to present their case.
Guest – Attorney Laura Lichter, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. (“AILA”), the premier bar association of immigration lawyers and law professors in the U.S. She has been an elected member of AILA’s national leadership for over a decade and has served as the association’s top liaison to the key immigration enforcement bureaus of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is responsible for immigration investigations, prosecution, detention and removal operations, and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the nation’s immigration court system. Ms. Lichter is AILA’s liaison to the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration and serves on the Federal Bar Association’s Immigration Law Section Advisory Board. Ms. Lichter recently served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) Task Force on ICE’s Secure Communities program, reporting to findings on the ICE enforcement initiative to DHS Secretary Napolitano. Based in Denver, she is the former Chair of AILA’s Colorado Chapter. Ms. Lichter’s practice focuses on the representation of foreign nationals in removal proceedings, contested family and naturalization applications, administrative appeals, and related federal district and appellate court litigation.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Updates:
- Hosts Update On Hurricane Sandy
- Obama Re-election: What Does It Mean For Basic Civil Rights? Drones, Guantanamo, Military Commissions, Warrantless Wiretapping.
- PLO and CCR Victory – Muhammad Salah
- Holy Land Case Update – Supreme Court Refuses To Review Sixth Amendment Right
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Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Attorney Diana Butto
The final session of the Tribunal focused on the responsibility of the United States of America and the United Nations regarding the Israeli breaches of international law towards Palestine and Palestinians. There is now a situation in which Israel has achieved a status of immunity and impunity, facilitated by the US, despite its complete disregard for the norms and standards of international law. We hear an excerpt of a speech by Human Rights Attorney Diana Butto at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
Diana Buttu is a Palestinian–Canadian lawyer and former spokesperson with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
She is best known for her work as a legal adviser and negotiator on peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian organizations. Buttu was born in Canada to Palestinian parents. She began her work as a negotiator in 2000, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Palestinian Intifada, as a spokesperson for the Negotiations Support Unit of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
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The Moral Challenge of ‘Kill Lists’ by Ray McGovern
The Obama Administration has conducted hundreds of drone strikes in several countries, killing civilians and a US citizen. Critics point out that as the Obama Administration assassinates its’ suspects, it also avoids the legal complications of detention. In last week’s New York Times, authors Jo Becker and Scott Shane expose the priest-like role of counter terrorist adviser John Brennan as he provides Mr. Obama with the moral justification for extrajudicial murder. The framing of John Brennan’s role of priestly adviser caught Ray McGovern’s attention. His recent article The Moral Challenge of Kill Lists, dissects the New York Times story.
Ray McGovern:
- There has been a geometric increase in the number of drone strikes against Pakistan and of course Somalia and Yemen.
- London based bureau for investigative journalism estimates that about 830 civilians including women and children may have been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan. 138 in Yemen, and 57 in Somalia. It’s incredibly naive to think that this helps in any way in the war on terrorism.
- This wonderfully insightful and dangerous New York Times article a week ago talked about the conundrum of aligning these activities with US legal and moral principles. Conundrum? That’s an impossibility.
- The Fifth Amendment prevents this sort of thing if you take the interpretation we’ve always had.
- As the New York Times article mentions 1 out of 30 assassinations that are known about just one escaped assassination and was brought before a court. It’s much easier to kill them.
- If you wanted to learn about al-Qaeda, don’t you think Osama Bin Laden could’ve told us some stuff about al-Qaeda?
- Any military aged male in the area of a “bad guy” is fair game.
- Maybe I can draw from my own experience in the CIA, I know about lists. I know that when there was a coup attempt in Indonesia in 1965, that there were lists given to the Indonesian authorities of communists. How many communists on that list? A million. How many were killed, were murdered? 500 thousand plus. How many were put in prison? The other 500 thousand.
- The drones are really accurate but the target information is notoriously inaccurate.
- I love Fordham and I hate to see the administration and the very wealthy trustees who have lots of money to give to Fordham, determine who comes in to give the commencement address.
- I think that you have to have some kind of personal involvement with innocent suffering. I think that you have to have some sense of the injustice others suffer to let your heart be touched by this direct experience.
- Obama’s fallen in with a rough crowd.
- I was attracted to getting outside of my Catholic walls. There’s a small church down in Washington DC called the Church of the Savior.
- I found out they were doing wonderful things like preventing housing from being gentrified so poor people can still live there. Healthcare, jobs, addictions, a hospice for people to sick to be on the street.
- There’s been one major change for the good in this country. That is Occupy.
- When you look for proof that Occupy has incredible potential, look no farther than what the president and the top senators thought necessary to inject into the NDAA on New Year’s Eve, which allows them to use the US Army of all things to wrap us all up without charge, without court proceedings.
Guest – Raymond L. McGovern, retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray’s opinion pieces have appeared in many leading newspapers here and abroad. His website writings are posted first on consortiumnews.com, and are usually carried on other websites as well. He has debated at the Oxford Forum and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Newshour, CNN, and numerous other TV & radio programs and documentaries. Ray has lectured to a wide variety of audiences here and abroad. Ray studied theology and philosophy (as well as his major, Russian) at Fordham University, from which he holds two degrees. He also holds a Certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University. A Catholic, Mr. McGovern has been worshipping for over a decade with the ecumenical Church of the Saviour and teaching at its Servant Leadership School. He was co-director of the school from 1998 to 2004. Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
