CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prison Industry, RFID, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Historic Vigil And Compassionate Release For Lynne Stewart
It’s been seven weeks since Warden Jody Upton of FMC Carswell approved Compassionate Release for Lynne Stewart. This decision was based on the medical findings of Stage 4 cancer that spread Lynne’s scapula, lymph nodes and lungs. A massive vigil was held last week for Lynne at Federal Bureau of Prisons Headquarters in Washington DC. We’re joined today by former Attorney General of the United States Ramsey Clark who is helping to get Lynne Stewart released from prison.
Attorney Ramsey Clark:
- The matter is now on the desk of the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, it’s been there for about five or six weeks which is intolerably long because everyday counts.
- Lynne is in physical desperate condition, her cancer is spreading. She has appointments at Sloan Kettering when she gets out that may extend her life.
- It’s slipping away while the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons who seems to be opposed of Compassionate Release or any broad application of it, sits on her application.
- Charles Samuels, seemed to have isolated himself from this issue. Any letters to Director Samuels would be helpful and important.
- He’s being bombarded but for some reason, he’s holding out because he wants an interpretation of the compassionate release statute that would enable the release of only those who are going to die in the very near future, have no hope of living longer.
- Right now we have an urgent human matter, a very wonderful human being, mother and grandmother is dying in prison.
- Please Write to: Charles E Samuels Jr. / Federal Bureau of Prisons / 320 1st Street Northwest / Washington DC 20534
Guest – Attorney Ramsey Clark was the former Attorney General of the United States, under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was the first Attorney General at the Justice Department to call for the elimination of the death penalty and all electronic surveillance. After he left the Johnson administration, he became a important critic of the Vietnam War and continued defending the rights of people worldwide, from Palestinians to Iraqis, to anyone who found themselves at the repressive end of government action.
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Whistleblower Cases Update
Attorney Michael Ratner:
- June 19th Anniversaries: Execution of the Rosenbergs. Julian Assange 1 year at the Ecuadorian embassy.
- Snowden, we don’t know where he is, massive revelations.
- The question you should be asking, is Dick Cheney a traitor? Is George Bush a traitor? Aren’t those the real traitors, the real people to be held accountable.
- We should look at what they told us. Ed Snowden told about a massive domestic surveillance operation.
- Their job is to tell the American people what they’re doing so we can debate it and discuss it and not put forward basically false stories of who they’ve purportedly stopped.
- This is about knowing where everyone of us is all the time.
- Freedom of the Press Foundation – Bradley Manning
- This is really a war on whistle-blowers and really a war on the United States trying to keep control on all of the information it can and control the internet from the top down.
Richard Falk, U.N. Rapporteur on Palestinian Rights, Calls for Close of UN Watch
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Lakota Indians To File UN Genocide Charges Against US, South Dakota
There was a time in the mid 1800s when the territory of Lakota Indians reached 90 million acres, now they’re separated into tribal councils and relegated to reservations. Their children are seized and put into foster homes of white families. During Republican administrations, more than 700 Lakota children are taken annually by a private corporation called the South Dakota Children’s Home Services. In April, a grassroots movement led by Lakota grandmothers touring the country built support for a formal UN complaint of genocide against the United States government and constituent states.
Attorney Daniel Sheehan:
- There’s basically a decade involved here during which the state of South Dakota engaged in a systematic program of the removal of Lakota children from their parents, from their extended families and from their entire tribe.
- Some 740 Lakota children a year during that period were taken from their families and tribes.
- Over half of them were never returned. 80-90 percent of those children were placed in white foster care.
- This is clear violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act which was the piece of legislation that mandated that if an Indian child were taken from the child’s parents they were required to be placed with Native American people.
- This is has been absolutely openly defied by the state of South Dakota.
- There has been an official notice of intent to file the complaint with the United Nations.
- We need to understand that there has been a longstanding policy in the Republican Party. When the Republican Party comes into power in Washington DC where they engage in this process to try and assimilate the native tribes.
- They’re constantly trying to eliminate the ownership of land and integrate them into society, basically to eliminate their culture.
- That was why the US Congress back in 1978 made the move to establish the American Indian Policy Review Commission and the Indian Child Welfare Act to stop the states from engaging in that type of activity of assimilation.
- What we’ve seen by William Janklow, a former South Dakota congressman, governor, and attorney general, is the process to attempt to take as many of the children away as they could possibly do and place them in huge group homes such as South Dakota Children Homes Services Inc.
- There is a subtext to this issue. We’ve discovered that during the Bush Administration from 2001 to 2009 there was systematic program of funneling federal funds into South Dakota to finance the seizure of these children and a substantial portion of that money from the Federal Government was transferred to the pharmaceutical corporations, who were in fact administering involuntarily to these children, pharmaceutical drugs Zoloft, and other psychoactive drugs to control their moods and attitudes.
- They refuse to give information about who the children are, where they’ve been taken, where they’ve been placed, some of them have been taken out of the state, we traced a number of them to Utah.
Guest – Daniel Sheehan is the lead attorney and general counsel for the Lakota People’s Law Project (LPLP). Currently, LPLP is working in South Dakota to stop violations of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and rescue Lakota children from an abusive state care system. Award-winning journalist Laura Sullivan has just completed a hard-hitting investigative series on the situation in Lakota Country airing now on NPR. To learn more about Daniel Sheehan’s work with Lakota Indians, visit the Lakota People’s Law Project website. Sheehan traced the institutionalization of state kidnapping of Native children back to the late William Janklow, a former South Dakota congressman, governor, and attorney general notorious for his role in what the the Lakota refer to as the “Reign of Terror” on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the years following the American Indian Movement-led occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. According to Sheehan, members of the George W. Bush administration tipped off Janklow on a Texas strategy to grab millions of dollars in federal subsidies by administering a psychological test devised by the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical corporation to children taken into protective custody. Replicating the strategy, South Dakota developed a mental health test failed by 98% of Native children, who then become “special needs” cases under federal law, with the state receiving up to $79,000 for each Indian child and the child being placed involuntarily on psychoactive drugs.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Hosts Discussion On Snowden and Manning Cases.
Attorney Michael Ratner:
- There’s a lot of support out there for what Snowden revealed.
- This big program of massive surveillance against all of us, internet surveillance, cyber wars, there’s a tremendous amount of support for him. Editorials in the times basically saying it’s not treason.
- NYTimes: Snowden not nearly as reckless as Bradley Manning (same position as Faiza Patel at Brennan Center)
- Protecting Snowden and throwing Bradley Manning and the war crimes he revealed, under the bus.
- This whole claim that it was a data dump by Bradley Manning that he went into the documents and dumped everything not knowing what was in them is false. I know its false from sitting at the trial.
- I heard Bradley Manning testify as why he did each set of documents. The Iraq war logs, the Afghanistan war logs, the collateral murder video, the State Department cables.
- In each case he came with a moral and political reason for doing them.
- The fact that people are still accusing Bradley Manning of a data dump is outrageous and actually the prosecutors position.
- Snowden did something really important, we’ve all known or suspected we’re under massive surveillance. We now have it confirmed and its as bad or worse as we could imagine. It’s every phone call we make, everyone, every single phone call in this United States. It’s a surveillance program against us.
- What Bradley Manning revealed was the U.S. committing war crimes against others.
- I think its easier for American people to hear, “we’re being surveilled than to care about the fact that America is committing war crimes all over the world” because that actually goes to the heart of an imperialist country.
- Cypherpunks predicted exactly what happened: Surveillance is now cheap. You get decent quality storage of all German telephone calls on a certain type of computer for 30 million Euros including administrative overhead for pure storage.
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Attorney Heidi Boghosian:
- It really does away with the standards of reasonable suspicion or probable cause to open an investigation.
- It’s saying that we’ll open an investigation and this will be on information that hasn’t even happened.
- Stored Data: The government has access to that. There’s data out there that you can never really get rid of. Corporate intelligence firms or military contractors working with the government comprise about 70 percent what’s given to the intelligence budget.
- The government has to hire out contractors because they’re the only ones able to use this sophisticated technology. The data that is collected, stored and resold, contains a high rate of inaccuracy.
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Attorney Michael Smith:
- Booze Allen which is the private contractor that Snowden worked for is part of the Carlyle Group.
- The Carlyle group is a private equity firm that’s worth a 158 billion dollars. The ruling class in this country own a chunk of the Carlyle Group.
- Clapper who’s know the head of national intelligence used to be a big executive with Booze Allan.
- The head of Booze Allan used to be one of the main guys at the National Security Agency.
- Privatizing Intelligence, the private sector has a duty to its share holders.
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Pardon Ed Snowden
Pardon or Free Bradley Manning
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions
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America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy
The United States war machine has been on auto pilot for the past 65 years says our guest William Blum he’s author of the recently published America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About U.S. Foreign Policy and Everything Else. This provocative book exposes the true motives of America’s foreign policy and outlines steps to take action.
William Blum:
- All this while I was looking to find reasons for it, to explain this weird record.
- What I was left with to believe that it’s world domination that the U.S. wants for various reasons.
- Once you understand that, many things become clearer, much less confusing.
- We’re dealing with a lifetime of indoctrination. It starts in kindergarten. People like you and I have a long battle on our hands to overcome this.
- We’re subjected to the indoctrination means well and its the most honorable and liberal government in the world.
- It’s reinforced in high school and college, on television, in the print media, it’s a major task for the likes of you and I to overcome this upbringing.
- It’s amazing the number of Americans that have seen through this upbringing despite this upbringing.
- I think the main to understand with this man called Barack Obama, is that there’s nothing that he strongly believes in except being President of the United States.
- The man doesn’t have any core beliefs. He’s not anti-empire, he’s not pro-empire, he likes being President.
- He’ll do and say whatever it takes to remain in that office. In my opinion, in Europe he’d be regarded as center-right.
- Look at the atrocities we carry out.
- Samantha Power is the author of a book on humanitarian intervention. Obama appointing these two women with that philosophy shows that he supports that philosophy. We have to assume they’re believers in humanitarian intervention.
Guest – William Blum, has been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America. His stay in Chile in 1972-3, writing about the Allende government’s “socialist experiment” and its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing in various parts of the world. In the mid-1970’s, he worked in London with former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds. His book on U.S. foreign policy, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, first published in 1995 and updated since, has received international acclaim.
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Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield
The new documentary “Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield” is an unique look into the covert wars brought by the United States. The film follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill into Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen and analyzes expanded US drone warfare and the foreign policy that has allowed this destruction to take place. The film’s director Rick Rowley and Scahill went into these covert war zones to speak with families about the what they’ve seen and bring those stories back. As we’ve reported on Law and Disorder, the Obama Administration has continued to normalize the Bush Administration policies by empowering the Joint Special Operations Command and the use of drones.
Rick Rowley:
- The film is about the global covert war on terror.
- Jeremy and I have war reporters for over a decade. I became a war reporter because I thought the global war on terror was the most important story of our generation – killed hundreds of thousands of people cost untold billions yet most of it was unfolding in the shadows.
- Around the world today there are dozens of wars being fought in our name but without our knowledge and meaningful oversight.
- When we started shooting this film we thought it was a film just about Afghanistan. What we were seeing is the covert war in Afghanistan was eclipsing the covert war.
- More Afghans are killed and captured by covert units than by the entire 100 thousand strong NATO force that’s there.
- So we began to film to see what was up behind that.
- This is a unit that initially amounted to a few hundred guys who’s supposed to the most high level strategic missions, hostage rescue missions. If a nuclear weapon is stolen from the Ukraine they’d go and recapture it. That’s what they’re supposed to do.
- They’re doing 15-20 raids a night across Afghanistan, thousands of raids a year, going after mid level Taliban field commanders.
- The entire war is being fought by this clandestine group that wasn’t really built for this operation.
- We started to trace where JSOC was operating, that brought us to Yemen, and Somalia. Under the AQNX order, JSOC was authorized to operate in 26 countries clandestinely. Now under Obama 78 countries.
- I was staggered by the massive scale of this, the wholesale assassination machine.
- Current kill lists: It’s a permanent cycle of violence that’s being managed around the world.
- We interview Ron Weiden from the Senate Intelligence Committee. He’s a guy who’s trying to push for more disclosure and transparency in the Senate, but the entire time there’s a lawyer an aide inside the office who has to keep stopping him.
- There are secret interpretations of laws that exist on the books but would be shocking to the American people if they knew about them.
- We knocked on so many doors of night raids in Afghanistan, families shared stories with us of the most painful time in their life.
- They think that if the American people could only hear their story and their story were proven to be true, that somehow it would matter and make a difference.
- When we started this film 3 years ago, WBAI was talking about drones and kill lists, but it took until 6 months ago for that to work its way to editorial page of the Times and the Post.
- I’ve been a war reporter for more than a decade.
- Jeremy got on camera a number of whistle-blowers who are former operators or parts of JSOC, CIA people who are saying these kinds of discussion about blow back are happening inside their institutions.
- A lot of them talk about this as “mowing the lawn” the jihadists, insurgency will rise up and you go and chop it off but the grass will rise again.
- That’s permanently managing a level of acceptable chaos and violence. This war remains secret for a reason, that if everyone knew about it there would be a popular outrage.
Guest — Rick Rowley, is a director and cinematographer. Over the course of fifteen years, Richard Rowley, co-founder of Big Noise Films, has made multiple award-winning documentary features including Fourth World War and This Is What Democracy Looks Like. His shorts and news reports are also regularly featured on and commissioned by leading outlets including Al Jazeera, BBC, CBC, CNN International, Democracy Now!, and PBS. Rowley is a co-founder of the Independent Media Center. Rowley has been a Pulitzer Fellow, Rockefeller Fellow, a Jerome Foundation Fellow, and a Sundance Documentary Film Program Fellow.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- ‘We Steal Secrets’: State Agitprop by Chris Hedges
- Banality of Don’t Be Evil – A Response To The Book – The New Digital Age
- Michael Ratner Discusses Bradley Manning Trial – Hundreds of Protesters
- Get Whistleblowers First Then Journalists
- A Phone Call To Save Lynne Stewart’s Life:
- Attorney General Eric Holder – 1 202 514 2001
- White House President Obama – 1 202 456 1414
- Federal Bureau of Prisons – Director Charles Samuels – 1 202 307 3198 ext 3
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Carry it Forward: Celebrate the Children of Resistance – 60th Anniversary of Rosenberg Execution
Today we speak to Robert Rosenberg, the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. He’s an author, activist, attorney and public speaker. He sued the FBI and CIA to force the release of 300 thousand previously secret documents about his parents. Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund For Children which provided educational and emotional needs of both targeted activist youth and children whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed or died because or during their activism. This week the event Carry it Forward: Celebrate the Children of Resistance – 60th Anniversary of Rosenberg Execution on Sunday June 16, 2013.
Robert Meeropol:
- The Rosenberg Fund For Children is a public foundation that provides for the educational and the emotional needs of the children of targeted activists in the United States.
- I founded this organization in 1990. We help hundreds of children of targeted activists.
- In some ways you can say that the Rosenberg Fund For Children was a vehicle for me to create something positive in response to the destruction that was visited upon me when my parents were arrested when I was just 3 years old.
- Judge Kaufman’s sentencing statement justifying a death sentence after a conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage by using the word treason.
- The parallel today is the Bradley Manning case which is going on right at this moment. He is being charged with conspiracy to commit espionage under the exact same law that my parents were charged under.
- The question being asked is: Is he a whistle-blower or is he a traitor?
- We now know from the government’s own files that my parents had nothing to do with the secret of the atomic bomb.
- The government wanted to make a big show trial and demonstrate that people who wanted to take this conscious driven action posed a threat to the entire nation.
- Sixty years on, this case is just as relevant today as the day it was born.
- The change that has occurred is the government learned the lessons of my parents’ case and has now figured out ways in post 911 America to make all the illegal activities that they engaged in in other to obtain this big show trial conviction in the 1950s legal today.
- We went through hell between the years of the arrest and the execution. I grew up with this sense, this unmet need to do something about this.
- It wasn’t until I was 43 years old in 1990 that I figured out what to do and that was to start a foundation in my parents name that would help children and young people in similar circumstances today.
- Law and Disorder Interview On The Rosenbergs
Guest – Robert Meeropol, the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In 1953, when he was six years old, the United States Government executed his parents for “conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb.” For more than 40 years he has been a progressive activist, author and public speaker. In the 1970’s he and his brother, Michael, successfully sued the FBI and CIA to force the release of 300,000 previously secret documents about their parents. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, graduated law school in 1985, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar
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Welcome to the Gilded City of New York: Low Wage Workers Unite
Last month in an article titled Welcome to the Gilded City by The Nation, the collaborative work of editors compiled a detailed overview of Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy. The article assesses the various personas the New York mayor used to further specific agendas, among them are the “top cop” presiding over a vast surveillance program, the union buster waging war on organized labor, the imperialist undermining the city’s term limits. New York City’s income inequality has grown rapidly in the last 3 decades, outpacing New York state and the nation. The article points out that there were choices available to New York City’s government to counter this economic trend yet they’ve been basically ignored.
Lizzy Ratner:
- We’re at a fulcrum moment in New York City, we’re at the end of the Bloomberg era, he is finally term limited at the end of this year.
- In thinking about what New York City is now, we came upon a central theme and that is “inequality.”
- Peel back the cellophane a little bit and what you see is deep struggle, deep poverty.
- Because New York is an emblem sometimes for the larger country, what does it tells us about the country?
- In 1980 about 21 percent of New York City’s population lived at or below the federal poverty line.
- In the last 30 years we’ve had effectively no progress in the realm of fighting poverty in this city.
- In 2011, about 400 thousand people or about 1 out of 10 of the city’s workers, worked by didn’t earn enough money to get out of poverty.
- That same year about 600 thousand people earned 10 dollars an hour or less.
- The point of the metaphor was to contrast these two New York Citys, these two different worlds. The gilded world, which is flashy, which everybody sees on TV, which is the one that’s been promoted by the Bloomberg administration.
- There is this perception of Bloomberg as a great liberal icon. There is a certain disturbing truth to that in that liberalism is being defined these days as social progressiveism.
- We have these sacrificed populations in the city which are being targeted.
- The mayor took control of public schools, claimed control when he took office. The justification for that was this was a way to tame an unruly system, narrow the education gap between students of color and white students.
- One of his signature failures (Bloomberg) was not addressing the horrifying inequality and job loss (during recession)
- Bloomberg Obstructed or Vetoed: Paid Sick Leave Law, Living Wage Bill, Anti-Predatory Lending Bill
- If you want to look at Bloomberg’s failure around poverty you just need to look at homelessness. Homelessness had almost doubled under his tenure.
- A lot of organizations and grass roots groups have started building power and have come together in various ways to change conditions for workers in this city.
Guest – Lizzy Ratner, co-editor of this Nation article. Lizzy is a journalist and co-editor of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
Past Law and Disorder interviews with Lizzy Ratner
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Death Penalty, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- FDNY Lawsuit Update
- Guatemalan Genocide Verdict Overturned
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We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks – Michael Ratner
Our own Michael Ratner delivers a critical review of the film documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks” by director Alex Gibney. The annotated transcript, reveals errors, rank speculation and a focus on personality that detracts from the important revelations by Manning and published by WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning’s 12-week trial commences on Monday (3 June) and the film may have been released to take advantage of that date. Manning may face life in prison and could potentially face the death penalty. Julian Assange remains in the Ecuadorian embassy legitimately fearful that extradition to Sweden is a one way ticket to the US and potential for life in prison.
Attorney Michael Ratner, attorney in the US for Julian Assange and Wikileaks:
- (The film) does a great disservice to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.
- I think it trivializes the incredible courage that both of them had as well as what was revealed by the documents.
- Julian Assange declined an interview by Alex Gibney and no one currently associated with Wikileaks participated in the film. This may explain in part Gibney’s poor treatment of Julian Assange.
- What grabs you immediately is the title, “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks.” Wikileaks is a publisher. Yet the title implies that the story of Wikileaks is the story of it stealing secrets.
- That implication plays into the government’s theory that somehow Wikileaks and Julian Assange are co-conspirators with Bradley Manning in taking secrets. The film does so in other places as well.
- A second criticism is that part of the film focuses on Bradley Manning’s psychological problems and implies that those are the basis for Manning’s revelation of documents.
- Gibney has said as much in interviews given after the film: “I think it raises big issues about who whistleblowers are, because they are alienated people who don’t get along with people around them, which motivates them to do what they do.”
- In fact, Manning gave an incredibly moving political explanation for each leak of documents; an explanation not covered in any detail in the film.
- Third, Gibney claims Wikileaks is dead. Nothing could be more of fable.
- Since December 2011 Wikileaks has released the SpyFiles, the Stratfor emails dubbed the GIFiles, the Syria Files and in April 2013 both Cablegate and 1.7 million Kissinger Cables in an easily searchable Plus Public Library of US Diplomacy.
- Fourth, somehow, Gibney claims there are no charges filed against Julian Assange. How does he know that? It’s a secret Grand Jury, and if there’s an indictment, it’s going to be a sealed indictment because an indictment is not made public when a person is not in custody. In fact, there is significant, irrefutable evidence of an on going investigation and its likely there is a sealed indictment.
- Gibney diminishes the risk to Julian Assange if he were sent to the United States because he wants to claim that Assange is in the embassy to avoid going to Sweden to answer questions about sexual misconduct allegations. But it does not work. Were Sweden to guarantee Assange would not be sent to US he would go there to answer questions.
- Assange has also offered to answer those questions in the embassy–Sweden has refused. In the end, the problem is the United States–Gibney, in his effort to demean Assange, needs to play down the huge risk he faces in the US.
Law and Disorder Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. Ratner and CCR are currently the attorneys in the United States for publishers Julian Assange and Wikileaks. He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court. Ratner is also a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights.
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Palestinian Prisoners Legal Support: Addameer
On the 17th of April, hundreds of Palestinians filled the streets in the West Bank in protest to mark Palestinian Prisoners Day. Right now there nearly 5000 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails, 14 of them are women. More than half have been convicted, 33 percent have not been sentenced and 3 percent are being held in administrative detention. 235 of Palestinian prisoners are minors ranging in age from 14 to 18. As many listeners may know, Palestinian activists are often targeted and detained. In prison, tactics are used such as solitary confinement and forbidding family contact.
Attorney Sahar Francis:
- Currently there are still 4900 Palestinians inside Israeli prisons. Most of them are adults. There are 236 minors under age 18. 14 women and 14 Parliamentarians.
- The majority of them I would say were arrested because of political activism and being involved in the peaceful struggle, and resistance especially in the last couple of years against the wall, the checkpoints, the settlements, land confiscation, house demolition all these practices of the occupation.
- Including Jerusalem residents, they would be arrested inside Israel but they could be subjected to 2 different legal systems. The Israeli legal system or the military system that applies just to the Occupied Territories.
- Settlers are not subjected to the military court system that is imposed on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
- It’s violation of International Law to move them to prisons inside Israel. This is what Israel was doing since 1995.
- They moved the prisoners from prisons inside the Occupied Territories to prisons inside Israel and this is a violation for the 4th Geneva Convention Act actually.
- The number of Palestinian prisoners decreased compared to previous years, 2005, 2006.
- Since 1967 til today more than 750 thousand Palestinians were arrested. It’s almost hitting every Palestinian house. It’s estimated to be about 40 percent of the Palestinian men population that were at least once incarcerated in their life.
- In the 7 years of Oslo, Israel kept 1500 political prisoners.
- Now I can say that the majority of the prisoners would be sentenced for periods less than 10 years.
- There’s around 430 of them sentenced for life.
- We still have cases of families where they have 4 sons or 5 sons in the same time in prison.
- In some cases they (the sons) would be distributed in all prisons, in north, south of Israel and the mother would be traveling all the way trying to visit them.
- The women prisoners number was much higher we used to have 120 female prisoners.
- Most of them involved in political activism, mainly supporting their brothers or husbands in their political activism or in stop cases involved in trying to stop soldiers.
- Addamer was established in 1991 by ex Palestinian political prisoners and lawyers who were aiming to give legal support for free to Palestinian prisoners in military court system.
- Our focus is on political arrests. We have 8 members in Addamer. We are members of the Israeli Bar Association and members of the Palestinian Bar Association.
- Most of the cases in military court would end in plea bargain without exhausting the system because neither the system or the lawyers don’t have much trust in the system.
- You could end up being interrogated in the detention centers inside Israel and they will decide whether to transfer the case for the civil prosecution or the military prosecution.
- You can have a person 90 days before charging them (military system) Civil system it’s 35 days.
- Law In These Parts – Film Documentary.
- Regarding torture and terms such as enhanced interrogation techniques : In our place its called moderate physical pressure.
- We can’t sue them because the prosecutors claim out of necessity we used the torture.
- Seeing the photos of Abu-Ghraib with this sack on the detainee’s heads, this was used in the Palestinians case since the early years of the occupation.
- This is the method that was used to prevent them from breathing, from sleeping, and they were tied to these kindergarten small chairs with the sack on their head, with playing music 24 hours a day. Then after in this position for 2 weeks, the interrogator shake you.
- We’re promoting Boycott Divest and Sanction.
Guest – Sahar Francis, human rights lawyer and director of the Palestinian NGO Addamer. (Arabic for conscience) Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association is a Palestinian non-governmental, civil institution which focuses on human rights issues. Established in 1992 by a group of activists interested in human rights, the center offers support to Palestinian prisoners, advocates the rights of political prisoners, and works to end torture through monitoring, legal procedures and solidarity campaigns.It’s an organization offering legal services to political prisoners under Israeli occupation and represents prisoners in Israeli military and civil courts.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
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MOVE Bombing: 28th Anniversary
This week marks the 28th anniversary of an armed police mission in Philadelphia that ended in a helicopter bombing of the headquarters of the group known as MOVE. The fire commissioner in that city allowed a fire to rage unabated at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, killing six adults and five children, destroying 65 homes and leaving more than 200 people homeless. Despite two Grand Jury investigations, and a commission finding that top officials were grossly negligent, no one from city government was ever criminally charged. A recent film called Let the Fire Burn, chronicles the events leading up to the conflagration.
Ramona Africa:
- The government, through the media had mislead people to believe that what happened in May of 1985 was because of complaints from neighbors which is absolutely not true.
- What happened on May 13, 1985 happened because of our unrelenting fight for the release of our innocent sisters and brothers known as the MOVE 9 who were arrested in August 1978.
- After years of abuse, physical abuse, judicial abuse by this system, MOVE babies being killed through miscarriage and a 3 week old baby being trampled to death by police, after countless unprovoked beatings of MOVE men and women, children, even pregnant women, MOVE people took a stand and said listen, we are uncompromisingly opposed to violence, we’re a peaceful people. We’re not stupid and we’re not masochistic or suicidal.
- We do believe in self defense which is the law, the law of life. There is not a species on this Earth that doesn’t defend itself, when threatened, when attacked.
- When MOVE took that stand, the government became enraged.
- They alleged housing code violations, and they wanted MOVE to move out of the home based on housing code violations.
- MOVE people wouldn’t go along with that. A judge gave MOVE people til August 1 to get out.
- On August 2, 1985, a judge issued warrants on any MOVE people he knew of including people he knew were not in the house.
- After the warrants were issued, hundreds and hundreds of cops were sent out to our home.
- They shot thousands of bullets into that house. The fire department used deluge hoses to flood our home.
- The officer that was killed was standing on street level while everybody including the police acknowledged that all MOVE people were in the basement of our home.
- This policeman was shot from a bullet traveling on a downward angle.
- Hours after I was arrested on August 17, the city sent a demolition team out and completely demolished MOVE’s home which was the scene of the crime.
- The MOVE 9 trial was a bench trial, not a jury trial.
- They did it to silence our righteous protest and our unrelenting fight for the release of our family the MOVE 9.
- They came out to our home on Mother’s Day, May 12 1985, with warrants they obtained on May 11.
- The Fire Department as in 1978 was their first mode of attack.
- They came out there to kill, that’s the bottom line.
- When their ten thousand rounds of bullets didn’t kill us, the water hoses, the tear gas didn’t do the job, they concocted a bomb made from powerful military explosives, C4.
- They got the C4 from the federal government, from the FBI.
- The state police helicopter flew over our home without any warning, and two Philadelphia Police bomb squad police officers dropped that bomb on the roof our home. It ignited a fire. They made a conscious decision not to put the fire out.
Guest – Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor of the 1985 police bombing of the home occupied by members of the MOVE organization. Email Ramona – onamovelleja (at) gmail.com
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Assata Shakur Placed On FBI Terror List
Last week, the FBI placed Assata Shakur on its Most Wanted Terrorists list, while the state of New Jersey raised the bounty on her head to 2 million dollars. These actions fall on the 40th anniversary of the 1973 shoot out in in which police allege Shakur killed a police officer during a traffic stop on the New Jersey turnpike. Assata also known as JoAnne Deborah Byron is an African American activist was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Assata Shakur: Understanding the politics behind the FBI’s new attack.
Eugene Puryear:
- I think why a 65 year old grandmother has been put on the FBI terrorist list is a reflection of the United States government’s fear of that which opposes it.
- Assata Shakur was part of the 60s movements . . . a movement that the Nixon administration attempted to criminalize, to say that political dissent and political opposition to the US government and its imperial moves around the world.
- She does fit the profile of what the US government has been trying to perpetuate for the last 30 years, in a sense an extension of COINTELPRO.
- One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.
- Assata Shakur, her actions and beliefs is certainly not something that is beyond the pale but the US government view her as a terrorist.
- By placing her on this terrorist list, it’s a way of criminalizing dissent.
- Assata’s trial was moved several times, it was placed in counties that were mostly wealthy, mostly white where pre-trial publicity around the case had biased people in a major way against Assata Shakur.
- When the government wants to put someone away and they know they don’t have the evidence they want to do everything possible to both manipulate the venue and also bring in people whose predisposition will make them more likely to believe the government’s version of events.
- Assata was in a position to be put in prison for the rest of her life in these human-breaking conditions.
- The day before this happened, the US government refused to remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list. This is used in part for keeping Cuba on that list.
- Also to give a chilling effect to progressive movements in the United States.
- The US seems to be redefining what are terrorist actions and what its responses are.
- The lock down of Boston, the reclassification of Assata Shakur, the issuing of the drone memo of what eminence actually means.
- The US is attempting to create enough ambiguity in the statutes.
Guest – Eugene Puryear, Eugene is a writer and on the editorial board of the Liberation, Newspaper of the Party for Socialism and Liberations.
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CIW – Fair Food Program: Wendy’s
Last year Trader Joe’s and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers signed an agreement that formalized the ways in which Trader Joe’s support the CIW’s Fair Food Program, a hard won victory.. Since then efforts have turned to companies such as Publix supermarkets in Florida and the Wendy’s fast food chain. Recently, Fair Food activists across the country visited their local Wendy’s to deliver a message: It’s time to join the rest of the fast-food industry and support the Fair Food Program.
Emilio Faustino:
Translator Joe Parker:
- We’re farm workers who come from the town Immokalee, Florida that’s based in the Southwestern part of the state. Our community is a farm worker community and for many years we faced a number of different kinds of exploitation, poverty, wage theft, physical and verbal abuse as well as sexual harassment of many women working in the fields.
- We began our campaign focused on the big corporate buyers of the produce that we pick back in 2001 in an effort to improve wages and working conditions in the fields, we began with Taco Bell and from there had campaigns with McDonald’s, Burger King, until as you said 11 other companies came to the table to dialogue with farm workers and work to improving those wages and working conditions in their supply chains.
- We’re here in New York focused on Wendy’s fast food chain. For a number of years the coalition has been sending letters to the fast food chain asking them to join the Fair Food program. We launched a public campaign with them earlier this year but thus far they have ignored us.
- We want Wendy’s to do what most of these corporations have done, that’s pay one penny more for each tomato that they buy.
- We’re here for the Wendy’s shareholder action, and we’re going to be organizing an protest on Saturday, May 18, at 2PM at Union Square to send a message to company’s investors that this is something that farmworkers in Wendy’s supply chain really deserve. There will also be a number of actions taking place that day all over the country in a number of communities standing together with the CIW.
- Contact: www.ciw-online.org, email: workers@ciw-online.org, 239-657-8311
Guest – Emelio Faustino, farm worker, CIW activist living in Florida. He is among other workers picking tomatoes by hand for 10-12 hours per day, while getting paid 50 cents per bin, or about 200 to 283 dollars per week.
Guest – Joe Parker, CIW spokesman and translator.
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