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.
Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights
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Crisis In Syria Update: Black Agenda Report
Thousands of Syrians have died in the escalating conflict between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those that oppose his leadership. The vicious internal power struggles have forced tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into other countries including Turkey. This conflict could represent a threat to world peace according to UN based human rights groups.
Glen Ford:
- We have to see a global system that’s in crisis that has clearly decided that International Law, a body of international law that the United States had so much do with erecting after World War II.
- That body of International Law is no longer useful or tolerable to US empire.
- There is no international legitimacy as to what’s happening in Syria, which has now become a US model.
- It can gather in an ad hoc way any volunteer group of nations and pretend there is international legitimacy to the aggression that they mount.
- This time its against Syria, they’ve enlisted. They’re making a war, the NATO countries and gulf kingdoms against Syria.
- There is no concept here of inalienable rights of nations to run their own internal affairs.
- I believe the US saw the Arab Spring as a existential crisis.
- If they cannot achieve cleanly, the kind of regime change that they hope to achieve they do not hesitate to resort to the imposition of chaos.
- We’ve seen that in Africa for the last 50 years. That which we can’t directly control, we will through into chaos.
- They will be satisfied with years and years of chaos, and social disintegration and great loss of life.
- Muslim fundamentalism behaves very much like a nationalism.
- These jihadis have done the US a great service and they do know it.
- Despite the global financial crisis, and we’re still suffering from it unless we are banks, we do not have a political crisis.
- You only have a political crisis when there is effective resistance.
- When you have effective resistance then you have a conversation that is hostile to the order.
- Romney and Obama, there are no fundamental differences between these two people.
- We have these little dust ups off to the side made to look like arguments. The Republicans didn’t want modest taxes on the rich. That is all that separates them.
- Black America has historically been the point constituency for change in the United States.
- It is only with the passing on of this black president we’re going to see such a movement.
- The advent of a black in the White House has totally neutralized the black politic. It has short circuited our instinctive reactions to travesties wrought by power.
Guest – Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report and many other media forums. Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities.
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Russell Tribunal on Palestine: Phyllis Bennis
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 Phyllis Bennis at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.
Speaker – Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute For Policy Studies. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. In 2001 she helped found and remains on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. She works closely with the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, co-chairs the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine, and since 2002 has played an active role in the growing global peace movement. She continues to serve as an adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues.
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Locking Away Children For Life Without Parole
The United States is the only country in the world that sentences children to life, without the possibility of parole. Last month, the US Supreme Court revisited the question of whether juveniles convicted of murder should be given mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole. The Supreme Court had once ruled against imposing death sentences on juveniles and imposing life sentences on youth who aren’t convicted of murder. Currently, 2500 kids in jail are serving life sentences without parole in the US. 371 of those individuals are in Michigan prisons. Our next guest has been working on a lawsuit on behalf of 9 Michigan individuals who were sentenced to life in prison for crimes committed when they were minors and who are being denied the possibility of parole.
Attorney Deborah LaBelle:
- The concept that we’ve been talking about that these are children both under international law and US law for civil matters, children are different from adults.
- The Supreme Court seemed to readily grasp that, they weren’t speaking about juveniles or teenagers or young adults, they spoke continuously on what to do about children who are involved in homicide crime.
- The court had two cases in front of them, both involving 14 year olds, one in which the 14 did not commit a homicide, but convicted of either felony murder or aiding and abetting.
- That juvenile got mandatory life without possibility of parole, because the child was sentenced as an adult, the other case, the 14 year old actually committed the homicide.
- There is a handful of states, Michigan and I think 8 others who treat 17 year olds always as adults for all purposes in the criminal justice system.
- Under the 38 states, there’s a whole range, some you can only get life without parole, if you’re 16 and up, some allow it for 15, some states allow it for a child of any age, Michigan is one of them.
- One of the justices talked about that. Is there an age in which we would all share a collective cringe. What about a 5 year old, what about a 10 year old.
- The frontal lobe area of the brain that really addresses impulse control and long term consequences, and control issues of risk management, is developing through adolescence.
- People draw the age at different points, some say not til 19, some not til 23 as you say.
- There’s a bright line in civil law that’s been drawn in civil law that youth have a maturity that they can vote, when they can decide to leave school, when they can drink in some places, when they can drive.
- There are these bright lines.
- Every other country who has signed on to the conventions of the rights of the child which prohibits putting children in prison for life without possibility of parole explicitly has recognized that this practice is banned.
- The only other country that hasn’t signed on is Somalia and they don’t quite have a government right now to do that.
- We stand alone in not adhering to that convention on the rights of the child as well as we stand alone on approving this sentence.
- We have over 2500 youth who are serving of life without any possibility of parole. About 70 percent are children of color. A third of them, did not commit homicides.
- No one is arguing that there might not be circumstances, that a state couldn’t decide upon review that child couldn’t be released. What the argument is, you can’t keep them in there without any hope. You have to give them an opportunity to demonstrate upon maturation that they have been rehabilitated and they aren’t a threat to public safety.
- We should think of putting children in places where we can nurture, council and believe in their rehabilitation and give them a second chance.
- I read transcript after transcript of judges saying, – listen I don’t want to do this to this 14 or 16 year old, but I don’t have any choice. What is the value of putting a child away with no hope. It’s certainly not a public safety issue, because that can be addressed by the state by having parole or review hearings.
Guest – Attorney Deborah LaBelle, an attorney with the ACLU of Michigan’s Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative.
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Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- Supreme Court Decision on Qualified Immunity: Dick Cheney
- NYPD Turned Young Man Into Informant: Mosque Crawler
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Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
It’s an undisputed fact: both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations actively engaged in various methods of torture, and have done so with impunity. Despite initial public outrage at graphic images from the bowels of Abu Graib and Guantanamo prisons, government-sponsored torture has, on one level, come to be accepted as integral in the several perpetual wars waged by the United States. References to torture are now commonplace, sprinkled throughout the mainstream media and in popular culture references. Even discussion of different forms of torture has, in ways, become abstract.
We’ve reported, for example, that Cornell University Medical Center scientists have deemed so-called “forced standing” the most devastating mode of torture. Standing motionless for hours can shut down the kidneys, cause hallucinations and wreak much more damage.
And we’ve looked at numerous cases in which the perpetrators of US-sponsored terror have gone unpunished. In one case, while Italy’s high court upheld sentences of 23 CIA operatives convicted of kidnapping a Muslim cleric under the US program of “extraordinary rendition, more than 10 years later, the commanders who authorized the torture yet to face charges. This country’s practice of torture have become virtually sanitized, and in the process, does lasting damage to America’s moral authority as a world leader.
Professor Al McCoy:
- In the 1950s, the human mind was like the last continent to be discovered.
- People in Washington, the CIA were concerned that Russia was capable of programming people to do things against their will.
- Initially defensively and very quickly offensively the CIA led the US intelligence community, the British and Canadians on a massive search that lasted 12 years for sophisticated mind control techniques.
- It went through an exotic phase where they explored hypnosis and very famously almost notoriously drugs, that led to dead ends.
- They outsourced the mundane research to top ranking cognitive scientists. This produced two breakthroughs.
- One is sensory deprivation, second is stress positions.
- These two techniques self afflicted pain and sensory disorientation were combined in the CIA’s counter intelligence and interrogation manual in 1963.
- It was disseminated withing the US intelligence community and then through a bunch of CIA blinds then to international police training to US allies worldwide . . .leading to a global proliferation of torture on our side of the Iron Curtain.
- The UN Convention barred with equal weight the physical and psychological torture.
- We illegally took people and seized them, transferred them to allied nations where they would be likely to be subjected to torture.
- One of the favorite blinds of the CIA was the office of Naval Research.
- President Bush authorized the CIA to open up its own prisons, lease its own fleet of executive jets in order to move them around from prison to prison.
- Torture became normalized for the American people. Torture became omnipresent on screens large and small across America.
- The show 24 became enormously popular with 15-20 million views per episode. We’ve had torture normalized within the mass media.
- This process of impunity is really a transnational process.
- Rewriting history so that the fabric of the past is radically reconstructed to justify the use of torture.
Guest – Al McCoy, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation.” Al is also the author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror” and “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. The first edition of his book, published in 1972 as The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, sparked controversy, but is now regarded as the “classic work” about Asian drug trafficking.
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ACLU: When Boston Police Spy on Free Speech, Democracy Suffers
The Massachusetts National Lawyers Guild, along with the ACLU, recently issued a report detailing how the Boston Police Department has worked with its local fusion center to spy on lawful activities. The Center was established in the wake of 9/11 to more effectively share “terrorism-related” information among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies as well as with private entities.
Public police records, including documents and videotapes, obtained with a court order reveal a pattern of police surveillance of peaceful demonstrations, coupled with the practice of interrogating activists and labeling peaceful groups as extremists. Local groups and activists have long suspected that spying was taking place.
Urszula Masny-Latos:
- We know that various law enforcement agencies monitor peaceful activists.
- Even though COINTELL PRO ended in the 70s, we know that law enforcement agencies have continued spying.
- In 2009 when Israel attacked Gaza, there were many protests in Boston, one of those protests happened at the Israeli consulate.
- Four activists were arrested and the NLG represented them and eventually charges were dropped.
- While in jail the activists were interviewed by plain clothes officers.
- One of the activists was threatened because she refused to answer questions.
- Four BRIC officers interviewed those activists. BRIC (Boston Regional Intelligence Center) is one of two fusion centers we have in Massachussetts.
- We know that BRIC is not supposed to gather information or evidence from activists or anyone else.
- The Boston Police Department says BRIC officers only said they were available to talk with.
- Not only in Boston, people have to be very aware of it, fusion centers have been put in all states.
Guest – Urszula Masny-Latos, Executive Director of the Massachusetts National Lawyers Guild since 1996. She grew up in Poland, where she was active in the student movement. After moving to the U.S., she attended University of California at Santa Cruz where she majored in sociology and legal studies; her graduate work in arts management was done at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Prior to her Guild employment, Urszula organized arts festivals, managed a theater company, and worked as an organizer for a union in Boston.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Updates:
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Universal Jurisdiction: Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Shell / Bush 6 Case In Spain
This week the US Supreme Court will decide if corporations could be held liable in U.S. courts for violations of international human rights law in the land mark case Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. The case was brought by families of seven Nigerians who were executed by a former military government for protesting Shell’s exploration and development and is pushing to hold corporations accountable for human rights violations. The Supreme Court will also consider how the Alien Tort Statute Claim can be used the Kiobel case. A one sentence law that goes back to 1789 when the first judiciary act was brought in the United States. We’ve discussed this statute with several past guests including attorneys Peter Weiss and Rhonda Copeland who were instrumental in beginning the first cases in which human rights violations, taking place in other countries could actually be litigated in the United States.
We also discuss the recent amicus filing by a group of international human rights organizations and experts before the Spanish Supreme Court. The brief asks the Spanish Supreme Court to overturn a decision not to pursue a criminal case against six former officials from the Bush administration for their role in directing and implementing a systematic torture program. Past shows with Katherine Gallagher.
Attorney Katherine Gallagher:
- The Kiobel case has been in US courts since 2004.
- The claims were brought in the Southern District of New York, under a law from 1789, known as the Alien Tort Statute.
- This law allows non-US citizens to come into a US federal court and assert violations of the Laws of Nations or International Law.
- A recent precedence for this is Citizens United, what happened was that the Second Circuit ruled that corporations could not be held liable for these egregious human rights violations under the Alien Tort Statute.
- The question of corporate liability went up to the Supreme Court first.
- We had 2 judges from a 3 bunch panel in the Second Circuit suddenly come out in the fall of 2009 and say there is no corporate liability. That is the question that went up to the Supreme Court.
- Four other circuits had look at this question and they said of course corporations can be held as liable as an individual, a natural person.
- The Alien Tort Statute allows for a civil suit and civil liability rather than criminal liability.
- The key case from 1980 that CCR brought, the case of Filartiga, this case which the Supreme Court affirmed in 2004 as being on solid legal basis, claims by a Paraguayan, against a Paraguayan for actions that occurred in Paraguay.
- So its very strange that the Supreme Court was asking in a very broad fashion whether the ATS could apply to actions that occurred in another country. That is what the bulk of the cases brought under the ATS have been about.
- Some of the cases where the ATS is used are for some of the most serious violations. Cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, not your run of the mill case.
- What the justices seem to coalesce around was the issue of whether there’s an alternate forum. If the claims against Shell could have been brought in the UK or in the Netherlands, maybe they don’t need to be brought in the US.
- We’ve seen a trend in the last 20 years of other countries adopting stronger laws that allow for redress, and accountability, so we don’t have to be the world’s policeman.
- There have been 2 cases that percolated up in the last 4 years in Spain.
- The first is a widespread investigation of the torture program then Judge Balthazar Garzon. This is a case looking at torture in Guantanamo, and potentially in Iraq and Afghanistan, looking at the whole U.S. torture program. That case was brought on by 4 named plaintiffs.
- That case is very wide ranging, and willing to go up the chain of command as far as the evidence leads.
- There is a second case that was brought against specific U.S. individuals. They’re known as the Bush 6, including, Jay Bybee, John Yu, David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez. Six men who served as lawyers and argued to have essentially created both the legal structure that enabled the torture program, providing arguements for immunity and protecting participants of the torture program from accountability.
- Spain has a long and proud history of upholding International Law. Spain is where we had the case against Augusto Pinochet in the late 90s.
- We’ll be doing this as long as we need. We need to have accountability, its really critical.
Guest – Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), where she focuses on holding individuals, including US and foreign government officials, and corporations, including private military contractors, accountable for serious human rights violations. Among the cases she has worked, or is working, on are international accountability efforts for U.S. officials involved in torture (Spain, Switzerland, Canada); ICC Vatican Officials Prosecution; Arar v. Ashcroft, Corrie v. Caterpillar, Matar v. Dichter, Saleh v. Titan, Al-Quraishi v. Nakhla and L-3, Estate of Atban v. Blackwater.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights
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Updates:
- PFCJ Challenge Sidewalk Arrests During Occupy Wall Street Anniversary
- Insane Clown Posse To Sue The FBI
- Texas Policeman Shoots Wheelchair Bound Man In The Head
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ACLU Issues Statement In Response to Father-Daughter Dance Controversy
In Rhode Island, the Cranston School Department recently announced that it is banning traditional “father-daughter” and “mother-son” activities. citing a violation of federal law. The controversy arose when a local parent-teacher organization with support from the school, organized a “father-daughter” dance for female students and a “mother-son” outing to a Pawtucket Red Sox baseball game. When a single mother complained that her daughter could not attend the dance because her father was not a part of their life, the ACLU notified the school district they were suing for gender discrimination under Rhode Island law. The Rhode Island ACLU posted a statement noting that “This type of gender stereotyping only perpetuates outdated notions of ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ activities and is contrary to federal law.”
Attorney Steven Brown:
- Title IV is a federal law, a really crucial law promoting fairness and equality on the basis of gender in the school setting.
- There are certain exemptions, one in particular says its ok for schools to have father-son and mother-daughter events without violating this general ban on sex discrimination in school activities.
- Back in the 1980s, Rhode Island passed its own version of Title IV.
- In April or May of this year, we did receive a complaint from a parent, a single mother who has a daughter in the Cranston School district, and she received a notice of a “Me and My Guy Dinner Dance” for girls attending the school.
- There is no adult male in her life, she’s raised her daughter by herself. When she got this notice she was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to attend. She was also concerned about the mothers and sons event, she was barred from that as well.
- She also pointed out that the PTO was reverting to an old type of tradition that they’d actually stopped a few years previously. Nonetheless the PTO said we want to bring back this father-daughter dance and that’s what we’re doing.
- We very quickly got a letter back from the superintendent not only agreeing with us, but they notified the PTOs previously that they should not be holding these types of events.
- It was a rogue PTO president deciding to bring back this father-daughter dance after it had disappeared for some time. We thought that it was all resolved, until a candidate for state office in Cranston decided to turn it into a political issue.
- If their name (ACLU clients) were out there (in the public) based on what we’ve seen here, I would expect based on some of the vitriol we’ve seen here but also vitriol we’ve experienced in another case in the same school district, that there would be some adverse consequences.
Guest – Attorney Steven Brown, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Civil Liberties Union.
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Wisconsin Dept of Transportation And Federal Civil Rights Violations
The Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Civil Rights is moving to hold Wisconsin transportation officials accountable for allegedly discriminated against minorities. Though the state says it’s in compliance, a lawsuit proceeds on the legal basis of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits agencies that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, age or disability. The lawsuit could freeze construction on a major Wisconsin freeway interchange known as the Zoo Interchange. Meanwhile, the ACLU of Wisconsin and the Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin continue to issue complaints that the Wisconsin DOT has allegedly failed to address their requirements to gather data about the impact their actions have on minorities.
Attorney Kayrn Rotke:
- Title VI – If you get federal money you can’t discriminate on the basis of race.
- Most if not all federal agencies have civil rights offices or units or divisions that enforce those Title VI requirements.
- It prohibits actions that have a discriminatory effect.
- Milwaukee and the counties around it are the most racially segregated region in the United States.
- The other issue if you have job growth in these overwhelmly white suburbs and absolutely no transit access.
- Its making a transportation system that benefits commuters who are disproportionally white.
- At the same time the transit system is biting the dust.
- We see that as a program that is clearly having a discriminatory effect on people of color.
- I think there are hooks that you can look at to try to challenge this.
- State Departments of Transportation have to update Title VI annually.
- This is taking a step back and looking at it in an environmental justice way.
- You can’t have healthy people in a sick community.
Guest – Karen Rotke, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Wisconsin.
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The Democrats: A Critical History
As we near the 2012 Presidential election, many are complacent about what they see as having to choose between the lesser of two evils. By choosing political heads of the false left right political paradigm, where third party candidates are marginalized, sidelined or altogether pushed out or sidelined what are are we really supporting? We talk today with author Lance Selfa, who wrote the book The Democrats: A Critical History. It offers a realistic assessment of the Democratic Party and examines the nature of the party beyond the campaign rhetoric and media hype. Lance joins us today to talk about his book, the Democratic Party and the upcoming election.
Lance Selfa:
- I would describe it as one of the two big business parties that runs the American political system that trades off between itself and the Republican Party.
- Though many people don’t see it that way because it has the image of the party of the people. It’s the party that most African-Americans vote for, union members voter for.
- Really what controls it is big business interest.
- It was the party that tied together and held the southern slave holding class with northern financial interest and western farming interest.
- The Democratic Party combined the sense in which it was looked on as the party of social security and medicare and so on, but that was always coupled with commitment of the Democratic Party of an aggressive foreign policy that actually got us into wars like Vietnam.
- There’s a real bipartisan commitment to that empire.
- Both of them Republicans and Democrats answer to big business interests.
- The way Wall Street money is shifting support to Romney shows that business tries to play both parties to insure it’s interests are preserved.
- The Democrats are sort of like the “plan B” party for capital.
- Capital would prefer to have a party that’s just big business that doesn’t have to make any attempt to say that they’re in favor of any kind of programs for the poor.
- The Democrats at least have those rhetorical commitments. They have a social base that they have to placate.
- Business finds out in periods such as the end of the Bush Administration, the most unpopular administration since Richard Nixon that Republicans were going to get turfed out of office so business starts to move their money over to Democrats.
- If one succumbs to the idea that there are only two choices and the only thing anyone can do politically is to choose the lesser of two evils. Will voting for Obama actually advance an agenda of social movement? I would argue no.
Guest – Lance Selfa, author of The Democrats: A Critical History. Lance is a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review, and writes a column on U.S. politics in Socialist Worker newspaper.
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