Updates:

• Moratorium on Use of Tasers in Moberly, Missouri
• Janet Napolitano Moves To Stop A Hi-Rez Satellite Surveillance Program
• The Worm Turns: Veripass - Clear Security Service Data Unsecured?
  
• 47 States Allow a Post Conviction Test of DNA

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Segments This Week

• Charges Dismissed Against March of the Dead Activists: Laurie Arbeiter
• Supreme Court Denies Certiorari In the Cuban Five Case

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Charges Dismissed Against March of the Dead Activists: Laurie Arbeiter

On January 6, 2009, artist and activist Laurie Arbeiter joined seventy others from around the country for the March of the Dead. Participants assembled in Washington and began to read the names of those killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine before the Capitol Police interrupted the event and arrested seventeen people. Four of them, including Laurie, appeared in court last week on charges of unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct, where the judge nullified their case. Robbie Diesu, Michelle Grise, and Pete Perry also appeared in court with Laurie.  In the event that Laurie and others would be convicted, she prepared a statement to read outside of the courthouse. Click here to read that statement.

Laurie is a member of The Critical Voice, which started the We Will Not Be Silent T-shirt campaign.

Laurie Arbeiter:

• Four of us were put on trial for an action that we did Jan 6, 2009. The first day of 111th Congress.
• People came from all over the country to circle the Capitol in death masks carrying the names of the dead from Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza.
• On that day, 17 of us were arrested and some of us were brought all the way to trial.
• Last week, we went into court for disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly.
• We didn’t get to mount our case because of the gross misconduct of the government, including tampering with evidence, they destroyed evidence.
• We were followed by police both on bicycles and motorcycles, throughout the day. But then we decided to go into the Senate Hart Building, in the atrium. We continued with the March of the Dead. Another group hung billboard sized banners.
• When we did the solemn procession before we got to the Capitol, the police on bikes were waiting for us. I was in the lead, wearing a death mask and police officers started taunting me, pointing at me saying, “we know who you are.” It makes me feel more defiant.
  
• As Barack Obama said, “those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.”
• I am one of many that stand proud in solidarity with all the other people that came from around the country.
• During the court case, the police officer kept saying how loud we were, but we are all quiet, and read the names of the dead reverently.
• The police asked the court to see a youtube video, edited, sound enhanced, the judge allowed it. They had problems projecting the video in court.
• So, they used the judge’s laptop. My lawyer cross-examined the police officer, where are your notes, the log of the event. The cop answered they went away. At that point the case was dismissed.
  
• This case was about what is allowed of a free people who feel an urgency because war crimes are being committed in their time. What are we as a free people allowed to do? Where do we go to seek justice?
• I would have asked the court - if crimes are being committed why wouldn’t decent people speak up so their voices could be heard? Why is that a crime? While the people who committed the most heinous acts against human beings are set free. Why are we being prosecuted?

Guest - Laurie Arbeiter, artist, prominent activist, and designer of “We Will Not Be Silent” T-shirt series. To order T-shirts, email Laurie at - Arrestbush(at)gmail.com. Her website (currently being built) is wewillnotbesilent.net.

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Supreme Court Denies Certiorari In the Cuban Five Case

As listeners may already know, the Supreme Court recently declined to hear the case of the Cuban Five. The request for review, which included a record-setting 12 amicus briefs and received widespread international attention, was the Cuban Five’s last chance for a new trial.

The Five’s defense attorneys argued it was impossible for the men to get fair trials in Miami, where anti -Castro sentiment runs high, and that the convictions should be overturned.

Last year, the 11th U.S. District Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld the convictions of the Cuban Five who are serving long prison sentences charged with spying and conspiracy to commit murder. Joining us again to discuss the case is noted criminal defense attorney Leonard Weinglass, who represented the Cuban Five. Len, welcome back to the show. Demonstration video link

Len Weinglass:

• 98 Percent of all petitions for Cert are denied. We were optimistic because our position was so strongly stated and unprecedently joined by 11 briefs and friends of the court including 10 Nobel Prize winners.
• Then June 15, the news came down. The court rejected out of hand without a single dissenting opinion.
• We were hoping against experience that teaches otherwise, that the Obama Administration would lighten up on this case and acknowledge some of the undisputed facts.
• Timing: June 5, 2009 Kendall and Gwendolyn Meyers arrested for passing classified information to Cuban handlers.
• Batson Case - The government permitted several minorities on the jury who were elderly and less well educated as a shield against challenges of racial bias. The record shows the government removed seven younger well educated minority jurors. We brought this to the court’s attention, because this is happening throughout the country (Mumia Abu Jamal case - instruction film to purge minority jurors)
• Community prejudice issue: Trying the Cuban Five case in Miami.
• This is the first “conspiracy to commit espionage” case in which there was not a single classified document.
• The options have become narrower, three of the five are up for re-sentencing. I’m hopeful my client Antonio Guerrero will not get a life sentence but will get a set term of years.The Cuban Five have served 10 years.
• Analagous cases - Ben-Ami Kadish - recently (Dec 2008) received a suspended sentence and 50 thousand dollar fine ( which he responded, no problem judge.) for taking classified documents to his handler’s home in Riverdale, Bronx several times (including information about nuclear weapons, a modified F-15 fighter, and the Patriot missiles) and let an unnamed Israeli government worker take photographs of them.
• Posada Carriles, has a long standing association with the CIA, which his attorney acknowledged in court papers. Carriles was charged with the murder of 73 people, he escaped prison, (with help of unknown persons) He was then hired by the CIA, paid by the US tax payer to help in the war against the elected government of Nicarargua.
• Carriles was involved in bringing down the first commercial plane in mid-flight. Cubana airline, the bomb exploded (C4) that was placed in a toothpaste tube left in the mens room. The tail assembly was damaged, then pilots lost control and plane plummeted into ocean. Carriles was named by the person who he paid them to do it. That person is a cab driver in Caracas, Venezuela and is available to the media.
• Going forward with the Cuban Five cases, there are legal options, specifically 18 US C2255 - Federal Habeas. We could raise constitutional issues that haven’t previous been raised and litigated, we have one year in which to file. We’re not completely out of court, but what’s called the “direct appeals” are over. We now have collateral appeals.
• It’s up to the Obama Administration to recognize the reality here of what happened and begin the process of returning the Five home.

Guest - criminal defense attorney Leonard Weinglass, who represented the Cuban Five, as William Kunstler’s younger partner, Len Weinglass was considered the work horse of the defense team. He’s worked on a number of political cases including the Pentagon Papers trial and the Angela Davis case. He’s a Yale Law School graduate and former U.S. Air Force Captain.

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Host Updates:

• Jose Padilla Sues John Yoo
• Four Uighurs Released To Bermuda
• State Secrets - ACLU’s National Security Project.
• State Secrets - Torture Photos - Release them, so the US can see what their government did.
  
• State Secrets - CIA Fights Full Report on Tortured Detainees
  
• Obama Refuses to Show Visitor’s List to the Whitehouse / Coal Company?

Segments this week:

• Peter Weiss : International Human Rights Law and the Royal Dutch Shell Settlement
• A Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting: TORTURE AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE - Chris Hedges / Laura Flanders
  
• For WBAI - Men, Mobs and Law by Rebecca Hill

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Peter Weiss : International Human Rights Law and the Royal Dutch Shell Settlement

Europe’s largest oil company Royal Dutch Shell settled a landmark lawsuit last week, agreeing to pay 15.5 million to avoid a trial over it’s alleged involvement in human rights violations in the Niger Delta. The case was brought by relatives of human rights and environmental activists killed in Nigeria who accused Shell of complicity in the 1995 executions of Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro Wiwa and eight others. Charges in the case include summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrest, wrongful death, assault and battery, and infliction of emotional distress. Attorney Peter Weiss explains how historic laws such as the Alien Tort Claim are used to hold multinational corporations accountable for human rights crimes.

Peter Weiss:

• They (Royal Dutch Shell) knew all along that they were complicit. Decades ago I was involved in the struggle against colonialism in Africa. What that settlement represented was a victory against neo-colonialism.
• I think we all hope at the Center for Constitutional Rights that this will send a signal to other companies.
• Peter Weiss and Rhonda Copeland 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.
• Alien Tort Statute Claim: We first discovered that during the Mei Li massacre. It’s a one sentence law that goes back to the first judiciary act in the United States in 1789.
• It simply says, an alien shall have a right of action in district court for a violation of the law of nations. (as international law was called in the 18th century)
• Ten years later Amnesty International got in touch with CCR, saying we have this torturer in Paraguay. Which became known as Filartica - 1978 / 1980 was the decision. It set the stage for hundreds of cases.
• About 15 years ago, CCR applied that statute to the human rights crimes of corporations in foreign countries.
• We’ve had a few victories and one of them was the UNOCAL case, where UNOCAL was using slave labor. That case was settled. Now, the Wiwa case was settled.
• If you’re familiar with what corporations are doing around the world, you can imagine how many such cases can be brought.
• Royal Dutch Shell was actually paying these Nigerian soldiers that were committing these atrocities.
• The worst thing that they did was go to the Nigerian government and say we have to get rid of these trouble makers.
• Nigeria was under a corrupt dictatorship at the time.
• We’re not the only ones, the Center for Justice and Accountability out in California have victories against Salvadorian torturers
• Jerry Nadler had a hearing on the state’s secrets act and on the opening statement, he says people bring these suits and the government comes in and says state secrets, the suit can’t go forward. But there’s an international law says Nadler, that has to be a remedy for every right.

Guest - Peter Weiss, former Vice President, Center for Constitutional Rights and Vice President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.

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A Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting: TORTURE AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE

We hear from Laura Flanders, journalist and host of GRITtv, and Chris Hedges, former New York Times Mideast bureau chief, author of many books specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was also the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. Chris Hedges’ new book, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” will be out in July and can be preordered at your local bookstore.

Speakers :

• Michael Ratner, is the president, Center for Constitutional Rights, and an international human rights lawyer
• Laura Flanders, journalist and host of GRITtv
• Jeremy Scahill, investigative reporter and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
• Sister Dianna Ortiz -founder and director of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC)
• Gitanjali Gutierrez, attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights representing prisoners held at Guantanamo
• Chris Hedges, former New York Times Mideast bureau chief, author “American Fascists”
• Andy Zee, spokesperson for Revolution Books and author of “The Collapse of ‘The Movement’; the Resistance and the Revolutionary Movement We Need”

Organized by Revolution Books / Libros Revolucion

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For WBAI Listeners

Men, Mobs and Law by Rebecca Hill

Men Mobs and Law is the title of Rebecca Hill’s new book that explores the complexities of protest movements, race, class and gender. Hill draws comparisons in two types of left protest campaigns, those that defend labor organizers from prosecution and the anti-lynching groups that seek to memorialize lynching victims. Hill says, both groups have influenced each other throughout history and she specifically connects the narratives and stories of the NAACP’s anti lynching work to the IWW’s labor defense campaigns.

Rebecca Hill’s treatment of these dramatic stories has been called “fresh, lively, richly detailed, and impassioned.”

Rebecca Hill:

• When I first started the book it was about martyrdom and the American Left and heroic politics. I’ll take these particular cases, John Brown, Haymarket etc.
• In the research I found that this other problem that there is no law enforcement and the source of terror that black activists were dealing with was extra-legal. . . . and their anti-lynching activism that started in the 60s - and I then went back to Ida B Wells, Dubois - 1887-1890s
• Ida B Wells talking about how dangerous passion is. This is a problem in leftest activism in general. It goes to the big questions of political theory and rationale, the role of emotions, questions of what is the meaning of popular action,
• I didn’t want to condemn either side, the anti lynching movement strategy or and the socialist left defense organizing, because they both came out of experiences that informed their politics.
• If you’re facing terroristic mobs, you’re going to respond with a strategy. The anarchists and socialists movement response spoke to the lynching and their response was in inadequate - “rise up in self defense.”
• If you lived in the post reconstructive South, rising up in self defense was not realistic without legal protection.
• What came out of the Haymarket movement in the 1880s was the idea that the key element of solidarity in a labor movement is when somebody is arrested, or victimized as a result of organizing, its the membership that can save them. Not the law. The law is a tool, it’s not enough perhaps.
• The courts are structured by the ruling class, they’re stacked against the worker who is in court. They didn’t want the court room take away from the radicalism of the movement.
• Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - defense expert in IWW trials and Sacco Vanzetti case. Anarchists connected to Sacho and Vanzetti case didn’t want structure and organizing
• I was very active in the Mumia Abu Jamal campaign, you see the greater successes in the popular defense organizing it’s not based on the legal strategy, its when is the movement stronger. You see more victories in the thirties because the labor movement was big and the consensus was moving to the left during the New Deal
• John Brown’s defense is close to the fugitive slave rescues which were anti-court . John Brown’s notion that the courts are wrong and should answer to a higher power, not the current law of slavery. John Brown attempted to make available weapons for slaves to take up arms. See the book John Brown Mysteries
• I don’t really think of John Brown as a religious zealot, I think he really believed in popular organizing and popular activism.

Guest - Rebecca Hill, author of Men Mobs and Law.

Host Updates:

• Dr. Alan Berkman Remembered - Michael Smith
  
• Troy Davis Update /Amnesty USA Action / NAACP Action
• Holy Land Case Update
  

Segments This Week:

• Disgraceful Coverage: New York Times Article Riddled With Inaccuracy
• US “Preventive Detention” System In Place

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Disgraceful Coverage: New York Times Article Riddled With Inaccuracy

On May 21, the New York Times newspaper published a front page story, titled 1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds. Journalist, Elisabeth Bumiller stated from the Pentagon report that 74 prisoners released from Guantanamo had “returned to terrorism.” Many have criticized Bumiller for parroting the Pentagon without investigation or at least being aware of the Seton Hall Law School’s work in challenging the Pentagon’s many recidivism reports. Using the phrase “rejoining jihad” assumes guilt to all former Guantanamo prisoners. The DOD counted Uighers and the Tipton 3, to have returned to the battlefields. The Myth of Return To The Battlefield from Guantanamo

Mark Denbeaux:

• Pentagon playing with numbers, first they said people (in Guantanamo) returned to the fight who were never in the fight, and then they said they returned to the fight from Guantanamo who were never in Guantanamo and never in the fight.
• None of the people that the DOD has listed in its 45 times has ever attacked American troops or its American interests or Americans anywhere in the world. With one exception, none of them have left their home country to whom they’ve returned.
• I was quoted in that article, the reporter called me for 2 days in a row, saying she’s under enormous pressure from her NYTimes editors.
• Talking with the Public Editor we both agreed comparing Elisabeth Bumiller with Judith Miller wasn’t fair but he said it was reminiscent of the lead up to the Iraq War
• A disgrace in the coverage of Guantanamo, a grotesque statement that was wrong with huge political consequences and they (NY Times) couldn’t un-ring that bell.
• There are NY Times reporters immersed in Guantanamo and National Security issues, why did they drop this in the lap of Elisabeth Bumiller? She said (Elisabeth Bumiller) that the Pentagon can’t release information because of politics. I said at least say that politics are involved. She said, I can’t say that.
• Add to that, that the editors were pushing her to get this story out. (Memorial Day Weekend)
  
• I think everyone agrees that the headline was grotesque and everyone noted the story came out on the morning of Cheney’s speech, and he had it at the ready in his speech.
• I was able with a group of Seton Hall Law students to go through the data the AP produced from a FOIA application.
• My students discovered that only 4 percent of those in Guantanamo were picked up by US forces, 86 percent were bounties in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• It turned out that if you had 4 or 5 Arabs in a truck that was 20 or 25 thousand US dollars. But for one bounty, it 5 thousand dollars.
• For that 5 thousand dollar bounty you could feed your village as it said in the (CIA brochure) for a year. . .etc
• 55 percent of those in Guantanamo were not accused of commiting a hostile act.
• One of my conservative students asked, Where’s Mr. Big? We’re reading through the lists, he says what about this guy? He turns out to be under US allegation conscripted by the Taliban to be an assistant cook.
• This person surrendered but considered to be among the 45 percent of GTMO prisoners accused of hostile acts. His hostile act was surrendering to the Northern Alliance.

Guest - Seton Hall Law School Professor Mark Denbeaux gives an accurate reading on the Guantanamo prisoner recidivism rates. Professor Mark Denbeaux, one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members, is also the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research, which is best known for its dissemination of the internationally recognized series of reports on the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp.

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US “Preventive Detention” System In Place

President Obama has held on to the power to allow for a “preventive detention” system that would indefinitely jail terror suspects in the United States without a trial. In a number of Guantanamo habeas corpus cases, the US government’s arguments set up a framework to give the president power to hold terror suspects indefinitely without charge or trial. This is the same broad executive power wielded by the Bush Administration that essentially defines a police state. It would be a total disaster if Congress were to pass a preventive detention regime into law say concerned civil rights lawyers.

David Remes:

• One of my colleagues called CCR and asked how can we help, and CCR doled out 13 Yemenis to represent at Guantanamo.
• We represented them since July 2004, along the way we’ve picked Albanians, more Yemenis and a Pakistani.
• I have my own non-profit human rights litigation firm called Appeal For Justice. I’ve had this up and running since it became clear I could no longer continue at a corporate law firm.
• I really lost interest in the corporate work that I was doing. I would come back from Guantanamo thinking on the way back, nothing else matters.
• I am right now at the secure facility at Arlington Virginia. This is a facility that the government set up to hold our interview notes and exhibits that are deemed to be classified information. It’s not a very pleasant place to work.
• So here are now in June, a year after the Supreme Court said that the men could bring Habeas cases, and they’re still here, five months after the Obama Administration said they would determine case by case who could be released.
• President Obama has released two men.
• My client Adnan Latif with severe psychological issues and a variety of neglected medical conditions. He’s tried to commit suicide a number of times that we know about.
• He’s a very intelligent young man, he writes beautiful poetry. In the last meeting I had with him, but under the table he had chipped off a piece of the formica and started sawing into the vein in his wrist.
• Then at a certain point he said I have a gift for you. I want something for you to remember me by, and he threw a small cup of his blood at me.
• Guantanamo prisoner suicides are considered acts of war against the US.
• I think the idea of preventive detention is an idea that goes too far analytically, because if you can preventively detain people why try them at all.
• I’m afraid that the Obama Administration may pursue legislation, that would strip jurisdiction and deny the right of Habeas.
• Forty percent of Guantanamo prisoners are Yemenis. This is diplomatic problem, not a case by case review.

Guest - Attorney David Remes , who represents 16 Guantanamo detainees from Yemen. Remes played a role in a challenge focused around the captives’ detention based on an avenue of appeal that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (DTA) opened. The DTA closed the opportunity for captives who had not yet had writs of habeas corpus filed on their behalf. But the DTA allowed captives to challenge the determinations of their Combatant Status Review Tribunals, that they were properly classified as “enemy combatants”.

_______________________________________________________________

Host Updates:

• Susan Jordan Remembered by Lynne Stewart and Heidi Boghosian
• Activist Lawyer Susan Jordan Killed In Plane Crash

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Segments This Week:

• A Look Into the Memorial Day Weekend Terror Plot - Guest Mike German
• A Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting: TORTURE AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE
  
• WBAI: Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

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A Look Into the Memorial Day Weekend Terror Plot

A few weeks ago we spoke with Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California about how the FBI infiltrated Southern California mosques and intrusively monitored members of the Muslim community as if they were criminals. Similar news broke the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11.

Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen were ex cons and drug addicts who were probably entrapped by an all too familiar FBI informant sting that lured them into plotting to commit political violence.

Columnist for the Nation, Robert Dreyfuss writes in his article titled, Yet Another Bogus ‘Terror’ Plot since 9/11 not a single American has even been punched in the nose by an angry Muslim, as far as I can tell. Plot after plot the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge! bombing the New York Subways! taking down the Sears Tower! bombing the Prudential building in Newark! proved to be utter nonsense.

Mike German:

• Typically what I do is completely ignore the news stories and go straight to the indictment.
• There were a couple things in the indictment that were shocking. One, the indictment made clear that the informant was convicted in a fraud scheme. The FBI sent this criminal into a mosque. Sending a criminal into a house of worship seems like a misguided approach.
• These hapless unemployed guys were not going to get their hands on heavy weaponry any time soon, the fact that FBI brought in the SAM (Surface To Air) missle is a problem. It makes these people more dangerous than they ever would have been.
• Reading through the indictment, these guys weren’t able to find a gun in New York City, let alone a Stinger missile.
• It was also the informant who introduced the terrorist organization into the discussion.
• Bottomline is you don’t want the government inventing a crime than enticing innocent people into that crime.
• The argument against that is that the people were pre-disposed to commit the crime and the government presented the opportunity. In this case the informant seemed to bringing all the important facts into the game.
• Fits into pattern - you can turn to the Liberty 7 Case, The Ft. Dix Case, the California Lodi Case that involve informants.
• I worked as an undercover agent and it surprises me why these aren’t long term projects with undercover agents. (instead using ex-con informants)
• For the most part the undercover agents’ motives are pure, they’re better trained on how not to commit entrapment and document the planning of the crime instead of using enticements.
• The indictment says that the informant was offering money in an impoverished community. 10 - 15 thousand dollars to join the team. If you’re out of work, it’s kind of hard to turn that down.
• The facts will have to come out in the case as far as documented history of whether these people are involved.
• They could have wrapped this up without making it seem like they’re saving New York City from this terrible destruction.

Guest - ACLU attorney and former FBI agent, Mike German, German develops policy positions and proactive strategies on pending legislation and executive branch actions concerning domestic surveillance, data mining, freedom to travel, medical and financial privacy, national ID cards, whistleblower protection, military commissions and law enforcement conduct. German currently serves as an adjunct professor for Law Enforcement and Terrorism at the National Defense University and is a Senior Fellow with GlobalSecurity.org. German graduated from the Northwestern University Law School , and graduated cum laude from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in Philosophy. A sixteen-year veteran of federal law enforcement, German served as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations. As an undercover agent, German twice infiltrated extremist groups using constitutionally sound law enforcement techniques. These operations successfully prevented terrorist attacks by winning criminal convictions against terrorists.

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A Revolution Books Town Hall Meeting: TORTURE AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE

We hear from Sister Dianna Ortiz, who was abducted in 1989 by right-wing forces in Guatemala and brutally tortured.  She wrote about her experiences and recovery in the book The Blindfold’s Eyes. My Journey From Torture to Truth.  Ortiz is the founder and director of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC).  We listen also to Jeremy Scahill, investigative reporter and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Jeremy is also a frequent contributor to the Nation.  Lastly we hear an excerpt from Michael Ratner’s speech.  Co-host Michael Ratner, is the president, Center for Constitutional Rights, and an international human rights lawyer who in 2006 filed a criminal complaint in the courts of Germany requesting the criminal prosecution of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Speakers :

• Michael Ratner, is the president, Center for Constitutional Rights, and an international human rights lawyer
• Laura Flanders, journalist and host of GRITtv
• Jeremy Scahill, investigative reporter and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
• Sister Dianna Ortiz -founder and director of Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC)
• Gitanjali Gutierrez, attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights representing prisoners held at Guantanamo
• Chris Hedges, former New York Times Mideast bureau chief, author “American Fascists”
• Andy Zee, spokesperson for Revolution Books and author of “The Collapse of ‘The Movement’; the Resistance and the Revolutionary Movement We Need”

Organized by Revolution Books / Libros Revolucion

————————-

For WBAI Listeners:

Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

Here on Law and Disorder we recently talked with several guests on the escalation of war in Afghanistan under the Obama Administration. Last week Obama appointed General Stanley McChrystal to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan, - another decision revealing how Obama has restored the most notorious Bush era policies according to James Petra, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. In his article titled Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars, Petra outlines how McChrystal’s past brutal leadership is marked by systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and extrajudicial assassinations. Between September 2003 and August 2008, Petra writes - McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations. Petra also mentions that McChrystal is one reason why Obama is fighting to prevent the release of graphic photos that document torture by US soldiers and interrogators. Related: Mysterious Chip-CIA’s Latest Weapon Against Taliban.

Jim Petras:

• It’s very clear that Obama wants a bigger and more ferocious counterinsurgency program.
• Obama is also concerned because the entire Pakistan and Afghanistan borders are supporting resistance. Indigenous, anti-colonial forces have taken over.
• He’s going all out now, he’s pressured the puppet president of Pakistan to launch this humanitarian crime against the Pakistani people, creating 2 million Pakistani refugees, destruction and civil war.
• The overall picture that we get is a tremendous boost in militarization. In the last couple of months it’s one attack after another on the Pakistan military.
• McCrystal is gung-ho, he’s a greater asset to destroy the social networks among the resistance. Similar to Vietnam, to go into villages and assassinate local leaders.
• General McCrystal is a proponent of direct action strictly involved in US terrrorist operations. Slitting throats and strangling anyone remotely connected with the armed resistance.
• There was effort to distinguish between civilians and armed resistors. McCrystals approach is to empty the pond to catch the fish. There going in to drive out millions of people in Pakistan to catch a few thousand resistance fighters.
• This is a monstrous humanitarian disaster compared to Rwanda.
• Torture Photos: You can’t publicize the worst activities of the person you appoint to be the head honcho in this phase of the war.
• Navy Seals, Delta Force, Special Operations Command. I was at Ft. Bragg, in a debate with military officers regarding death squads in Central America. These are killing operations, no surrender. The people that go into it are psycopaths.
• That Obama appointed McCrystal to this position builds bridges back to the worst part of the Bush Administration. Obama has accepted the general paradigm of the past presidents, he has a vision of military empire building, rather than realizing that much more power is achieved in economic expansion and investment.
• The US thought they could do both, economic and military empire building, but with the loss of manufacturing and rise of financial businesses there was no counterweight to the military side of empire. American power can only be realized through a massive military commitment.
• This is a war against a people, it’s going to be a long dirty war. It’s already shaping up. It’s a cost for big oil and manufacturing, rather than a benefit.

Guest - James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50_year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co_author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006); Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007) and Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Clarity Press 2008)

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WBAI Listeners Click Here For June 1, Rundown

Torture And The Need For Justice - Wednesday June 3, at the New York Society For Ethical Culture.

Updates:

• Italian CIA Case Moves Forward
• AT&T Equal Pay For Women
• Supreme Court: Right To Counsel Overturned
  

Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

Here on Law and Disorder we recently talked with several guests on the escalation of war in Afghanistan under the Obama Administration. Last week Obama appointed General Stanley McChrystal to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan, - another decision revealing how Obama has restored the most notorious Bush era policies according to James Petra, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. In his article titled Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars, Petra outlines how McChrystal’s past brutal leadership is marked by systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and extrajudicial assassinations. Between September 2003 and August 2008, Petra writes - McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations. Petra also mentions that McChrystal is one reason why Obama is fighting to prevent the release of graphic photos that document torture by US soldiers and interrogators.  Related: Mysterious Chip-CIA’s Latest Weapon Against Taliban.

Jim Petras:

• It’s very clear that Obama wants a bigger and more ferocious counterinsurgency program.
• Obama is also concerned because the entire Pakistan and Afghanistan borders are supporting resistance. Indigenous, anti-colonial forces have taken over.
• He’s going all out now, he’s pressured the puppet president of Pakistan to launch this humanitarian crime against the Pakistani people, creating 2 million Pakistani refugees, destruction and civil war.
• The overall picture that we get is a tremendous boost in militarization. In the last couple of months it’s one attack after another on the Pakistan military.
• McCrystal is gung-ho, he’s a greater asset to destroy the social networks among the resistance. Similar to Vietnam, to go into villages and assassinate local leaders.
• General McCrystal is a proponent of direct action strictly involved in US terrrorist operations. Slitting throats and strangling anyone remotely connected with the armed resistance.
• There was effort to distinguish between civilians and armed resistors. McCrystals approach is to empty the pond to catch the fish. There going in to drive out millions of people in Pakistan to catch a few thousand resistance fighters.
• This is a monstrous humanitarian disaster compared to Rwanda.
• Torture Photos: You can’t publicize the worst activities of the person you appoint to be the head honcho in this phase of the war.
• Navy Seals, Delta Force, Special Operations Command. I was at Ft. Bragg, in a debate with military officers regarding death squads in Central America. These are killing operations, no surrender. The people that go into it are psycopaths.
• That Obama appointed McCrystal to this position builds bridges back to the worst part of the Bush Administration. Obama has accepted the general paradigm of the past presidents, he has a vision of military empire building, rather than realizing that much more power is achieved in economic expansion and investment.
• The US thought they could do both, economic and military empire building, but with the loss of manufacturing and rise of financial businesses there was no counterweight to the military side of empire. American power can only be realized through a massive military commitment.
• This is a war against a people, it’s going to be a long dirty war. It’s already shaping up. It’s a cost for big oil and manufacturing, rather than a benefit.

Guest - James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50_year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co_author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006); Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007) and Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Clarity Press 2008)

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Gringo - A Coming of Age in Latin America

In the book Gringo - A Coming of Age in Latin America, author Chesa Boudin travels through parts of Venezuela, the streets of Guatemala and to protests in Santiago. Boudin’s narrative chronicles nearly a decade of on-the-road experiences in Latin America. He’s captured the transformation in Latin American politics through the voices of the wealthy and the desperately poor.

One review called Gringo, a quote - compelling firsthand account of the unregulated greed, social neglect, and deliberate misrule that has provoked so many Latin Americans to demand a better life for themselves and their children.”

Seymour Hersch says in another review, it’s quote - cheap beer, fried plantains, long dusty bus rides, radical politics, the repeated kindness of desperately poor people sharing what they have with an outsider, and Chesa Boudin’s eagerness to share what he’s seeing and what he’s feeling, with sympathy and empathy __ as he tries to sort it all out. There’s much to learn in this book.”

Chesa Boudin:

• This is a book that weaves together two different threads. One is my own personal journey, my own effort to make sense of my identity, my place in the world as a white, priveledged North American man. But also, in the context of where I was traveling, working and studying in Latin America at a time when the region was experiencing a dramatic political shift to the left.
• I had grown up in a very political family. All 4 of my parents had been very involved in the anti-war movement. Both of my biological parents Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were incarcerated in New York State maximum security prisons.
• I grew up in two very different worlds, one of prison and one of privelege and opportunity.
• I took public buses mainly, interacted with the poorest and most humble as well as the elite rich.
• I went to Guatemala and from there I went to Chile, which was a classic example of what Naomi Klein writes about in the Shock Doctrine of the US with Pinochet imposing the neo-liberal model on the people.
• I sat for hours and hours in line to change money into pesos, I watched entire families digging through garbage on the street.
• The irony Michael is that I found time and again, the most downtrodden, the most humble, the ones living 17 people in a 2 bed room apartment that took me in. Those were the ones that were the most generous.
• When the political and economic models come out of Washington, it became difficult to fathom what another government approach would look like.
• In Venezuela, I watched the recreation of system based not on shutting people out but rather giving them a stake in the day to day functioning of their government and empowering poor people.
• Instead of having people from another country or economic class come in and tell them what they need to do.
• Venezuela is exciting, its hard to predict what may happen. Ten years into Chavez’s presidency, an opposition opinion poll places him at 60 percent.
• One of the controversies in Venezuela is the constitutional reform of term limits.
• The people voted for this not only for the president but for other offices as well, the New York Times framed it as the downfall of democracy.
• Bolivia has been my favorite country to visit, it’s a beautiful country. Visiting the mines and talking with the miners is something I use as a lens to view the country’s current politics and the political development that led to the election of Evo Morales.
• One thing I’ve noticed in Bolivia is the left has gotten much more experience being critical from the outside then from actually learning to govern from the inside.

Guest - Chesa Boudin - a Rhodes Scholar, is a student at Yale Law School and author of Gringo: A Coming-of-Age in Latin America (Scribner)

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Updates

• Military Commissions continue under Obama
• Barack Obama Prevents Release of 2000 New Torture Photos
• Democrats Decide To Leave Guantanamo Prisoners In Cuba, Including Uighers
• Rememberance of Malcolm X on His 84th Birthday - Michael Steven Smith
  

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Jeremy Scahill - “Little Known Military Thug Squad Still Brutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama”

Author and independent journalist Jeremy Scahill delivers a rare report on the actions of the Immediate Reaction Force’s torture tactics with disturbing detail. While the Obama administration prevents the release of thousands of photos, Scahill describes the graphic imagery of the ongoing torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and in prisons abroad.  Teams of men in padded gear enter the cell of a Guantanamo prisoner and are basically assigned body parts to restrain. Rarely heard about in the media, Scahill writes about the multiple accounts of severe beatings delivered by IRF teams that include sustained injuries such as broken noses, blindness and brain damage. In one incident a US soldier was IRF’d during a training exercise, he now suffers seizures up to 10 episodes a day.

Jeremy Scahill:

• The US has a one party system and Obama is showing that very clearly.
• On January 22, Obama said that Guantanamo would be closed in a year.
• Obama is continuing the use of a notorious military police unit at Guantanamo, known as the Immediate Reaction Force.
• They come into a cell, five men deep, they douse the prisoner with chemicals, each thug sent in is assigned a different body part and their job is to subdue restless or combative prisoners.
• This is not about stopping a riot in prison, or keep a prisoner from stabbing a guard. What’s going on is if a prisoner has an extra styro-foam cup in their cell, they are IRF’d.
• They have smeared feces of another prisoner onto the face of a prisoner.
• In one case that CCR has taken, a prisoner was doused with chemicals, beaten and the IRF team members urinate on his head.
• Scott Horton says this force was authorized at the highest levels of the Bush Administration.
• When you don’t prosecute those who set the tone for this torture, you encourage it, not allow it, you encourage it to continue.
• The Democratic Party is a shill for powerful corporations. Harry Reid implied that Guantanamo prisoners should not be moved to the US because they would be a threat to US security.
• The real danger here is to the US Constitution and the reality is that the torture program was bi-partisan.
• Nancy Pelosi’s participation in authorizing the torture program is not a partisan issue, it’s a law enforcement issue with grave implication to the United States and the world.
• Michael Ratner: Looking forward to a future without torture is guaranteed by prosecution, not impunity.
• I actually have people standing up and walking out on speeches, when I was criticizing Obama, a group of students at an American University walked out.
• Name the countries of the world where people walk around with the president’s face on their T-shirts.
• The facade is starting to crack. People are realizing now we are at a critical moment in history to reflect on the one party system that we have.
• Obama has sucked the air out of the social movements that were co-opted by the Democratic Party or willingly folded themselves into the Obama campaign mechanism.

Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His writing and reporting is available at Rebel Reports.

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Chris Hedges - Buying Brand Obama

We’ve been duped. The global celebrity status of President Obama has been molded into a brand writes Chris Hedges, former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times. Obama’s campaign was a marketer’s dream and won the vote of top marketer in Advertising Age magazine. Chris Hedges article, Buying Brand Obama takes a scathing look at how clever marketing diverts public attention away from critical issues such as the expansion of war, Obama’s rejection of single payer healthcare, his refusing to prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes and allowing Bush era surveillance and secrecy laws to remain intact.

Chris Hedges:

• There’s a wild disconnect between what Obama does and what he says that can only be cleverly bridged with illusion. That’s what his PR people do. That 600 million dollars of campaign funding had to go somewhere.
• Listen to the professionals:   Obama Wins Ad.Age Marketer of the Year!
• He does one thing and he like any “brand” gets you to believe another.
• This started a while ago, if you remember Benetton ads, they used risque images and progressive politics to give themselves an edge.  It is intended to make the passive consumer mistake a brand for an idea or experience.
• He (Obama) didn’t make many promises, it was sloganeering and the confusion of propaganda.
• It’s what Benjamin DeMott calls Junk Politics, in his book Junk Politics. Junk politics is not about demanding justice. It moralizes issues, it doesn’t clarify them. The result: Nothing Changes.
• Obama is a classic example of how re-branding allows for the disintegration of American democracy.
• Obama once again has followed the lead of the Bush Administration.  It has spent, lent or guaranteed at this point 12 trillion dollars of tax payer dollars.  Handed out to Wall St. and firms like AIG.  It’s a bizarre effort to re-inflate a bubble through massive loans.
• This has forestalled catastrophe, but when that catastrophe comes, we’re going to be broke.  . .  that time will come at a profound crisis.
• The problem is not Obama, the problem is the American Left which forgot it’s place.  Politics is a game of pressure and we don’t do that.  Look at Moveon.org, it’s become an arm of the Obama campaign.
• I’m re-reading Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, what happens to a bankrupt liberalism which took hold of Russia in the latter part of the 19th century, moral nihilism.
• Allowing Americans to remain in this self delusional belief that everything is going to go back to the way it was and we are always going to be powerful and rich.  . . . you’re essentially maintaining a population in a state of childishness. They never grow up because they never face reality.
• Book: Empire of Illusion - Post literate society, unable to discern lies from truth.

Guest - Chris Hedges, author of many books specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was also the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times.  Chris Hedges’ new book, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” will be out in July and can be preordered at your local bookstore.

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[Law and Disorder Radio:  Encore Interviews on Prosecution]

The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book - Michael Ratner

We are very pleased to talk with our own Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights about his recent book The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book. Michael’s book exposes how hundreds of individuals were victims of gruesome crimes inside the secret prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba while under International and American law. Michael Ratner not only levels the charge against former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld but lists others to be guilty of the US War Crimes Act of 1996 such as David Addington, George Tenet, Alberto Gonzales, and John Yoo.

The case is presented in shocking detail, it’s a blueprint for prosecuting war criminals and a powerful reference tool for holding the Bush administration’s rogue leadership accountable. One review states that it quote represents a case that a prosecutor could bring against Donald Rumsfeld were he not shielded by dubious immunity doctrines crafted by the Bush administration and the judges it has appointed.

Guest - Michael Ratner - president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of many books including, Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. Michael has worked for decades, as a crusader for human rights both at home and abroad litigating many cases against international human rights violators resulting in millions of dollars in judgments for abuse victims and expanding the possibilities of international law. He acted as a principal counsel in the successful suit to close the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees on Guantanamo Base, Cuba. Over the years, he has litigated a dozen cases challenging a President’s authority to go to war, without congressional approval. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Center has focused its efforts on the constitutionality of indefinite detention and the restrictions on civil liberties as defined by the unfolding terms of a permanent war. Among his many honors are: Trial Lawyer of the Year from the Trial lawyers for Public Justice, The Columbia Law School Public Interest Law Foundation Award, and the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award.

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David Swanson: Why We’re Planning to Prosecute Cheney and Bush

In an article published on the website - AfterDowningStreet, author David Swanson lays out another powerful case as to why it is critical to hold leadership accountable for war crimes. He explains that if much needed change is made in the United States such as a transparent electoral process, eliminating secret government and constitutional amendments, it would still not be enough to “chain the dogs of war.”  Hosts discuss with David Swanson about why it’s critical to hold a conference to plan the prosecution of Bush and Cheney.

War Crimes Conference Archive

Guest - David Swanson, creator of many media-based websites including MeetWithCindy.org and KatrinaMarch.org, he has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

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Legislation To Stop Preemptive Pardons

So far George W Bush has issued nearly 170 pardons, they include a Missouri farmer who unintentionally poisoned three bald eagles. Pardons give the recipients greater leeway to find jobs, live in public housing and vote. Many expect that President Bush will pardon himself and other high officials as a shelter from criminal charges and that’s what New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler is trying to prevent. Nadler is the Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, and he’s recently introduced House Resolution 1531 demanding that Bush refrain from issuing pre_emptive pardons of senior officials in his Administration during the final 90 days of office.

New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler:

• No pre-emptive pardons, the president should not do it, it’s a dangerous abuse of pardon power.
• HR 1531 also says that we believe an attorney general should appoint an independent counsel to investigate alleged various crimes, such as warrantless wiretapping, torture, renditions and so forth committed during the Bush administration.
• Premptive Pardons: President Ford pardoned Nixon, for any crimes that he might have committed.
• President H W Bush pardoned Casper Weinberger and various other people for any crimes they might have made. President Carter pardoned anyone who violated the draft laws in evading the draft during the Vietnam War.
• My feeling is the reason for pardons or give the pardon power in the first place is you want to temper justice with mercy.
• It would be an abuse of power before they get convicted of a crime. If he pardoned all the people well, then how do you develop a case.
• I think there should be a commission with supoena power, that can get at the facts, that can have people testify, that can develop more information for prosecutors to use.
• Right now the narrative will be: Nobody did anything wrong, we protected the American people from terrorism.
• We need to educate the American people about why these prosecutions must be done.
• It’s very important for the people in a democratic country to know what was done in their name.
• One of the problems we have in this country today is that everything is secret.
• The resolution will not be passed in this Congress. If Bush exercises pardons, then there’s very little we can do about those pardons. I’m going to introduce a constitutional amendment to restrict the pardon power in the future.

Guest - Congressman Jerrold Nadler - He represents New York’s Eighth Congressional district. The Eighth, one of the most diverse districts in the nation, includes Manhattan’s West Side below 89th Street, Lower Manhattan, and areas of Brooklyn including Borough Park, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Sea Gate, Bay Ridge, and Bensonhurst.

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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration

We hear from our own Michael Ratner President, Center for Constitutional Rights. The event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.”

• Elizabeth Holtzman, Author, The Impeachment of George W. Bush
• Scott Horton, Contributing Editor, Harper’s Magazine
• Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, House Subcommittee on the Constitution
• Antonio Taguba, Major General (U.S. Army Ret.)

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Host Updates:

• Michael Smith returns from Australia
• Death Row Lawyers Get Paid While Messing Up
• Michael Ratner’s Recent Post - Preventive Detentions and Military Commissions
  

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Men, Mobs and Law by Rebecca Hill

Men Mobs and Law is the title of Rebecca Hill’s new book that explores the complexities of protest movements, race, class and gender. Hill draws comparisons in two types of left protest campaigns, those that defend labor organizers from prosecution and the anti-lynching groups that seek to memorialize lynching victims. Hill says, both groups have influenced each other throughout history and she specifically connects the narratives and stories of the NAACP’s anti lynching work to the IWW’s labor defense campaigns.

Rebecca Hill’s treatment of these dramatic stories  has been called “fresh, lively, richly detailed, and impassioned.”

Rebecca Hill:

• When I first started the book it was about martyrdom and the American Left and heroic politics. I’ll take these particular cases, John Brown, Haymarket etc.
• In the research I found that this other problem that there is no law enforcement and the source of terror that black activists were dealing with was extra-legal.  . . . and their anti-lynching activism that started in the 60s - and I then went back to Ida B Wells, Dubois  - 1887-1890s
• Ida B Wells talking about how dangerous passion is.  This is a problem in  leftest activism in general. It goes to the big questions of political theory and rationale, the role of emotions, questions of what is the meaning of popular action,
• I didn’t want to condemn either side, the anti lynching movement strategy or and the socialist left defense organizing, because they both came out of experiences that informed their politics.
• If you’re facing terroristic mobs, you’re going to respond with a strategy. The anarchists and socialists movement response spoke to the lynching and their response was in inadequate - “rise up in self defense.”
• If you lived in the post reconstructive South, rising up in self defense  was not realistic without legal protection.
• What came out of the Haymarket movement in the 1880s was the idea that the key element of solidarity in a labor movement is when somebody is arrested, or victimized as a result of organizing, its the membership that can save them.  Not the law. The law is a tool, it’s not enough perhaps.
• The courts are structured by the ruling class, they’re stacked against the worker who is in court. They didn’t want the court room take away from the radicalism of the movement.
• Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - defense expert in IWW trials and Sacco Vanzetti case. Anarchists connected to Sacho and Vanzetti case didn’t want structure and organizing
• I was very active in the Mumia Abu Jamal campaign, you see the greater successes in the popular defense organizing it’s not based on the legal strategy, its when is the movement stronger. You see more victories in the thirties because the labor movement was big and the consensus was moving to the left during the New Deal
• John Brown’s defense is close to the fugitive slave rescues which were anti-court .  John Brown’s notion that the courts are wrong and should answer to a higher power, not the current law of slavery.  John Brown attempted to make available weapons for slaves to take up arms. See the book John Brown Mysteries
• I don’t really think of John Brown as a religious zealot, I think he really believed in popular organizing and popular activism.

Guest - Rebecca Hill, author of Men Mobs and Law.

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Wiwa et al v. Royal Dutch Petroleum et al  Royal Dutch Shell Case - CCR

Europe’s largest oil company Royal Dutch Shell faces a lawsuit in a case originally filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights in November 1996. US District Judge Kimba Wood refused to throw out the case late last month, and the Shell Oil Company faces trial brought by relatives of human rights and environmental activists killed in Nigeria. The activists were protesting oil production pollution such as water contamination and agricultural destruction. The lawsuits are brought against the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and Shell Transport and Trading Company (Royal Dutch/Shell); the head of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson; and the Nigerian subsidiary itself, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC).

The defendants are charged with complicity in human rights abuses against the Ogoni people in Nigeria.  Charges include summary execution, crimes against humanity, torture, inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrest, wrongful death, assault and battery, and infliction of emotional distress. The trial begins May 26 of this year.

Jennie Green, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the plaintiffs, said in a statement. (quote) “Now, the public will have the opportunity to see how Shell’s complicity with a murderous military regime was its standard operating procedure for doing business in Nigeria.”

Attorney Jennie Green:

• The case is about the concerted attacks on people organizing in the Niger Delta against the environmental devastation and human rights violations committed by the partnership of the Nigerian military and Royal Dutch Shell.
• The Shell Corporation based in the Hague and England.
• We sued them for human rights violations against the leadership of the movement for the survival of the Ogoni people.
• There was a campaign against Ken Saro-Wiwa and other leaders who were charging Shell publicly, coordinating a very effective movement against Shell.
• 300 thousand people peacefully demonstrating against Shell
• They were calling attention to the fact that Shell’s practices in Nigeria involve constant flaring, the flaring of gas products, lasting up to 24 hours a day.  Some of kids in the region have never known dark.
• It’s an area based on fishing and farming - polluted water supply and land has devasted their way of life.
• Ken Saro-Wiwa developed a very effective campaign, building international alliances, Shell and the Nigerian military went after them, using torture, imprisonment etc.
• Ken Saro-Wiwa was a very effective writer, producer, poet and environmentalist.
• This started in the 1990’s when the Ogoni people declared in a campaign that Shell (in the area since 1958) could no longer go on exploiting the natural resources of the Delta without some accountability to the Ogoni people.
• As the peaceful campaign escalated, so did the pattern of repression.
• Ken Saro-Wiwa was falsely accused of murdering 4 Orgoni leaders. A military tribunal was created that did not meet any due process standards.  In 1995 the Orgoni 9 were executed, hung, including Ken Saro-Wiwa.
• A month later Shell installed a 4 billion dollar liquified natural gas project.
• What we’ve charged Shell with is, complicity with these acts. They subdued protests, they bribed witnesses at the trial,
• Shell claims to be environmentally conscious but this is a classic double standard, their practices in the west are very different from Nigeria.
• The judge rejected Shell’s push to dismiss the international law claims, charging Shell with crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings.   Ken Saro-Wiwa did not start out thinking Shell was the enemy, they wanted better business practices could develop and benefit the Ogoni people.
• Shell has approached this in a way to evade all accountability and maximize impunity.  They spent 4 years fighting us over whether can be tried here in New York. Where we are is . . . that they need a judge and jury to tell them that they are accountable for human rights violations.

Guest - Jennifer Green, lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the plaintiffs. Jennifer Green specializes in international human rights legal actions in U.S. courts and international bodies. She has represented plaintiffs in successful lawsuits against the Unocal corporation for forced labor in Burma, and against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, former Guatemalan Minister of Defense Hector Gramajo, Indonesian military official Sintong Panjaitan, Ethiopian police official Kelbessa Negewo, and former Haitian dictator Prosper Avril for rape and other acts of genocide and war crimes.

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Host Updates:

• CCR 100 Days Score Card
• 100 Days Glimmer of Hope
  
• Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon Says He Will Continue With Investigating US Torture Conspiracy
• Update on Troy Davis - Brian Evans AI Abolition Campaigner - Stay of Execution Ends May 16, 2009
• Troy Davis Video - Finality Over Fairness
  

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Unreasonable Intrusions Report

Last month, the Muslim Advocates released a report titled Unreasonable Intrusions: Investigating the Politics, Faith & Finances of Americans Returning Home. The report documents the systematic and widespread practice of federal agents interrogating Americans returning home after overseas travel at our nation’s borders and international airports. Muslim Advocates, a sister group with the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML), which is a group of approximately 500 Muslim lawyers, law students and other legal professionals.

Farhana Khera:

• These are folks who are returning home from travel and they’re being stopped at borders, land crossings.
• After showing valid US passports, federal agents are engaging in very invasive questioning and searches of these Americans.
• Muslim or those Americans who may look Muslim.
• The questions (from border agents) go into first amendment protected areas. What mosque do you attend? How often do you pray?
• We want to educate federal policy makers, members of Congress, Homeland Security and the Obama Administration about this practice.
• Laptops, cameras and phones searched, in some cases asking about people in images, and how they particular individuals.
• Again, all of this without any evidence or suspicion.
• Ninth Circuit Decision US v Arnold, pretty much gives blanket authority to federal agents at the border to search laptops and electronic devices of law abiding Americans.
• We really need some standards in place that address the need of probable cause and reasonable suspicion before seizing personal data.
• We believe that Americans have the right to enter the country and not be compelled to answer questions, particularly about first amendment protected beliefs.
• We are giving practical advice in saying that you think this line of questioning is inappropriate. Get badge #’s of officers who have your stuff, then file a complaint.
• Traveler’s Privacy Protection Act - Proposed Legislation, to be re-introduced.

Guest - Farhana Khera, first Executive Director of Muslim Advocates and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers (NAML). Prior to joining Muslim Advocates and NAML in 2005, Ms. Khera was Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights. In the Senate, she worked for six years directly for Senator Russell D. Feingold (D_WI), the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee. Ms. Khera focused substantially on the USA PATRIOT Act, racial and religious profiling, and other civil liberties issues raised by the government’s anti_terrorism policies since September 11, 2001. She was the Senator’s lead staff member in developing anti_racial profiling legislation and organizing subcommittee hearings on racial profiling.

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FBI Exposed: Federal Judge Orders FBI to Provide Full Muslim Surveillance Records

Last week a federal judge ordered the FBI to submit 100 documents detailing the bureau’s surveillance of Muslim leaders and organizations in Southern California and specifically, documents relating to the Council on American_Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles and its executive director. The court’s decision came in response to a 2007 lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Southern California that claimed the government’s incomplete and long_delayed response violated the Freedom of Information Act.

An attorney with the ACLU of Southern California says the surveillance records will show how the FBI infiltrated Southern California mosques and invasively monitored members of the Muslim community as if they were criminals.

“Truth can never be redacted. Only full disclosure will satisfy us and alleviate the pervasive fear in our communities and congregations,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, who joins us today.

Shakeel Syed:

• It was confirmed in a court of law, under oath, that the FBI had employed informants, in one case, the informant was a former convicted felon.
• Craig Monteilh has multiple identities, he was given a different by the FBI and sent into one of the mosques.
• He embraced Islam proclaiming that he wanted to become Muslim and wanted to make his faith public.
• He abused the Islamic platform to gain trust in the community. The FBI told him the best way for you to infiltrate is to become Muslim and pretend to be a slow learner.
• The people at the mosque were alarmed when Craig Montel was encouraging others to blow up buildings in LA
• They called the FBI office on Craig Monteilh unaware that he was an informant. They brushed the report aside.
• Radiation monitoring of mosques
• We filed a FOIA request jointly not individually, which was good because what was suspected is now fully confirmed in the court of law that informants were paid as provocateurs in the area.
• In 2006, one of our members of the mosque, a student, ambushed an agent that was following him and he was apprehended by the University of Irvine campus police. We later filed a case against this individual and later never heard back from the campus police or the FBI.
• We received similar reports in our conversations with other community leaders in other areas such as Chicago, New York, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco.
• It was revealed in some of the FBI surveillance documents that my private speeches were mentioned that were against the war in Iraq. Dalia Hashad - “They were in the mosque.”
• We continue to receive reports from the community on an almost ongoing basis from within the regions of Southern CA that the FBI has approached them to become informants, threatened them, intimidated them, offered them convenience of getting their naturalization papers expedited or immigration papers duly adjusted.
• I’m disgusted, but more emboldened to stand up and assert my rights.

Guest - Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.

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Host Updates:

• Obama Speech To CIA
• Obama Administration Releases Torture Memos
• Leaked: - More than 200 waterboarding applications done to 2 people.
• Rahm Emanual Misspoke: Protect CIA Line Agents and Lawyers
• US Attny General to make decision on whether to prosecute
• Coalition Suggests Impeachment of Judge Bybee
• Armenian Genocide Bill

Hear more of the Jim Lehrer Newshour interview with Michael Ratner and Jeffrey Smith

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US To Escalate War in Afghanistan

Nearly 15 thousand US troops have been recently committed to Afghanistan, and progressive think tanks are pushing the Obama Administration to send an additional 17 thousand which would bring the total to 70 thousand troops. Expansions are being built onto the Bagram prison, as mass incarceration is expected. Progressive Think Tank Tells Obama to Escalate

Tom Hayden:

• Global Phoenix Program - in testimony last week, 10 - 12 years overall to win the Afghanistan War. Two years of hard fighting, a couple extra billion dollars a month. I think they plan to send the troops into Southern Afghanistan and to take on the Taliban or who ever the local resistance forces are.
• I think people need to buckle their seat belts for a war. We’re going to have a war in Afghanistan that’s soft on torture. Where are the human rights groups, we’re sending US troops into a dirty war that incarcerates without evidence, tens of thousands of people.
• Center for American Progress - I’m disappointed in them, they’re usually good liberal democrats. Now they’ve come out for a military surge in Afghanistan.
• Obama has narrowed it down to one goal. Can we prevent Al-Quaeda from getting a base area from which they can attack Europe or the United States. The more we go into Pakistan with the predators and drones, the more Pakistan turns against us. It becomes a recruiting tool for more militants.
• The other way to go would be to address the grievances of the Muslim world that give al-queda some support base.
• 1. The US unconditional support for Israel
• 2. 150 thousand troops still in Iraq
• 3. US troops in countries where Muslims control their own oil.
• It’s all laid out in a book by Michael Scheuer -Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror
• I work very closely with Robert Greenwald at Brave New Foundation. Getting Afghanistan Right. There’s a huge sectarian problem in the anti-war movement. Nonetheless there’s always a peace and justice community in every city I go to.
• One wonders what it will take for someone in the House or Senate to stand up and say I want to lead the anti-war movement.

Guest - Political and social activist Tom Hayden joins us today to fill in the detail and time line in this escalation of war. Tom is also the author of Ending The War In Iraq.

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US War in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Follow Up

As tensions rise between Pakistan and the United States, President Obama recently mentioned that stability in Afghanistan depends on what will happen in Pakistan. The United States and Pakistan have been allies in their interest to purge Islamist extremism, however the two countries are now embroiled in miscommunication, drone wars and mistrust that is centered around a 10 billion dollar military aid fund. Analysts say the Obama administration is asking a lot from a fragile Pakistani government that has been in power for now only a year.

Michael Schwartz:

• President Obama’s speech - on Pakistan, tells the whole story. You have to unpack it.
• Not a lot of people have read the speech, Obama starts by saying a campaign against extremism will not succeed by bullets and bombs alone then he launches into the peaceful side of American policy.
• The US is planning to make Pakistan another outpost of globalization creating an opportunity for multinational corporations to invest into a local economy and basically take it over.
• What they’re saying is they’re trying to execute a policy to bring Pakistan into full economic domination of American capitalism. - a globalized version of American capitalism. The military aspect of this is only a part to secure the farthest reaches of the middle east, the part of instability.
• Obama’s speech is filled with being “adminstratively involved with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• The delivery is profound American presence. American enterprises, adminstrators, experts, trainers, a kind of colonial presence, then on the other side of this, an integration into the global system.
• Private multinational enterprises will build schools, infrastructure.
• This same neo-liberal process has ocurred in Africa, South America and what we know about this process is that there is an extraction of large profits by these multinational corporations. The Taliban would set up a social organization that is incompatible with the globalized agenda, so you can see this as a counter-insurgency maneuver.
• The military part of this is that they’re not going to be able to do this in a peaceful way, they’re going to have to conquer the area.
• In a period of two years with more than 90 drone attacks have killed 5000 innocent Pakistanis. They want to kill civilians
• The sense that people are waiting to see whether Obama and Congress move to escalate the war is a big part of the lack of energy in the anti-war movement.
• These are colonial wars, because the United States seeks to have a real administrative hold over these countries.
• The United States can’t withdraw from Afghanistan because it borders on the three Caspian Sea oil companies. Those oil companies are gravitating toward China and Russia in the grand scheme of things.
• Regarding the Poppy agriculture in Afghanistan, the Taliban had gotten rid of the poppies, since the US had invaded Afghanistan, the poppy agriculture has come backWe talk today with Michael Schwartz about the current relations amid Pakistan, the United States and the war in Afghanistan.
• $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years - resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan’s democracy. I’m also calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Maria Cantwell, Chris Van Hollen and Peter Hoekstra that creates opportunity zones in the border region to develop the economy and bring hope to places plagued by violence. And we will ask our friends and allies to do their part - including at the donors conference in Tokyo next month.

Guest - Michael Schwartz is a professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include the recently published War Without End.
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Cuba, South America and the Summit of the Americas

Earlier this year we spoke with film maker and Cuban scholar Saul Landau about the Cuban 50th anniversary and its significance. Now Saul describes the changes we can expect with regard to Cuban / US relations from the Obama Administration. The discussion also covers some detail of the recent talks at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad.

Saul Landau:

• Obama has allowed Cuban Americans to travel freely to Cuba and allowing more loose travel regulations as well.
• What can Cuba really do except to promise to stop hitting the US in the fist with its face.
• What did Cuba do to the United States to merit 50 years of punishment?
• I don’t think Cubans are prepared to have 100 thousand Spring Breakers descend upon Havana.
• Nor are they prepared for American investors with big wads of cash, trying to buy up everybody and everything that they see.
• I think Obama is one of the cleverist, winsome, brightest people I can ever imagine, he’s a hard man to resist. But you have to get behind his optimistic rhetoric, his humility, his smile and his handshake and remember that prize fighters also shake hands before the first round.
• Cuba will have a lower profile in the future, we’ve seen the most publicity we’re going to see for quite a while now.
• I think things are little better, they’re a little quieter and less hostile. I think Cuba has its own problems that it really has to deal with

Guest - Saul Landau is an internationally known author, commentator, and film maker on foreign and domestic policy issues. Landau’s most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political and historical issues, and worldwide human rights, for which he won the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, the George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting, and the First Amendment Award, as well as an Emmy for “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” In 2008, the Chilean government presented him withthe Bernardo O’Higgins Award for his human rights work. Landau has written fourteen books including a book of poems, “My Dad Was Not Hamlet.” He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the 1976 murders of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt.

He is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Pomona. He is a senior Fellow at and Vice Chair of the Institute for Policy Studies.

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