Jim Turpin : Assassinations, Anyone?

Image from Assassins / IMFDB.
Due process and special ops:
Assassinations, anyone?

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / August 25, 2010

Every American citizen has heard the legal phrase “due process of law," but do you really know what that means?

The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause has two aspects: procedural and substantive. Procedural due process is concerned with the process by which legal proceedings are conducted. It requires that all persons who will be materially affected by a legal proceeding receive notice of its time, place, and subject matter so that they will have an adequate opportunity to prepare. It also requires that legal proceedings be conducted in a fair manner by an impartial judge who will allow the interested parties to present fully their complaints, grievances, and defenses. The Due Process Clause governs civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings from the pretrial stage through final appeal, and proceedings that produce arbitrary or capricious results will be overturned as unconstitutional.

It surfaced earlier this year that our President (a former constitutional professor of law and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago) is now authorizing, without Congressional consent, and against constitutional authority, assassinations of U.S. citizens abroad. Dana Priest in the Washington Post reported:

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 (2009) strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said...

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy.

Both the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year.

Interestingly, during George W. Bush’s reign, there was intense and heated debated over the indefinite detention and torture of “high value individuals” at Black Ops sites across the world (Bagram Air Force Base, Syria, Egypt, etc.). Even Obama criticized the Bush administration during the presidential race and then promised to close Guantanamo after taking office. This has not happened and most likely never will, even though intelligence shows that Guantanamo remains a recruiting tool, used by extremists around the world.

There have been a number of reports that show the complete innocence of these accused “terrorists” whether U.S. citizens or not:

"There are still innocent people there (Guantanamo)," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years..." Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."

Glenn Greenwald in Salon (1/27/2010) wrote:

Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations... That's why we have what are called "trials" -- or at least some process -- before we assume that government accusations are true and then mete out punishment accordingly.

But now, there seems to be little or no discussion over the assassination of U.S. citizens for their alleged ties to “terrorist organizations."

The only recent outcry has been from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) who introduced a bill (HR 6010) titled: "To prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens, and for other purposes."

Democratic Congressman Kucinich's draft bill H.R. 6010 states in part, "No one, including the president, may instruct a person acting within the scope of employment with the United States Government or an agent acting on behalf of the United States Government to engage in, or conspire to engage in, the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen... As Kucinich points out, "The US government cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner."

So the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) along with the CIA seems to be carrying out these “extrajudicial” (outside of the law) assassinations all over the world.

Who or what is JSOC?

The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is a component command of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and is charged to study special operations requirements and techniques to ensure interoperability and equipment standardization, plan and conduct special operations exercises and training, and develop Joint Special Operations Tactics.

In March 2009, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh described JSOC as "a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently... They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office... Congress has no oversight of it.

A few months later, when it was reported that General Stanley McChrystal would be taking over command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, journalist Gareth Porter noted that McChrystal had been commander of JSOC from April 2003 to August 2008 and commented that his "long specialisation in counter-terrorism operations suggests an officer who is likely to have more interest in targeted killings than in the kind of politically sensitive counterinsurgency programmes that the Obama administration has said it intends to carry out."

So JSOC is the assassination squad for U.S. citizens or other “high value targets” of interest.

But does the United States train others to do assassinations by proxy? In other words, do the dirty work of eliminating leaders, politicians, social movements or others that are in direct conflict with our “national interest” or “sphere of influence."

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) (formerly known as the School of the Americas (“SOA”), is a United States Department of Defense facility at Ft. Benning, Georgia. This benign sounding “school” or “institute,” established in 1946, has been responsible for training more than 61,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen who have been responsible for some of the most heinous human rights abuses in the 20th century.

From 1946-2001, such infamous dictators (that the U.S. propped up and supported) as Manuel Noriega (Panama) and Augusto Pinochet (Chile) and many others had soldiers and police trained at the SOA. The brutal tactics of “counterinsurgency” taught at the SOA included torture, indefinite detention and extrajudicial killings.

“The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) used training materials that condoned executions of guerillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment" asserts an Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) Report issued June 28, 1996, in Washington, DC. The IOB, a four-person, independent board created three years ago(1993) by President Clinton, is charged with investigating excesses and abuses by the US intelligence community.

The term “death squads” is closely associated with the training received at the SOA. Many of the countries (Chile, Bolivia, etc.) that formerly sent soldiers for training, now have refused this offer from the United States.

To counter the operations at WHINSEC (the new and “improved” name as of 2001), the “School of Americas Watch" was founded by Mary Knoll Father Roy Bourgeois and a small group of supporters in 1990 to protest the training of mainly Latin American military officers at the School of Americas. Most notably, SOA Watch conducts a vigil each November at the site of the academy, located on the grounds of Fort Benning, a U.S. Army military base near Columbus, Georgia, in protest over myriad human rights abuses committed by graduates of the academy.

So are “extrajudicial” killings (code for assassinations) OK with the American people? Most would most likely answer “NO," but what can you do to stop these abuses by the U.S. government?

A first step is to call or email your congressional representative and insist that they support Rep. Kucinich’s bill (HR 6010) to stop “extrajudicial” killings of U.S. citizens.

Ironically, Abraham Lincoln signed General Order 100 in Section IX entitled “Assassinations” in April 1863 that stated:

The law of war does not allow proclaiming either an individual belonging to the hostile army, or a citizen, or a subject of the hostile government, an outlaw, who may be slain without trial by any captor, any more than the modern law of peace allows such intentional outlawry; on the contrary, it abhors such outrage. The sternest retaliation should follow the murder committed in consequence of such proclamation, made by whatever authority. Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

[Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Cafe at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

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Steve Russell : In Memory of Jay Spotted Elk

In memory of Jay Spotted Elk

It became possible to prove that Jay Spotted Elk’s last night on earth was not unusual in the history of Sheridan County, Nebraska.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / August 9, 2010

In my time as a trial judge, I’ve learned that often when a litigant says it’s not about the money it is in fact about the money. You can’t tell at the beginning of a case but you can tell at the end. In this case, it was not about the money.

An Indian hanging himself in the drunk tank is seldom big news in Indian country except to his relatives. When Jay Spotted Elk hung himself while facing misdemeanor charges in Sheridan County, Nebraska, his mother decided not to stand for it. Arlyn Eastman/Broken Nose sued the county and several individuals who might have been able to prevent the suicide if they had been properly trained and motivated.

Any lawsuit is difficult, and this one much more so. In the wake of the civil rights movement, there was a time when the courts seemed generally sympathetic to claims by the powerless against the powerful. As a result, the Republican Party took on the reorientation of the federal courts as a project that continues to this day.

This year saw the racial attacks on Sonia Sotomayor and the recent hearing on the appointment of Elena Kagan that left the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee praising Kagan’s qualifications and personality while still resolved to vote against her (excepting Lindsey Graham, who seems to find good government more important than party discipline).

In all GOP administrations since Nixon, most nominees have been very young and very conservative. Young because federal judgeships are lifetime appointments and conservative to get the law back into what they choose to call the mainstream, where you can tell the winners largely by race and by class.

At this time, as at the beginning of the Clinton administration, there are no American Indians serving on federal courts, which is where Indian interests are normally adjudicated. As bad, the influx of judges with a political agenda has had approximately 40 years to work its magic, since the Democrats in power during that time have been centrists who would correctly claim that stacking courts is bad government and refrain from fighting fire with fire.

I was educated in the legal landscape peopled by Thurgood Marshall (demonized in the first day of the Kagan hearings), William O. Douglas, William Brennan, and judges like Hugo Black, who wrote the words that Indian lawyers call the all-purpose Indian law dissent: “Great nations, like great men, should keep their word.” I doubt that I would have become a lawyer had Thurgood Marshall not existed and I was reluctant to wash my hand again after William O. Douglas shook it.

In modern times, the “liberals” are conservative appointees who were enlightened by their experiences on the court like Harry Blackmun or David Souter. The “center” has been moved by political calculation. As a result, people without power have a set of problems that go far beyond the fact that they often don’t know lawyers and that lawsuits cost a lot of money.

Should she find a lawyer to work on a “contingent fee” (no pay unless you win), Spotted Elk’s mother would have to contend with the social fact of suing a local government (the law enforcement part, no less) and with the legal fact that if there is one class of litigants that has less success than American Indians it would have to be prisoners.

The courts, since the heyday of civil rights lawsuits, have made it harder to sue local governments for damages. It’s not enough that law enforcement officers violate your rights and they work for the city or the county you want to sue. To hold the local government responsible, you must prove that they did or failed to do something in particular. Most common is a failure to properly train or supervise the officers, but this has to be a pattern. One bad outcome is not enough, even if somebody is killed.

The lawyer who took on this case, Maren Chaloupka, hit a mother lode of evidence that was good for the lawsuit but bad for the Indian community in Nebraska:

• Twelve inmates had attempted suicide in the same jail, all but one Indian.
• The inmates had attempted suicide repeatedly.
• One inmate literally killed himself the day after he told corrections officers that he no longer wanted to live.

When nothing was done in the face of all this, it was bad for the Indians who might be in the jail from time to time but it made proving that the county had failed to take suicide precautions the proverbial slam dunk.

It became possible to prove that Jay Spotted Elk’s last night on earth was not unusual in the history of Sheridan County, Nebraska. According to a report in the Scottsbluff Star-Herald, Spotted Elk threatened suicide before he even got to the jail. Yet his belt was not removed and he was not closely watched.

In these rare cases when there’s a good chance of prevailing in a trial, there comes a time when you know why the lawsuit was filed. Everybody knows that going to trial is a crapshoot, but there is something to negotiate about if the lawyer on the other side is sane. If the case settles, that’s when you learn why the case was brought.

Chaloupka, of Scottsbluff and her co-counsel, Robin Zephier of the Abourezk Law Firm in Rapid City, got $100,000 paid to Jay Spotted Elk’s estate, managed by his mother. If that was all, it would be better than not placing any cost on Indian lives, but it is unlikely that I would be writing about it. The rest of the settlement requires the county to:

• Have all employees of the sheriff and jail trained in suicide prevention.
• Make efforts to contact the tribal suicide prevention program for any Indian who expresses ideas of suicide.
• Post the contact information for suicide prevention at Pine Ridge and Rosebud at the booking desk and keep a log of calls made to those programs.
• Notify the closest tribal suicide prevention program in cases where no program can be reached for the inmate’s tribe.
• Allow a representative of the tribal suicide prevention program to speak to the inmate by telephone or in person and document the reason why any recommendation by the tribal suicide prevention program is not followed.
• Provide a written report on compliance with the agreement every year until 2015, after which Spotted Elk’s mother retains the right to inspect the records.

This is what civil rights lawyers can do now and then even when the courts are so stacked against them, and local officials would plainly not care to spend money protecting Indians if they had a choice. In this case, we won’t know exactly whose life was saved but it is safe to say that saving lives will be the result. It’s for that result we should remember the life of Jay Spotted Elk.

[Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, lives in Sun City, Texas, near Austin. He is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and associate professor emeritus of criminal justice at Indiana University-Bloomington. Steve was an activist in Austin in the Sixties and Seventies, and wrote for Austin’s underground paper, The Rag. Steve is also a columnist for Indian Country Today, where this article first appeared. He can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu.]

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Howard Zinn : Why We Must Not Be Discouraged

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010.
On commitment,
And believing in Saints

By Thomas Cleaver / The Rag Blog / February 1, 2010

See 'Against discouragement: Howard Zinn at Spelman' by Howard Zinn, Below.

I met many memorable individuals who stopped by the Oleo Strut coffeehouse in Killeen to see for themselves what was going on with the GI antiwar movement. One such was Professor Howard Zinn, the author of A People's History of the United States, who stopped by one weekend in November 1968. I was fortunate to meet him a few other times over the following years.

While I am not particularly religious, I do believe in Saints -- not the kind that get sanctified by priests, but the kind of people one meets whose life example you use forever after as a measuring stick for your own moral progress. Howard Zinn was one of those people, and his writing allows us to remember others who went before us in the struggle for true justice.

Learning of his death this past Wednesday, January 27, I was reminded of a commencement speech he gave at Spelman College in 2005, which speaks very directly to what it takes to be a Committed Person.

Historian Howard Zinn, who died January 27 at 87, is shown being arrested at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in the 1960s. Image from Telegraph, U.K.
Against discouragement:
Howard Zinn at Spelman

My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you.

By Howard Zinn

[In 1963, historian Howard Zinn was fired from Spelman College in Atlanta GA, where he was chair of the History Department, because of his civil rights activities. In 2005, he was invited back to give the commencement address. Here is the text of that speech, given on May 15, 2005.]

I am deeply honored to be invited back to Spelman after 42 years. I would like to thank the faculty and trustees who voted to invite me, and especially your president, Dr. Beverly Tatum. And it is a special privilege to be here with Diahann Carroll and Virginia Davis Floyd.

But this is your day -- the students graduating today. It's a happy day for you and your families. I know you have your own hopes for the future, so it may be a little presumptuous for me to tell you what hopes I have for you, but they are exactly the same ones that I have for my grandchildren.

My first hope is that you will not be too discouraged by the way the world looks at this moment. It is easy to be discouraged, because our nation is at war -- still another war, war after war -- and our government seems determined to expand its empire even if it costs the lives of tens of thousands of human beings.

There is poverty in this country, and homelessness, and people without health care, and crowded classrooms, but our government, which has trillions of dollars to spend, is spending its wealth on war. There are a billion people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who need clean water and medicine to deal with malaria and tuberculosis and AIDS, but our government, which has thousands of nuclear weapons, is experimenting with even more deadly nuclear weapons. Yes, it is easy to be discouraged by all that.

But let me tell you why, in spite of what I have just described, you must not be discouraged.

I want to remind you that, 50 years ago, racial segregation here in the South was entrenched as tightly as was apartheid in South Africa. The national government, even with liberal presidents like Kennedy and Johnson in office, was looking the other way while Black people were beaten and killed and denied the opportunity to vote.

So Black people in the South decided they had to do something by themselves. They boycotted and sat in and picketed and demonstrated, and were beaten and jailed, and some were killed, but their cries for freedom were soon heard all over the nation and around the world, and the President and Congress finally did what they had previously failed to do -- enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.

Many people had said: The South will never change. But it did change. It changed because ordinary people organized and took risks and challenged the system and would not give up. That's when democracy came alive.

I want to remind you also that when the war in Vietnam was going on, and young Americans were dying and coming home paralyzed, and our government was bombing the villages of Vietnam -- bombing schools and hospitals and killing ordinary people in huge numbers -- it looked hopeless to try to stop the war.

But just as in the Southern movement, people began to protest and soon it caught on. It was a national movement. Soldiers were coming back and denouncing the war, and young people were refusing to join the military, and the war had to end.

The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies.

I know you have practical things to do -- to get jobs and get married and have children. You may become prosperous and be considered a success in the way our society defines success, by wealth and standing and prestige. But that is not enough for a good life.

Remember Tolstoy's story, "The Death of Ivan Illych." A man on his deathbed reflects on his life, how he has done everything right, obeyed the rules, become a judge, married, had children, and is looked upon as a success. Yet, in his last hours, he wonders why he feels a failure. After becoming a famous novelist, Tolstoy himself had decided that this was not enough, that he must speak out against the treatment of the Russian peasants, that he must write against war and militarism.

My hope is that whatever you do to make a good life for yourself -- whether you become a teacher, or social worker, or business person, or lawyer, or poet, or scientist -- you will devote part of your life to making this a better world for your children, for all children. My hope is that your generation will demand an end to war, that your generation will do something that has not yet been done in history and wipe out the national boundaries that separate us from other human beings on this earth.

Recently I saw a photo on the front page of the New York Times which I cannot get out of my mind. It showed ordinary Americans sitting on chairs on the southern border of Arizona, facing Mexico. They were holding guns and they were looking for Mexicans who might be trying to cross the border into the United States.

This was horrifying to me -- the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call "civilization," we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call "nations" and are ready to kill anyone who crosses a boundary.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary, so fierce it leads to murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking, cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on, have been useful to those in power, deadly for those out of power.

Here in the United States, we are brought up to believe that our nation is different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral; that we expand into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

But if you know some history you know that's not true. If you know some history, you know we massacred Indians on this continent, invaded Mexico, sent armies into Cuba, and the Philippines. We killed huge numbers of people, and we did not bring them democracy or liberty.

We did not go into Vietnam to bring democracy; we did not invade Panama to stop the drug trade; we did not invade Afghanistan and Iraq to stop terrorism. Our aims were the aims of all the other empires of world history -- more profit for corporations, more power for politicians.

The poets and artists among us seem to have a clearer understanding of the disease of nationalism. Perhaps the Black poets especially are less enthralled with the virtues of American "liberty" and "democracy," their people having enjoyed so little of it. The great African-American poet Langston Hughes addressed his country as follows:

You really haven't been a virgin for so long.
It's ludicrous to keep up the pretext.
You've slept with all the big powers
In military uniforms,
And you've taken the sweet life
Of all the little brown fellows.

Being one of the world's big vampires,
Why don't you come on out and say so
Like Japan, and England, and France,
And all the other nymphomaniacs of power.

I am a veteran of the Second World War. That was considered a "good war," but I have come to the conclusion that war solves no fundamental problems and only leads to more wars. War poisons the minds of soldiers, leads them to kill and torture, and poisons the soul of the nation.

My hope is that your generation will demand that your children be brought up in a world without war. It we want a world in which the people of all countries are brothers and sisters, if the children all over the world are considered as our children, then war -- in which children are always the greatest casualties -- cannot be accepted as a way of solving problems.

I was on the faculty of Spelman College for seven years, from 1956 to 1963. It was a heartwarming time, because the friends we made in those years have remained our friends all these years. My wife Roslyn and I and our two children lived on campus. Sometimes when we went into town, white people would ask: How is it to be living in the Black community? It was hard to explain. But we knew this -- that in downtown Atlanta, we felt as if we were in alien territory, and when we came back to the Spelman campus, we felt that we were at home.

Those years at Spelman were the most exciting of my life, the most educational certainly. I learned more from my students than they learned from me. Those were the years of the great movement in the South against racial segregation, and I became involved in that in Atlanta, in Albany, Georgia, in Selma, Alabama, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Greenwood and Itta Bena and Jackson.

I learned something about democracy: that it does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice. I learned about race. I learned something that any intelligent person realizes at a certain point -- that race is a manufactured thing, an artificial thing, and while race does matter (as Cornel West has written), it only matters because certain people want it to matter, just as nationalism is something artificial. I learned that what really matters is that all of us -- of whatever so-called race and so-called nationality -- are human beings and should cherish one another.

I was lucky to be at Spelman at a time when I could watch a marvelous transformation in my students, who were so polite, so quiet, and then suddenly they were leaving the campus and going into town, and sitting in, and being arrested, and then coming out of jail full of fire and rebellion. You can read all about that in Harry Lefever's book Undaunted By The Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957-1967.

One day Marian Wright (now Marian Wright Edelman), who was my student at Spelman, and was one of the first arrested in the Atlanta sit-ins, came to our house on campus to show us a petition she was about to put on the bulletin board of her dormitory. The heading on the petition epitomized the transformation taking place at Spelman College. Marian had written on top of the petition: "Young Ladies Who Can Picket, Please Sign Below."

My hope is that you will not be content just to be successful in the way that our society measures success; that you will not obey the rules, when the rules are unjust; that you will act out the courage that I know is in you. There are wonderful people, Black and white, who are models.

I don't mean African-Americans like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, or Clarence Thomas, who have become servants of the rich and powerful. I mean W.E.B. DuBois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin, and Josephine Baker and good white folk, too, who defied the Establishment to work for peace and justice.

Another of my students at Spelman, Alice Walker, who, like Marian, has remained our friend all these years, came from a tenant farmer's family in Eatonton, Georgia, and became a famous writer. In one of her first published poems, she wrote:

It is true --
I've always loved
the daring
ones
Like the Black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.

I am not suggesting you go that far, but you can help to break down barriers, of race certainly, but also of nationalism; that you do what you can -- you don't have to do something heroic, just something, to join with millions of others who will just do something, because all of those somethings, at certain points in history, come together, and make the world better.

That marvelous African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston, who wouldn't do what white people wanted her to do, who wouldn't do what Black people wanted her to do, who insisted on being herself, said that her mother advised her: Leap for the sun -- you may not reach it, but at least you will get off the ground.

By being here today, you are already standing on your toes, ready to leap My hope for you is a good life.

Copyright © 2005, Howard Zinn

Thanks to Alice Embree / The Rag Blog

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Labor Justice : 'Last Vestige of Slavery and Segregation'

“Brothers of the Sun” by Luana Boutilier / Farmworker Movement

...two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law's protections -- farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.

By Dick Meister / May 28, 2009

It's been three-quarters of a century since enactment of the National Labor Relations Act that grants U.S. workers the basic legal right of unionization -- the right to bargain with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.

But for all that time, two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law's protections -- farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.

Congress should remedy the situation by amending the law to include the excluded workers. Which is the goal of a campaign - "Labor Justice" -- that's been launched by two veterans of United Farm Worker union campaigns, longtime UFW activist LeRoy Chatfield and former UFW attorney Jerry Cohen. They've already won the backing of labor, political, civil rights, academic, religious and community leaders and organizations in more than 30 states.

Chatfield and Cohen played key roles in passing the 1975 law that granted union rights to California's farm workers. There have been drives to enact similar laws in other states, but none have even come close to passing. Neither have drives for state laws to grant union rights to domestic workers.

The need to extend the legal protections is obvious. Most farm workers' pay is at or near the poverty level. They typically have few fringe benefits and very little legal protection from employer mistreatment.

Domestic workers, some of them self-employed, some of them employees of companies that hire them out, also generally earn little more than poverty-level pay and have few benefits. Most are women, who often are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Some have formed union-like organizations to seek better treatment, but need the force of law behind them.

The "Labor Justice" campaign leaders call the exclusion of farm workers and domestics from the protections of the Labor Relations Act "one of our nation's last vestiges of slavery and segregation."

Certainly the exclusion is at the least racist, since the vast majority of U.S. farm and domestic workers are Latino immigrants. In a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis urging the Obama administration to back the proposed expansion of the law, Cohen compared the exclusion of farm workers and domestics to the situation in racist South Africa under Apartheid. "Blacks," Cohen noted, were specifically excluded from the protections of South Africa's equivalent of the National Labor Relations Act.

It was racism, in fact, that kept farm workers and domestics from being granted the protection of the U,S. law originally, although it was a more subtle racism - a "sleight of hand," as Cohen said.

At the time of the law's introduction in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, most farm workers and domestics were African-American. The segregationist Southern Democrats in Congress, an important part of FDR's political base, absolutely refused to vote for a law that would grant African-American workers the same rights as white workers.

So, as presented to Congress by Roosevelt and as passed, the Labor Relations Act, the basic labor law of the land, specifically excluded from its legal protections "agricultural laborers" and anyone "in the domestic service of any family or person."

But now, 74 years later, we finally have the opportunity to correct that shameful exclusion. Finally, we have the chance to provide every worker - every one of them - the vital right of unionization.

[Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a print, broadcast and online reporter, editor and commentator. Contact him through his website.]

Source / Portside

Also see Key Leaders Endorse National Labor Justice Campaign by Randy Shaw / Beyond Chron / LA Progressive / April 14, 2009

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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California Supremes on Prop. 8 : The Return of Separate But Equal

Demonstrators placed signs on a statue of Lincoln in front of San Francisco City Hall on May 26, 2009, after the California Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8. Photo by Paul Sakuma.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination.

By Jeff Jones / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yesterday's California Supreme Court decision to uphold Proposition 8 created a bizarre post-modern version of "separate but equal" with three separate water fountains to drink from.

First, the court ruled that California's Constitution officially reserves the designation of the term “marriage” for opposite-sex couples. Second, the court ruled that despite restricting the word “marriage" to opposite-sex couples, the 18,000 same-sex couples who got married before the passage of Proposition 8 remain officially "married" and their marriages are legally recognized by the state.

Finally, the Court claimed that same-sex couples have the same rights as opposite sex couples: supposedly, we have the right to "choose one's life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship (translation: civil union) that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage."

At the center of this controversy is the first paragraph of California's State Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal rights. So let me state the obvious by paraphrasing Gertrude Stein: equality is equality is equality is equality.

In yesterday’s bizarre ruling, the California Supreme Court codified three different sets of rules for three different types of supposedly "equal" citizens: all non-LGBT people have the right to get married; some LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) individuals have this right; most do not. Chief Justice Ronald M. George said the measure "carves out a narrow and limited exception” to the citizens’ constitutional rights but leaves undisturbed "all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple's (rights).”

But how can this ruling meet the constitutional guarantee of equality if some queers can be legally married while the rest are legally prohibited from doing the very same thing? In essence, the ruling implies that words have no meaning; ”marriage,” apparently, is essentially symbolic.

But such thinking is patently absurd: as any LGBT individual knows, the state and federal governments use legal definitions of marriage to determine eligibility for numerous rights and benefits including sick leave, tax breaks, prison visitation rights, property, health benefits, adoption, social security benefits etc. As an article in today’s New York Times pointed out, the Supreme Court’s tortured logic is like telling black people that sitting in the back of the bus is not important, as long as the front and the back of the bus arrive at its destination at the same time.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination. As the lone dissenter -- Justice Carlos Moreno -- wrote: “Proposition 8 strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution and “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities.”

Also see The Laudable Dissenting Opinion in Today's California Court Decision by Rieux / Daily Kos / May 26, 2009

And read Justice Moreno's dissent here.

The Rag Blog

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow to Barack Obama : "Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue"

Rabbi Arthur Waskow.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow asked us to publish this open letter to Barack Obama. He has also posted it to the On Faith blog on the Newsweek/Washington Post website.

Rabbi Waskow has been one of the creators and leaders of Jewish renewal since writing the original Freedom Seder in 1969. Rabbi Waskow is director of The Shalom Center; author of Down-to-Earth Judaism and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on US public policy. Newsweek named Rabbi Arthur Waskow one of America's 50 most influential rabbis.

Open Letter to Senator Obama:
The Middle East, Islam, Ends, & Means
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Dear friends, I am writing this out of personal experience and my own individual ethical concern, not on behalf of any organization or campaign. It comes with Martin Buber's teaching ringing in my brain: that he had no idea what it meant to say that "the ends justify the means," but that for sure the means we actually use will become the ends that we actually achieve.

Or as ancient Torah teaches, "Justice, justice shall you pursue." Why "justice" twice? To teach that just ends can only be achieved through just means.

A lesson for all who work to change society.

Shalom, salaam, peace -- Arthur

Dear Senator Obama,

I met you at your talk with Philadelphia Jewish leaders in April. It was I who as you entered the room handed you a copy of the original Freedom Seder, which I wrote in 1969, and which bound together the freedom struggles of Blacks and Jews. And during Q & A, it was I who asked you how as President you would deal with the peace-obstructing settlement policy of this and many previous Israeli governments.

I asked that question because one of the advance speakers for your meeting, Congressman Roth of New Jersey, had just asserted that you believe the failure of the peace process has been solely the result of the absence of a Palestinian partner for peace.

"Solely the fault of the Palestinians?" I thought. "Surely he doesn't believe that!" So I rose to say that hundreds of rabbis and hundreds of thousands of American Jews see Israeli settlement policy as obstacles to peace, and asked what as President you would do about it.

Your answer cited the vigorous debate on these questions in Israel -- more vigorous than here; the recognition by most Israelis that for peace to unfold, there will have to be a shift in settlement policy; and your sense that most Israelis know that internal debate would be so wrenching that they want to know there is a partner for that decision before going through the debate.

Though you avoided saying what you would do, I was satisfied with your answer -- then.

I was especially ready to be satisfied because I knew that earlier, when you met with Jewish leaders in Cleveland, you had gone even further, saying:

"I sat down with the head of Israeli security forces and his view of the Palestinians was incredibly nuanced because he's dealing with these people every day. He was willing to say sometimes we make mistakes and if we are just pressing down on these folks constantly without giving them some prospects for hope, that's not good for our security situation."

It would be profoundly important to have a President who understands that! Yet more recently, in your speech to AIPAC, there was no such language. And you slid so far into simply repeating official shibboleths like "Jerusalem undivided" that you had to correct yourself the next day.

No one knows better than I that many of the "official" Jewish organizations would go ballistic to hear a presidential candidate bring such ideas to the fore in, say, a major speech about making peace across the whole region that Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah walked.

And no one knows better than I that millions of American Jews , Christians, and Muslims want exactly that kind of honest talk and vigorous diplomacy. They would support any President who insisted on exactly the kind of broad pursuit of peace you have sometimes affirmed, and the changes in not only Palestinian, Syrian, and Iranian but also Israeli and American behavior it requires.

I know some people who carry a strange mixture of cynicism and wish-fulfillment in their heads -- who think you can, will, and should say anything to calm folks like the AIPAC membership and thereby get elected, and later will work hard for a real peace. I know people who think that you can, will, and should pretend you never met Palestinians and heard their suffering, never got to understand their understanding of their history as you have so eloquently explained that you have heard and understood the Jewish story -- all in order that once you are in office, you can bring your "true" knowledge into policy.

But I don't think it works that way. Not only would that kind of campaign be an ethical failure and a personal self-betrayal, abandoning the honest, nuanced, politics of change that you claimed to represent -- but I think it won't work politically.

First of all, that kind of campaign will greatly weaken your appeal to the passionate supporters you have had -- just like your betrayal of your own understanding that the FISA bill violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of searches without warrants. Already, the drop-off of small contributions to your campaign suggests that these people are dismayed. And they are the core of your strength, as you yourself have repeatedly said.

Secondly, it will weaken your ability if you are elected President to take the steps necessary for peace. For it would weaken and delegitimate the millions of American Jews, Muslims, and Christians who seek precisely a policy of peace for Israel alongside a peaceful Palestine, and peace between Iran and the United States. Who would thank God -- literally! -- for a President who would seek to meet the crucial needs of all these peoples while refusing to humiliate or subjugate any of them. There will be many people and organizations ready to attack any President who takes such positions. There need to be people and organizations motivated and mobilized to support them.

To strengthen such a faith-based coalition, you will also have to make clear -- by where you speak as well as what you say -- that of course American Muslims are as much a part of American society as any other religious group. So your unwillingness to speak in any mosque -- presumably for fear that might reinforce the wicked rumors that you are really a Muslim -- simply strengthens the mind-set that thinks to demonize you on the false grounds that you are a Muslim, and any Muslim must be anti-American.

I remember being moved when in your speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, you said, "If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties." That line had no political pay-off in numbers of voters. It was a principled statement, fearlessly swimming against the tide of public opinion. And -- against all "realistic" calculation -- it won vigorous applause from those assembled number-centered politicians!

You owe it to Americans of all faiths, to Jews around the world, to the Arab and Muslim billions - - to treat all these people as part of the world community that must work together to heal our planet from war and eco-disaster.

Just as in Philadelphia you expressed compassion for white working-class anger without surrendering to right-wing policies that ignore Black poverty and despair --- so you can express compassion for Jewish fears without surrendering to oppressive right-wing Israeli policy. And in the same new approach to change, you can include Muslims in the body politic and express compassion for some Muslims' anger and fear, without affirming violence and terrorism.

You will need to address these questions honestly if you are not to be caught against your will in years of war and terror that would destroy an Administration you might lead as it did the last one, will damage America at least as deeply as our deafness to others' narratives has damaged us this past seven years.

Just as the racial chasm has haunted and daunted American democracy two centuries and more, the growing chasm between "the West" and "Islam" will haunt and daunt every effort to make peace and heal our planet, if we and you do not address it in all its depth and difficulty.

So just as you spoke in Philadelphia with nuance and compassion about race, I implore you to speak as clearly with nuance and compassion about these questions.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, peace --

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

[The Shalom Center voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multireligious, and American life. To receive the weekly on-line Shalom Report, click
here.]

The Rag Blog / Posted July 16, 2008

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A Fundamental Breach of International Law

‘Western Leaders Are War Criminals’
By Mick Meaney / April 26, 2008

The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, has echoed calls for Western leaders to be charged with war crimes over the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Speaking at Imperial College in London Mahathir, who was in office from 1981 to 2003, singled out US President George Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australia’s former prime minister John Howard as he wants to see them tried “in absence for war crimes committed in Iraq”.

The event was organised by the Ramadhan Foundation which is a leading British Muslim youth organisation working for peaceful co-existence and dialogue between communities.

Mohammed Shafiq, spokesman for the group said: “It was an opportunity for students to put a range of questions about war crimes and the international situation. He said that people have to stop killing each other and use arbitration, negotiation and discussion as an alternative to violence, war and killing.”

Speaking about the Iraq war, Mahathir focused on “the thousands dying, the economic war, the power of oil and how we could utilise some of these tools to have a leverage against the people who commit countries to war”, Shafiq said.

The event was incredibly well attended with over 450 people and 200 more had to be turned away.

Among the mountain of war crimes Western leaders are guilty of include:-

The illegal use of napalm and other chemical weapons

Intentionally torturing and abusing detainees

Blocking aid convoys

Killing unarmed civilians, including shooting into family homes

Western leaders are also guilty of many other violations of the Geneva Convention, the Charter of the United Nations, the Nuremberg Charter, International Law and the Constitution of the United States, including crimes against peace and crimes against humanity.

International law professors have called the attack against Iraq “a fundamental breach of international law (that) would seriously threaten the integrity of the international legal order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War.”

Mahathir Mohamad’s statement appears to be valid as the International Criminal Court defines the following as international crimes:

(a) Crimes against Peace:

Namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing:

(b) War Crimes:

Namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity:

(c) Crimes against Humanity:

Namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Source / RINF.com / Information Clearing House

The Rag Blog

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Larry Hales Charges Dropped

Larry Hales and FriendALERT: The Racist Frame-up Charges Against Larry Hales HAVE BEEN DROPPED!

On Wed., April 23 all charges were dropped against Denver activist Larry Hales. Hales had been assaulted by ten Denver cops this past Nov. 30. The cops had busted into Larry's home without permission at 10:30 p.m., handcuffed his partner to a chair, ripped out some of Hales’ hair, ripped his clothes, and charged him with interfering with the police.

Hales, a leading activist against police brutality and war, is also organizing for protests at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August, and is well known to the Denver police. Hales had been providing housing for a parolee who had been a police brutality victim. A parole visit had been the pretext of the cops’ raid on Hales' home, but the parolee was not at home at the time and the cops did not have permission to enter or search the home when the parolee was not present.

A widespread support campaign grew up around the case, demanding that all charges be dropped against Hales. The National Justice for Larry Hales campaign launched an online petition which generated over 160,000 email messages to the members of the Denver legislature, the mayor, city attorney and the judge in the case, the Colorado congressional delegation, congressional leaders, President Bush, Attorney General Mukasey, and members of the media. Letters were faxed from public officials such as Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, from unions like USW 8751 Boston School Bus Union and many rank and file union leaders, religious leaders like Bishop Filipe Teixeira OFSJC, lawyers and other public figures.

Larry Hales’ message to supporters: ‘Mass campaign made the difference’

Larry Hales wrote the following statement on this victory: The city attorney's office decided to drop the charges against me because of the attack and the violation of mine and Melissa Kleinman’s fourth amendment rights. But, if there was no campaign and the case not made public, I believe they would have gone forward, wasting time, resources and possibly sending me to jail for an extended period of time, up to a year.

I do not believe in luck or chance, but Melissa and myself did escape great bodily injury or death, and so our case was never as bad as many others. What happened to us is more indicative of what many people who try and house parolees and the parolees themselves face. Their homes are ransacked and the parolees are goaded into a response and if they respond are violated and sent back to prison.

However, in our case there were a great many cops and parole officers and to some it may seem surreal, but what happened on Nov. 30th, is just more of the same, of the state using its forces to harass and intimidate. They were held off and defeated by a mass campaign of support and this is what made the difference.

Melissa and I would like to thank the International Action Center, Troops Out Now, the Recreate ‘68 Alliance, USW 8751, Bishop Teixeira, City Council Person Chuck Turner, the Partisan Defense Committee, the Pan-African Newswire and all organizations and individuals that came to our assistance.

In struggle and solidarity,
Larry Hales

The Rag Blog

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Calling to Task Those Who Disregard the Constitution

Cheney, Torture and the Chance to Restore the Rule of Law
By John Nichols / April 12, 2008

The Constitution of the United States is absolutely clear when it comes to matters of torture.

Amendment 8 specifically states that, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

Acts of torture are by definition and common understanding -- certainly at the time of the drafting of the nation's essential document and arguably even in this less-enlightened era -- cruel and unusual punishments.

Vice President Dick Cheney, when he assumed the second most powerful office in the land after the disputed election of 2000, swore an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same."

Any reasonable reader of that oath would conclude that Cheney bound himself to abide by the Constitution -- and thus to avoid any involvement with the promotion of acts of torture upon detainees of the United States government.

Yet we now know from revelations made by former senior intelligence officials to ABC News and the Associated Press that Cheney and other members of the administration -- who apparently took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods were discussed -- authorized the use of waterboarding and other generally recognized torture techniques.

There is no question that Cheney violated his oath of office, which bound him to support and defend a Constitution that he disregarded.

The question is: How will responsible Americans respond?

The power to hold Cheney to account rests with Congress.

The power to get Congress to act rests with the American people.

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a respected lawyer who has been working with a number of other Constitutional experts and activists, has responded -- not just to Cheney's trashing of the Constitution but to the long list of Bush administration wrongs.

Anderson is circulating a letter that reads:

As patriotic Americans, we believe in knowing the truth about our government. Regardless of political affiliation, we believe in our constitutional democracy. We believe in the rule of law – that no person, regardless of position, is above the law.

We believe in respecting basic human rights – and have been proud to distinguish our nation from those countries where people are kidnapped, disappeared, and tortured.

We believe that in a democracy likes ours, citizens are entitled to know whether government officials are living up to their oaths to defend and preserve the Constitution, and whether they are abusing the human rights of people here or elsewhere in the world.

This is not a partisan matter. It is a matter of responsible citizenship.

Recently, several conscientious members of the House Judiciary Committee, including the Chair, Congressman John Conyers, have indicated support for public hearings to investigate and disclose the facts concerning claims of illegal conduct and other abuses of power by members of the Executive Branch. If misconduct has occurred, the American people are entitled to know. If misconduct has not occurred, hearings will determine and disclose that as well.

By showing that the American people – without political partisanship – support the disclosure of the truth through public hearings, we can make a difference, together standing up for the truth, the rule of law, and our Constitution.

• We are entitled to know whether members of the Executive Branch misrepresented the facts and withheld crucial information, thereby deceiving our nation and the international community before the invasion of Iraq.

• As American citizens who value the system of checks and balances among the three branches of government, we are entitled to know whether that system has been seriously undermined. We are entitled to know whether the courts and Congress have fulfilled their important constitutional roles in investigating and disclosing the misuse of Executive power.

• Our nation has engaged in the unprecedented, illegal, and immoral kidnapping, disappearance, and torture of human beings around the world (some of whom have been proven to be innocent of any wrongdoing), with no due process, in complete secrecy, and with no accountability. Even US citizens have been held in prisons indefinitely, with no legal counsel, no trial, and no charges filed against them. As Americans, we are entitled to know what has occurred in connection with these human rights abuses. In our democratic system of government, there must be full accountability.

Speaking out together, as concerned, patriotic Americans, we can send a clear message to Congress: In the United States, the rule of law must prevail, our Constitution cannot be disregarded, and the fundamental morality to which our nation has always laid claim will be restored.

Anderson asks that Americans who support the principles outlined in this letter -- as I do -- go to his Restore the Rule of Law website and sign on.

Signing this letter, says Anderson, who has opened an important dialogue about the Constitution and White House accountability with Conyers and other key players on the Judiciary Committee, "indicates to Congressman Conyers, other members of the House Judiciary Committee, and Congress as a whole that you support efforts to investigate and disclose any illegal acts and abuses of power by the President and others in his administration. Declare to the world, and to our posterity, that, as a US citizen:

• You proudly support our long-held constitutional principles.

• You are speaking out to reaffirm our democracy.

• You demand accountability for those in our government who have disregarded our Constitution, violated statutory law, or engaged in immoral human-rights abuses."

Anderson's is an authentic patriotic response to the latest revelations about Dick Cheney's disregard for the Constitution.

Go to the Restore the Rule of Law website and sign on and do what Cheney did not: support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Source / The Nation / The Rag Blog

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German Citizen Challenges U.S. Rendition Before Human Rights Commission

Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent says the CIA abducted him Dec. 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonian border. Photo y Thomas Kienzle / AP.
Man claims CIA tortured him, goes to international court
April 9, 2009

Washington — A German citizen thwarted in the U.S. courts is taking his allegations of abduction and torture at the hands of the CIA to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union petitioned the commission on behalf of Khaled el-Masri, saying the U.S. government should be called on to apologize for its treatment of el-Masri and that the CIA's anti-terrorism rendition program should be found unlawful.

The commission, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States of which the United States is a member.

A German of Lebanese descent, el-Masri says he was abducted in December 2003 at the Serbian-Macedonian border and flown by the CIA to Afghanistan and abused as part of the administration's rendition program.

The Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege in el-Masri's case, shutting him out of the U.S. court system. The Supreme Court last year refused to hear his case.

The CIA declined to comment about the petition filed on el-Masri's behalf by the ACLU.

President Bush and others have confirmed the existence of the CIA's rendition program, but the facts central to el-Masri's claims "concern the highly classified methods and means of the program," the government said.

By refusing to hear el-Masri's case, the high court passed up an opportunity to review the doctrine of state secrets, which critics say this administration has used more frequently than its predecessors.

"This administration has routinely abused the state secrets privilege to avoid any accountability for egregious violations of the Constitution and international law," Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said in a statement.

El-Masri says the CIA mistakenly identified him as an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers

Source. Associated Press / The Rag Blog

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Border Fence Will Skirt Environmental Laws

A zigzagging second fence runs along side the original border fence, far right, along the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego. Photo by Denis Poroy / AP.
Homeland Security announces that it will waive regulations in order to complete the fence by the end of this year.
By Nicole Gaouette / Los Angeles Times / April 1, 2008

Washington -- In an aggressive move to finish building 670 miles of border fence by the end of this year, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it will waive federal environmental laws to meet that goal.

The two waivers, which will allow the department to slash through a thicket of environmental and cultural laws, would be the most expansive to date, encompassing land in California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas that stretches about 470 miles.

The waivers are highly controversial with environmentalists and border communities, which see them as a federal imposition that could damage the land and disrupt wildlife.

But they are praised by conservatives who championed the 2006 Secure Fence Act, despite the reluctance of President Bush, who has said a broader approach is needed to deal with illegal immigration.

Republicans greeted the news with satisfaction.

"It's great. This is the priority area where most of the illegal activity is going on and where most of the deaths are occurring," said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-Solana Beach), chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus. "The quicker we can get the physical fence up, the sooner we'll avoid situations like the deaths of agents. And it's still a national security issue. You just have to stop this kind of open traffic along the border."

Wildlife groups reacted with dismay.

Brian Segee, an attorney with Defenders of Wildlife, said, "It's dangerous, it's arrogant, it's going to have pronounced environmental impacts and it won't do a thing to address the problems of undocumented immigrants or address border security problems. It's an incredibly simplistic and ineffective approach to complex problems."

The waivers are intended to clear the way for fencing to block pedestrians and cars, as well as extra camera, towers and roads near the border. A special waiver was issued for a project in Hidalgo County, Texas, that would combine levees and a barrier.

Congress gave Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff the power to waive federal law in order to build the fence quickly. Since construction began, the department has faced fierce opposition from local communities and has had to go to court against more than 50 property owners simply to survey land to determine whether it is suitable for a fence.

The department has so far built 309 miles of fence.

Some of the resistance comes from landowners who protest that the path of the fence might block their access to the Rio Grande; other opponents are concerned that it could increase the danger of extinction for endangered animals, such as the ocelot, a wild cat whose mating habits may be affected.

Chertoff has called the waivers a last resort, and department officials say the agency is committed to minimizing the impacts to the environment and wildlife.

Homeland Security officials said many of the 470 miles have already undergone environmental review and that the agency is committed to environmental responsibility.

"If that was true, the waivers wouldn't be necessary," Segee countered.

Homeland Security has previously issued three waivers.

One, on September 2005, was to complete roughly 14 miles near San Diego; another in January 2007 was used to build infrastructure near the Barry M. Goldwater military range in southern Arizona. A third waiver was issued in October 2007 near the San Pedro National Riparian Conservation Area, also in southern Arizona.

Source.

Environmentalists have complained about the fence because they say it puts already endangered species such as two types of wild cats — the ocelot and the jaguarundi — in even more danger of extinction. They say the fence would prevent them from swimming across the Rio Grande to mate.

"Unwilling to consult with local communities or to follow long-standing laws, Secretary Chertoff chose to bypass stakeholders and push through this unpopular project on April Fool's Day," Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said in a statement. "We don't think the destruction of the borderlands region is a laughing matter."

Chertoff has said the fence is good for the environment because immigrants degrade the land with trash and human waste when they sneak illegally into the country. -- AP.

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Supreme Court Inc.

How the nation’s highest court became increasingly receptive to the arguments of American business.

By Jeffrey Rosen

[This article first appeared in the March 16, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine. It's a scary read if you're not, say, a Republican. -- The Rag Blog.]

The headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, located across from Lafayette Park in Washington, is a limestone structure that looks almost as majestic as the Supreme Court. The similarity is no coincidence: both buildings were designed by the same architect, Cass Gilbert. Lately, however, the affinities between the court and the chamber, a lavishly financed business-advocacy organization, seem to be more than just architectural.

The Supreme Court term that ended last June was, by all measures, exceptionally good for American business. The chamber’s litigation center filed briefs in 15 cases and its side won in 13 of them — the highest percentage of victories in the center’s 30-year history. The current term, which ends this summer, has also been shaping up nicely for business interests.

I visited the chamber recently to talk with Robin Conrad, who heads the litigation effort, about her recent triumphs. Conrad, an appealing, soft-spoken woman, lives with her family on a horse farm in Maryland, where she rides with a fox-chasing club called the Howard County-Iron Bridge Hounds.

Her office, playfully adorned by action figures of women like Xena the Warrior Princess and Hillary Rodham Clinton, has one of the most impressive views in Washington. “You can see the White House through the trees,” she said as we peered through a window overlooking the park. “In the old days, you could actually see people bathing in the fountain. Homeless people.”

Conrad was in an understandably cheerful mood. Though the current Supreme Court has a well-earned reputation for divisiveness, it has been surprisingly united in cases affecting business interests. Of the 30 business cases last term, 22 were decided unanimously, or with only one or two dissenting votes. Conrad said she was especially pleased that several of the most important decisions were written by liberal justices, speaking for liberal and conservative colleagues alike.

In opinions last term, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter each went out of his or her way to question the use of lawsuits to challenge corporate wrongdoing — a strategy championed by progressive groups like Public Citizen but routinely denounced by conservatives as “regulation by litigation.”

Conrad reeled off some of her favorite moments: “Justice Ginsburg talked about how ‘private-securities fraud actions, if not adequately contained, can be employed abusively.’ Justice Breyer had a wonderful quote about how Congress was trying to ‘weed out unmeritorious securities lawsuits.’ Justice Souter talked about how the threat of litigation ‘will push cost-conscious defendants to settle.’ ”

Examples like these point to an ideological sea change on the Supreme Court. A generation ago, progressive and consumer groups petitioning the court could count on favorable majority opinions written by justices who viewed big business with skepticism — or even outright prejudice. An economic populist like William O. Douglas, the former New Deal crusader who served on the court from 1939 to 1975, once unapologetically announced that he was “ready to bend the law in favor of the environment and against the corporations.”

Today, however, there are no economic populists on the court, even on the liberal wing. And ever since John Roberts was appointed chief justice in 2005, the court has seemed only more receptive to business concerns. Forty percent of the cases the court heard last term involved business interests, up from around 30 percent in recent years. While the Rehnquist Court heard less than one antitrust decision a year, on average, between 1988 and 2003, the Roberts Court has heard seven in its first two terms — and all of them were decided in favor of the corporate defendants.

Business cases at the Supreme Court typically receive less attention than cases concerning issues like affirmative action, abortion or the death penalty. The disputes tend to be harder to follow: the legal arguments are more technical, the underlying stories less emotional. But these cases — which include shareholder suits, antitrust challenges to corporate mergers, patent disputes and efforts to reduce punitive-damage awards and prevent product-liability suits — are no less important. They involve billions of dollars, have huge consequences for the economy and can have a greater effect on people’s daily lives than the often symbolic battles of the culture wars.

In the current Supreme Court term, the justices have already blocked a liability suit against Medtronic, the manufacturer of a heart catheter, and rejected a type of shareholder suit that includes a claim against Enron. In the coming months, the court will decide whether to reduce the largest punitive-damage award in American history, which resulted from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

What should we make of the Supreme Court’s transformation? Throughout its history, the court has tended to issue opinions, in areas from free speech to gender equality, that reflect or consolidate a social consensus. With their pro-business jurisprudence, the justices may be capturing an emerging spirit of agreement among liberal and conservative elites about the value of free markets.

Among the professional classes, many Democrats and Republicans, whatever their other disagreements, have come to share a relatively laissez-faire, technocratic vision of the economy and are suspicious of excessive regulation and reflexive efforts to vilify big business. Judges, lawyers and law professors (such as myself) drilled in cost-benefit analysis over the past three decades, are no exception. It should come as little surprise that John Roberts and Stephen Breyer, both of whom studied the economic analysis of law at Harvard, have similar instincts in business cases.

Read all of it here

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Peace, Justice AND Sustainability

Jensen: Look beyond war and peace to global justice
By Robert Jensen / March 23, 2008

Now that we have passed the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it's a good time to step back for a look not at how we went wrong but what we need to do to get on the right path.
It has long been a staple of the anti-war movement that there can be no meaningful peace without justice on a global scale. Those of us living in the First World, especially in the United States, cannot pretend to be working for peace unless we also are working for a more just and equitable distribution of the world's resources.

The anti-war/peace movement, therefore, must also be a movement focused on the grotesque inequalities in a predatory corporate capitalist system. In a world where half the population lives on less than $2 a day, it's clear that the global economy is itself a form of war on billions of people. In such a profoundly unjust world, armed conflict is inevitable because there always will be resistance to inequality. Powerful states will respond militarily to any threat, real or perceived, to their dominance.

In other words: No justice, no peace.

Now it's time for us to take the next step: We must recognize that there can be no justice over the long term without sustainability, and creating a sustainable world will require not only radical change in systems and structures of power but also a radical change in the way we in affluent societies live.

It's time to recognize that if we are serious about the values of equality that we claim are the core of our politics, we must scale back the level at which we live.

No reduction in First World consumption, no justice; and no justice, no peace.

One cannot be a serious peace activist without putting peace in the context of justice and sustainability, and the high-energy/high-tech lifestyle of the First World is not sustainable and not compatible with the demands of justice. Meaningful peace requires real justice, which means we must learn to live with less.

We could start by applying a "Golden Rule" of consumption. Working from the common moral principle that we should follow a path based on rules that we would be willing to apply to all, we could begin with this: Consume at a level that, if applied throughout the world, would allow all people a decent life consistent with long-term sustainability. That doesn't prescribe a destination but suggests a direction; instead of anyone sanctimoniously dictating a specific lifestyle, we can collectively recognize that we must move toward living lower on the food chain, using far less energy, consuming far fewer of the planet's limited resources, generating far less toxic waste.

Though some might see this as a sacrifice — and in some sense, of course, we will have to give up material things that we have come to rely on and enjoy — this moment in history also provides us with a chance to redefine what it means to live a good life. Rather than accept the mad scramble to accumulate goods and insulate ourselves from the natural world — the good life as defined in a consumer capitalist society awash in high-tech toys and mass-mediated entertainment — we can reorient ourselves toward the traditional definition of a good life in terms of community and connection with others, service and sacrifice for others, and a deeper sense of meaning for ourselves.

Eloquent calls for peace are easy to make from the material comfort of the First World. Moving beyond that to a demand for meaningful justice gets us closer to the goal. A commitment to a sustainable level of consumption should be at the core of this work.

It will be a struggle, of course, often confusing and sometimes painful. But we can remember that there is joy in the struggle for a better world, which is always at the same time a struggle to become more fully human.

Jensen (rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu) is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. This article appeared in the March 23, 2008 Austin American-Statesman as an op-ed piece.

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From Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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Another Forgotten Victim of 911

Dr. Sami Al-Arian vs Big Brother
by Eileen Fleming / March 15th, 2008

American Palestinian Professor Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, has spent the last five years behind bars although NO jury ever returned a single guilty verdict against him. On March 3, 2008 he began his third hunger strike in Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. after learning he would face a third grand jury, instead of being released and deported this April.

After losing fifteen pounds, the diabetic Dr. was moved to Butner Medical Center. I phoned the center [919- 575-3900] on March 14, 2008, seeking a condition update, but only got as far as leaving a voice mail.

I then phoned Melva Underbakke, who was driving to Phoenix to show the documentary USA vs Al-Arian.

Melva informed me, “I have known Sami for fifteen years, we both taught at the University of South Florida. When he was indicted he lost his tenure. We lived a mile from each other and were both on the educational committee of HOPE, a volunteer organization in the community that works to strengthen the community. Sami and I were both on the committee that helped the public schools develop an alternative to out of school suspension by keeping the suspended kids in the school system.

“After 9/11, Sami was instrumental in outreaching to the entire community by inviting the churches and all others to the mosque to express our shared grief and sorrow.

“Sami has won many awards for teaching. He worked to get people out to vote and he lobbied in Washington.

“It’s a big loss to our community–a big loss to our country to lose such a person as Sami.

“Even during his pretrial incarceration the conditions were very harsh. He was always behind a glass; no physical contact was allowed, even for his family. I think maybe once a year they were allowed to be in the same room with him. The last time I saw him was just after his second hunger strike. He was still joking and in good spirits. He was strong and it was a happy visit.

“Sami was always a big believer in the American system. He felt justice would be done. But, I think because this case goes all the way to Washington, and they have been loosing these terror cases, they want to save face and don’t want to give up persecuting Sami.”

Dr. Al-Arian has stated:

“To be patriotic is to be able to question government policy in times of crisis. To be patriotic is to stand up for the bill of rights and the Constitution in times of uncertainty and insecurity. To be patriotic is to speak up against the powerful in defense of the weak and the voiceless. To be patriotic is to challenge the abuses of the PATRIOT Act.”

“A great nation is ultimately defined and judged by its system of justice. When the system is manipulated by the powerful and tolerates abuses against the minorities or the weak members of society, the government not only loses its moral authority and betrays future generations, but will also be condemned by history.”

The diabetic Dr.’s first hunger strike, lasted 140 days, he survived on nutritional liquids and lost 45 pounds. In 2007, he went on a two month hunger strike, drank only water and lost 55 pounds. His third hunger strike began March 3, 2008 and he is refusing fluids.

The documentary USA vs Al-Arian that Melva is taking around the country, details “the absurdity of the show trial held in Florida and the hollowness of the government’s case against Al-Arian. When the film was awarded Best Nordic Documentary at the Nordic Panorama in Finland the jury wrote: ‘The film shows precisely how a common man becomes a victim of the situation in the contemporary world, where the Big Brother is watching you even when you’re ordering pizza.’”

The film is also “a close portrait of an Arab-American family facing terrorism charges leveled by the U.S. Government. The film shows a personal story of a family living in a society where fear of terrorism has resulted in increasing stigmatization and discrimination against Muslims. For years, Nahla Al-Arian and her children have been fighting to prove the innocence of husband and father Sami, a Palestinian refugee, university professor and civil rights activist, who has lived in the USA for more than thirty years. In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was accused of giving material support to a terrorist organization and held in solitary confinement for over three years. His six-month trial ended without a single guilty verdict. The failure to convict Dr. Al-Arian was seen as a stinging rebuke for the federal government. While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he has been targeted in an attempt to silence his political views. Because the jury hung on some of the counts, however, Dr. Al-Arian remained in jail as the prosecution threatened to retry him. In May 2006, he agreed to a plea bargain with the US Government in order to put an end to the ordeal and to be reunited with his family. A federal judge sentenced him to 57 months in prison and subsequent deportation… The case of Sami Al-Arian is one of the first major tests of the USA Patriot Act, a controversial law passed hastily after September 11, 2001.”

So far the American taxpayer has provided approximately $50 million dollars to persecute Dr. Al-Arian. “The government has called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to hundreds of hours of often absurd phone transcriptions and recordings made over a 10-year period, which the jury dismissed as “gossip.” Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian—including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad”—the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors disagreed on the remaining charges, with 10 of the 12 jurors favoring his full acquittal… Following the acquittal, a disaster for the government, especially because then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had announced the indictment, prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor, under duress, accepted a plea bargain agreement that would spare him a second trial, saying in his agreement that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a tepid charge given the high profile of the case.”

*****

USA vs Al-Arian
Contact Melva Underbakke to schedule a screening in your city.
Call (813) 215-3403
E-mail: melvau@earthlink.net


Eileen Fleming is the author of Keep Hope Alive and Memoirs of a Nice Irish American Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory and the producer of 30 Minutes With Vanunu. Email her at ecumei@gmail.com.

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