Hillary Invokes Assassination

For weeks, pundits have speculated about why Hillary Clinton insists on remaining in the primary race when Barack Obama has all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, Clinton answered that question. It appears she's waiting in the wings for something dreadful to befall Obama.

When asked by the editorial board of South Dakota's Sioux Falls Argus-Ledger why she is still running, Clinton replied, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it."

It's astounding that a presidential candidate could verbalize such a thing when the collective American psyche still aches from the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. Many of us remember where we were when these heroes were shot. The pain we felt is palpable. We still suffer from their absence.

Clinton, evidently surprised at the ferocity of the reaction to her statement, made a half-baked non-apology a few hours later. She expressed regret that anything she said could have offended the Kennedy family. But she uttered not a word of repentance for her suggestion that Barack Obama's death could inure to her benefit.

The response to Clinton's invocation of the "A" word was swift and strong. The New York Times called it an "inexcusable outburst." Keith Olbermann characterized it as "crass and low and unfeeling and brutal." Noting that "the politics of this nation is steeped in blood," he admonished Clinton: "You cannot and must not invoke that imagery, anywhere, at any time."

Clinton's remarks offer a look into her character. In Olbermann's words, they "open a door wide into the soul of somebody who seeks the highest office in this country and through that door shows something not merely troubling but frightening."

Before Friday, a groundswell of support for an Obama-Clinton ticket appeared to be building. But as New York state Sen. Bill Perkins, an Obama supporter, said when he heard Clinton's comments, "My jaw just dropped -- I think she just basically shattered her hopes of being named as vice president. To use the example of an assassination," Perkins added, "I think, leads one to believe that she may be talking about something unfortunate happening to Barack Obama. Couple that with the other remarks she made recently about winning the white vote and her husband's statements and I'd say something is seriously amiss."

How, after Clinton's ominous remarks, could Obama ever turn his back on her if she became his vice-president?

Anyone who "might be sticking around on the off-chance the other guy might get shot has no business being the president of the United States," Olbermann declared. As Newsweek's Howard Fineman noted, Clinton's is "a campaign that probably needs to be put out of its misery real soon."

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, an uncommitted superdelegate, commented that Clinton's remarks were "beyond the pale." Indeed, the remaining uncommitted superdelegates should stop the bleeding now and allow us to move on with the election.

(The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer; she is not acting on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild or Thomas Jefferson School of Law)

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National Lawyers Guild Welcomes Discussion of Racism Occasioned by Senator Barack Obama's Historic Speech

In response to highly-publicized sound-bites from sermons by Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Sen. Barack Obama delivered an historic speech on racism, titled "A More Perfect Union."

Rev. Wright had strongly criticized the U.S. government for putting Indians on reservations, Japanese in internment camps, and Africans into slavery. He said, "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost." Rev. Wright did not justify the 9/11 attacks; he explained they were blowback for a vicious U.S. foreign policy.

Rev. Wright's words were not unlike those uttered by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. about the Vietnam War in 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place."

In his speech, Sen. Obama credited the civil rights movement for the progress we have made in overcoming racism. "But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now," he said, citing segregated, inferior schools that continue to exist 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education.

Yet last term, the Supreme Court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, limited the ability of public school districts to address segregation by prohibiting the use of race-conscious measures as a tool to promote integration. Chief Justice John Roberts based his plurality opinion on the myth of "colorblindness," equating the exclusion and segregation of children by race with the inclusion of different races in the same schools. He ignored the decades of racial discrimination caused in part by segregated schools. Roberts ended his opinion with the flip comment, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Vast disparities with respect to race continue to pervade every aspect of American life. Latinos and African Americans are disproportionately concentrated in poor residential areas with sub-standard housing conditions, limited employment opportunities, inadequate access to health care, under-resourced schools and high exposure to crime and violence.

Racial profiling from the initial police stop to the charging process and trial through the sentencing procedure has been widely documented. Mandatory sentences of life imprisonment are imposed disproportionately on minority defendants. Non-whites are much more likely than whites to be charged with and sentenced to death for substantially similar crimes.

In his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King wrote, "Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

Sen. Barack Obama has injected this critical discussion into the national discourse as a means of tackling the problems of inferior schools, health care, jobs and economic opportunities for all races. He said, "It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper."

The National Lawyers Guild welcomes this long overdue opportunity for a national dialogue on the pernicious racism and class oppression that the U.S. government continues to perpetuate.

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Targeting Dissent: FBI Spying on the National Lawyers Guild

In 1937, the American Bar Association refused to allow people of color to join its ranks. With the blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the National Lawyers Guild was founded as a multi-racial alternative to the ABA. The Guild's founding members included the attorney general, several judges, some congressmen, and the head of the National Labor Relations Board.

Three years after the creation of the National Lawyers Guild, the FBI began to conduct secret surveillance of the Guild. From 1940 to 1975, the FBI wiretapped Guild phones, burglarized Guild offices, and sent informers into Guild meetings. The June 25, 2007 New York Times report on the FBI's program of spying on the Guild omits FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's primary rationale for undertaking this surveillance: "to blunt the Guild's criticism of the FBI and, if possible, to destroy the organization," in the words of Michael Krinsky, one of the lawyers who filed the 1977 lawsuit against the FBI.

The Guild, which provided legal support for the people, was a thorn in Hoover's side. In 1950, the Guild was about to release a big exposé on the FBI, prepared by Yale law professor and ex-Guild president Thomas Emerson. No other organization was undertaking such a comprehensive criticism of the FBI. Through illegal wiretaps and informants the FBI learned of the Guild's impending report. In advance of the report's release, the FBI launched a pre-emptive strike at the Guild by causing people in the press and the Senate to denounce the report. "So the story became the Lawyers Guild, not the FBI," Krinsky said.

The FBI asked Richard M. Nixon, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), to call for an investigation of the Guild, on the eve of the release of the Guild report. The investigation led to the 1950 HUAC report titled, "National Lawyers Guild: Legal Bulwark of the Communist Party." It concluded with a call to the attorney general to designate the National Lawyers Guild a "subversive organization." The AG complied in 1953, but when no evidence to support the designation was forthcoming, he dropped it in 1958.

From the 1950s through the early 1970s, the FBI continued to focus on the National Lawyers Guild. The FBI had a list called The Security Index, which identified people, including Guild leaders, to be rounded up in the event of a national emergency.

Hoover's COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program) engaged in illegal surveillance of other organizations and individuals as well as the Guild. For example, in a program called Racial Matters, the FBI wiretapped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s hotel rooms and tried to drive him to divorce and suicide. Dr. King's voter registration campaign and especially his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War incurred the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover, who went after Dr. King with a vengeance. Groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) were also on Hoover's surveillance list.

The revelation of President Richard Nixon's illegal surveillance of groups opposed to his policies as well as hearings by a select Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church led to the enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other curbs on the power of the FBI and the CIA. Today we are faced with President George W. Bush's secret domestic spying program, which, as I explain in my book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, violates not only FISA, but the Fourth Amendment as well.

Bush's predecessors illegally targeted those who criticized their policies, under the guise of fighting communism. Bush's rationale for bending the Constitution is fighting terrorism, but his attacks are leveled at disssenters.

The HUAC report and the AG's designation of the Guild not only violated the Constitution; they nearly succeeded in destroying the organization. Membership in the Guild fell to about 300 members. But the Guild survived and today it boasts nearly 6,000 members.

Members of the National Lawyers Guild continue to work beside those who struggle for economic, racial and sexual equality, and against imperial wars and occupations. I'm proud to have been a Guild member for more than half of its 70-year life.

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One Nation Under Surveillance

We do not believe the Executive has, or should have, the inherent
constitutional authority to violate the law or infringe the legal rights
of Americans, whether it be a warrantless break-in into the home or
office of an American, warrantless electronic surveillance, or a
President's authorization to the FBI to create a massive domestic
security program based upon secret oral directives.
-Final Report of the Church Committee, 1976

The revelation that President George W. Bush authorized the unlawful warrantless surveillance of Americans has resurrected the discussion of the proper balance to be struck between liberty and security.

This discourse is not new in the United States. Benjamin Franklin warned, "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." Franklin was prescient. Throughout our history, we have grappled with this apparent tension. Unfortunately, all too often, we have lost our liberties - without becoming more secure. It has been primarily the executive branch that has overreached across the lines that separate the three branches of our government. In this post-9/11 world, under the guise of his "Global War on Terror," George W. Bush has arrogated to himself a level of presidential authority that rivals any such usurpation in the past.

Surveillance in this country has been aimed at slaves, immigrants, political radicals, suspected lawbreakers, the poor, workers, and anyone with a credit card or a computer. It has frequently been used by the government to suppress criticism of its policies.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans. The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.

The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.

Subsequent examples of repressive legislation passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).
During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting."
COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) was designed to "disrupt, misdirect and otherwise neutralize" political and activist groups. In the 1960s, the FBI targeted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a program called "Racial Matters." King's campaign to register African-American voters in the South raised the hackles of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who disingenuously claimed King's organization was being infiltrated by communists. In fact, the FBI was really concerned that King's civil rights and anti-Vietnam War campaigns "represented a clear threat to the established order of the U.S." It went after King with a vengeance, wiretapping his telephones and securing personal information which it used to try to discredit him and drive him to divorce and suicide.

In response to the excesses of COINTELPRO, a congressional committee chaired by Senator Frank Church conducted an investigation of activities of the domestic intelligence agencies. The Church Committee concluded, "[I]ntelligence activities have undermined the constitutional rights of citizens and ... they have done so primarily because checks and balances designed by the framers of the Constitution to assure accountability have not been applied." The committee added, "In an era where the technological capability of Government relentlessly increases, we must be wary about the drift toward 'big brother government' ... Here, there is no sovereign who stands above the law. Each of us, from presidents to the most disadvantaged citizen, must obey the law." The committee stressed that the "advocacy of political ideas is not to be the basis for governmental surveillance."

Congress established guidelines to regulate intelligence-gathering by the FBI. Reacting against President Richard Nixon's assertion of unchecked presidential power, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, to regulate electronic surveillance while protecting national security.

FISA established a secret court to consider applications by the government for wiretap orders. It specifically created only one exception for the President to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant. For that exception to apply, the Attorney General must certify under oath that the communications to be monitored will be exclusively between foreign powers, and that there is no substantial likelihood that a United States person will be overheard.

In 2002, in direct violation of FISA, Bush signed an executive order that authorizes the National Security Agency to wiretap people within the United States with no judicial review. It is estimated that the NSA has eavesdropped on thousands of private conversations in the last four years. Additionally, the NSA has combed through large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States. It has collected vast personal information that has nothing to do with national security.

Electronic surveillance was first used during the Holocaust when IBM worked for the Nazi government organizing and analyzing its census data. Death camp barcodes - linked to computerized records - were tattooed onto prisoners' forearms.

The advent of digital technology raised surveillance to a new level. Social Security numbers, credit cards, gym memberships, library cards, health insurance records, bar codes, GSM chips in cell phones, toll booths, hidden cameras, workplace identification badges, and the Internet all provide the government with effective tools to keep track of our finances, our politics, our personal habits, and our whereabouts through data mining. The Privacy Foundation determined in a 2001 survey that one-third of all American workers who use the Internet or email on the job are under "constant surveillance" by employers.

One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act lowered the standards for government surveillance of telephone and computer communications, and empowered the government to monitor books people read. It created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the Japanese internment in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day came with the recent decision of a New York federal judge, dismissing a case that challenged the detention of hundreds of Arab and Muslim foreign nationals shortly after 9/11. None has been convicted of any crime involving terrorism. U.S. District Judge John Gleason ruled in Turkmen v. Ashcroft that the round-up and indefinite detention of foreign nationals on immigration charges based only on their race, religion or national origin does not violate equal protection or due process. This is not surprising in light of the anti-immigrant hysteria sweeping our country today.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

Milton Mayer described the escalation of surveillance that accompanied the rise of German fascism: "What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security." We should heed his words.

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Taking Reparations Seriously

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego says that although reparations for African-American slavery remain an elusive goal due largely to misconceptions about what they might entail, meaningful reparations could in practice come in different forms in different contexts...

The reparations movement is grounded in the civil rights movement and the social justice movements of the 1960s – 1980s.
- Congressman John Conyers, keynote address, March 18, 2006

One hundred and forty years after the end of legalized slavery and 40 years after the passage of civil rights legislation, the legacy of slavery persists. In employment, education, healthcare, and criminal justice, African-Americans suffer from institutionalized racism. The movement to secure reparations for slavery has gained new traction with recent successes of Holocaust litigants. But it remains an elusive goal, due, in large part, to common misconceptions about what reparations would really mean.

Last month, Congressman John Conyers and scholars from around the country participated in an historic gathering to address the myriad issues arising from the debate over reparations. Held at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, the two-day conference focused on slavery and reparations as well as other instances of mass injustice in relation to the themes of justice, causation, group responsibility, moral culpability, racism and forgiveness.

Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor Kaimipono Wenger described reparations as “an acknowledgement of the displacement of the rule of law under slavery.” He noted that Blacks were denied civil and political rights even after slavery ended. “Not only are reparations consistent with the rule of law,” he said. “They are in fact a product of the rule of law.”

Conyers told the conference, “After slavery ended, a new form of subjugation kicked in. There is a continuing, traceable, uninterrupted connection of racial subjugation that explains why there are ghettos today.”

The first reparations for slavery came in the form of land. Titles to 40-acre tracts were distributed to the head of each family of freedmen. Animals that were no longer useful to the military – mules and horses – were given to each household.

In 1989, Conyers introduced a bill which would establish a federal commission to study reparations. It was named HR 40, in honor of the now-famous phrase “40 acres and a mule.” But Congress has still not passed HR 40.

Conyers noted that on February 13, 2006, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution urging the US Congress to 1) create and appropriate funds for a commission to study and make findings relating to the present day social, political and economic consequences of both slavery and the denial thereafter of equal justice under law for persons of African descent living in the United States; and 2) authorize the commission to propose public policies or governmental actions, if any, that may be appropriate to address such consequences.

In adopting this resolution, the ABA cited Congress’s establishment in 1980 of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Congress directed the commission to review the facts and circumstances surrounding the impact of the internment during World War II on American citizens and permanent resident aliens.

Margaret Chon, a professor at Seattle University School of Law, told the audience that “the Japanese American reparations experience teaches us about the capacity as well as the limits of law to address injustice, not only for this particular group, but also for all groups that have and continue to be harmed by group discrimination.” She said, “If the primary purpose of reparations is to repair past harm, then reparations should include mechanisms to correct past harm that has ‘hardened’ into present everyday practices. That is, reparations requests should anticipate ways to effect long-term structural change.”

Chon cited the 2000 Civil Liberties Public Education Act. Its purpose is to provide competitive grants for public educational activities and the development of educational materials to ensure that the events surrounding the exclusion, forced removal and incarceration of civilians and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry will be remembered and so that causes and circumstances of this and similar events may be illuminated and understood.

Rebecca Tsosie, a professor at Arizona State University College of Law, spoke about reparations for Native Americans. “There is no ‘uniform’ theory of reparations that fits all cultures, all nations, all people. Part of the process is telling the truth,” she said. “That’s why apology is so important.” Tsosie maintained that “’reconciliation’ constitutes a process of ‘healing’ between groups who have experienced bitter and painful relations.”

Professor KJ Greene, from Thomas Jefferson, cited the mass appropriation of Black cultural production as unjust enrichment. He advocated atonement as reparations, not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators of cultural theft and distortion.

Linda Keller, another Thomas Jefferson professor, discussed reparations for victims of massive human rights violations, with particular emphasis on the compensation system in the new International Criminal Court. “It has the potential to be a comprehensive reparations regime with truly global reach, covering victims of the international crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” she said.

In the United States, “reparations advocacy has recently shifted from legislative efforts to the courtroom,” Theodore Kornweibel, a professor at San Diego State University, explained. He detailed the way in which the railroads “employed” over 10,000 slaves yearly, making them the largest example of industrial slavery. Kornweibel said that corporate defendants in recent suits seeking reparations include banks, insurance companies and railroads.

The week before the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States delegation walked out of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durbin, South Africa. Although framed as opposition to resolutions condemning Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, the Bush administration opposed the demand that the US pay reparations to African-Americans for the damage they suffered from slavery. Conyers reported at the time that other delegates from the Congressional Black Caucus alleged the US was using the Middle East issue as a smoke screen to avoid discussion of reparations.

But this unique conference at Thomas Jefferson took the issue of reparations head-on. The thread that wove the broad range of scholarly views together was the notion that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to reparations. “Different types of injury proclaim different relationships with disparate national, local, and private entities,” St. Louis University School of Law professor Eric Miller told the gathering. “Each requires a different form of reparations and permits a different critique of structural and individual discrimination. Some forms of reparations are appropriate as between nations; others as between discrete groups within a particular society. Some are directed towards government entities, some towards private actors. Some require monetary damages and some require other forms of remediation.”

Whether apology, atonement, education, or 40 acres and a mule, the solution must fit the problem. And the problem is racism, which, unfortunately, is still very much with us today.

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The Two Americas

Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died.

What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go."

"Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis."

"Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin."

They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed.

After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does."

Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction.

Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq."

An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees.

"This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps.

Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice."

During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America.

"I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!"

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the circumstances.

But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!"

When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive.

Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the edge off their jones."

When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat.

Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years."

On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own.

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Another World Is Possible

The Fifth Annual World Social Forum (WSF) held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from January 26-31 garnered almost no media coverage in the United States. Timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the WSF drew 155,000 activists from 135 countries, who assembled to challenge Bush's agenda.

The weeklong happening, called "Another World Is Possible," kicked off with a "march for peace." An estimated 200,000 people, many with turbans or indigenous clothing, carried bright flags and marched to the beat of omnipresent drums. Several bore posters with pictures of Bush ("The World's No. 1 Terrorist"). The mood was festive but purposeful as old and young, black, brown, yellow and white, prepared to strategize about how to create a just and peaceful world.

One of the most compelling speakers at the WSF was John Perkins, a former CIA operative and self-described economic hit man for U.S. imperialism. It was Perkins' job to meet with a leader of a targeted country and encourage him to accept a large loan for a project that both the CIA and the leader knew the country could not afford. The money would go to a bank in the United States and U.S. corporations would get the contract to do the job. The country was then beholden to the United States, manipulated to support U.S. policy and make its natural resources available to U.S. corporations. This is the model of "neo-liberalism."

Where a head of state refused to accept the CIA's offer, Perkins would remind him that several leaders had been assassinated or become the victims of a coup and removed from office (e.g., Chile, Haiti). In such a situation, the CIA would back opposition movements within the target country, support corrupt military leaders, or undermine the country's economy. The CIA often sent in "jackals," or "hit men," who plied their trade when other methods failed. Omar Torrijos, former president of Panama, was one victim of these jackals.

When both the economic hit men and the jackals were unsuccessful in bringing the country under U.S. domination, the tactic of last resort was war. This is what happened in Iraq after the U.S. was unable to convince Saddam to support its policies.

Notwithstanding Bush's rhetoric about creating democracies throughout the world, the United States has tried mightily to facilitate the overthrow of twice democratically-elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. But it has thus far failed. (See my editorial, Chavez Victory: Defeat for Bush Policy). There was talk last week at the WSF that the U.S. is attempting to get Colombia to invade Venezuela, but Chavez and other Latin American leaders are trying to defuse the situation. Likewise, Dick Cheney lobbed out the possibility that Israel might attack Iran (thereby using Israel as a U.S. surrogate to enable the installation of an Iranian government more receptive to U.S. policies).

Hugo Chavez, who also spoke at the WSF, received a hero's welcome. He highlighted the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a proposal made by Venezuela as an alternative to the Free Trade of the Americas. The ALBA emphasizes social and cultural exchanges over profit-based economic deals. Chavez noted, "We can't wait for a sustained economic growth of 10 years in order to start reducing poverty through the trickledown effect, as the neoliberal economic theories propose."

Chavez criticized Condoleezza Rice's recent assertion that Chavez was "a negative force in the region." He said relations between the U.S. and Venezuela will remain unhealthy as long as the United States continues its policy of aggression. "The most negative force in the world today is the government of the United States," Chavez said.

Significantly, Chavez maintained, "We must start talking again about equality. The U.S. government talks about freedom and liberty, but never about equality." Indeed, Bush told the Congressional Black Caucus a few days ago that he was "unfamiliar" with the Voting Rights Act.

Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines, analyzed the role that cultural oppression played in the U.S. presidential election. Bello said that although neo-liberalism and militarism are significant problems, "the cultural dimension is what led the Bush administration to victory by drawing its support largely based on white people in the U.S." He noted, "The Bush administration in fact appeals to traditional forms of cultural oppression through traditional forms of cultural ethnocentrism and of traditional and old forms of racism." The people who voted for Bush, according to Bello, "were voting against blacks, they were voting against immigrants, the feminist movement, foreign imports and foreign ideas that are not American."

The American Association of Jurists (AAJ), in association with the Latin American Association of Labor Lawyers, sponsored three days of panel discussions on Law, Public Order and Social Integration at the WSF. As the U.S. representative to the AAJ, I gave a presentation on Human Rights and the New World Order, in which I noted that Bush told his advisors on the evening of September 11, 2001, that the terrorist attacks provided a "great opportunity" for the United States. Likewise, when the tsunami devastated Asia, Condoleezza Rice used almost the same words. She said the tsunami was a "wonderful opportunity" for the U.S. I presented an analysis of how the neoconservatives have hijacked United States foreign policy and the resulting decimation of human rights, including the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.

Another speaker at the AAJ conference was Arnel Medina Cuenca, president of the National Union of Cuban Jurists. Discussing the U.S. policy of neo-liberalism, he said, "Matan a los pobres pero no a la pobresa" ("They kill the poor but not the poverty.")

The AAJ passed a resolution in support of the five Cuban political prisoners incarcerated in New York for what was, in effect, their anti-terrorist actions against terrorists in the U.S. who sought to overthrow the Cuban government. Another AAJ resolution calls for the return of Vieques, a United States military installation on the land of the U.S. colony Puerto Rico. The resolution also calls on the U.S. government to finance the decontamination of Vieques, which has been poisoned by depleted uranium and heavy metals from U.S. weapons testing and military training exercises. As a result the people of Vieques have the highest incidence of cancer in Puerto Rico.

Programs at the WSF advocated sustainable development, cancellation of Third World debt, an end to corporate abuse, struggle against United States imperialism, and termination of the occupation of Iraq.

In Bush's State of the Union address this evening, we can expect to hear more rhetoric about "freedom," "liberty" and "spreading democracy throughout the world." For most of the people of the world, however, Bush's words signal the spread of neo-liberalism, aggression and regime change, to their detriment. The World Social Forum is one small step toward uniting progressives from around the world to defy Bush's agenda which threatens us all.

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Alito Threatens Dr. King's Dream

Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

During his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito Jr. pledged allegiance to the principle of one man-one vote and denied he was a bigot. It is astonishing that these issues even entered our national discourse in 2006. But it is Alito's record, both as a member of the Reagan administration and as a judge on the Court of Appeals, that raises allegations of racism. And it is that same record that betrays Dr. King's values and threatens the future of civil rights in this country if Alito is confirmed to the high court.

In his 1985 application for a job in the Reagan Justice Department, Alito noted that he became interested in constitutional law "in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment." The reapportionment cases that upset him were the landmark decisions that affirmed the bedrock principle of our democracy: one person-one vote.

Fred Gray, the veteran civil rights lawyer who represented Dr. King and Rosa Parks, testified at Alito's hearing. "As one who has been in the trenches and still is in the trenches," Gray told the senators, "I appear today to attest to the tremendous importance of the reapportionment cases - those cases decided by the Warren Court, one of which I actually litigated and was my brainchild, Gomillion versus Lightfoot ... The cases illuminate the inequities of mal-apportionment which deprived African Americans of voting strength across the nation. In my view, there is no more important body of law than that generated in the field of voter registration and in civil and human rights." Gray testified, "I am troubled, extremely troubled, by Judge Alito's comments made in his application, notwithstanding his testimony before this committee ... A nominee to the Supreme Court who has a judicial philosophy that's set against the Warren Court and against the reapportionment cases is in effect saying that he would turn the clock back."

Indeed, when Alito became a judge, he ruled against minority voters who claimed a school board voting plan illegally diluted their voting strength. If he is confirmed, Alito will vote on a series of cases alleging minority vote dilution now pending before the Supreme Court.

Moreover, certain important provisions of the Voting Rights Act that have enhanced the opportunities for African Americans and other minority groups to vote effectively are set to expire next year, unless Congress renews them. These special provisions allow for significant federal oversight of state and local voting functions for jurisdictions deemed to have the worst and most persistent histories of voting discrimination against their minority populations. This heightened oversight is intended to identify and prevent proposed voting changes that worsen the position of minority voters, or to deter covered jurisdictions from proposing such voting changes.

For example, section 5 of the act requires certain covered states and political subdivisions to obtain federal or judicial preapproval or "preclearance" of any voting law changes or practices before they can legally take effect. This oversight has resulted in the detection and prohibition of several harmful voting laws and practices. Appeals of district court decisions on these preclearance provisions go directly to the Supreme Court.

Alito will have the opportunity to rule on section 5 preclearance issues, and may also review the 2007 congressional renewal of the act's special provisions.

Besides his astounding statement opposing reapportionment, Alito also proudly touted his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton in the same job application. CAP was formed to maintain Princeton as a white male college. It complained that increased numbers of "women and minorities will largely vitiate the alumni body of the future."

In spite of his avowed pride in being a CAP member, Alito denied any memory of the group after he was nominated for the Supreme Court. His amnesia is particularly surprising in light of his vast recall of the details of the myriad cases on his court's docket.

Alito's judicial record in civil rights cases corroborates his bias. In all split decisions in cases alleging race and sex discrimination, Alito voted against the claimants. His dismal record led the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Hispanic Caucus Civil Rights Task Force, and the National Bar Association to oppose Alito's confirmation.

The mainstream media has fixated on Martha Alito's tearful exit from the hearing after Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's defensive rhetorical question about whether her husband was a "closet bigot." Unfortunately, that dramatic film clip obscured the merits of the issue.

Samuel Alito's record on and off the bench shows a consistent pattern of bigotry - a pattern that promises to continue once he becomes a justice of the Supreme Court. Senators from both parties who truly seek to realize the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have a solemn obligation to filibuster and defeat Alito's nomination.

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Torture of Prisoners in U.S. Custody

Major General Geoffrey Miller, the American commander in charge of detentions and interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, recently conducted an overnight tour of the facility for journalists.

He proudly displayed “Camp Liberty” and “Camp Redemption,” newly renovated in response to the torture scandal unleashed by the release of the disgusting photographs last spring.

Under the new system in place at Abu Ghraib, an interrogation plan is submitted to a lawyer for approval before any interrogation begins. The time required to process prisoners has been reduced from 120 to 50 days. Since July, 60% of the reviews have lead to releases.

Three hundred Iraqi prisoners were released on one day in September. Each walked away with $25 and a 12-page glossy pamphlet on Iraq’s interim government.

General Miller, the tour guide, oversaw interrogations at the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He had been sent to Abu Ghraib last fall to transfer his interrogation system from Cuba to Iraq. It was on his watch that the worst mistreatment, depicted in the publicized photos, occurred.

Several official reports were written with more disturbing revelations. The International Committee of the Red Cross documented 70 – 90 % of those held at Abu Ghraib were there by mistake.

The reaction of the Bush administration to the revelations of torture was to prosecute seven low ranking soldiers.

In spite of calls for investigation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President George W. Bush for complicity in the mistreatment, the prison torture scandal has been on the back burner in the national discourse.

The September release of Seymour Hersh’s book Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, however, has put the issue back on the radar screen.

Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that his department was alerted to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in January 2004. Rumsfeld told Bush in February about an “issue” involving mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, according to a Senior White House aide.

These claims are disingenuous. The roots of Abu Ghraib, writes Hersh, lie in the creation of the “unacknowledged” special-access program (SAP) established by a top-secret order signed by Bush in late 2001 or early 2002. The presidential order authorized the Defense Department to set up a clandestine team of Special Forces operatives to defy international law and snatch, or assassinate, anyone considered a “high-value” Al Qaeda operative, anywhere in the world.

Rumsfeld expanded SAP into Iraq in August 2003. It was Rumsfeld who approved the use of physical coercion and sexual humiliation to extract information from prisoners. Rumsfeld and Bush set this system in motion long before January 2004. The mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was part of the ongoing operation.

Hersch quotes a CIA analyst who was sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo in late summer of 2002, to find out why so little useful intelligence had been gathered. After interviewing 30 prisoners, “he came back convinced that we were committing war crimes in Guantánamo.”

By fall 2002, the analyst’s report finally reached General John A. Gordon, the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, who reported directly to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Gordon was deeply distressed by the report and its implications for the treatment of captured American soldiers. He also thought “that if the actions at Guantánamo ever became public, it’d be damaging to the president.”

Gordon passed the report to Rice, who called a high-level meeting in the White House situation room. Rumsfeld, who had been encouraging his soldiers to get tough with prisoners, was present at the meeting. Yet Rice asked Rumsfeld “what the issues were, and he said he hadn’t looked into it.” Rice urged him to look into it: “Let’s get the story right,” she declared.

A military consultant with close ties to Special Operations told Hersh that war crimes were committed in Iraq and no action was taken. “People were beaten to death,” he said. “What do you call it when people are tortured and going to die and the soldiers know it, but do not treat their injuries?” the consultant asked rhetorically. “Execution,” he replied to his own question.

We should have seen it coming. In Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union Address, he said: “All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate.” He added, “Let’s put it this way. They are no longer a problem for the United States and our friends and allies.”

Bush was admitting he had sanctioned summary execution, in direct violation of international, and United States, law.

The Bush administration has also admittedly engaged in the illegal practice of rendition, where people are sent to other countries to be tortured. The C.I.A. acknowledged in testimony before Congress that prior to 2001, it had engaged in about seventy “extraordinary renditions.”

In December 2001, for example, American operatives kidnapped two Egyptians and flew them to Cairo, where they were subjected to repeated torture by electrical shocks from electrodes attached to their private parts.

Rape, sodomy with foreign objects, the use of unmuzzled dogs to bite and severely injure prisoners, and beating prisoners to death have been documented at Abu Ghraib. Women beg their families to smuggle poison into the prisons so they could kill themselves because of the humiliation they suffered.

Allegations of routine torture have emerged from Mosul and Basra as well. “Some were burnt with fire, others [had] bandaged broken arms,” claimed Yasir Rubaii Saeed al-Qutaji. Haitham Saeed al-Mallah reported seeing “a young man of 14 years of age bleeding from his anus and lying on the floor.” Al-Mallah heard the soldiers say that “the reason for this bleeding was inserting a metal object in his anus.”

The army has charged one Sergeant with assault and other crimes, and is recommending that two dozen other American soldiers face criminal charges, including negligent homicide for mistreatment of prisoners in Afghanistan.

In September, three Americans running a private prison, but reportedly working with the CIA, were convicted of kidnapping and torture and sentenced to 8–10 years in prison by an Afghan court. Afghan police had reportedly found three men hanging from the ceiling, and five others were found beaten and tied in a dark small room.

The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty ratified by the U.S. and thus part of its binding domestic law, defines torture as follows: the infliction of severe pain or suffering for the purpose of obtaining a confession, discrimination, coercion or intimidation.

Torture, inhuman treatment, and willful killing are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, treaties ratified by the United States. Grave breaches of Geneva are considered war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996. American nationals who commit war crimes abroad can receive life in prison, or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, a commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes and he failed to prevent or stop them.

When John Walker Lindh was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001, his American interrogators stripped and gagged him, strapped him to a board, and displayed him to the press. He was writhing in pain from a bullet left in his body. A Navy admiral told the intelligence officer interrogating Lindh that “the secretary of defense’s counsel has authorized him to ‘take the gloves off’ and ask whatever he wanted.”

Although initially charged with crimes of terrorism carrying life in prison, Attorney General John Ashcroft permitted Lindh to plead guilty to lesser crimes that garnered him 20 years. The condition: Lindh make a statement that he suffered “no deliberate mistreatment” while in custody. The cover-up was underway.

Lawyers from the Defense Department and Justice Department penned lengthy memos and created a definition of torture much narrower than the one in the Torture Convention. They advised Bush how his people could engage in torture and avoid prosecution under the U.S. Torture Statute.

More than 300 lawyers, retired judges, and law professors (including this writer), a former FBI director, an ex-Attorney General, and seven past presidents of the American Bar Association, signed a statement denouncing the memos, which, we wrote, “ignore and misinterpret the U.S. Constitution and laws, international treaties and rules of international law.” The statement condemns the most senior lawyers in the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, White House, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, who “have sought to justify actions that violate the most basic rights of all human beings.”

Even the conservative American Bar Association (ABA) criticized what it called "a widespread pattern of abusive detention methods." Those abuses, according to the ABA, "feed terrorism by painting the United States as an arrogant nation above the law."

Relying on advice in these memos, Bush issued an unprecedented order that, as commander-in-chief, he has the authority to suspend the Geneva Conventions. In spite of Geneva’s requirement that a competent tribunal decide whether someone qualifies for prisoner of war (POW) status, Bush took it upon himself to decide that Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan were not protected by the Geneva Convention on the POWs.

This decision was premised on the reasoning of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez [Bush’s current nominee for Attorney General, ed.], that “the war against terrorism is a new kind of war, a new paradigm [that] renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

A still-secret section of the recently-released U.S. Army’s Fay Report says that “policies and practices developed and approved for use on Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions, now applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions’ protections.”

And Bush didn’t take into account that even prisoners who don’t are not POWs must still be treated humanely under the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Civilians In Time of War.

The Schlesinger Report that came out within a day of the Fay Report accused the Pentagon’s top civilian and military leadership of failing to exercise sufficient oversight and permitting conditions that led to the abuses. Rumsfeld’s reversals of interrogation policy, according to the report, created confusion about which techniques could be used on prisoners in Iraq.

Rumsfeld has admitted ordering an Iraqi prisoner be hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Pentagon investigators believe the CIA has held as many as 100 “ghost” detainees in Iraq. Hiding prisoners from the Red Cross violates Geneva.

The Schlesinger Report confirmed 5 detainee deaths as a result of interrogation, and 23 more deaths are currently under investigation.

The torture of prisoners in U.S. custody did not begin in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. “I do not view the sexual abuse, torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers as an isolated event,” says Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist who testifies about human rights abuses in U.S. prisons. “The plight of prisoners in the USA is strikingly similar to the plight of the Iraqis who were abused by American GIs. Prisoners are maced, raped, beaten, starved, left naked in freezing cold cells and otherwise abused in too many American prisons, as substantiated by findings in many courts that prisoners’ constitutional rights to remain free of cruel and unusual punishment are being violated.”

Torture techniques used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo are all too familiar in prisons in the U.S. as well. Hooded, robed figures with electrical wiring attached to them have been seen at the city jail in Sacramento, California. Prisoners in Maricopa County jails in Phoenix, Arizona have been forced to wear women’s underwear. And guards in the Utah prison system have piled naked bodies in grotesque and uncomfortable positions.

The connection between mistreatment of prisoners here and abroad is even more direct than that. For example, John Armstrong ran Connecticut’s Dept. of Corrections from 1995-2003, before being sent to Iraq as a prison adviser in September 2003. On his Connecticut watch, two mentally ill prisoners died while being restrained by guards. Two more inmates died in custody after guards mistreated them. And Armstrong made a remark once that equated the death penalty with euthanasia.

Speaking of the death penalty, the use of the gas chamber was challenged in California as cruel and unusual punishment, before the execution of Robert Alton Harris about 10 years ago. As a result California adopted the use of the lethal injection because it was more “humane” method of killing a person. Lawyers in Kentucky are now challenging the three-chemical cocktail used for lethal injections in many states as cruel and unusual. It took one man in Kentucky 12 minutes to die from the humane lethal injection.

In May 2000, the U.N. Committee Against Torture considered the United States’ initial report on implementation of the Convention Against Torture. It expressed concern at torture and ill-treatment by prison guards – much of it racially motivated—and the sexual abuse of female prisoners by male guards. Human Rights Watch reports that sexual misconduct is rarely investigated, much less punished, and that punishments tend to be light.

Eight prison guards were acquitted of charges they subjected prisoners to cruel and unusual punishment by arranging gladiator-style fights among inmates, and setting up the rape of an inmate by a notoriously violent inmate known as the “Booty Bandit” at Corcoran State Prison in California.

Although Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, the law provides for no enforcement mechanism or cause of action for rape victims.

But prison guards have been convicted of organizing assaults on inmates in a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, and at Pelican Bay State Prison in California. The Department of Justice concluded that conditions at prisons in Newport, Arkansas are unconstitutional. And New Jersey prison guards reportedly brutalized over 600 prisoners.

A U.S. District Court Judge in California threatened to place the prisons into receivership if the Department of Corrections (DOC) didn’t overhaul its internal disciplinary system. In response, the DOC has undertaken an independent Bureau of Review to ensure violations do not occur in the future.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, more than 1200 Arab, Muslim, and South Asian men were rounded up in one of the most extensive incidents of racial profiling in the U.S. since the Japanese were interned during World War II. A December 2003 report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General investigated allegations of physical and verbal abuse of non-citizen prisoners by the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, NY.

BOP policy prohibits staff members from using brutality, physical violence, intimidation toward inmates, or any force beyond that which is reasonably necessary to subdue an inmate.

The report concluded that several MDC staff members slammed and bounced detainees into the walls, twisted or bent their arms, hands, wrists, or fingers, pulled their thumbs back, tripped them, and dragged them on the floor. It also found violations of BOP policy by verbal abuse as well.

In Estelle v. Gamble, the U.S. Supreme Court applied the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment to conditions of confinement that are incompatible with the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.

The United Nations’ Economic and Social Council promulgated the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. The Supreme Court in Estelle specified that these rules should be included in the measurement of “evolving standards of decency.”

The rules provide that corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments shall be completely prohibited as punishments for disciplinary actions.

Fyodor Dostoevsky once said, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

In May, when the Abu Ghraib scandal was on the front pages, there were demands for Rumsfeld to resign. But Cheney told Rumsfeld there would be no resignations. It was blatantly political. We’re going to hunker down and tough it out, Cheney said, so as not to hurt Bush’s chances for election in November.

In spite of George W. Bush’s renunciation of the International Criminal Court, many people around the world are clamoring for Bush and his deputies to be held accountable for the widespread torture of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and the CIA’s secret prisons elsewhere. In the words of Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman: “It is one thing to protect the armed forces from politicized justice; quite another, to make it a haven for suspected war criminals.”

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Affirmative Action Counteracts Centuries of Racism

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's recent momentous affirmative action decisions, the talking heads have railed against "reverse discrimination," a term that entered our vernacular 25 years ago with the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke opinion.

But focusing on equal rights for whites misses the point. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her separate opinions in the Michigan cases, hits the nail on the head. In her dissent in Gratz v. Bolinger, where the court struck down the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program, she decries the majority's view that judicial inspection of all official race classifications should be judged by the same standard of review. This would be appropriate, she writes, if our country were "free of the vestiges of rank discrimination long reinforced by law."

Ginsburg documents the large disparities between whites and minorities in earning power, unemployment rates, poverty levels and access to health care and quality education. She also discusses institutional racism. Ginsburg then says that the issue presented in Bakke -- where a white man claimed discrimination because blacks were admitted before him -- is categorically distinct from the issue presented in Brown v. Board of Education -- where the Supreme Court said that black kids have the right to go to the very same schools as white kids.

Ginsburg reinforces this distinction with reference to international treaties, saying "Contemporary human rights documents draw just this line; they distinguish between policies of oppression and measures designed to accelerate de facto equality," citing the United Nations-initiated Conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which administers the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has determined that affirmative action may involve preferential treatment, and as long as it is needed to correct discrimination in fact, "it is a case of legitimate differentiation."

Illegitimate differentiations have been maintained for years. The children of alumni -- who are primarily white -- have always been granted preference in admission at the elite universities (e.g., George W. Bush). This system has served to discriminate against the children of non-alumni, or non-whites.

Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting in the law school decision, Grutter v. Bolinger, where the court held that race can be used as a factor to achieve diversity in higher education, says "blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators." He focuses on the stigma attached to blacks who take positions in "the highest places of government, industry or academia," saying "it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement."

Thomas apparently wonders whether he himself benefited from affirmative action when he was admitted to Yale Law School and appointed to the Supreme Court. In any event, he disingenuously seeks to slam the door behind him, and deprive future generations of black students the opportunities that were available to him.

Thomas misses the point. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor writes for the majority in Grutter, "By virtue of our Nation's struggle with racial inequality, such [minority] students are both likely to have experiences of particular importance to the Law School's mission, and less likely to be admitted in meaningful numbers on criteria that ignore those experiences."

In my own criminal procedure classes, the perspectives of African-American students about racial profiling which enrich the classroom discussion could not be duplicated by their white counterparts. Indeed, according to O'Connor, "Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civil life of our Nation is essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized."

Read on >>

Affirmative Action Counteracts Centuries of Racism

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's recent momentous affirmative action decisions, the talking heads have railed against "reverse discrimination," a term that entered our vernacular 25 years ago with the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke opinion.

But focusing on equal rights for whites misses the point. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her separate opinions in the Michigan cases, hits the nail on the head. In her dissent in Gratz v. Bolinger, where the court struck down the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program, she decries the majority's view that judicial inspection of all official race classifications should be judged by the same standard of review. This would be appropriate, she writes, if our country were "free of the vestiges of rank discrimination long reinforced by law."

Ginsburg documents the large disparities between whites and minorities in earning power, unemployment rates, poverty levels and access to health care and quality education. She also discusses institutional racism. Ginsburg then says that the issue presented in Bakke -- where a white man claimed discrimination because blacks were admitted before him -- is categorically distinct from the issue presented in Brown v. Board of Education -- where the Supreme Court said that black kids have the right to go to the very same schools as white kids.

Ginsburg reinforces this distinction with reference to international treaties, saying "Contemporary human rights documents draw just this line; they distinguish between policies of oppression and measures designed to accelerate de facto equality," citing the United Nations-initiated Conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which administers the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has determined that affirmative action may involve preferential treatment, and as long as it is needed to correct discrimination in fact, "it is a case of legitimate differentiation."

Illegitimate differentiations have been maintained for years. The children of alumni -- who are primarily white -- have always been granted preference in admission at the elite universities (e.g., George W. Bush). This system has served to discriminate against the children of non-alumni, or non-whites.

Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting in the law school decision, Grutter v. Bolinger, where the court held that race can be used as a factor to achieve diversity in higher education, says "blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators." He focuses on the stigma attached to blacks who take positions in "the highest places of government, industry or academia," saying "it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement."

Thomas apparently wonders whether he himself benefited from affirmative action when he was admitted to Yale Law School and appointed to the Supreme Court. In any event, he disingenuously seeks to slam the door behind him, and deprive future generations of black students the opportunities that were available to him.

Thomas misses the point. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor writes for the majority in Grutter, "By virtue of our Nation's struggle with racial inequality, such [minority] students are both likely to have experiences of particular importance to the Law School's mission, and less likely to be admitted in meaningful numbers on criteria that ignore those experiences."

In my own criminal procedure classes, the perspectives of African-American students about racial profiling which enrich the classroom discussion could not be duplicated by their white counterparts. Indeed, according to O'Connor, "Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civil life of our Nation is essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized."

Read on >>

The Patriotic Duty to Dissent

Reichmarshall Hermann Goering of the Third Reich once said: “It is always a simple matter to drag the people along” to do “the bidding of the leaders,” regardless of the form of government. “All you have to do,” he said, “is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Indeed, this strategy is working in the United States. Attorney General John Ashcroft painted the defenders of civil liberties as anti-American fear-mongerers when he said in December: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends.”

This is the same John Ashcroft who rammed the “USA PATRIOT Act” through a timid Congress, urged federal agencies to resist Freedom of Information Act requests, and plans to engage in new COINTELPRO-style surveillance activities.

Ashcroft’s PATRIOT Act creates a new crime of domestic terrorism so broad it will cover civil disobedience and target environmental and anti-globalization activists. Representative Scott McInnis (R-CO) has already subpoenaed a spokesperson for Earth Liberation Front, which McInnis has dubbed an “eco-terrorist” organization, to appear before the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health.

No wonder Ashcroft has instructed all federal agencies to resist Freedom of Information Act requests. The FOIA, enacted in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is one of our most significant democratic reforms. It permits citizens to hold the government accountable by requesting and publicizing public records and documents. Pursuant to FOIA requests, the Charlotte Observer recently uncovered records detailing how the Duke Power Co. manipulated its books to avoid exceeding profit limits that would have mandated a rate cut, and USA Today exposed a widespread pattern of misconduct among the upper echelon of the National Guard, including the inflation of troop strength, misuse of taxpayer money, sexual harassment and the theft of life-insurance payments.

Ashcroft also seeks to resurrect the counterintelligence programs, known as COINTELPRO, which were responsible for intensive FBI surveillance in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. The spying, which targeted Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders, was so horrendous that Congress put a halt to it.

The new “patriotic” act will permit the government to spy on all of us more easily through its aptly named Carnivore surveillance system. Carnivore devours all of the communications flowing through an internet service provider’s network, not just those of the target of the surveillance.

In mid-December, the FBI announced it is developing another new internet spying software called “Magic Lantern.” It will surreptitiously enter an individual’s personal computer, record every keystroke and zap all of that data back to the G-men and G-women, in violation of the federal wiretapping statute and the Fourth Amendment.

Many people oppose the direction of the government’s war on terror, which, Vice President Dick Cheney warns, will last 50 years and extend to 50 or 60 countries. There is opposition to President George W. Bush’s request of an additional $48 billion to enhance an already engorged military budget, at the expense of social services. Yet many fear they will be harassed for speaking out against the government in this time of xenophobic flag-waving.

Those who seek to curb the excesses of governmental repression do so at great risk. Human rights activist Benjamin Prado, who tried to document the U.S. Border Patrol’s racial profiling on the San Diego Trolley, was savagely beaten, assaulted and detained by 12 Border Patrol agents for 25 hours with no charges, after his video camera was confiscated and destroyed.

Hundreds of other people of color, particularly those of Middle Eastern descent, are currently detained in U.S. prisons. Most, like Rabih Haddad, are suspected of no crime or connection to the events of September 11; yet they are being held incommunicado, in indefinite, preventative detention, in violation of the Constitution. In a recent letter, Haddad, a Lebanese immigrant who has been in custody for 76 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, detailed his conditions of confinement. Strangely reminiscent of the prisoners in Guantanamo, he described his 6’ by 9’ solitary cell, the camera permanently fixed on him, his lack of exercise and “waves of cockroaches” in his cell at night.

Mr. Haddad’s story brings back memories of the excesses of our government during World War II, when it interned thousands of Japanese-Americans, in a shameful and racist overreaction. In a similar dragnet, federal agents have announced they will soon begin apprehending and interrogating thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants who have ignored deportation orders.

President Bush has accused the terrorists of attacking our democratic way of life. The foundation of a democracy is the right and duty to dissent against misconduct by governmental leaders. Dissent, also unpopular in the early stages of the Vietnam War, was later voiced by a majority of Americans.

We are responsible for the actions of our government. When it fails to act in a moral and lawful manner, we must speak out and educate our fellow citizens about the abuses. If we fail to dissent for fear of governmental retaliation, we will have confirmed the truth of Hermann Goering’s frightening prediction.

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Israel Resisters and Palestinian Rights

The government of Israel faces a serious dilemma. Its population lives in legitimate fear of terrorist suicide bombers. But its reprisals against the Palestinian civilian population have been so heavy-handed that they are creating dissension within the ranks of Israel's own army.

Indeed, a February 4 editorial in The New York Times, a long-time supporter of Israel, said: "The growing harshness of Israeli military practices in the West Bank and Gaza is creating thousands of potential suicide bombers and Israel haters as well as coarsening a generation of young Israeli soldiers."

More than 100 Israeli army reservists have declared they will no longer fight in the West Bank and Gaza Strip "with the aim of dominating, expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people." These Israeli soldiers follow in the tradition of scores of American GI's who refused to kill Vietnamese civilians during the 1960s and 1970s. After Seymour Hirsch exposed the cover-up of the My Lai Massacre, where U.S. soldiers killed thousands of civilians, Lt. William Calley was tried and convicted of murder. Calley unsuccessfully claimed he was just following orders. That defense theory has been rejected by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the International Criminal Court.

In their declaration, the Israeli resisters said: "The price of occupation is the loss of the Israeli Defense Forces' semblance of humanity and the corruption of all of Israeli society." They reported firing at Palestinians who hadn't endangered them, stopping ambulances at checkpoints, and stripping areas clean of groves and trees necessary to people's livelihoods. Some fear their treatment of Palestinian civilians constitutes war crimes. Attacks on a civilian population as a form of collective punishment violate Article 50 of the Hague Regulations and Articles 33 and 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The dissenting Israeli reservists made clear their statements were not aimed at the Israeli army, but rather at the political system. A recent poll conducted by Israel Radio found 30 percent of Israelis supported the reservists' protest.

Last month, the Israeli army's demolition of 52 Palestinian homes, which left 411 people homeless, drew rare criticism from Israeli Cabinet ministers and journalists. The demolition was condemned by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, said: "House demolitions are a blatant violation of human rights and contravene international humanitarian law, which forbids destruction of property, collective punishment and reprisals."

The Israeli government has called the reservists' declaration "dangerous and antidemocratic." Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon threatened to sever all communication with Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat after the interception of a shipment of arms that Israel claims were bound for the Palestinians last month. With Arafat out of the picture, however, Israel would have no one with whom to negotiate except the extremists.

The Palestinians live under a system of apartheid, according to a report issued by the National Lawyers Guild delegation to the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel last year. In December, the United Nations General Assembly condemned Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and called for international observers to be dispatched to the Palestinian territories, which Israel rejects. The U.S. government has consistently opposed U.N. resolutions critical of Israel's policies. The U.S. staged a walkout from the United Nations World Conference Against Racism last year when it criticized Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. The National Lawyers Guild report said most of the weapons Israel has used to inflict indiscriminate attacks with excessive force on the Palestinian civilian population were manufactured in the United States.

Lev Grinberg, Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, says: "Unless we, the Israelis, cast off our arrogant mode of thinking, and our position as an occupying power, the present cycle of bloodshed can only intensify, with Arafat and even more so, in his absence."

In his op-ed in The New York Times on February 3, Arafat unequivocally condemned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. He invoked U.N. resolutions, which call for the return of the Palestinian refugees, and the Oslo Accords, where the Palestinians recognized Israel, renounced their claim to historic Palestine, and settled for 22 percent of the land (the West Bank and Gaza). He described the Palestinian vision, which would have Israel and a Palestinian state co-exist equally with peace and security for both. But, he said, "two peoples cannot reconcile when one demands control over the other...we will only sit down as equals, not as supplicants; as partners, not as subjects."

The popularity of Sharon, known as "The Bulldozer," has declined in Israel since his election last year. Resistance to the Israeli government's occupation of the Palestinian territories is now growing within Israel. Forty-five percent of Israelis polled by Israel Radio said they thought more reservists would join the resistance and refuse service in the West Bank and Gaza. They will do so at great risk to themselves. Many resisters have been disciplined and jailed. But it will take a large resistance movement within Israel to ultimately stop the collective punishment of the Palestinians, end the occupation and halt the killing of both Israelis and Palestinians.

The war between Israel and the Palestinians has claimed too many lives on both sides. It is essential that a neutral international body try to negotiate an end to the bloodshed. International observers should be allowed in, and there should be an emphasis on reconciliation, not cutting Arafat out of the equation.

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U.S. Boycott of the World Race Conference Signals Denial of Racism at Home

The United States government's walkout at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia