Israel boards Gaza-bound ships, 15 dead: reports

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – About 15 people were killed on Monday when the Israeli navy intercepted a convoy of aid ships that activists were trying to sail to the Gaza Strip, Israel's Channel 10 private television network said.




Earlier, a spokesman for the Free Gaza Movement which organized the six-ship flotilla said at least two were killed.




Casualties could hurt Israel's international image and diplomatic relations, especially its long-time regional Muslim ally Turkey, whose flag some of the aid ships were flying.




Israel has said it was absolutely determined to maintain its blockade of the Islamist Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory of 1.5 million. It has previously halted such activist ships, although others have reached Gaza before.




Amid Israeli military censorship and a refusal of Israeli officials to comment on what appeared to be a continuing operation three hours after dawn broke over the Mediterranean, Channel 10 made clear it was not citing foreign sources.




After initially reporting that at least 10 people were dead, it later said the death toll was between 14 and 16. It said commandos who had boarded the convoy were still conducting searches and encountering what it called violent resistance.




"Two people have been killed on board the Turkish boat and 30 or more were wounded," said Mary Hughes Thompson, a spokesewoman for the Free Gaza Movement, which was behind the convoy.




"As far as we know IDF (Israeli military) commandos descended on the boat from helicopters and took it over."




The convoy set off in international waters off Cyprus on Sunday in defiance of an Israeli-led blockade of the Gaza Strip and warnings that it would be intercepted.




The flotilla was organized by pro-Palestinian groups and a Turkish human rights organization. Turkey had urged Israel to allow it safe passage and said the 10,000 tonnes of aid the convoy was carrying was humanitarian.




KEY ALLY




Turkey, long Israel's best Muslim friend and a key ally in a hostile Middle East, was highly critical of Israel's attack on Gaza 18 months ago, in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Relations between the two states are now distinctly chilly and bloodshed at sea will do nothing to improve them.




CNN showed pictures of a commando apparently sliding down a rope and clashing with a man wielding a stick. Other TV images showed what appeared to be rubber boarding launches.




France 24 television aired video of a woman in a Muslim headress holding a stretcher with a large bloodstain on it. Below her lay a man, apparently wounded, in a blanket.




Israel had said it would prevent the convoy from reaching the Gaza Strip.




Israel and Egypt tightened a blockade on Gaza after Hamas took over the territory in 2007. Israel launched a devastating military offensive in Gaza in December 2008 with the aim of halting daily rocket fire toward its cities.




Most of the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza rely on aid, blaming Israel for imposing restrictions on the amount and type of goods it allows into the territory.




The United Nations and Western powers have urged Israel to ease its restrictions to prevent a humanitarian crisis. They have been urging Israel to let in concrete and steel to allow for postwar reconstruction.





Israel denies there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying food, medicine and medical equipment are allowed in regularly. It says the restrictions are necessary to prevent weapons and materials that could be used to make them from reaching Hamas.





(Jerusalem newsroom)

Israelis Kill 3, Injure Dozens in Assault on Gaza Ship Convoy Carrying Humanitarian Aid

Israeli commandos surround convoy, fire live ammunition upon Mavi Marmara, with hundreds of aid workers and activists aboard, including Chicago activist Fatima Mohammadi.


Media contacts:
Kevin Clark, Free Gaza Movement/Midwest: FGMinchicago @aol.com, cell 312-259-4380
Fatima Mohammadi, Chicagoan on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Satellite phone: +8821636619168; email: fatmoh@gmail.com
Huwaida Arraf on board the Challenger: 0088 216 5207 2093
Ewa Jasciewica on board the Challenger: 0088 163 184 7926
Bianca Shana'a, Free Gaza Movement, Paris: 00336 63 59 20 28

Greta Berlin, Free Gaza Movement: 00 357 99 18 72 75
Mary Hughes: 00 357 96 38 38 09


10 PM CST: Solidarity activists aboard one of six relief vessels traveling to Gaza with humanitarian report that they have been attacked by Israeli forces, with three of their human rights volunteers killed and roughly 30 injured. The assault comes in the wake of the flotilla being surrounded earlier today by three Israeli warships in international waters, roughly 70 miles away from the Israeli coast. The Flotilla moved further west, deeper into international waters to avoid any conflict with Israeli navy vessels, but had been concerned all night that Israeli forces would send small inflatable military boats towards the flotilla and attempt to attack and board the humanitarian vessels.


Those fears have apparently been realized, with people aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship with hundreds of aid workers and activists aboard, reporting that they have been attacked. At least three passengers have been killed and dozens more wounded. Israeli commandos apparently repelled onto the Mavi Marmara, whose passengers range in age from 88 to a year old and include Christians, Muslims and Jews seeking to end the blockade. Midwest U.S. activists have been unable to reach Chicagoan Fatima Mohammadi, traveling aboard the Mavi Marmara.


Live video from the flotilla shows Israeli naval commando vessels pulling alongside the aid ships, and what sounds like gunfire can be heard in the background. No-one on the aid ships is carrying any kinds of weapons, including for defense against a feared Israeli attack in international waters.


Hundreds of elected officials, former diplomats, aid workers and activists -- including a Nobel laureate and many European legislators -- are with the flotilla, traveling by sea to Gaza to break Israel's blockade of the tiny strip of land. Foreign news correspondents and independent journalists are traveling aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship with hundreds of aid workers and activists aboard which is also running its own press operation reachable at the satellite number +8821636619168. A total of six ships, including two cargo ships and other passenger vehicles, are carrying thousands of tons of humanitarian aid to the beseiged region, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2006.


Israel has marshalled its most lethal military vessels to try to stop the humanitarian marine convoy, and at around 2:20 pm Central Standard Time (US) the first reports of unmanned drone planes buzzing the vessels was received from convoy passengers.


Two boats in the aid flotilla, one currently traveling with the convoy to Gaza and another in port in Cyprus for repairs, are flagged and registered in the United States. The ships are U.S. territory under maritime law, and the U.S. government is required to intervene if this "U.S. property" is attacked or illegally confiscated by Israeli authorities -- a tactic Israel has threatened and deployed in the past. Israel has a long history of attacking ships whose missions are deemed undesirable. In December 2008, it rammed the Dignity, carrying medical and humanitarian aid, doctors, human rights workers and a former U.S. congresswoman, without warning in international waters.


Israel intensified its 2006 blockade after attacking the area in a weeks-long assault that ended in January 2009, killing more than 1,400 and leaving thousands more homeless and reducing huge swaths of housing to rubble. The blockade has created mass unemployment and extreme poverty, leaving four out of five Gazans -- half of whom are children -- dependent on humanitarian aid.


The Freedom Flotilla carries more than 10,000 tons of relief and developmental aid to Gaza, along with roughly 700 participants from more than 30 countries, among them volunteers from South Africa, Algeria, Turkey, Macedonia, Pakistan, Yemin, Kosovo, the UK and US and Kuwait – and an exiled former Archbishop of Jerusalem who currently lives in the Vatican. The cargo includes prefabricated homes and playgrounds, cement and other home-building supplies, medical devices and medications, textiles and food, in defiance of Israel's siege on Gaza, which restricts the entry of all materials, including food and medicine. The flotilla's supplies were gathered by a coalition of international civil society and human rights organizations to be sent directly to the people of Gaza by sea, using only international waters and the coastal waters immediately off of Gaza for passage. The flotilla is expected to arrive in Gaza as early as today.


Participants on board speak languages that include English, Turkish, Kurdish, over ten dialects of Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Portugeuse, French, Malaysian, Indonesian, Norweigen, Swedish, Urdu, Punjabi, Farsi, Hindi, German, Flemish, Greek, Catalon, Russian, Bosnian, Chechen, Macedonian and Albanian. Reporters on board hail from locations that include the United Kingdom, Spain, Malaysia, Indonesia, Venezuela, Kuwait, South Africa, Pakistan, Jordan, the Persian Gulf and across the Arab world.


Protests in support of the aid convoy have been occuring around the world since Thursday, with Chicagoans scheduled to protest again at 4:30 PM on Tuesday, June 1, in front of the Israeli consulate at 111 E. Wacker Dr. in Chicago.


U.S.-based humanitarian projects with news updates on the Gaza aid flotilla:


LIVE video feed: www.livestream.com/ insaniyardim
www.WitnessGaza.com
www.freegaza.org
gazafreedommarch.org
http://fpmdigitalship. blogspot.com/
www.ihh.org.tr
savegaza.eu/eng
www.perdana4peace.org/Default. aspx
www.shiptogaza.gr
shiptogaza.se
www.commondreams.org


Recent news reports on the aid flotilla:
Gaza aid flotilla anticipates high-seas standoff with Israel - LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/ news/nationworld/world/ middleeast/la-fg-gaza- flotilla-20100531,0,7691835. story
Gaza Aid Convoy Showdown Poses Challenge for Israel - Time Magazine: http://www.time.com/ time/world/article/0,8599, 1992205,00.html
Pro-Palestinian aid flotilla sets sail for Gaza - Associated Press: http://www.google.com/ hostednews/ap/article/ ALeqM5ioi_ 0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD9G172 NG0
Gaza Freedom Flotilla Shows Power of Nonviolent Resistance - Huffington Post: http://www. huffingtonpost.com/robert- naiman/gaza-freedom-flotilla- sho_b_594407.html
Rel ief convoy sails from Cyprus for Gaza- Reuters: http://www.iol.co.za/ index.php?set_id=1&click_id= 123&art_id= nw20100530102034310C692180
Convoy of ships resumes journey toward Gaza - CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2010/ WORLD/meast/05/30/gaza. protest/?hpt=T2
Aid ships set out to bust Gaza blockade - AFP: http://www.google.com/ hostednews/afp/article/ ALeqM5gx- Zcxvyt5gEOZXW1NrQEoxEB_pw
Cyprus stops MPs from joining Gaza flotilla - Cyprus Mail: http://www.cyprus-mail. com/cyprus/cyprus-stops-mps- joining-gaza-flotilla/20100529
Gaza-bound aid ships leave Cyprus - Aljazeera.net: http://english.aljazeera.net/ news/middleeast/2010/05/ 201053062124985747.html
Report: Israeli navy prepares to stop Freedom Fleet - Maan News Agency (Palestine): http://www. maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails. aspx?ID=288217
Gaza-bound aid ships leave Cyprus - Aljazeera.net: http://english. aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/ 2010/05/201053062124985 747.html
- end -

Appeals Panel Bars Detainees From Access to U.S. Courts

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled Friday that three men who had been detained by the United States military for years without trial in Afghanistan had no recourse to American courts. The decision was a broad victory for the Obama administration in its efforts to hold terrorism suspects overseas for indefinite periods without judicial oversight.





The detainees, two Yemenis and a Tunisian who say they were captured outside Afghanistan, contend that they are not terrorists and are being mistakenly imprisoned at the American military prison at Bagram Air Base.





But a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously that the three had no right to habeas corpus hearings, in which judges would review evidence against them and could order their release. The court reasoned that Bagram was on the sovereign territory of another government and emphasized the “pragmatic obstacles” of giving hearings to detainees “in an active theater of war.”





The ruling dealt a severe blow to wider efforts by lawyers to extend a landmark 2008 Supreme Court ruling granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A lower court judge had previously ruled that the three Bagram detainees were entitled to the same rights, although he had found that others captured in Afghanistan and held there were not.





A lawyer for the detainees, Tina Foster, said that if the precedent stood, Mr. Obama and future presidents would have a free hand to “kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives” without having to prove in court that their suspicions about such prisoners were accurate.





“The thing that is most disappointing for those of us who have been in the fight for this long is all of the people who used to be opposed to the idea of unlimited executive power during the Bush administration but now seem to have embraced it during this administration,” she said. “We have to remember that Obama is not the last president of the United States.”





Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and an influential lawmaker in the long-running debate over detentions, called the ruling a “big win” and praised the administration for appealing the lower court’s ruling.





“Allowing a noncitizen enemy combatant detained in a combat zone access to American courts would have been a change of historic proportions,” he said. “It also would have dealt a severe blow to our war effort.





“There is a reason we have never allowed enemy prisoners detained overseas in an active war zone to sue in federal court for their release. It simply makes no sense and would be the ultimate act of turning the war into a crime.”





It was not entirely clear how the ruling might affect detention policies for terrorism suspects caught outside Afghanistan or Iraq. While the Obama administration has stepped up the use of Predator drone strikes to kill terrorism suspects and has relied on other countries, like Pakistan, to hold and interrogate suspects who are captured alive, it is not known whether the United States has directly captured anyone outside Afghanistan or Iraq recently — and, if so, where it has taken them.





A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, would not comment on the decision.





David Rivkin, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the Special Forces Association urging the court to side with the government, said the ruling would have broad significance by removing doubts over whether the United States could capture and interrogate terrorism suspects without worrying about having to collect, in dangerous situations, evidence that would later stand up in court.





“This is an excellent decision,” said Mr. Rivkin, who was a White House lawyer in the administration of the first President Bush. “It has restored a considerable degree of sanity to what threatened to be a crazy legal regime that would have deprived the United States, for the first time in history, of the opportunity to capture and detain — outside of the United States, in theaters of war — high-value combatants. That has been solved, and it will apply to many other situations in the future.”





The case was brought on behalf of a Tunisian man who says he was captured in Pakistan in 2002, a Yemeni man who says he was captured in Thailand in 2002, and another Yemeni man who says he was captured in 2003 at another location outside Afghanistan that has not been disclosed. (The government has disputed the second Yemeni’s claim.)





The men’s case was originally heard by Judge John D. Bates of the Federal District Court, an appointee of former President George W. Bush. The Bush and Obama administrations had both urged Judge Bates not to extend habeas corpus rights beyond Guantánamo, arguing that courts should not interfere with military operations inside active combat zones.





But in April 2009, Judge Bates ruled that there was no difference between the three men who had filed suit and Guantánamo prisoners. His decision was limited to non-Afghans captured outside Afghanistan — a category that fits only about a dozen of the roughly 800 detainees at Bagram, officials have said.





In urging the appeals court to let Judge Bates’s decision stand, lawyers for the detainees argued that reversing it would mean that the government would be able “to evade judicial review of executive detention decisions by transferring detainees into active combat zones, thereby granting the executive the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.”





But in the appeal panel’s decision reversing Judge Bates, Chief Judge David B. Sentelle said there had been no such gamesmanship in the decision to bring the three detainees to Bagram because it happened years before the Supreme Court’s Guantánamo rulings.





Still, he left the door open to approving habeas corpus rights for prisoners taken to prisons other than Guantánamo in the future, writing, “We need make no determination on the importance of this possibility, given that it remains only a possibility; its resolution can await a case in which the claim is a reality rather than speculation.”





Ms. Foster vowed to keep fighting. But Mr. Rivkin said that the detainees’ chances for overturning the decision were dim because the three appeals judges spanned the ideological spectrum: Chief Judge Sentelle, appointed by President Ronald Reagan; Judge Harry T. Edwards, appointed by President Jimmy Carter; and Judge David S. Tatel, appointed by President Bill Clinton.





It could also be difficult to win a reversal by the Supreme Court, where five of the nine justices supported giving habeas rights to detainees in the Guantánamo case. Among the narrow majority in that case was Justice John Paul Stevens, who is retiring.





The nominee to replace him, Elena Kagan, who as solicitor general signed the government’s briefs in the case, would most likely recuse herself from hearing an appeal of the decision, and a four-four split would allow it to stand.




Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

The sinking of the Cheonan: Another Gulf of Tonkin incident

By Stephen Gowans

While the South Korean government announced on May 20 that it has overwhelming evidence that one of its warships was sunk by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine, there is, in fact, no direct link between North Korea and the sunken ship. And it seems very unlikely that North Korea had anything to do with it.

That’s not my conclusion. It’s the conclusion of Won See-hoon, director of South Korea’s National Intelligence. Won told a South Korean parliamentary committee in early April, less than two weeks after the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, sank in waters off Baengnyeong Island, that there was no evidence linking North Korea to the Cheonan’s sinking. (1)

South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Tae-young backed him up, pointing out that the Cheonan’s crew had not detected a torpedo (2), while Lee Ki-sik, head of the marine operations office at the South Korean joint chiefs of staff agreed that “No North Korean warships have been detected…(in) the waters where the accident took place.” (3)

Notice he said “accident.”


Soon after the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, Defense Minister Kim Tae-young ruled out a North Korean torpedo attack, noting that a torpedo would have been spotted by radar, and no torpedo had been spotted. Intelligence chief Won See-hoon, said there was no evidence linking North Korea to the Cheonan’s sinking.
Defense Ministry officials added that they had not detected any North Korean submarines in the area at the time of the incident. (4) According to Lee, “We didn’t detect any movement by North Korean submarines near” the area where the Cheonan went down. (5)

When speculation persisted that the Cheonan had been sunk by a North Korean torpedo, the Defense Ministry called another press conference to reiterate “there was no unusual North Korean activities detected at the time of the disaster.” (6)

A ministry spokesman, Won Tae-jae, told reporters that “With regard to this case, no particular activities by North Korean submarines or semi-submarines…have been verified. I am saying again that there were no activities that could be directly linked to” the Cheonan’s sinking. (7)

Rear Admiral Lee, the head of the marine operations office, added that, “We closely watched the movement of the North’s vessels, including submarines and semi-submersibles, at the time of the sinking. But military did not detect any North Korean submarines near the country’s western sea border.” (8)

North Korea has vehemently denied any involvement in the sinking.

So, a North Korean submarine is now said to have fired a torpedo which sank the Cheonan, but in the immediate aftermath of the sinking the South Korean navy detected no North Korean naval vessels, including submarines, in the area. Indeed, immediately following the incident defense minister Lee ruled out a North Korean torpedo attack, noting that a torpedo would have been spotted by radar, and no torpedo had been spotted. (9)

The case gets weaker still.

It’s unlikely that a single torpedo could split a 1,200 ton warship in two. Baek Seung-joo, an analyst with the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis says that “If a single torpedo or floating mine causes a naval patrol vessel to split in half and sink, we will have to rewrite our military doctrine.” (10)

The Cheonan sank in shallow, rapidly running, waters, in which it’s virtually impossible for submarines to operate. “Some people are pointing the finger at North Korea,” notes Song Young-moo, a former South Korean navy chief of staff, “but anyone with knowledge about the waters where the shipwreck occurred would not draw that conclusion so easily.” (11)

Contrary to what looks like an improbable North-Korea-torpedo-hypothesis, the evidence points to the Cheonan splitting in two and sinking because it ran aground upon a reef, a real possibility given the shallow waters in which the warship was operating. According to Go Yeong-jae, the South Korean Coast Guard captain who rescued 56 of the stricken warship’s crew, he “received an order …that a naval patrol vessel had run aground in the waters 1.2 miles to the southwest of Baengnyeong Island, and that we were to move there quickly to rescue them.” (12)

So how is it that what looked like no North Korean involvement in the Cheonan’s sinking, according to the South Korean military in the days immediately following the incident, has now become, one and half months later, an open and shut case of North Korean aggression, according to government-appointed investigators?


South Korean president Lee Myung-bak is a North Korea-phobe who prefers a confrontational stance toward his neighbor to the north to the policy of peaceful coexistence and growing cooperation favored by his recent predecessors. His foreign policy rests on the goal of forcing the collapse of North Korea.
The answer has much to do with the electoral fortunes of South Korea’s ruling Grand National Party, and the party’s need to marshal support for a tougher stance on the North. Lurking in the wings are US arms manufacturers who stand to profit if South Korean president Lee Myung-bak wins public backing for beefed up spending on sonar equipment and warships to deter a North Korean threat – all the more likely with the Cheonan incident chalked up to North Korean aggression.

Lee is a North Korea-phobe who prefers a confrontational stance toward his neighbor to the north to the policy of peaceful coexistence and growing cooperation favored by his recent predecessors (and by Pyongyang, as well. It’s worth mentioning that North Korea supports a policy of peace and cooperation. South Korea, under its hawkish president, does not.) Fabricating a case against the North serves Lee in a number of ways. If voters in the South can be persuaded that the North is indeed a menace – and it looks like this is exactly what is happening – Lee’s hawkish policies will be embraced as the right ones for present circumstances. This will prove immeasurably helpful in upcoming mayoral and gubernatorial elections in June.

What’s more, Lee’s foreign policy rests on the goal of forcing the collapse of North Korea. When he took office in February 2008, he set about reversing a 10-year-old policy of unconditional aid to the North. He has also refused to move ahead on cross-border economic projects. (13) The claim that the sinking of the Cheonan is due to an unprovoked North Korean torpedo attack makes it easier for Lee to drum up support for his confrontational stance.

Finally, the RAND Corporation is urging South Korea to buy sensors to detect North Korean submarines and more warships to intercept North Korean naval vessels. (14) An unequivocal US-lackey – protesters have called the security perimeter around Lee’s office “the U.S. state of South Korea” (15) – Lee would be pleased to hand US corporations fat contracts to furnish the South Korean military with more hardware.

The United States, too, has motivations to fabricate a case against North Korea. One is to justify the continued presence, 65 years after the end of WWII, of US troops on Japanese soil. Many Japanese bristle at what is effectively a permanent occupation of their country by more than a token contingent of US troops. There are 60,000 US soldiers, airmen and sailors in Japan. Washington, and the Japanese government – which, when it isn’t willingly collaborating with its own occupiers, is forced into submission by the considerable leverage Washington exercises — justifies its troop presence through the sheer sophistry of presenting North Korea as an ongoing threat. The claim that North Korea sunk the Cheonan in an unprovoked attack strengthens Washington’s case for occupation. Not surprisingly, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has seized on the Cheonan incident to underline “the importance of the America-Japanese alliance, and the presence of American troops on Japanese soil.” (16)

Given these political realities, it comes as no surprise that from the start members of


In 1964, Washington claimed that three North Vietnamese torpedo boats had launched an unprovoked attacked on the USS Maddox, a US Navy destroyer, in the Gulf of Tonkin. The incident was used by US president Lyndon Johnson to win the Congressional support he needed to step up military intervention in Vietnam. No attack had occurred.
Lee’s party blamed the sinking of the Cheonan on a North Korean torpedo (17), just as members of the Bush administration immediately blamed 9/11 on Saddam Hussein, and then proceeded to look for evidence to substantiate their case, in the hopes of justifying an already planned invasion. (Later, the Bush administration fabricated an intelligence dossier on Iraq’s banned weapons.) In fact, the reason the ministry of defense felt the need to reiterate there was no evidence of a North Korean link was the persistent speculation of GNP politicians that North Korea was the culprit. Lee himself, ever hostile to his northern neighbor, said his “intuition” told him that North Korea was to blame. (18) Today, opposition parties accuse Lee of using “red scare” tactics to garner support as the June 2 elections draw near. (19) And leaders of South Korea’s four main opposition parties, as well as a number of civil groups, have issued a joint statement denouncing the government’s findings as untrustworthy.

No wonder. Lee announced, even before the inquiry rendered its findings, that a task force will be launched to overhaul the national security system and bulk up the military to prepare itself for threats from North Korea. (20) He even prepared a package of sanctions against the North in the event the inquiry confirmed what his intuition told him. (21) There was no chance it wouldn’t.

On August 2, 1964, the United States announced that three North Vietnamese torpedo boats had launched an unprovoked attacked on the USS Maddox, a US Navy destroyer, in the Gulf of Tonkin. The incident handed US president Lyndon Johnson the Congressional support he needed to step up military intervention in Vietnam. In 1971, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon report, revealed that the incident had been faked to provide a pretext for escalated military intervention. There had been no attack. The Cheonan incident has all the markings of another Gulf of Tonkin incident. And as usual, the aggressor is accusing the intended victim of an unprovoked attack to justify a policy of aggression under the pretext of self-defense.

1. Kang Hyun-kyung, “Ruling camp differs over NK involvement in disaster”, The Korea Times, April 7, 2010.
2. Nicole Finnemann, “The sinking of the Cheonan”, Korea Economic Institute, April 1, 2010. http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/kei/issues/2010-04-01/1.html
3. “Military leadership adding to Cheonan chaos with contradictory statements”, The Hankyoreh, March 31, 2010.
4. “Birds or North Korean midget submarine?” The Korea Times, April 16, 2010.
5. Ibid.
6. “Military plays down N.K. foul play”, The Korea Herald, April 2, 2010.
7. Ibid.
8. “No subs near Cheonan: Ministry”, JoongAng Daily, April 2, 2010.
9. Jean H. Lee, “South Korea says mine from the North may have sunk warship”, The Washington Post, March 30, 2010.
10. “What caused the Cheonan to sink?” The Chosun Ilbo, March 29, 2010.
11. Ibid.
12. “Military leadership adding to Cheonan chaos with contradictory statements”, The Hankyoreh, March 31, 2010.
13. Blaine Harden, “Brawl Near Koreas’ Border,” The Washington Post, December 3, 2008.
14. “Kim So-hyun, “A touchstone of Lee’s leadership”, The Korea Herald, May 13, 2010.
15. The New York Times, June 12, 2008.
16. Mark Landler, “Clinton condemns attack on South Korean Ship”, The New York Times, May 21, 2010.
17. Kang Hyun-kyung, “Ruling camp differs over NK involvement in disaster”, The Korea Times, April 7, 2010.
18. “Kim So-hyun, “A touchstone of Lee’s leadership”, Korea Herald, May 13, 2010.
19. Kang Hyun-kyung, “Ruling camp differs over NK involvement in disaster”, The Korea Times, April 7, 2010; Choe Sang-Hun, “South Korean sailors say blast that sank their ship came from outside vessel”, The New York Times, April 8, 2010.
20. “Kim So-hyun, “A touchstone of Lee’s leadership”, The Korea Herald, May 13, 2010.
21. “Seoul prepares sanctions over Cheonan sinking”, The Choson Ilbo, May 13, 2010.

Most of the articles cited here are posted on Tim Beal’s DPRK- North Korea website, http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~caplabtb/dprk/, an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Korea.

Updated May 21, 20110.

Dean Elena Kagan: Harvard's Gitmo Kangaroo Law School -- The School for Torturers

by Francis A. Boyle Ph.D. Not surprisingly, the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Imperial Law — otherwise known as the self-styled American Journal of International Law but originally founded a century ago and still operated by U. S. War and State Department legal apparatchiks and their law professorial fellow-travelers — published an article by Harvard Law School's recently retired Bemis Professor of International Law Detlev Vagts (who only taught me the required course on Legal Accounting) arguing in favor of the Pentagon's Kangaroo Courts System on Guantanamo despite the fact that they have been soundly condemned by every human rights organization and every human rights official and leader in the entire world as well as by the United States Supreme Court itself in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006). I am not going to bother to recite here all the grievous deficiencies of the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts under International Law and U.S. Constitutional Law. But suffice it to say that the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts constitute war crimes under the Laws of War, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and even the U. S. Army's own Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare (1956). Field Manual 27-10 was drafted for the Pentagon by my Laws of War teacher Richard R. Baxter, who was generally recognized as the world's leading expert on that subject. That is precisely why I voluntarily chose to study International Law with him and his long-time collaborator Louis B. Sohn, and not with the bean-counter Vagts. For the entire post-World War II generation of international law students at Harvard Law School, Louis Sohn shall always be our real Bemis Professor of International Law and never the False Pretender to that Throne known as Detlev Vagts. Since those student days I have personally appeared pro bono publico in five U.S. military courts-martial proceedings involving warfare that were organized in accordance with the Congress's Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J.) — which still does not apply to the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts despite the ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court in Hamdan that the U.C.M.J. should be applied in Guantanamo — on behalf of five U. S. military personnel who each acted as matters of courage, integrity, principle, conscience and at great risk to their own freedom: 1. U. S. Marine Corporal Jeff Paterson, the first U.S. military resister to President Bush Sr.'s genocidal war against Iraq; 2. Army Captain Doctor Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, the highest ranking U. S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Sr.'s genocidal war against Iraq; 3. Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who was court-martialed by the U. S. Army for trying to stop torture in Haiti after the Clinton administration had illegally invaded that country in 1994; 4. Army Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, the first U. S. military resister to be court-martialed for refusing to participate in President Bush Jr.'s war of aggression against Iraq; and 5. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, the first U. S. commissioned officer to be court-martialed for his refusal to participate in President Bush Jr.'s war of aggression against Iraq. As I can attest from my direct personal involvement, each and every one of these five courts-martial under the U.C.M.J. were Stalinist show-trials produced and directed by the Pentagon that predictably and readily degenerated into travesties of justice. These five U.C.M.J. courts-martial involving U.S. warfare each proved correct the old adage attributed to Groucho Marx that military justice is to justice as military music is to music. By comparison, the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will not even be run in accordance with the U.C.M.J. despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan that they should be. The Marx Brothers are running the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts. Whenever they are up and fully operating the Gitmo Courts will constitute Stalinist Show Trials as well as Kangaroo Courts, and their preliminary proceedings have already proven them to be Travesties of Justice. Even worse yet, fully-functioning Stalinist Gitmo Kangaroo Courts will quickly become conveyor-belts of death for alleged and already tortured terrorist suspects along the lines of the Texas execution chamber operated by George Bush Jr. when he was the "governor" of that state and tortured to death 152 victims by means of lethal injection. Gitmo and/or Gitmo-North in Illinois will become Americas first-ever Nazi-style death camp. But today under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, executing persons detained as a result of armed conflict without a fair trial before a regularly constituted court constitutes a grave war crime. To be sure, under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution Harvard Law Professor Vagts has the freedom to advocate war crimes so long as he does not participate in their commission, or incite them, or aid and abet them. But precisely where is that line to be drawn for law professors? In this regard, the Harvard Law School Faculty currently has at least five professors who have advocated torture and war crimes: 1. Vagts himself, who supported abusing the then recently captured President of Iraq Saddam Hussein despite his being publicly acknowledged to be a Prisoner of War by the Bush Jr. administration itself and thus absolutely protected by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Convention against Torture; 2. the infamous Alan Dershowitz, a self-incriminated war criminal in his own right. Dersh publicly acknowledged being a member of a Mossad Committee for approving the murder and assassination of Palestinians, which violates the Geneva Conventions and is thus a grave war crime; 3. the Neo-Con Con Law non-entity known as Richard Parker; 4. Another one of my teachers, Waco Phil Heymann. Previously, Waco Phil had been Deputy to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the Butcher of Waco. Reno ordered the Waco Massacre, while Heymann ordered its cover-up and thus earned his well-deserved sobriquet of Waco Phil as an Accessory After The Fact. All those incinerated women and children! 5. The war criminal Jack Goldsmith who while working as a lawyer for the Bush Jr. administration at both the Pentagon and later its Department of In-Justice did much of the legal spade-work designing, justifying and approving the hideous human rights atrocities that the Bush Jr. administration inflicted on everyone after 9/11. Goldsmith and his co-felon accomplice and co-conspirator from the Bush Jr. administration Professor John Yoo — now desecrating Berkeley's Law School where my friend and colleague the late, great Dean Frank Newman had taught Human Rights and International Law — are functionally analogous to Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt, who justified every hideous atrocity that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on anyone, including the Jews. Despite my best efforts to prevent it, the Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans hired the war criminal Goldsmith right out of the Bush Jr. administration knowing full well that he was up to his eyeballs in the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts, torture, war crimes, enforced disappearances, murder, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity, at a minimum. And when Goldsmith's proverbial "smoking-gun" Department of In-Justice Memorandum was published by the Washington Post, then Harvard Law School's Dean Elena Kagan contemptuously boasted in response about how "proud" she was to have hired this notorious war criminal. Previously Kagan had also publicly bragged that the future of International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School would be in the "good hands" of their resident war criminal Goldsmith. How perversely and tragically true! The Neo-Conservative Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans deliberately hired this Neo-Nazi legal architect of the Bush Jr. administration's bogus and nefarious "war against terrorism" because they fully support it together with all its essential accouterments of torture, kangaroo courts, war crimes, murder, kidnapping, enforced disappearances, crimes against humanity, and Nuremburg crimes against peace. By contrast, after the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in alleged revenge for the Waco Massacre and Cover-up by Janet Reno and Waco Phil Heymann, to the best of my recollection I do not remember that the Neo-Conservative Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans advocated kangaroo courts, torture, war crimes, and racist profiling for America's population of White Judeo-Christian Males. Yet after 9/11 the fundamentally White Racist Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans have no problem with inflicting torture, kangaroo courts, war crimes, and racist profiling upon Muslims/Arabs/Asians of Color, which is exactly why they hired the war criminal Goldsmith to teach such criminal practices to their own law students and thus someday turn them into racist U. S. governmental war criminals in their own right. This is because for the most part the Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans have always been viscerally bigoted and racist against Muslims/Arabs/Asians and other People of Color since at least when I first matriculated there in September of 1971. The Harvard Law School (H.L.S.) Faculty and Deans are no longer fit to educate Lawyers, Members of the Bar, and Officers of the Court. They are a sick joke and a demented fraud. Groucho Marx would have had a field day with them: Harvard is to Law School as Torture is to Law. The Harvard Law School Faculty and Deans torture the Law. Do not send your children or students to Harvard Law School where they will grow up to become racist war criminals! Harvard Law School is a Neo-Con cesspool. As for Harvard Laws Neo-Con Dean Kagan, Harvard Law Graduate President Barack Obama appointed her Solicitor General in his Department of Justice as the third highest ranking official in that department and thus as the proverbial oeTenth Justice for the 9-Justice U.S. Supreme Court. In this capacity Kagan has quarter-backed, supervised, and defended in all U.S. federal courts the Obama administrations continuation of the Bush Jr. administrations hideous atrocities perpetrated against human rights, international law, civil rights, civil liberties, the U.S. Constitution, and Americas Bill of Rights. As payback for her yeoman Neo-Con efforts, Kagan is now reportedly at the top of a very short list for President Obama to nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court upon the expected retirement of Mr. Justice Stevens, the reputed leader of the Courts oeliberal wing. Of course Stevens widespread denomination as a oeliberal just proves how far to the reactionary right the Supreme Court has moved since Stevens was recommended for the Supremes to President Gerald Ford by the arch-reactionary jurist Edward Hirsh Levi, then U.S. Attorney General and previously Dean of the arch-reactionary University of Chicago Law School where Antonin Scalia, Obama, Kagan, and her pet war criminal Goldsmith would all teach. As President of the entire arch-reactionary University of Chicago itself, Levi drove out about 30% of my undergraduate class that in 1968 had unwittingly entered this Birthplace and Warren for the Neo-Con Movement that was founded there by Chicago Professor Leo Strauss, a protégé of Nazi Law Professor Carl Schmitt. Americas Neo-Cons are Neo-Nazis. In an interview she recently gave to National Public Radio, Obamas Neo-Con Solicitor General Kagan went out of her way to proclaim: oeI love the Federalist Society! (Emphasis in the original.) The Federalist Society is a gang of lawyers, law professors, and judges who for the most part are right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian. For example, almost all of the Bush Jr. administration lawyers responsible for its war criminal torture scandal were and still are members of the Federalist Society. Likewise, five Justices on the current U.S. Supreme Court were/are members of the Federalist Society: Harvard Law Graduate Roberts; Harvard Law Graduate Scalia; Harvard Law Graduate Kennedy; Yale Law Graduate Thomas; and Yale Law Graduate Alito. Thats what an oeelite legal education will do for you. In any event, H.L.S. President Obamas elevation of the H.L.S. Neo-Con Kagan to the Supremes would cement the Federalist Societys Neo-Con stranglehold over the U.S. Supreme Court for the next generation. As for another publicly touted Supremes candidate, the Neo-Con Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School and Harvard Law School, who is currently working at the White House as Obamas Disinformation and Infiltration Czar, would be just as lethal as Kagan to the American Constitution and Republic if sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court. Time for the Ordinary People of America to get organized against these Neo-Con legal elites!

Kagan's Troubling Record

By Marjorie Cohn

After President Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, he made a statement that implied she would follow in the footsteps of Justice Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights giant and first black Supreme Court justice. Kagan served as a law clerk for Marshall shortly after she graduated from Harvard Law School. Specifically, Obama said that Marshall's "understanding of law, not as an intellectual exercise or words on a page, but as it affects the lives of ordinary people, has animated every step of Elena's career." Unfortunately, history does not support Obama's optimism that Kagan is a disciple of Marshall.

Kagan demonstrated while working as his law clerk that she disagreed with Marshall's jurisprudence. In 1988, the Supreme Court decided Kadrmas v. Dickinson Public Schools, a case about whether a school district could make a poor family pay for busing their child to the closest school, which was 16 miles away. The 5-justice majority held that the busing fee did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. They rejected the proposition that education is a fundamental right which would subject the statute on which the school district relied to 'strict scrutiny.' The Court also declined to review the statute with 'heightened scrutiny' even though it had different effects on the wealthy and the poor. Instead, the majority found a 'rational basis' for the statute, that is, allocating limited governmental resources.

Marshall asked clerk Kagan to craft the first draft of a strong dissent in that case. But Kagan had a difficult time complying with Marshall's wishes and he returned several drafts to her for, in Kagan's words, "failing to express in a properly pungent tone - his understanding of the case." Ultimately, Marshall's dissent said, "The intent of our Fourteenth Amendment was to abolish caste legislation." He relied on Plyler v. Doe, in which the Court had upheld the right of the children of undocumented immigrants to receive free public education in the State of Texas. "As I have stated on prior occasions," Marshall wrote, "proper analysis of equal protection claims depends less on choosing the formal label under which the claim should be reviewed than upon identifying and carefully analyzing the real interests at stake." Kagan later complained that Marshall "allowed his personal experiences, and the knowledge of suffering and deprivation gained from those experiences to guide him."

Kagan evidently rejects these humanistic factors that guided Marshall's decision making and would follow a more traditional approach. This is a matter of concern for progressives, who worry about how the Supreme Court will deal with issues like a woman's right to choose, same sex marriage, "don't ask, don't tell," and the right of corporations to donate money to political campaigns without restraint. While Kagan has remained silent on many controversial issues, she has announced her belief that the Constitution provides no right to same-sex marriage. If the issue of marriage equality comes before the Court, Justice Kagan would almost certainly rule that denying same sex couples the right to marry does not violate equal protection.

There are other indications that should give progressives pause as well. During her solicitor general confirmation hearing, Kagan said, "The Constitution generally imposes limitations on government rather than establishes affirmative rights and thus has what might be thought of as a libertarian slant. I fully accept this traditional understanding..." But the Constitution is full of affirmative rights - the right to a jury trial, the right to counsel, the right to assemble and petition the government, etc. Does Kagan not understand that decisions made by the Supreme Court give life and meaning to these fundamental rights? Is she willing to interpret those provisions in a way that will preserve individual liberties?

While Kagan generally thinks the Constitution serves to limit governmental power, she nevertheless buys into the Republican theory that the Executive Branch should be enhanced. In one of her few law review articles, Kagan advocated expansive executive power consistent with a formulation from the Reagan administration. This is reminiscent of the 'unitary executive' theory that George W. Bush used to justify grabbing unbridled executive power in his 'war on terror.'

As solicitor general, Kagan asserted in a brief that the 'state secrets privilege' is grounded in the Constitution. The Obama White House, like the Bush administration, is asserting this privilege to prevent people who the CIA sent to other countries to be tortured and people challenging Bush's secret spying program from litigating their cases in court.

During her forthcoming confirmation hearing, senators should press Kagan to define her judicial philosophy. Several of the radical right-wingers on the Court define themselves as 'originalists,' claiming to interpret the Constitution consistent with the intent of the founding fathers.

I would like to hear Kagan say that her judicial philosophy is that human rights are more sacred than property interests. I would hope she would declare that her judicial philosophy favors the right to self-determination - of other countries to control their destinies, of women to control their bodies, and of all people to choose whom they wish to marry.

Kagan is likely to be circumspect about her views. She will frequently decline to answer, protesting that issues may come before the Court. We should be wary about how Justice Kagan will rule when they do.

ICE's Misplaced Priorities: The Numbers Speak for Themselves and the Stories Cry out for Justice

By Azadeh Shahshahani

This past Wednesday, Jessica Colotl was released from the Etowah Detention Center in Alabama and allowed to reunite with her family back in Cobb County, Georgia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has granted Jessica deferred action on her deportation case.

Jessica is a 21-year-old smart hard working student at Kennesaw State who has worked nights in order to pay her tuition. She hopes to become a lawyer after graduating in the fall.

So why was Jessica at a detention center all the way in Alabama in the first place? A few weeks ago, as Jessica pulled into her university parking lot, a campus police officer pulled her over, telling her that she was "impeding the flow of traffic." She could not produce a driver's license due to her undocumented status and eventually ended up at the Cobb County jail. This is when 287(g) kicked in. Per an agreement between Cobb County and ICE, some Cobb sheriff deputies have been granted certain enforcement powers of an immigration officer. Jessica was placed in deportation proceedings. Before long, she found herself behind bars at the Alabama detention center, awaiting deportation to Mexico, a country she has not lived in for over 10 years and which she hardly remembers. Jessica was only released after strongly voiced and sustained demands by the community, including her sorority sisters, and after the ACLU contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters on her behalf.

Is it unusual for ICE and the localities to waste limited resources meant for targeting perpetrators of the most dangerous crimes by going after individuals with great potential like Jessica?

Unfortunately not. Jessica is just one of the untold numbers of hard-working people who get caught up in the local immigration enforcement programs, including 287(g). In a sense, Jessica's case is very unusual, as she actually won respite (albeit temporary) from deportation. Most people in her situation, faced with prolonged detention at a jail, oftentimes isolated and hours away from their families, opt to give up their immigration case and are subsequently deported.

An ACLU of Georgia report released in October 2009 recounted stories of 10 community members in Cobb and their families impacted by 287(g). As documented by the report entitled, "Terror and Isolation in Cobb: How Unchecked Police Power under 287(g) had Torn Families Apart and Threatened Public Safety," mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters are torn apart from their families every day in Cobb County, many with little recourse.

In one case, a husband and father was pulled over for "an incomplete stop" on the way to the bank. Angel subsequently ended up at the Stewart Detention Center. He left behind his wife Sharon, an American citizen who is physically disabled and who "depended on [her] husband for everything." Sharon and Angel had to "celebrate" their 7-year wedding anniversary apart; their only means of contact was a phone call by Angel from the Stewart Detention Center.

In Cobb, immigrants disappear into detention for violations such as a broken tail light or tinted windows on their car. In 2008, Cobb County turned over 3,180 detainees to ICE for deportation. Of those, 2,180, about 69 percent, were arrested for traffic violations.

But you don't only have to rely on the ACLU of Georgia report to believe there is something wrong with this picture. A Government Accountability Office investigation of 287(g) released in January 2009 found that ICE was not exercising proper oversight over local or state agencies. And a report released in March 2010 by the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) documents significant lapses in 287(g) priorities and oversight. ICE claims that 287(g)'s mandate is to focus on non-citizens who pose a threat to national security or are dangers to the community. But less than 10 percent of those sampled by OIG were ICE "Level 1" offenders. Almost half had no involvement in crimes of violence, drug offenses, or property crimes.

This trend of misplaced priorities is shared by other ICE local enforcement programs.

Last week, a piece appeared by John Morton, the head of ICE, in the Atlanta Journal Constitution as well as other papers around the country defending the "Secure Communities" initiative through which arrestees' fingerprints are checked against DHS databases with information about civil immigration history, rather than just against FBI criminal databases. Morton claims that his agency is prioritizing perpetrators of dangerous crimes for deportation.

Morton's strongest rebuttal is his own numbers. According to the data ICE released in November 2009, out of 113,000 non-citizen individuals identified in the program during its first year of operation, more than 101,000, or close to 90 percent, were never charged with or convicted of dangerous crimes. "Secure Communities" is in fact designed to sweep up any foreign-born individual who is arrested by local law enforcement for any reason whatsoever, including traffic infractions, even if that person is never charged with, or convicted of, any crime at all. An alarming 5 percent of the total number of individuals identified were actually U.S. citizens, testifying to the inaccuracy and incompleteness of the federal agency databases against which fingerprints are matched.

Meanwhile, precious resources are diverted from identifying and removing perpetrators of the most dangerous crimes.

Contrary to Morton's assertion, the program is also profoundly susceptible to abuse and racial profiling, similar to the misguided 287(g) program. Any police officer or sheriff's deputy can arrest individuals simply to bring them to the attention of immigration officials. Without federal standards or oversight, this creates an unacceptably high risk of unlawful racial profiling.

The risk of racial profiling through local enforcement programs is compounded in Georgia, as there is no state legislation banning racial profiling and mandating accountability and transparency for law enforcement.

It is past time for ICE to match their rhetoric regarding priorities with action and put an immediate end to the unaccountable outsourcing of immigration enforcement functions. If the numbers weren't enough proof, Jessica's story and other accounts cry out for justice.

Never forget John Brown

By Kevin Alexander Gray

This week marks John Brown’s 210th birthday. After enduring a month of Southern states celebrating the Confederacy, let’s hear it for abolitionist John Brown.

Brown was born on May 9, 1800. When he took over Harpers Ferry on Oct. 16, 1859, he was not only drawing attention to the crime of slavery, he was also trying to provide the spark for a slave rebellion.

He declared his “sympathy with the oppressed and wronged, that are good as you and as precious in the sight of God.” This was a direct challenge to the South, to slaveholders everywhere and to white supremacy.



And even after he was tried and convicted of treason against the state of Virginia, even as he awaited the gallows, he did not relent.

“You may dispose of me easily, but this question is still to be settled — the Negro question — the end of that is not yet,” he said. Prophetically, he added: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

Brown’s willingness to give his life for equality and freedom puts the lie to all the efforts to recast the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression” and to sugarcoat the honoring of the Confederacy with such slogans as “Heritage, Not Hate.”

We blacks know in our bones that Confederate History Month is nothing more than the glorification of white supremacy. We shouldn’t stand for it, and nor should any American who believes in the words of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”

The neo-Confederate motto is “Never forget.” We should all adopt it.

Let’s never forget John Brown. Let’s never forget the other abolitionists, black and white, who campaigned against slavery. Let’s make sure that their stories are told in our national parks and on the markers and monuments and at the battle sites that serve as tourist attractions for Civil War buffs.

I recently visited Harpers Ferry, Antietam, Appomattox and other Civil War sites. I was the only black person in sight, with the exception of a few park workers. At Appomattox, I saw visitors placing Confederate flags on tombstones.

Doubtless, the efforts to rehabilitate the Southern cause seem to come at moments of racial and social stress by folk who feel alienated and angry about a “black” president or health care reform or “big government,” though their anti-government concerns seem to melt away when it comes to spending tax dollars to maintain the ever-growing list of parks, monuments and battle sites.

Still, the glorification of the Confederacy is mostly about white resistance to black advances, white resentment at the erosion of white privilege. It’s been that way since the 1880s and 1890s.

So, no, we should never forget.

We should not forget that even during enslavement and the war people of African descent fought back. There were the five black men among Brown’s raiding party: Lewis Leary, Dangerfield Newby, Shields Green, Osborne Perry Anderson and John Anthony Copeland Jr., along with the 16 white men who followed Brown to Harpers Ferry.

The fight to protect white privilege goes on. We have to fight back by being honest about the history of our republic. And we have to tell all our stories.

Remember John Brown.

Kevin Alexander Gray is the author of the recently published books “Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics” and “The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.” He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

My Brother Faces a Lifetime of Solitary Confinement on a Spurious Terror Conviction

By Mariam Abu-Ali, AlterNet
Posted on May 12, 2010, Printed on May 12, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146817/

A version of this piece first appeared in The Hoya, Georgetown University's newspaper.

My brother, Ahmed Abu Ali, has spent the past five years in solitary confinement, under 23-hour lockdown, in a 7x12 cell. He has one recreational hour in which he must get strip-searched if he wishes to leave his cell. He gets one unscheduled telephone call a month to his family, and receives the newspaper by the time news becomes history. If I send him a letter wishing him a happy birthday, he gets it 60 days later. When I visit him, once a year, I speak to him from behind a glass window. He is literally in a dungeon, over 20 meters beneath the ground.

Ahmed is not in a foreign prison, nor is he in Guantánamo; he is in a super maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

Ahmed was not convicted of an act of violence nor was he charged with one. In 2003, Ahmed, a sociable 22-year-old, was studying abroad when he was detained in Medina, Saudi Arabia at the behest of the U.S government. My family, in tandem with several human rights organizations, filed a habeas petition demanding his return to the U.S., and the judge ruled in our favor.

After being held for nearly two years in Saudi Arabia without any charges or access to an attorney, Ahmed was transferred to U.S. custody. The U.S. government sought to avoid public embarrassment by charging him with nine counts of terrorism related conspiracy. The only evidence presented was a confession tape obtained under torture in Saudi Arabia, a country with documented prisoner abuse, as reported by the State Department. Additionally, the judge suppressed the defense's evidence of torture during the trial. During a pretrial hearing, Ahmed offered to show the scars on his back in the U.S. courtroom. The judge refused his request, but assured him he would not be mistreated in the United States.

Mistreatment would be an understatement, given the draconian conditions under which he is held. Ahmed was initially sentenced to 30 years, but the prosecution was not satisfied. They appealed to increase his sentence. Despite the fact that the so-called conspiracies, according to the judge, "did not result in a single actual victim," he is now serving a life sentence in solitary confinement under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs).

Created in 1996, SAMs were imposed for a maximum of four months when a prisoner was deemed violent. Now, SAMs can be designated by the Attorney General for up to a year, and renewed continually thereafter resulting in perpetual isolation, a form of torture under international law. The SAMs limit certain "privileges," including, but not limited to, correspondence, visits, media interviews and telephone use. SAMs also restrict conversations between inmates and their lawyers by allowing them to be monitored by prison officials, violating attorney-client privilege and depriving inmates of their right to effective counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Ahmed was under SAMs even before his trial began. Imposing SAMs pre-trial cast a shadow of suspicion on a defendant, rendering him guilty until proven innocent.

Unfortunately, my brother's case is not an anomaly. Civil rights violations are an integral part of the "war on terror" and have become entrenched in the U.S. court system and in prison policy.

Fahad Hashmi is a young student from New York, who received his B.A from Brooklyn College and his master's from London Metropolitan University. In 2006, he was arrested at an airport in the United Kingdom and held in England's notorious Belmarsh prison for 11 months. Like Ahmed, Fahad was charged with conspiracy on the basis of flimsy evidence. While in the UK, he allowed an acquaintance to stay at his apartment for two weeks. The government alleges that this acquaintance had socks, raincoats and ponchos in his luggage during his stay that would later get delivered to Al-Qaeda. The government's case rested on secret evidence and on the testimony of an acquaintance who then became an informant to get a reduction on his own prison sentence.

Fahad was extradited back to New York, where was held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center without a trial under SAMs for the past three years. Under 24-hour electronic surveillance, he is required to shower and relieve himself in view of a camera. Furthermore, his limited family visits have been suspended for the past five months.

Extreme sensory deprivation often leads to hunger strikes and results in the deterioration of prisoners' physical and mental health. Medical and scholarly research has shown that such sensory deprivation results in depression, lethargy and psychosis in otherwise healthy prisoners. After studying inmates in solitary confinement, Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, noted that they "begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind -- to organize their own lives around activity and purpose … In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving," lapsing into catatonic states.

Senator John McCain, who spent more than two years in isolation while detained in Vietnam, has said that solitary confinement "crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment." Last year, Ahmed's conditions were so unbearable, he went on a hunger strike for two months, losing 50 pounds.

Fahad's health has degraded immensely, a fact that would have compromised his ability to participate in his defense during his trial, which was scheduled to begin on April 28. Instead, Fahad reached a plea bargain on the eve of his trial. In addition to facing the prospect of a 70-year prison sentence, the court granted the government's request for an anonymous jury with extra protection. The Center for Constitutional Rights called it "a clear attempt to influence the jury by creating a sense of fear for their safety and to paint Mr. Hashmi as already guilty." Fahad's plea should not be presumed as an admission of guilt; the biased circumstances led him to accept a chance for a lesser charge.

Ahmed's or Fahad's innocence is not the point, although I believe both are guilt-free. Rather, I write because regardless of their innocence or guilt, it is their right to be treated humanely. If we believe in the inherent dignity of each human being, then we should be outraged by these abuses. Unfortunately, abuse here in the United States rarely receives media attention. President Obama promised to close down Guantánamo; let us demand that he closes down the Guantánamo-style prisons on U.S. soil, too. Anyone with a true understanding of American values ought to demand an immediate end to these cruel and unusual punishments.

Mariam Abu-Ali is a senior at Georgetown University.

© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/146817/

Oil not the only threat to Gulf's fragile wildlife; Chemicals to fight spill also a problem

By LISE OLSEN and MATTHEW TRESAUGUE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

HOPELAND, LA. — The threatened Biloxi Marsh stretches for more than 20 miles from where the road ends at this fishing outpost to the open waters of the Gulf. Across the vast expanse of tall grass and the jumble of bays and inlets, marine life and shorebirds populate this area by the tens of thousands.
“It's an aquatic prairie,” said Gary Vitrano, a Louisiana state wildlife biologist.
But as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill laps at the Louisiana coast, its effects go far beyond what spreads across the surface to what can't be seen far below.
Not only do the toxic components of oil threaten the wildlife here, it's also the unprecedented amount of chemicals used to fight it. Already, oil and the chemical dispersant have invaded the complex web of life in the Gulf of Mexico, from tiny contaminated plankton and blackened sargassum drifting through the spill to thousands of dolphin known to live and travel there.
“My concern is with the entire food chain,” said Donald M. Baltz, chairman of the oceanography and coastal sciences department at Louisiana State University. “Adding toxic materials to the mess in the form of dispersants has its pros and cons ... it's a concern whether the largest harm will come from the oil or from what they use to ‘solve' the problem.”
Because of potential threats of contamination to fish and shellfish, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has closed a large area of the Gulf through May 17 and considered declaring a national fisheries disaster.
Many species of fish, shellfish, birds, sea turtles and mammals are considered at risk. Red snapper and spotted sea trout are among those that will soon begin to spawn in potentially contaminated offshore waters.
In the potential path of the spill are 20 national wildlife refuges currently filled with nesting herons, terns and brown pelicans, removed from the endangered species list in Louisiana just a few months ago.
Immense contamination
BP bought out the manufacturer's entire U.S. stockpile of dispersant to try to keep the spill from reaching refuges and beaches, as well as the largest coastal wetlands system in the United States. But the oil made landfall anyway late Wednesday on the Chandeleur Islands, part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, southeast of New Orleans.
Miles of boom have been laid to try to keep it from tainting shallow waters filled with sea grass, shorebirds and many other creatures that, if fouled by oil, might be impossible to clean or even locate.
Already, the offshore contamination from the spill is immense and unprecedented in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
This spill is more than a third as large as the devastating Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989, according to official estimates, and could get larger. And never before has so much dispersant — containing toxic heavy metals — been deployed to fight a spill in a single site.
So far, BP estimates that about 95,000 barrels of oil — 5,000 barrels a day — have spewed into the Gulf since the drilling rig exploded on April 20.
On top of that, more than 250,000 gallons of dispersant have been applied both by air and underwater at the Deepwater Horizon spill site, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed.
Though considered by many experts as the lesser of two evils, the environmental impact of so much dispersant at one site remains “widely unknown,” Environmental Protection Agency officials admit.
The spill has fouled waters frequented by several species of dolphin. Bottlenose dolphins in the Gulf may remain in their home waters even during major environmental threats, like red tide and hurricanes, based on research conducted on a Florida community of those dolphins by Randall Wells, a Florida-based scientist with the Chicago Zoological Society.
“We are concerned they don't have the option to leave and they would be subject to whatever happened within the region,” Wells said.
NOAA has photographed whales and striped dolphins swimming through the spill in recent days. At least 38 dead sea turtles and two dolphins have washed up near the spill area, though the cause of death is still unknown.
Beneath the surface
It could take years of scientific study for the true environmental effects of this spill to be measured, researchers and scientists predicted.
“It's important to understand for every carcass that washes up on a beach, there may be many more carcasses that sink or are scavenged and are in the marshes out-of-sight. For every bird carcass there are probably another 10 that are not picked up,” said Stan Senner, director of conservation science for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. “Beyond that, there are a whole array of impacts that go on unseen.”
More than 21 years after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground on a reef, signs of that spill continue to show in the formerly pristine Prince William Sound in Alaska. On sunny days, oil still seeps up through the rocks on its shores, staining the fur of river otters. And the Pacific herring has never fully recovered.
The monitoring continues today.
Ed Overton, another Louisiana-based researcher who is part of NOAA's chemical hazard assessment team is analyzing the potential effects of the dispersant used by BP, called Corexit. It has worked well on smaller spills, but its safety limits are unknown in such volume.
“If you drink a gin and tonic, one is fine — a whole bottle is not fine,” he said.
Tissue samples taken
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has focused on the top of the food chain out of concern for public health, taking tissue samples of spotted sea trout, red drum, flounder and other species popular among seafood lovers. The state already has closed areas east of the Mississippi River delta to fishing.
Even now, as the Deepwater Horizon's rust-colored oil stain moves and spreads, teams of spotters working for NOAA and for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are doing rapid inventories by plane to produce rough estimates of locations and concentrations of sea life and birds that may be harmed by the oil and the dispersant.
Even now, as the Deepwater Horizon's rust-colored oil stain moves and spreads, teams of spotters working for NOAA and for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are doing rapid inventories by plane to produce rough estimates of locations and concentrations of sea life and birds that may be harmed by the oil and the dispersant.
Sperm whales, which have teeth and feed on fish, as well as baleen whales, are likely to swim around the worst of the mess.
Yet those and many others species favor feeding grounds near the mouth of the Mississippi River just a few miles west of the spill site.
The Gulf has a tremendous capacity to reabsorb smaller amounts of oil, which naturally bubbles up from its bed. It appeared to consume even the 124 small spills, an estimated 17,000 barrels, created by the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, according to U.S. government estimates.
Already, the spill is the biggest man-made threat to the Gulf in two decades.
“Even if the oil spill stops now, it's going to take a long time for the ecosystem to consume it,” said James H. Cowan Jr., an LSU professor and Gulf fisheries expert. “For me, this has the potential to become a chronic insult.”
Reporter Harvey Rice contributed to this report.

Obama's Kagan Choice Will Push Court to the Right: Can Kagan Fill Stevens’ Mighty Shoes?

by Marjorie Cohn

As the Rehnquist court continued to eviscerate the right of the people to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens filed principled and courageous dissents. For example, the majority held in the 1991 case of California v. Acevedo that although the police cannot search a closed container without a warrant, they can wait until a person puts the container into a car and then do a warrantless search because the container is now mobile. In a ringing dissent that exemplified his revulsion at executive overreaching, Justice Stevens wrote that "decisions like the one the Court makes today will support the conclusion that this Court has become a loyal foot soldier in the Executive's fight against crime."

The founders wrote checks and balances into the Constitution so that no one branch would become too powerful. But during his "war on terror," President George W. Bush claimed nearly unbridled executive power to hold non-citizens indefinitely without an opportunity to challenge their detention and to deny them due process. Three times, a closely divided Supreme Court put on the brakes. Justice Stevens played a critical role in each of those decisions. He wrote the opinions in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and his fingerprints were all over Boumediene v. Bush.

Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has continued to assert many of Bush's executive policies in his "war on terror." Elena Kagan, reportedly Obama's choice to replace Justice Stevens, has never been a judge. But she has been a loyal foot soldier in Obama's fight against terrorism and there is little reason to believe that she will not continue to do so. During her confirmation hearing for solicitor general, Kagan agreed with Senator Lindsey Graham that the president can hold suspected terrorists indefinitely during wartime, and the entire world is a battlefield.

Justice Stevens ruled in favor of broad enforcement of our civil rights laws. In his 2007 dissent in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, he wrote that "children of all races benefit from integrated classrooms and playgrounds." When Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, she hired 32 tenured and tenure-track academic faculty members. Only seven were women and only one was a minority. "What a twist of fate," wrote four minority law professors on Salon.com, "if the first black president - of both the Harvard Law Review and the United States of America - seemed to be untroubled by a 21st Century Harvard faculty that hired largely white men."

Obama has a golden opportunity to appoint a giant of a justice who can take on the extreme right-wingers on the Court who rule consistently against equality and for corporate power. When he cast a vote against the confirmation of John Roberts to be Chief Justice, Senator Obama said, "he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong and in opposition to the weak." Justice Stevens has done just the opposite.

If he wants to choose a non-judge, Obama could pick Harold Hongju Koh or Erwin Chemerinsky, both brilliant and courageous legal scholars who champion human rights and civil rights over corporate and executive power. Unlike Kagan, whose 20 years as a law professor produced a paucity of legal scholarship, Koh and Chemerinsky both have a formidable body of work that is widely cited by judges and scholars.

But it appears Obama will take the cautious route and nominate Kagan, who has no record of judicial opinions and no formidable legal writings. After the health care debacle, he should know that the right-wingers will not be appeased by this milk toast appointment, but will oppose whomever he nominates.

The Warren Court issued several landmark decisions. It sought to remedy the inequality between the races and between rich and poor, and to curb unchecked executive power. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote these words, which would later become his epitaph: "Where there is injustice, we should correct it. Where there is poverty, we should eliminate it. Where there is corruption, we should stamp it out. Where there is violence, we should punish it. Where there is neglect, we should provide care. Where there is war, we should restore peace. And wherever corrections are achieved, we should add them permanently to our storehouse of treasures."

Conservatives decry activist judges - primarily those who act contrary to conservative politics. But the Constitution is a short document and it is up to judges to interpret it. Obama has defensively bought into the right-wing rhetoric, saying recently that during the 1960's and 1970's, "liberals were guilty" of the "error" of being activist judges. Rather than celebrating the historic achievements of the Warren Court - and of Justice Stevens - Obama is once again cowering in the face of conservative opposition.

Obama should do the right thing, the courageous thing, and fill Justice Stevens' seat with someone who can fill his shoes. If he nominates Elena Kagan, Obama will move the delicately balanced court to the Right. And that would be the wrong thing.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd). Her anthology, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, will be published in 2010 by NYU Press. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com

The Cover-up: BP's Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster

Written by Wayne Madsen

WMR has been informed by sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Obama White House and British Petroleum (BP), which pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign -- more than John McCain or Hillary Clinton, are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP's liability for damage caused by what can be called a "mega-disaster."
Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, are working with BP's chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. However, WMR's federal and Gulf state sources are reporting the disaster has the real potential cost of at least $1 trillion. Critics of the deal being worked out between Obama and Hayward point out that $10 billion is a mere drop in the bucket for a trillion dollar disaster but also note that BP, if its assets were nationalized, could fetch almost a trillion dollars for compensation purposes. There is talk in some government circles, including FEMA, of the need to nationalize BP in order to compensate those who will ultimately be affected by the worst oil disaster in the history of the world.
Plans by BP to sink a 4-story containment dome over the oil gushing from a gaping chasm one kilometer below the surface of the Gulf, where the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and killed 11 workers on April 20, and reports that one of the leaks has been contained is pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources. Sources within these agencies say the White House has been resisting releasing any "damaging information" about the oil disaster. They add that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf.
Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a "national security issue." Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano's actual reasoning for invoking national security was to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines.
From the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Coast Guard, and Gulf state environmental protection agencies, the message is the same: "we've never dealt with anything like this before."
The Obama administration also conspired with BP to fudge the extent of the oil leak, according to our federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day was gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day.
However, WMR has been informed that submersibles that are monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what is a "volcanic-like" eruption of oil. Moreover, when the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick -- which is larger than that being reported by the media -- it was turned down. However, National Geographic managed to obtain the satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site.
There is other satellite imagery being withheld by the Obama administration that shows what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to our sources.
FREE Breaking Investment & Geopolitical Intelligence - Previously only available to Governments, Intelligence Agencies & selected Hedge Funds. Click here for more information on our Free Weekly Intelligence Report
The Corps and Engineers and FEMA are quietly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only recently, has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. WMR has also learned that inspections of off-shore rigs' shut-off valves by the Minerals Management Service during the Bush administration were merely rubber-stamp operations, resulting from criminal collusion between Halliburton and the Interior Department's service, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves.
The impact of the disaster became known to the Corps of Engineers and FEMA even before the White House began to take the magnitude of the impending catastrophe seriously. The first casualty of the disaster is the seafood industy, with not just fishermen, oystermen, crabbers, and shrimpers losing their jobs, but all those involved in the restaurant industry, from truckers to waitresses, facing lay-offs.
The invasion of crude oil into estuaries like the oyster-rich Apalachicola Bay in Florida spell disaster for the seafood industry. However, the biggest threat is to Florida's Everglades, which federal and state experts fear will be turned into a "dead zone" if the oil continues to gush forth from the Gulf chasm. There are also expectations that the oil slick will be caught up in the Gulf stream off the eastern seaboard of the United States, fouling beaches and estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, and ultimately target the rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.
WMR has also learned that 36 urban areas on the Gulf of Mexico are expecting to be confronted with a major disaster from the oil volcano in the next few days. Although protective water surface boons are being laid to protect such sensitive areas as Alabama's Dauphin Island, the mouth of the Mississippi River, and Florida's Apalachicola Bay, Florida, there is only 16 miles of boons available for the protection of 2,276 miles of tidal shoreline in the state of Florida.
Emergency preparations in dealing with the expanding oil menace are now being made for cities and towns from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater, Sarasota-Bradenton, Naples, and Key West. Some 36 FEMA-funded contracts between cities, towns, and counties and emergency workers are due to be invoked within days, if not hours, according to WMR's FEMA sources.
There are plans to evacuate people with respiratory problems, especially those among the retired senior population along the west coast of Florida, before officials begin burning surface oil as it begins to near the coastline.
There is another major threat looming for inland towns and cities. With hurricane season in effect, there is a potential for ocean oil to be picked up by hurricane-driven rains and dropped into fresh water lakes and rivers, far from the ocean, thus adding to the pollution of water supplies and eco-systems.
This story contributed by the Wayne Madsen Report for Oilprice.com

Arizona Legalizes Racial Profiling

By Marjorie Cohn

The conservative “states’ rights” mantra sweeping our country has led to one of the most egregious wrongs in recent U.S. history. New legislation in Arizona requires law enforcement officers to stop everyone whom they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is an undocumented immigrant and arrest them if they fail to produce their papers. What constitutes “reasonable suspicion”? When asked what an undocumented person looks like, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 into law last week, said, “I don’t know what an undocumented person looks like.” The bill does not prohibit police from relying on race or ethnicity in deciding who to stop. It is unlikely that officers will detain Irish or German immigrants to check their documents. This law unconstitutionally criminalizes “walking while brown” in Arizona.

Former Arizona attorney general Grant Woods explained to Brewer that SB 1070 would vest too much discretion in the state police and lead to racial profiling and expensive legal fees for the state. But the governor evidently succumbed to racist pressure as she faces a reelection campaign. Woods said, “[Brewer] really felt that the majority of Arizonans fall on the side of, ‘Let’s solve the problem and not worry about the Constitution.’” The polls Brewer apparently relied on, however, employed questionable methodology and were conducted before heavy media coverage of the controversial legislation. No Democrats and all but one Republican Arizona legislator voted for SB 1070.

Undocumented immigrants in Arizona now face six months in jail and a $500 fine for the first offense – misdemeanor trespass – and an additional $1,000 fine for the second offense, which becomes a felony.

By establishing a separate state crime for anyone who violates federal immigration law, the new Arizona law contravenes the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which grants the federal government exclusive power to regulate U.S. borders.

SB 1070 creates a cause of action for any person to sue a city, town or county if he or she feels the police are not stopping enough undocumented immigrants. Even if a municipality is innocent, it will still be forced to rack up exorbitant legal fees to defend itself against frivolous lawsuits.

The bill also makes it a misdemeanor to attempt to hire or pick up day laborers to work at a different location if the driver impedes the normal flow of traffic, albeit briefly. How many New York taxi drivers impede the flow of traffic when they pick up fares? The law also criminalizes the solicitation of work by an undocumented immigrant in a public place, who gestures or nods to a would-be employer passing by. This part of the legislation is also unconstitutional as courts have held that the solicitation of work is protected speech under the First Amendment.

The new law effectively compels Arizona police to make immigration enforcement their top priority. Indeed several law enforcement groups oppose SB 1070. The Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, an organization of police officials who favor federal immigration reform, condemned the law, saying it would probably result in racial profiling and threaten public safety because undocumented people would hesitate to come forward and report crimes or cooperate with police for fear of being deported. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police also criticized the legislation, saying it will “negatively affect the ability of law enforcement agencies across the state to fulfill their many responsibilities in a timely manner;” the group believes the immigration issue is best addressed at the federal level.

Many civil rights and faith-based organizations also oppose SB 1070.
The Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF) called the law “tantamount to a declaration of secession.” The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders Legal Defense Fund - which represents 30,000 evangelical churches nationwide - as well as MALDEF, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), are preparing federal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of SB 1070.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles called the ability of officials to demand documents akin to “Nazism.” Former Arizona Senate majority leader Alfredo Gutierrez said, “This is the most oppressive piece of legislation since the Japanese internment camp act” during World War II. Representative Raul M. Grijalva (Dem.-AZ) called for a convention boycott of Arizona. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) complied. AILA is moving its fall 2010 conference, scheduled for Arizona, to another state.

Even though SB 1070 will not take effect for at least 90 days, undocumented immigrants in Arizona are terrorized by the new law. A man in Mesa, Arizona looked around nervously as he stood on a street corner waiting for work. “We shop in their stores, we clean their yards, but they want us out and the police will be on us,” Eric Ramirez told the New York Times.

Ironically, expelling unauthorized immigrants from Arizona would be costly. The Perryman Group calculated that Arizona would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs if all undocumented people were removed from the state.

“This bill does nothing to address human smuggling, the drug cartels, the arms smuggling,” according to Democratic Senator Rebecca Rios.

“And, yes, I believe it will create somewhat of a police state,” she added. “Police in Arizona already treat migrants worse than animals,” said Francisco Loureiro, an immigration activist who runs a shelter in Nogales, Mexico. “There is already a hunt for migrants, and now it will be open season under the cover of a law.”

SB 1070 is the latest, albeit one of the worst, racist attacks on undocumented immigrants. The federal program called 287(g) allows certain state and local law enforcement agencies to engage in federal immigration enforcement activities. But a report released earlier this month by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found a lack of oversight and training without adequate safeguards against racial profiling.

We can expect SB 1070 to be replicated around the country as the ugly wave of immigrant-bashing continues. Lawmakers from four other states have sought advice from Michael Hethmon, general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, who helped draft the Arizona law.

“SB 1070 is tearing our state into two,” said Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who called the bill “bitter, small-minded and full of hate.”

He thinks “it humiliates us in the eyes of America and threatens our economic recovery.” More than 50,000 people signed petitions opposing SB 1070 and 2,500 students from high schools across Phoenix walked out of school and marched to the state Capitol to protest the bill before it passed. On Sunday, about 3,500 people gathered at the Capitol, chanting, “Yes we can,” “We have rights,” and “We are human.”

President Obama criticized SB 1070 as “misguided,” saying it will “undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.” He called on Congress to enact federal immigration reform.

But Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Coalition of Human Rights in Tucson, told Democracy Now! that there have been more deportations under the Obama administration than in any other administration. “This administration continues to follow the flawed concept that migration is somehow a law enforcement or national security issue,” she noted.

“And it is not. It is an economic, social, political phenomenon.” She mentioned that NAFTA has displaced millions of workers in Mexico who flood into the United States.

Instead of expressing gratitude for the back-breaking work migrant laborers contribute to our society, there is an increasingly virulent strain of racism that targets non-citizens. Republican lawmakers are joining together to oppose federal immigration reform, opting instead for a “states rights” approach where each state is free to enact its own racist law.

Let us join the voices of compassion and oppose the mean-spirited actions that aim to scapegoat immigrants. Laws like SB 1070 demean us all.


Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild. See www.marjoriecohn.com