The Lawyers Who Would Torture

America’s current economic meltdown has crippled many professions, and the legal professional is no exception. As major law firms are engaging in the wholesale layoffs of lawyers, and freezing hiring for two years, newly minted lawyers must seek employment at department stores and fast food restaurants. One cannot help but conclude that collectively, lawyers are paying the price for the crimes of an errant minority.

I speak of that group of lawyers that, over the past decade, wrote the 30-page credit card contracts that are destroying millions of lives—contracts that are so intentionally murky and deceptively convoluted that even Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and Congressional TARP overseer, cannot understand them. There were the Ponzi-scheming lawyers who conspired to swindle honest, hard-working citizens out of billions of dollars in life savings. And there were the lawyers and judges who knowingly placed the innocent behind bars—or even worse, sent them to their untimely death.

And finally, there were the government lawyers who wrote memos to the President, justifying the torture of terror suspects, and giving the green light to lawbreaking. These documents were not mere academic exercises, but rather weapons used to harm and oppress others. Further, these memos were a violation of international treaties and federal criminal statutes, denying its victims a fair trial governed by the rule of law. If there is a hell, whether actual or metaphysical, such a place would undoubtedly reserve a special wing for such lawyers. And they will be made to wear those proverbial gasoline drawers on their journey to that select subterranean locale.

To coincide with the Obama administration’s release of a report on the CIA’s brutal and coercive interrogations techniques, Georgetown legal scholar David Cole has presented a new book called Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (The New Press, 2009). As its name suggests, the book discusses and presents in their entirety the actual legal memoranda that Bush administration lawyers wrote to justify torture. An important point which Cole makes is that while the actual CIA torturers should be held accountable for their brutal and illegal acts, the authors of these memos are culpable for their contortions of the law to sanction human rights abuses.

“Law at its best is about seeking justice, resolving disputes pursuant to principle and reasoned judgment, regulating state power, respecting human dignity, and protecting the vulnerable”, Cole says (p. 35). “Law at its worst treats legal doctrine as infinitely manipulable, capable of being twisted cynically in whatever direction serves the client’s desires….[T]hey used law not as a check on power, but as a facilitator of brutality, deployed against captive human beings who had absolutely no other recourse.”

Acting in bad faith, the legal hacks who crafted the torture memos engaged in sham analysis and tricky legal gymnastics. Motivated by a desire to please their superiors and little else, they merely invented law out of thin air, and created a law-free zone where perpetrators could act as they pleased. No superior legal analysis was presented from these allegedly superior legal minds. Ignoring that the prohibition on cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is absolute, they began with a false, predetermined conclusion that torture is acceptable. They proceeded to twist the law to rationalize their predetermined conclusion. Most of all, the analysis always absolved the CIA torturers— and the officials who authorized torture— of any wrongdoing. It makes you wonder what some people actually learn in law school, and what they hope to do with their law degree.

A nation is only as good as the laws that govern it. Unfortunately, throughout history we have witnessed the ways in which societies compromise their legal systems to oppress the many, benefit the few, and sanction the unconscionable. The law becomes a political game in which the powerful are exempt from the rules, and some are more equal than others. An arbitrary and capricious legal system can cloak injustice and the unjust with a veneer of legitimacy, fully backed by the apparatus of the state and the prestige of the courts. The Torture Memos reminds us through its post-game analysis that a free society must guard against such abuses of the law. Failure to do so will ensure that official criminal wrongdoing will occur. And as a matter of fact, it just did over the course of the Bush years.

Cross-posted from BlackCommentator.com and Huffington Post.

Southern states 'opted-out' of civil rights too

From theGrio: 

http://www.thegrio.com/2009/10/southern-states-opted-out-of-civil-rights-too.php

Governor Rick Perry And His Texas Death Machine Are In Big Trouble

When criminals are about to be caught, they try to hide their wrongdoing. When drug dealers hear the police sirens, they dump the stash in the alley or flush it down the toilet. When the Nazi officers in the concentration camps heard the allied forces approaching, they destroyed—and in many cases murdered—the evidence. There’s something about the light of day when it shines its truth upon you.

And when a Texas state commission started looking into a report that a faulty arson investigation apparently put an innocent man to death, Gov. Rick Perry replaced the commission and called the dead man a monster.

Because that’s what Southern hick town justice is all about.

Cameron Todd Willingham is now a free man, but unfortunately it took death to release him from the confines of his prison bars. He was executed on February 17, 2004 for the 1991 arson deaths of his three children. Gov. Perry refused to grant him a 30-day stay, despite questions about his guilt. According to a bogus forensics report, Willingham’s house was intentionally burned down.

In 2005, Texas instituted a forensic science commission to investigate mistakes and wrongdoing by forensic scientists. Baltimore fire expert Craig Beyler, who was hired by this commission to look into the Willingham case, concluded that there were no scientific grounds to characterize the fire as an act of arson. As The New Yorker reported, Beyler said the approach of the arson investigator in the case denied rational reasoning, was based on "folklore and mysticism rather than science," and violated "not only the standards of today but even of the time period." This, in a state whose fire investigators typically had a high school diploma, and unlike other states, no requisite experience and no specialized training or qualifications.

So, the Texas commission was reviewing Beyler’s report, and Gov. Perry, running for reelection, eliminated the members of the commission before they could issue their findings. Pure politics. After all, we don’t want people going around and talking about the execution of innocent people.

Meanwhile, Judge Sharon Keller, presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, that state’s highest criminal court, could find herself in deep trouble. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct initiated impeachment proceedings against Keller for incompetence, violating her duties as a judge and casting public discredit on the court. For a state such as Texas— with such abysmal standards of integrity in its criminal "justice" system—you must wonder what she did to stand out among the crowd.

Keller refused to keep the court open after 5pm when she knew Michael Richard, a death row inmate, sought a last-minute appeal challenging the constitutionality of his punishment of lethal injection. The inmate was unable to file an appeal and was executed. Also, Keller rejected a new trial for Roy Criner, a mentally retarded man convicted of rape and murder, even though DNA evidence showed that he did not rape the victim. "We can’t give new trials to everyone who establishes, after conviction, that they might be innocent," Judge Keller said. "We would have no finality in the criminal justice system, and finality is important. When witnesses testify, and when jurors return a verdict, they need to know that they can’t come back later and change their minds."

Keller was unrepentant, and Perry said the execution of Willingham was appropriate based on the "totality of the issues". Ex-governor Mark White suggests that Texas might have to do away with the death penalty altogether, given that it does not deter crime and is unfairly administered, with a risk of executing the innocent. Bad habits are hard to break, and with 423 executions since 1974, including 152 under Gov. George W. Bush, Texas has the most voracious appetite for capital punishment. But perhaps the Willingham case is what is needed to end the barbaric practice.

My take on this subject is that the death penalty never was intended to be fair, as it is a holdover from Jim Crow lynching. Capital punishment was an effort to transplant lynchmob justice into the courtroom and make lynching official, if not respectable. A broken system that was designed to be broken—just clean it up and no one will notice, they thought. Guilt or innocence is of little concern here, as finality reigns supreme. And Judge Keller essentially said as much. It is no accident that the states of the former Confederacy— the states with the most violent racial history, a deep legacy of extrajudicial terror and killings— have been among the most enthusiastic executioners. Interestingly, those states also seem to have the lowest educational and health standards. Typically, the inmates on death row are people of color, and poor white folk like Mr. Willingham, those who lack resources and are unable to afford the best justice money can buy. We will never know how many people have been wrongfully executed. But Cameron Todd Willingham certainly would not have been the first. And perhaps we will never know how many opportunistic individuals have built their political careers on the corpses of the executed, whether guilty or innocent.

Rick Perry and Sharon Keller now have ethical clouds hanging over their heads. They utilized death as a political tool, but now, ironically, the death machine that helped bolster their careers could be their undoing. Yet, both are appropriate spokespersons for the death penalty. They have helped perpetuate an inherently unjust, incompetent and capricious system that legalized the lynchmob.  

Cross-posted from BlackCommentator.com.

Morehouse dress code is more about homophobia than decorum

From theGrio:
http://www.thegrio.com/2009/10/morehouse-college-that-legendary-institution.php

A lack of legal assistance fuels the foreclosure crisis

From The Progressive:
http://www.progressive.org/mplove101409.html

Will Obama Save America From Capitalism?

Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story looked and sounded a lot like a huge conspiracy theory.  Too bad all of it was true.

Missing this time around were the legions of corporate shills employed to discredit this film, the way they tried to do with Moore’s previous film about the healthcare industry, Sicko.  Maybe they just gave up.  There comes a time when no amount of spin will cover up the truth.  You can sprinkle sugar on a turd and call it candy, but in that moment of reckoning, the truth becomes self-evident.

American-style capitalism is the system that gives you airline pilots buying groceries with food stamps; sheriffs and robber barons throwing families out of their homes and into the street; corporations taking out insurance policies on their own employees; corporations slashing jobs to earn record profits; college loans the size of mortgages, and people dying because they have a pre-existing condition, or can’t afford to get sick.

For a number of years, the boosters, the sales representatives, the pimps and prostitutes of this deeply flawed system did a great job of convincing the rest of us that no one else in the world had it better.  This is the land of opportunity, they told us.  The reality is that for all of its rhetoric, America is more unequal in terms of wealth and income than other industrial democracies.  Far more economic mobility is to be found in those “socialist” European nations that conservatives are so loathe to emulate.

America is a nation of sharecroppers.  Not in the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps sort of way, either.  The few at the top now have more than ever because they stole it from the many, typically by highway robbery.  And every day, they continue to dupe the many into giving more.  Many at the bottom actually believe that they will emerge at the top someday, so they don’t make a fuss.  Capitalism, American-style, is that great big Ponzi scheme.  And apparently, we was had.  This is what they do, unfettered, unaccountable, and unconcerned.

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee that is investigating the $700 billion bank bailout giveaway, a.k.a., Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), told the Washington Post that “the middle class is under terrific assault.”  Middle class families are actually earning about $800 less than a generation ago.  This reality precipitated the need to have two wage earners in each family, and to borrow more and save less just to stay above water.  But people are drowning by the millions.

Meanwhile, the economic puppeteers seem to gloat over the fact that they are stealing an ever-increasing part of the economic pie at the expense of the multitude.  On March 5, 2006, Citibank—a TARP welfare recipient of late— issued a memo to investors entitled Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer. Plutnomy is defined as “An economy that is driven by or that disproportionately benefits wealthy people, or one where the creation of wealth is the principal goal.”  The Citibank memo proclaimed that

The latest Survey of Consumer Finances, for 2004, has been released by the Federal Reserve. It shows the rich continue to account for a disproportionately large share of income and wealth in the US economy: the richest 10% of Americans account for 43% of income, and 57% of net worth. The net worth to income ratio for the richest 10% of Americans increased from 7.4x in 2001, to 8.4x in the 2004 survey. The rich are in great shape, financially.

Perhaps the most invidious part of the report warns that electoral democracy threatens to disrupt the wonderful party the rich are having:

Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks. For example, a policy error leading to asset deflation, would likely damage plutonomy. Furthermore, the rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement remains as was – one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation (on the rich or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation) or through trying to protect indigenous laborers, in a push-back on globalization – either anti-immigration, or protectionism. We don’t see this happening yet, though there are signs of rising political tensions. However we are keeping a close eye on developments.

Capitalism is as capitalism does.  Maximization of profit above all else— to the exclusion of ethics, morality and the public good—is the mark of a vulture society.  And this arrogant, coldhearted endeavor has been a bipartisan effort.  Beginning with Reagan, Republican administrations have championed drastic cuts to the social safety net and massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.  Meanwhile, the Clinton years ushered in deregulation of the financial markets, and an end to welfare as we know it.  Corporations have far more power than a free society can tolerate.  And both major political parties are the water carriers of this plutonomy.  They are the field hands for the financial interests that currently run the show and drive public policy—and are driving this nation into the ground.

The U.S. economy is worse than at any time since the Great Depression.  In fact, as Simon Johnson of MIT recently told Bill Moyers, we are currently experiencing elements of a depression.

But in this jobless recovery, where there is one job for every six job seekers, Wall Street is doing well because its fate is not dependent upon the employment of everyday working people.  Rather, its fate is dependent upon government handouts, paper shuffling, and the exotic hustling instruments to which they have grown accustomed.

But we have been here before.  Eighty years ago, on October 24-29, 1929, the stock market collapsed.  It was a testament to an economic system run amok, unregulated and unrestrained, for the benefit of concentrated, monopolistic power.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in the New Deal— a series of economic programs and initiatives based on relief to the unemployed and farmers, reform of business, banking and finance, and economic recovery.  The New Deal meant public works and infrastructure programs, economic planning by the government, social security, and labor standards that favored union growth.  There was a sense that workers, consumers and farmers should have influence with the government, not just corporations.

Today— with the erosion of the New Deal legacy creating the huge mess that is early twenty-first-century America—President Obama has a golden opportunity to make things right.  But will his administration step up to the plate and bring in the necessary reforms?  Just as F.D.R. saved capitalism from itself, will Obama save America from capitalism?  Or is the game already too fixed?

These times scream out for a “new” New Deal.  Jobs are sorely needed by millions, but will not appear out of thin air.  The foreclosed and unemployed middle class are joining the ranks of the poor and the homeless.  The national infrastructure is crumbling.  And the cartels and monopolies of old have returned.  A paltry and ineffectual stimulus package, accompanied by some tweaking at the edges of a carnivorous, predatory system, will not make a difference.

If the Obama administration wants to be a truly transformational force in American history, rather than a slightly-better-than-average, one-term presidency with good intentions, it will give America the new New Deal.  The Obama administration will find the intestinal fortitude to take on the banking system, and divest itself of Wall Street enablers and Goldman Sachs cronies.  It will cast out such underwhelming individuals as Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, and seek the advice of Nobel laureates such as Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia, and Paul Krugman of Princeton.  It will go beyond its laudable plans for a consumer protection agency, and either reform the current economic system, or replace it entirely with one that reduces the status of corporations, and brings economic fairness and justice to the people.

In other words, President Obama will do what the people voted for in November.

(From BlackCommentator.com.)

Hypocrisy reigns for critics of the first non-black Miss Hampton U

Hello everyone, I just became a contributor to theGrio, a new website launched by NBC News earlier this year.  My first comment piece on Hampton University is here.  It also appeared on MSNBC's website.

A Fast For Human Rights In Gaza

There are many opinions on the Mideast conflict, but one thing is certain: the situation in Gaza is a humanitarian and human rights disaster, and it cannot continue.

Under the Israeli blockade, the following items are not allowed into Gaza: cars, refrigerators, computers, cement, concrete, wood, glass, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee, fruit juice, chocolate, nuts, shampoo, conditioner, and toilet paper. And it takes 85 days to deliver shelter kits into Gaza, and 68 days to send health and pediatric hygiene kits.

Rabbi Linda Holtzman of congregation Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia has taken a stand on Israel’s policies in Gaza. In a recent Rosh Hashanah sermon, she discussed the need for people to set limits, and to challenge ourselves to set limits with those we love. “The men and women who have formed the settlements on the West Bank love Israel. All of those who have built barriers, set up roadblocks, and stopped humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, love Israel,” Rabbi Linda said. “I too love Israel, but under no circumstances can I condone these actions, and my understanding of love and the limits love demands will not let me sit quietly by while this is taking place.”

Rabbi Linda is a part of Jewish Fast For Gaza (Ta’anit Tzedek), an ad hoc group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergy, as well as other concerned individuals, who have undertaken a monthly daytime fast for Gaza. Founded by activist Rabbis Brant Rosen and Brian Walt, this association grew out of the Jewish tradition of communal fasting in times of crisis, as a form of mourning and repentance. “As Jews and people of conscience,” the group declares, “we can no longer stand idly by Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Their efforts have been endorsed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

Jewish Fast For Gaza seeks several goals, including: lifting the blockade that prevents civilian goods and services from entering Gaza; calling for the delivery of humanitarian and developmental aid to the people of Gaza; calling on Israel, the U.S. and the world community to negotiate without pre-conditions with all relevant Palestinian parties, including Hamas, to end the blockade, and calling on the U.S. government to engage Israelis and Palestinians toward a just and peaceful settlement of the conflict. Participants are asked to donate the money they save on food to the American Near Eastern Refugee Aid (ANERA), a relief agency combating Gazan preschool malnutrition.

Israeli and international human rights groups alike were shocked by the most recent Israeli military operation in Gaza— the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force against a civilian population, the massive civilian deaths, and the level of destruction of property and infrastructure it created. As a result of Operation Cast Lead—which was conducted between December 27, 2008 and January 3, 2009—over 1,400 Palestinians were killed. Of these, 773 were non-combatants (over 60%), including 320 children. These statistics fly in the face of the official narrative that the operation was part of the war on terror, and that those who were killed were the terrorists.

Civilians could not flee the combat, and there was no safe place to hide, as Fred Abrahams, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, noted. In a recent report on Operation Cast Lead, Human Rights Watch documented the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF’s) illegal use of white phosphorous artillery shells in densely populated areas, and the shooting of unarmed Palestinian civilians—including women and children— waving white flags. Warnings the IDF sent to Gaza residents in the form of fliers and phone calls fell short of international humanitarian law standards. Further, according to a UN report recently issued by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, “houses, factories, wells, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings were destroyed.” Around 240 of the Gazan deaths were police officers. And the Palestinian Legislative Council and a prison were bombed as well.

Further, the Gaza population suffers significant trauma, including insomnia, depression, childhood bed-wetting, and other medium- and long-term mental health problems.

As Jessica Montell, Executive Director of the Jerusalem-based human rights group B'Tselem recently said, “when there is wrongdoing, there must be a remedy." For Montell, justice is to be done at home. This includes not only the individual behavior of Israeli soldiers, but people throughout the chain of command, both military and government, who dictated policy and decided what to target. B’Tselem and all 11 Israeli human rights organizations are calling for a nonpartisan body to examine Israel’s conduct in Operation Cast Lead.

After Hamas’ electoral win in January 2006, Israel imposed the crippling blockade on Gaza, turning the territory into the functional equivalent of a prison. The blockade severely limits Gaza's ability to import essentials such as food and fuel, and to export finished products. The result has been a complete devastation of Gaza’s economy, and the closing of most of its industrial plants. Increased unemployment, poverty and childhood malnutrition now plague an already economically crippled and depressed region.

Wherever human rights abuses are committed throughout the world, someone must be held to account. And no longer can we turn our backs and close our eyes when injustices occur. Depriving human beings of basic necessities, food, water, employment, and freedom of movement in their own land cannot and will not make Israelis more secure. Maintaining a culture of impunity in the region, and denying people their basic rights and sense of dignity will not bring peace to anyone. It will only result in what Justice Goldstone calls “a situation where young people grow up in a culture of hatred and violence, with little hope for change in the future. Finally, the teaching of hate and dehumanization by each side against the other contributes to the destabilization of the whole region.”

Indeed, Gaza is a walled prison, seemingly out of sight and out of mind for some. But the Jewish Fast For Gaza is committed to tearing down the walls that separate us, and allowing justice to flow.

Cross-posted from Huffington Post and Black Commentator.

There Should Be More Pro Athletes Like Tracy McGrady

Tracy McGrady, shooting guard for the Houston Rockets, recently changed his jersey number from number 1 to number 3.

The number 3 stands for a three-point program to stop the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, which has already claimed 300,000 lives: peace, protection and punishment. McGrady is a pro basketball player-turned-human rights activist. He visited refugee camps in the troubled region with members of the Enough Project. And he has decided to devote time off the court to humanitarian efforts, including a sister city program that links middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities in the U.S. with schools in the Darfuri refugee camps. A documentary film called 3 Points, which is available for online viewing, discusses McGrady’s journey to the refugee camps. Recently, on the Rachel Maddow show, he had this to say:

I don’t live on the Earth just to live to walk it, I live on here to make a difference, and I’ve done a lot of things in the community of Houston and Florida, within the states, but I wanted to something more on a global level, and this is huge. I mean, it was a no brainer for me. Especially when once I got over there and saw how bad it was, you know, you can’t come back and not do anything.

At a time when many athletes seem to receive attention only when they find trouble, this is a rare and welcome piece of news. To be sure, there are other stars out there, citizen-athletes who are doing their part and making a difference. Society needs to hear more about them.

And there is a long history of people who stuck out their neck for political and social causes that were important to them. For example, Paul Robeson fought against racism and fascism, and for workers' rights and social justice. Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics was a civil rights advocate who participated in the 1963 March on Washington. Muhammad Ali was a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam, and was arrested, convicted and stripped of his boxing title for refusing to serve in the military. The Supreme Court later overturned his conviction. And during the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists-a symbol of “Black power”- when they received their medals.

Rarely these days do we see such bold statements and actions from our professional athletes. Perhaps it speaks to a past era, when people in the spotlight viewed themselves as representatives of their community. Perhaps it speaks to a present fear of lucrative corporate endorsements being cancelled if one “rocks the boat” and speaks out. “After all,” the argument goes, “if they’re giving you all of that big money to play ball, why mess it all up?” Such a mentality reminds me of the gladiator in ancient Rome, who risked bodily injury for the entertainment of the crowd. That gladiator fought and died at the behest of Caesar, who, in turn, benefitted politically from the games, and used the spectacles to divert public attention from the nation’s problems.

Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect everyone, or every athlete for that matter, to be a leader like Tracy McGrady. At the same time, people who are in the public eye are role models, whether they like it or not. Their stature, their exposure, and in some cases their wealth, provide them a unique opportunity to reach down and pull others up. They can influence young minds to do positive things, if only by example. And they can shape public opinion by giving badly needed exposure to important issues. And in some cases, as with McGrady, they can motivate their own peers to get involved in causes greater than themselves.

I salute Tracy McGrady and others who have dared to exhibit leadership off the court and off the field as well as on it. They challenge all of us to do better.

(From BlackCommentator.com.)