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Friday, June 4, 2010
Architect Richard Gage on WTC 7 Collapse
Richard Falk, Huwaida Arraf & Norman Finkelstein on the Freedom Flotilla
Laura Flanders reports on GRTV
Huwaida Arraf, US. activist released from Israeli custody recounts raid on the phone from Ramallah; also joining her are Prof. Norman Finkelstein and Prof. Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, to offer some analysis on the situation and for more on the international reaction and the U.S.’s involvement.
Finally, Laura reminds us all of some words on the U.S./Israel relationship from General David Petraeus.
In the middle of the night Monday, Israeli commandos boarded the “Freedom Flotilla” ships attempting to bring humanitarian aid to blockaded Gaza, killing 9-16 humanitarian activists, the exact numbers are still not known. The international community has reacted with shock and outrage; Protests rallies have erupted around the world. Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled a meeting with President Obama and headed back to Israel to do damage control, and Turkey, from where the flotilla departed, has recalled its ambassador and issued a travel warning to its citizens.
Source: GRITtv
HUWAIDA ARRAF majored in Arabic and Judaic studies and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also spent a year at theHebrew University in Jerusalem and studied Hebrew on a kibbutz. Arraf later earned a J.D. at American University’s Washington College of Law. Her focus was on International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, with a particular interest in war crimes prosecution. In May 2010 Arraf was aboard the Challenger 1, the largest ship of a humanitarian flotilla to Gaza, when the flotilla was attacked by the Israeli military. She is the chairperson for the Free Gaza Movement, the organization behind the flotilla.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Supreme Court backs off strict enforcement of Miranda rights
Once a suspect has been informed of his rights, he has the duty to invoke them, the justices say. The decision reinstates a murder conviction based largely on a suspect's one-word answer to police.
But in Tuesday's 5-4 decision, the court shifted the balance in favor of the police, saying a suspect has a duty to speak up and say he does not want to talk.
Reporting from Washington — —
The Supreme Court backed off Tuesday from strict enforcement of its historic Miranda decision, ruling that a crime suspect's words can be used against him if he fails to clearly tell police that he does not want to talk.
In the past, the court said the "burden rests on the government" to show that a crime suspect had "knowingly and intelligently waived" his rights. Some police departments tell officers not to begin questioning until a suspect has waived his rights, usually by signing a waiver form.
But in Tuesday's 5-4 decision, the court shifted the balance in favor of the police, saying a suspect has a duty to speak up and say he does not want to talk.
Moreover, the police are "not required to obtain a waiver" of the suspect's "right to remain silent before interrogating him," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote.
In her first strongly written dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the ruling "turns Miranda upside down" and "marks a substantial retreat from the protection against compelled self-incrimination."
Some experts on police questioning said the court's subtle shift would be felt in station houses across the country.
"This is the most important Miranda decision in a decade. And it will have a substantial impact on police practices," said Charles Weisselberg, a law professor at UC Berkeley. "This decision approves of the practice of giving the warnings and then asking questions of the suspect, without asking first whether he wants to waive his rights."
The case decided Tuesday involved Van Thompkins, who was arrested a year after the shooting of two men outside a mall in Southfield, Mich. One of the men died.
A police detective read Thompkins his rights, including the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer. Thompkins said he understood, but did not sign a form.
For about two hours and 45 minutes, Thompkins said almost nothing in response to questions. The detective asked Thompkins if he believed in God and then asked: "Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?"
"Yes," Thompkins said, and looked away. He refused to sign a confession or to speak further, but he was convicted of first-degree murder, based largely on his one-word reply.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Thompkins' conviction on the grounds that the use of the incriminating answer violated his right against self-incrimination under the Miranda decision.
The Supreme Court reversed that ruling and reinstated the conviction.
A suspect who wants to invoke the right to remain silent must "do so unambiguously," Kennedy said. "Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk with the police. Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his right to cut off questioning."
Joining Kennedy to form the majority were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Kennedy has played a key role in the last decade in preserving the core Miranda rule, while also narrowing its practical effect. For example, he joined with the liberal bloc for a 5-4 ruling in 2004 that rejected the police tactic of questioning first and then warning a suspect of his rights only after he made an incriminating comment.
The same day, he joined a 5-4 ruling by the conservative side that said physical evidence, such as a gun or cash, could be used against a suspect even if he revealed it during questioning without Miranda warnings.
In the case decided Tuesday, Kennedy emphasized that the suspect had been warned of his rights and eventually chose to speak.
The California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation praised the justices for paring back the "artificial rule" set in the Miranda decision. The court "recognized the practical realities that the police face in dealing with suspects," said Kent Scheidegger, the group's legal director.
But Steven Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the case "demonstrates the power of custodial interrogation to wear down the defendant's willpower, which is what Miranda was designed to prevent."
In her dissent, Sotomayor faulted the majority for announcing a "new general principle of law" that will be confusing in practice.
"Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent — which, counterintuitively, requires them to speak," she said.
Joining her in dissent were Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
The majority ruling is in line with the position taken by the Obama administration and Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who has been nominated to the Supreme Court.
In December, Kagan filed a brief on the side of Michigan prosecutors and argued that "the government need not prove that a suspect expressly waived his rights."
BP's Dismal Safety Record
As the nation comes to grips with the worst oil disaster in its history , there is evidence BP has one of the worst safety track records of any major oil company operating in the United States.
In two separate disasters prior to the Gulf oil rig explosion, 30 BP workers have been killed, and more than 200 seriously injured.
In the last five years, investigators found, BP has admitted to breaking U.S. environmental and safety laws and committing outright fraud. BP paid $373 million in fines to avoid prosecution.
BP's safety violations far outstrip its fellow oil companies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, in the last three years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas have accounted for 97 percent of the "egregious, willful" violations handed out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
U.N. Report Highly Critical of U.S. Drone Attacks
WASHINGTON — A senior United Nations official said on Wednesday that the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill terrorism suspects was undermining global constraints on the use of military force. He warned that the American example would lead to a chaotic world as the new weapons technology inevitably spread.
In a 29-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the official, Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The report — the most extensive effort by the United Nations to grapple with the legal implications of armed drones — also proposed a summit meeting of “key military powers” to clarify legal limits on such killings.
In an interview, Mr. Alston said the United States appeared to think that it was “facing a unique threat from transnational terrorist networks” that justified its effort to put forward legal justifications that would make the rules “as flexible as possible.”
But that example, he said, could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out “competing drone attacks” outside their borders against people “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
“I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Mr. Alston said in an accompanying statement. “But this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.”
Mr. Alston is scheduled to present his findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday. While not legally binding, his report escalates the volume of international concerns over a tactic that has become the Obama administration’s weapon of choice against Al Qaeda and its allies.
The New York Times reported last week that Mr. Alston’s report would call on the United States to stop using Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones and limit the technology to regular military forces because they are open and publicly accountable for their conduct — for example, by investigating missile strikes that kill civilians.
Days later, news emerged that a C.I.A. drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal areas was believed to have killed Al Qaeda’s third-ranking leader, apparently a major success. In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Alston acknowledged that the United States could make “a reasonable legal argument” that a strike against such a figure in those circumstances was lawful and appropriate, but he argued that the escalating number of drone strikes in Pakistan still raised concerns.
The recent strike “is a very convenient one because there you have got a very clearly acceptable target, but we’re not told who the other strikes are against and what efforts are being made to comply with the rules,” he said.
The report calls on nations like Pakistan to publicly disclose the scope and limits of any permission granted for drone strikes on their territories. It also calls on drone operators like the United States to disclose the legal justification for such killings, the criteria and safeguards used when selecting targets, and the process for investigating attacks that kill civilians.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the report, but pointed to a speech in March by the State Department legal adviser, Harold Koh, that partly outlined the Obama administration’s legal rationale. Mr. Koh said the United States obeyed legal limits on the use of force when selecting targets, and he defended drone killings as lawful because of the armed conflict with Al Qaeda and because of the nation’s right to self-defense.
“A state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force,” he said. “Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise.”
The United Nations report agrees that drone killings can be lawful in battlefield combat. But it says that the United States is stretching the limits of who can be lawful targets.
For example, it criticized the United States for singling out drug lords in Afghanistan suspected of giving money to the Taliban, a policy it said was contrary to the traditional understanding of the laws of war. Similarly, it said, terrorism financiers, propagandists and others who are not fighters should face criminal prosecution, not summary killing.
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Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida Arrested on Corruption charges
OVIEDO--While lying in bed with his young son Wednesday morning, the FDLE showed up to arrest former Oviedo City Councilman and Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer.
Shortly after 9 a.m., with his wife and children in the house, Greer, 47, was taken into custody and booked into the John E. Polk Correctional Facility. He is charged with four counts of grand theft, one count of money laundering and one count of organized scheme to defraud, according to Statewide Prosecutor William Shepherd.
Shepherd said a grand jury handed down the indictment against Greer. It was that indictment that triggered Greer's arrest.
Governor Charlie Crist, who appointed Greer to the position at RPOF, was notified a few minutes prior to the arrest.
At a press conference Wednesday morning, Shepherd said the State believes Greer skimmed money from the RPOF through Victory Strategies, LLC, a company he set up in which he was a majority owner.
Shepherd said Greer used the money, at least $100,000, to support his lifestyle.
RPOF Executive Director Delmar Johnson was the minority owner in the company.
Shepherd said Johnson was a witness in the case against Greer and was given "delayed prosecution" for working with the authorities.
According to a search warrant affidavit, signed on June 1, Greer was having financial problems last year.
Attorneys for Greer were unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Check back for updates.
Shortly after 9 a.m., with his wife and children in the house, Greer, 47, was taken into custody and booked into the John E. Polk Correctional Facility. He is charged with four counts of grand theft, one count of money laundering and one count of organized scheme to defraud, according to Statewide Prosecutor William Shepherd.
Shepherd said a grand jury handed down the indictment against Greer. It was that indictment that triggered Greer's arrest.
Governor Charlie Crist, who appointed Greer to the position at RPOF, was notified a few minutes prior to the arrest.
At a press conference Wednesday morning, Shepherd said the State believes Greer skimmed money from the RPOF through Victory Strategies, LLC, a company he set up in which he was a majority owner.
Shepherd said Greer used the money, at least $100,000, to support his lifestyle.
RPOF Executive Director Delmar Johnson was the minority owner in the company.
Shepherd said Johnson was a witness in the case against Greer and was given "delayed prosecution" for working with the authorities.
According to a search warrant affidavit, signed on June 1, Greer was having financial problems last year.
Attorneys for Greer were unavailable for comment Wednesday.
Check back for updates.
Feds Approve New Gulf Oil Well off La
Federal regulators approved Wednesday the first new Gulf of Mexico oil well since President Barack Obama lifted a brief ban on drilling in shallow water, even while deepwater projects remain frozen after the massive BP spill.
The Minerals Management Service granted a new drilling permit sought by Bandon Oil and Gas for a site about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana and 115 feet below the ocean's surface. It's south of Rockefeller State Wildlife Refuge and Game Preserve, far to the west of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that triggered the BP spill.
Obama last week extended a moratorium on wells in deep water like the BP one that blew out a mile below the surface in April and is gushing millions of gallons of oil. But at the same time, the president quietly allowed a three-week-old ban on drilling in shallow water to expire.
"I'm outraged," said Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity. "How is it that shallow water drilling suddenly became safe again?"
Bandon Oil and Gas first sought the permit in April shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank. The permit was approved Wednesday morning, according to MMS records.
Suckling said the administration was misleading the public by quietly resuming work in shallow waters while acting as if it was taking a tough look at deepwater work.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a news release Sunday that the extended moratorium on deepwater drilling was needed to provide time to implement new safety requirements.
"With the BP oil spill still growing in the Gulf, and investigations and reviews still under way, a six-month pause in drilling is needed, appropriate, and prudent," Salazar said. He said the term "deepwater" referred to drilling at depths of 500 feet or greater.
Frank Quimby, a spokesman for the Department of the Interior, said officials were comfortable with a variety of interim safety measures for shallow drilling, such as re-certification to ensure that blowout preventers will work properly. Officials plan to soon distribute a formal note to companies that outlines all the required actions.
"The interim safety measures, as long as they're completely adhered to, we feel that's enough for the shallow-water drilling to proceed under closer scrutiny and stepped-up inspections," Quimby said.
Meanwhile, the acting director of the Minerals Management Service announced further restrictions for offshore drilling.
Bob Abbey, named Friday to lead the agency, said operators will be required to submit additional information about potential risks and safety considerations before being allowed to drill. The rule applies even to those plans that have already been approved or received a waiver exempting them from detailed environmental scrutiny, Abbey said.
The Deepwater Horizon rig was among those given a waiver known as a "categorical exclusion." New information must be submitted before any drilling of new wells.
"Pulling back exploration plans and development plans and requiring them to be updated with new information is consistent with this cautious approach" adopted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Abbey said. The rule should ensure that tighter safety standards and better consideration of risks are incorporated into drilling plans, he said.
The plan will establish separate requirements for deep water and shallow water exploration, Abbey said.
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Associated Press Writers Matt Daly in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
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