By William Fisher
Last week's release of 900 pages of U.S. Government documents dealing with the implementation of the nation's primary surveillance law suggests that the government has been systematically violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
How many citizens is unclear, since the Government’s documents were extensively redacted. The previously secret internal documents were obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The government declined to disclose the numbers of Americans who had their telephone calls, e-mail, or other communications intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008. They also declined to discuss any specific abuses, the ACLU said.
The 900 documents were delivered in keeping with a previously agreed schedule.
Here’s what we know now:
Alex Abdo, a senior attorney with the ACLU, told IPS, "for two years now, the government has had the authority to engage in the dragnet and unconstitutional surveillance of Americans' communications with little to no oversight of its actual surveillance decisions."
He added, "This week's disclosures confirm that the government repeatedly abused even the minimal, and unconstitutional, limits set out in this new surveillance authority. Although we know that abuses occurred, the government has withheld all critical details about them."
"As Congress considers whether to renew or modify the FISA Amendments Act in 2012, the government must make additional information public to allow an informed debate about its use and abuse of this controversial surveillance power," he said.
The lawsuit seeks to enforce a November 2009 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records related to the government's interpretation and implementation of the FAA, including reports and assessments mandated by the law concerning how the FAA is being used, how many Americans are affected by this sweeping spying regime and what safeguards are in place to prevent abuse of Americans' privacy rights.
Prior to the government’s release of last week’s 900 pages, it had not released any of the records requested. The lawsuit alleges that the requested records are needed to enable informed public debate about whether the FAA - which expires in 2012 - should be repealed, amended or extended.
The ACLU filed today's FOIA lawsuit against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department, National Security Agency and Defense Department in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In July 2008, the ACLU and the NYCLU filed a landmark lawsuit to stop the government from conducting surveillance under the FAA on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose work requires them to engage in sensitive and sometimes privileged telephone and e-mail communications with colleagues, clients, journalistic sources, witnesses, experts, foreign government officials and victims of human rights abuses located outside the United States.
A district court dismissed the case, ruling that the plaintiffs could not challenge the secret surveillance law because they could not prove that their own communications had been monitored under it.
The ACLU and NYCLU appealed that ruling and have asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the case. The groups argued that, because of the secret nature of the FAA, the law may never be subject to judicial review at all if Americans are prohibited from challenging it unless they can show that their own communications have been collected.
"It is unfortunate that once again we have to sue over the secrecy that continues to shroud so much of our government's work," said NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn. "While we have seen recent improvements in transparency, much more remains to be done before we have a truly open government."
Attorneys on the FOIA case are Alex Abdo and Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU and Dunn and Arthur Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union
(NYCLU).
However, routine oversight reports carried out by the government itself acknowledge ongoing violations of legal parameters and civil rights that limit when Americans are targeted and minimize the amount of data collected.
As noted by the Washington Post, "The documents note that although oversight teams did not find evidence of "intentional or willful attempts to violate or circumvent the law . . . certain types of compliance incidents continue to occur," as a March 2009 report stated."
The Post goes on to assert that the unredacted portions of the reports refer only elliptically to what those actions were, but the March 2009 report stated that, "information collected as a result of these incidents has been or is being purged from data repositories."
However, no matter how small or large, the ACLU told IPS that the track-record thus far underscores "the need for continued focus on measures to address underlying causes."
The ACLU finds violations of the FISA Amendments Act's "targeting and minimization procedures . . . likely means that citizens and residents' communications were either being improperly collected or 'targeted' or improperly retained and disseminated."
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is an Act of Congress which prescribes procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of "foreign intelligence information" between "foreign powers" and "agents of foreign powers" (which may include American citizens and permanent residents suspected of being engaged in espionage and violating U.S. law on territory under United States control).
The Act was amended in 2001 by the USA PATRIOT Act, primarily to include terrorism on behalf of groups that are not specifically backed by a foreign government. An overhaul of the bill, the Protect America Act of 2007 was signed into law on August 5, 2007. It expired on February 17, 2008. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passed by the United States Congress on July 9, 2008.
Lawmakers amended the 1978 law in 2008 to “broaden and clarify legal authorities” after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and advances in Internet communications prompted fresh concerns over expanded surveillance powers.
The ACLU, human rights activists and other parties sued, charging that the new law is unconstitutional, violating the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches.
A U.S. district judge dismissed the case, but the ACLU appealed the verdict, which is still pending. Meantime, the ACLU has pursued the related Freedom of Information Act request.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Friday, December 03, 2010
Death Penalty Challenge
By William Fisher
Next Monday, December 6, a district court in Texas will be asked – for the first time in that state’s history – to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based on the “disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions” in Texas.
John Edward Green, Jr., the defendant in Texas v. Green, is charged in the fatal shooting of a 34-year-old Houston woman during a 2008 robbery. Green’s attorneys have filed a pretrial motion in Harris County District Court. Judge Kevin Fine will hear arguments that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it creates an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people.
Green's attorneys contend that a number of factors in Texas's legal system increase the risk of innocent people being executed.
According to the defense, these include a lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, faulty forensic evidence, incompetent lawyers at the appellate level, failures to guard against false confessions, and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection.
Paul Cates, Director of Communications for the Innocence Project, told IPS, “The Innocence Project will be participating in the hearing specifically to put on evidence about the cases of Claude Jones and Cameron Todd Willingham. Both Jones and Willingham were executed in Texas.”
He said, “In the case of Claude Jones, DNA evidence has proven that critical physical evidence (a hair sample) used to place him at the scene of the crime did not belong to Jones. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed even though a prominent arson scientist notified the Governor and the appeals court prior to his execution that the critical testimony of the arson investigator was based on outdated arson science.”
Both Ernest Ray Willis and Cameron Todd Willingham were convicted of murder by arson and sentenced to death on the basis of junk fire science. Mr. Willingham is dead and Mr. Willis is alive -- and free -- because a pro bono law firm took his case.
The Innocence Project has been responsible for freeing numerous prisoners from death row, largely through its use of DNA evidence.
Maurie Levin, a law professor at the University of Texas and an expert on capital punishment, said she would not be surprised if Judge Kevin Fine ruled the death penalty to be unconstitutional in Texas.
"I would think that Judge Fine would have substantial basis in the evidence that I'm aware of that would lead to a conclusion that the Texas death penalty is unconstitutional as applied," she said.
Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, writing in the New York Review of Books this week, said he now thinks the death penalty is unconstutitonal.
Since 1976, twelve people have been exonerated from death row in Texas out of 139 nationwide, and four study commissions set up by the Texas government have formally recognized the serious risks of wrongful convictions there.
Out of the 464 people executed in Texas, about 70 percent have been minorities, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Andrea Keilen, executive director of Texas Defender Service, said it is clear to her that the death penalty is handed down unfairly and erratically in Texas.
"It is my opinion and the opinion of many people close to this issue that the Texas system is wholly incapable of carrying out the death penalty in a fair and reliable way," she said, adding:
"Texas is remarkably out of step with the rest of the country and certainly out of step with what the average Texan would expect when dealing with capital punishment. We're seeing in case after case that the system is just inherently prone to the risk of wrongful convictions and has a complete inability to correct its mistakes."
Keilen said that while the state has a history of strong popular support for capital punishment, she thinks Texans would feel differently about the practice if they knew all the facts.
"I think there is support for the idea of the death penalty among the average Texan, but that if the average Texan were to get a closeup view of how the system actually operates, that support would significantly wane," she said.
"It's an abstract concept to most people, but if they saw how abysmal the quality of representation can be, how the system is biased racially, how prosecutors can not disclose evidence, or how DNA testing can be wrong, my opinion is that they as reasonable people would find it unacceptable."
The defense motion focuses on the factors they say increase the risk of wrongful convictions and executions in Texas, including: lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, which has been a factor in 75% of DNA exonerations nationwide; failures to guard against false confessions, which has been a factor in 25% of DNA exonerations nationwide; use of notoriously unreliable informant testimony, which has been a factor in nearly 50% of wrongful murder convictions nationwide; faulty forensic evidence; inadequate pretrial discovery procedures and state misconduct, which has been documents in 41 capital convictions in Texas; and racial discrimination in jury selection, which leads to less accurate fact-finding.
At next week’s hearing, expert witnesses will testify about “the numerous flaws that leave Texas' system riddled with errors, inherently unreliable, and unconstitutional as applied,” Green’s lawyers say.
They add that the clemency process fails in its role as the last safeguard against executing the innocent. Claude Jones was executed in 2000 based on false evidence. During the clemency review, then-Governor Bush was not informed that Mr. Jones had requested DNA testing that might have exonerated him. Ten years after Mr. Jones’ execution, a DNA test showed that the hair sample at the crime scene was not his.
Four study commissions set up by the three branches of Texas government have formally recognized the serious risks of wrongful convictions, but virtually nothing has been done to fix the problem.
Nationwide, since 1976, 139 people have been exonerated from death row. Twelve of them were in Texas.
The 35 U.S. states that practice the death penalty have executed 1,233 prisoners since 1976. In 2010, executions will number 47, down from 52 a year earlier. Some 3,261 prisoners are currently on death row. States executing the most prisoners since 1976 were Texas (466) and Virginia (108). One hundred thirty-eight prisoners have been freed from death row, largely as a result of new DNA evidence.
Next Monday, December 6, a district court in Texas will be asked – for the first time in that state’s history – to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based on the “disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions” in Texas.
John Edward Green, Jr., the defendant in Texas v. Green, is charged in the fatal shooting of a 34-year-old Houston woman during a 2008 robbery. Green’s attorneys have filed a pretrial motion in Harris County District Court. Judge Kevin Fine will hear arguments that the death penalty is unconstitutional because it creates an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people.
Green's attorneys contend that a number of factors in Texas's legal system increase the risk of innocent people being executed.
According to the defense, these include a lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, faulty forensic evidence, incompetent lawyers at the appellate level, failures to guard against false confessions, and a history of racial discrimination in jury selection.
Paul Cates, Director of Communications for the Innocence Project, told IPS, “The Innocence Project will be participating in the hearing specifically to put on evidence about the cases of Claude Jones and Cameron Todd Willingham. Both Jones and Willingham were executed in Texas.”
He said, “In the case of Claude Jones, DNA evidence has proven that critical physical evidence (a hair sample) used to place him at the scene of the crime did not belong to Jones. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed even though a prominent arson scientist notified the Governor and the appeals court prior to his execution that the critical testimony of the arson investigator was based on outdated arson science.”
Both Ernest Ray Willis and Cameron Todd Willingham were convicted of murder by arson and sentenced to death on the basis of junk fire science. Mr. Willingham is dead and Mr. Willis is alive -- and free -- because a pro bono law firm took his case.
The Innocence Project has been responsible for freeing numerous prisoners from death row, largely through its use of DNA evidence.
Maurie Levin, a law professor at the University of Texas and an expert on capital punishment, said she would not be surprised if Judge Kevin Fine ruled the death penalty to be unconstitutional in Texas.
"I would think that Judge Fine would have substantial basis in the evidence that I'm aware of that would lead to a conclusion that the Texas death penalty is unconstitutional as applied," she said.
Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, writing in the New York Review of Books this week, said he now thinks the death penalty is unconstutitonal.
Since 1976, twelve people have been exonerated from death row in Texas out of 139 nationwide, and four study commissions set up by the Texas government have formally recognized the serious risks of wrongful convictions there.
Out of the 464 people executed in Texas, about 70 percent have been minorities, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Andrea Keilen, executive director of Texas Defender Service, said it is clear to her that the death penalty is handed down unfairly and erratically in Texas.
"It is my opinion and the opinion of many people close to this issue that the Texas system is wholly incapable of carrying out the death penalty in a fair and reliable way," she said, adding:
"Texas is remarkably out of step with the rest of the country and certainly out of step with what the average Texan would expect when dealing with capital punishment. We're seeing in case after case that the system is just inherently prone to the risk of wrongful convictions and has a complete inability to correct its mistakes."
Keilen said that while the state has a history of strong popular support for capital punishment, she thinks Texans would feel differently about the practice if they knew all the facts.
"I think there is support for the idea of the death penalty among the average Texan, but that if the average Texan were to get a closeup view of how the system actually operates, that support would significantly wane," she said.
"It's an abstract concept to most people, but if they saw how abysmal the quality of representation can be, how the system is biased racially, how prosecutors can not disclose evidence, or how DNA testing can be wrong, my opinion is that they as reasonable people would find it unacceptable."
The defense motion focuses on the factors they say increase the risk of wrongful convictions and executions in Texas, including: lack of safeguards to protect against mistaken eyewitness identification, which has been a factor in 75% of DNA exonerations nationwide; failures to guard against false confessions, which has been a factor in 25% of DNA exonerations nationwide; use of notoriously unreliable informant testimony, which has been a factor in nearly 50% of wrongful murder convictions nationwide; faulty forensic evidence; inadequate pretrial discovery procedures and state misconduct, which has been documents in 41 capital convictions in Texas; and racial discrimination in jury selection, which leads to less accurate fact-finding.
At next week’s hearing, expert witnesses will testify about “the numerous flaws that leave Texas' system riddled with errors, inherently unreliable, and unconstitutional as applied,” Green’s lawyers say.
They add that the clemency process fails in its role as the last safeguard against executing the innocent. Claude Jones was executed in 2000 based on false evidence. During the clemency review, then-Governor Bush was not informed that Mr. Jones had requested DNA testing that might have exonerated him. Ten years after Mr. Jones’ execution, a DNA test showed that the hair sample at the crime scene was not his.
Four study commissions set up by the three branches of Texas government have formally recognized the serious risks of wrongful convictions, but virtually nothing has been done to fix the problem.
Nationwide, since 1976, 139 people have been exonerated from death row. Twelve of them were in Texas.
The 35 U.S. states that practice the death penalty have executed 1,233 prisoners since 1976. In 2010, executions will number 47, down from 52 a year earlier. Some 3,261 prisoners are currently on death row. States executing the most prisoners since 1976 were Texas (466) and Virginia (108). One hundred thirty-eight prisoners have been freed from death row, largely as a result of new DNA evidence.
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Someone’s Not Telling the Truth
By William Fisher
A diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks corroborates images released earlier by Amnesty International (AI) showing that the U.S. military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local residents, including women and children, AI charged.
In the secret cable, written in January 2010, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh is reported to have assured U.S. General David Petraeus that his government would “continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours”.
According to the cable, this prompted Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-‘Alimi “to joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG [Republic of Yemen Government]”.
Amnesty International is calling on the U.S. government to investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by US forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones
Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, claims, “The cable appears to confirm [our] finding that the Abyan strike was carried out by the U.S. military, not Yemeni government forces.”
An alleged al-Qa’ida training camp at al-Ma’jalah, Abyan, was hit by a cruise missile on 17 December 2009. A Yemeni parliamentary inquiry found that 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children, and 14 alleged al-Qa’ida members were killed in the attack. In the 4 January cable, General Petraeus is recorded as saying that the attack had caused the deaths of “only” three “civilians”.
Amnesty International provided the media with photographs of the aftermath of the Abyan strike in June this year, including remnants of U.S.-sourced cluster munitions and the Tomahawk cruise missiles used to deliver them.
The organization had requested information from the Pentagon about the involvement of U.S. forces in the al-Ma’jalah attack, and what precautions may have been taken to minimize deaths and injuries.
The US government did not respond to Amnesty International, but a press report the day after the images were released quoted a Pentagon spokesman as saying that the U.S. declined to comment on the strike and that questions on operations against al-Qa’ida should be posed to the Yemeni government.
“There must be an immediate investigation into the dozens of deaths of local
residents in the Abyan air strike, including into the extent of US involvement,” said Amnesty’s Luther. “Those responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice.”
The “Arhab” strike referred to in the secret cable was carried out on 17
December 2009 and the “Shebwa” strike on 24 December 2009. The Yemeni government insisted at the time that their forces had carried out all three attacks, which were meant to target al-Qai’da in the Arabian Peninsula.
In the leaked cable, President Saleh is said to have suggested that targeted
aerial attacks were preferable to those by cruise missiles, which were “not very accurate”, and to have expressed anxiety about the level of civilian casualties caused.
President Saleh agreed to have US fixed-wing bombers circle outside Yemeni territory ready to engage targets “should actionable intelligence become available”, according to the cable, and also requested that the USA provide 12 armed helicopters and train and equip three new Republican Guard brigades, totaling 9,000 soldiers. He complained that Yemeni forces had not yet received the necessary training to operate 17 “Iraqi” light armored vehicles provided by the US government in 2008.
The leaked cable says that US security assistance to Yemen would substantially increase from US$67 million in 2009 to U.S.$150 million in 2010, including $45 million to equip and train an aviation regiment under the Yemeni Special Operations Forces. The USA told President Saleh that two fully equipped 87-foot patrol boats destined for the Yemeni coastguard were under construction and would arrive in Yemen within a year.
US forces are also alleged to have used unmanned aerial drones in Yemen in
efforts to kill suspected leading al-Qa’ida members. An attack in May 2010 which apparently killed in error a key mediator between the Yemeni government and al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula was said by some sources to have been carried out from an unmanned drone. Yemen’s Foreign Affairs Minister later said the government would investigate whether drones were used in the attack and, if so, whether they were used by Yemeni security forces or others, such as the USA.
Amnesty International is not aware that any outcome to the investigation has
been disclosed.
Amnesty International has called on the U.S. government to investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by US forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones; ensure that all US military and security support given to Yemen, and all US military and security operations carried out in Yemen, are designed and implemented so as to adhere fully with relevant international human rights law and standards, and that such human rights standards are made fully operational in training programs and systems of monitoring and accountability.
A diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks corroborates images released earlier by Amnesty International (AI) showing that the U.S. military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local residents, including women and children, AI charged.
In the secret cable, written in January 2010, Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh is reported to have assured U.S. General David Petraeus that his government would “continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours”.
According to the cable, this prompted Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-‘Alimi “to joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG [Republic of Yemen Government]”.
Amnesty International is calling on the U.S. government to investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by US forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones
Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, claims, “The cable appears to confirm [our] finding that the Abyan strike was carried out by the U.S. military, not Yemeni government forces.”
An alleged al-Qa’ida training camp at al-Ma’jalah, Abyan, was hit by a cruise missile on 17 December 2009. A Yemeni parliamentary inquiry found that 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children, and 14 alleged al-Qa’ida members were killed in the attack. In the 4 January cable, General Petraeus is recorded as saying that the attack had caused the deaths of “only” three “civilians”.
Amnesty International provided the media with photographs of the aftermath of the Abyan strike in June this year, including remnants of U.S.-sourced cluster munitions and the Tomahawk cruise missiles used to deliver them.
The organization had requested information from the Pentagon about the involvement of U.S. forces in the al-Ma’jalah attack, and what precautions may have been taken to minimize deaths and injuries.
The US government did not respond to Amnesty International, but a press report the day after the images were released quoted a Pentagon spokesman as saying that the U.S. declined to comment on the strike and that questions on operations against al-Qa’ida should be posed to the Yemeni government.
“There must be an immediate investigation into the dozens of deaths of local
residents in the Abyan air strike, including into the extent of US involvement,” said Amnesty’s Luther. “Those responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice.”
The “Arhab” strike referred to in the secret cable was carried out on 17
December 2009 and the “Shebwa” strike on 24 December 2009. The Yemeni government insisted at the time that their forces had carried out all three attacks, which were meant to target al-Qai’da in the Arabian Peninsula.
In the leaked cable, President Saleh is said to have suggested that targeted
aerial attacks were preferable to those by cruise missiles, which were “not very accurate”, and to have expressed anxiety about the level of civilian casualties caused.
President Saleh agreed to have US fixed-wing bombers circle outside Yemeni territory ready to engage targets “should actionable intelligence become available”, according to the cable, and also requested that the USA provide 12 armed helicopters and train and equip three new Republican Guard brigades, totaling 9,000 soldiers. He complained that Yemeni forces had not yet received the necessary training to operate 17 “Iraqi” light armored vehicles provided by the US government in 2008.
The leaked cable says that US security assistance to Yemen would substantially increase from US$67 million in 2009 to U.S.$150 million in 2010, including $45 million to equip and train an aviation regiment under the Yemeni Special Operations Forces. The USA told President Saleh that two fully equipped 87-foot patrol boats destined for the Yemeni coastguard were under construction and would arrive in Yemen within a year.
US forces are also alleged to have used unmanned aerial drones in Yemen in
efforts to kill suspected leading al-Qa’ida members. An attack in May 2010 which apparently killed in error a key mediator between the Yemeni government and al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula was said by some sources to have been carried out from an unmanned drone. Yemen’s Foreign Affairs Minister later said the government would investigate whether drones were used in the attack and, if so, whether they were used by Yemeni security forces or others, such as the USA.
Amnesty International is not aware that any outcome to the investigation has
been disclosed.
Amnesty International has called on the U.S. government to investigate the serious allegations of the use of drones by US forces for targeted killings of individuals in Yemen and clarify the chain of command and rules governing the use of such drones; ensure that all US military and security support given to Yemen, and all US military and security operations carried out in Yemen, are designed and implemented so as to adhere fully with relevant international human rights law and standards, and that such human rights standards are made fully operational in training programs and systems of monitoring and accountability.
PROSECUTING ASSANGE
By William Fisher
As the government investigates the possibility of prosecuting WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, under the Espionage Act for publishing classified government documents The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) voiced skepticism that prosecuting WikiLeaks “would be constitutional, or a good idea.”
Hina Shamsi, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, said in a statement, “The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Prosecuting WikiLeaks would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents. If newspapers could be held criminally liable for publishing leaked information about government practices, we might never have found out about the CIA’s secret prisons or the government spying on innocent Americans.”
She added, “Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome.”
“The broader lesson of the WikiLeaks phenomenon is that President Obama should recommit to the ideals of transparency he invoked at the beginning of his presidency. The American public should not have to depend on leaks to the news media and on whistleblowers to know what the government is up to,” she said.
She was not alone. Another human rights leader, Chip Pitts, today weighed in on the controversy. Pitts is former board president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and a former president of Amnesty International USA. He told IPS, “ If the US government goes beyond the current ridiculous rhetoric and actually attempts to prosecute Assange or Wikileaks for violations of the Espionage Act, ‘treason’, ‘material support’, or being a designated ‘terrorist organization’, they would have to take great pains to distinguish the activities of other journalists and news outlets who publish such information on the operations of our government – and it would mean the effective end of American press freedom.”
Meanwhile, something of a conflict is brewing between usually-agreeable members of the human rights community regarding whether Wikileaks disclosures placed human rights defenders in authoritarian countries at risk.
Groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Human Rights First (HRF) believe it was a mistake for Wikileaks to publish the names of foreign human rights activists and organizations that receive support from the U.S. Government.
But Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has a different view. He told IPS, “This claim by some human rights groups, whomever they are, is not supported by the facts. So far as I know, the names of human rights activists have not been disclosed in any of the documents released by Wikileaks; nor have any such activists been put in danger.”
And Chip Pitts told IPS, “Amnesty and other rights organizations were indisputably correct to express concerns previously that human rights defenders or e.g. Afghans working for the US could be at risk from the disclosures.”
However, he continued, “It is now clear that Wikileaks has learned from the past and is acting more responsibly (and in fact taking its lead from the major news organizations as to information and names redacted).”
He said the US government has confirmed that “even the more casual approach of the past has not resulted in the deaths or harms that alarmists claimed would occur.”
Pitts opined that “On balance, these disclosures -- this new level of global transparency that is here to stay -- are a good thing in foreign relations and authentic national security, just as it has been the main positive driver in the related global governance field of corporate social responsibility.”
He added, “Most of the catastrophic foreign and domestic policies in recent years have resulted from secret and unaccountable decision making – often by public sector governing elites benefiting from unseemly collusion with private elites (e.g. Dick Cheney’s energy task force, the distortion of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, the distortion of debt ratings in the recent financial crisis). Those secret actions resulted in criminal human rights violations yet still no accountability.”
“I find it more than despicable that the US government is now threatening to prosecute as “spies” or “terrorists” those who’ve revealed this information instead of those who’ve committed, as Assange says, “human rights abuses and other criminal behavior,” Pitts said.
“And I find it more than despicable that the bipartisan establishment is joining in that historically discredited witchhunt chorus of “let’s kill the messenger.”
He continued: “The leaks thus far at least confirm the lamentable double standards of the US administration and the Department of State under Hillary Clinton – publicly claiming to be concerned about human rights but doing so very little behind the scenes to aggressively push these vital issues and, instead, actively seeking to undermine human rights accountability by covering up violations by CIA or other US personnel (as in the German investigations into the El Masri torture case, and the Spanish investigations into rendition, Guantanamo torture, and the killing of a Spanish journalist in Iraq) and foreign allies (as with the hundreds of extrajudicial killings by the Pakistani military in the SWAT valley or similar killings of civilians in Yemen).”
As the government investigates the possibility of prosecuting WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, under the Espionage Act for publishing classified government documents The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) voiced skepticism that prosecuting WikiLeaks “would be constitutional, or a good idea.”
Hina Shamsi, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, said in a statement, “The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Prosecuting WikiLeaks would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents. If newspapers could be held criminally liable for publishing leaked information about government practices, we might never have found out about the CIA’s secret prisons or the government spying on innocent Americans.”
She added, “Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome.”
“The broader lesson of the WikiLeaks phenomenon is that President Obama should recommit to the ideals of transparency he invoked at the beginning of his presidency. The American public should not have to depend on leaks to the news media and on whistleblowers to know what the government is up to,” she said.
She was not alone. Another human rights leader, Chip Pitts, today weighed in on the controversy. Pitts is former board president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and a former president of Amnesty International USA. He told IPS, “ If the US government goes beyond the current ridiculous rhetoric and actually attempts to prosecute Assange or Wikileaks for violations of the Espionage Act, ‘treason’, ‘material support’, or being a designated ‘terrorist organization’, they would have to take great pains to distinguish the activities of other journalists and news outlets who publish such information on the operations of our government – and it would mean the effective end of American press freedom.”
Meanwhile, something of a conflict is brewing between usually-agreeable members of the human rights community regarding whether Wikileaks disclosures placed human rights defenders in authoritarian countries at risk.
Groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Human Rights First (HRF) believe it was a mistake for Wikileaks to publish the names of foreign human rights activists and organizations that receive support from the U.S. Government.
But Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has a different view. He told IPS, “This claim by some human rights groups, whomever they are, is not supported by the facts. So far as I know, the names of human rights activists have not been disclosed in any of the documents released by Wikileaks; nor have any such activists been put in danger.”
And Chip Pitts told IPS, “Amnesty and other rights organizations were indisputably correct to express concerns previously that human rights defenders or e.g. Afghans working for the US could be at risk from the disclosures.”
However, he continued, “It is now clear that Wikileaks has learned from the past and is acting more responsibly (and in fact taking its lead from the major news organizations as to information and names redacted).”
He said the US government has confirmed that “even the more casual approach of the past has not resulted in the deaths or harms that alarmists claimed would occur.”
Pitts opined that “On balance, these disclosures -- this new level of global transparency that is here to stay -- are a good thing in foreign relations and authentic national security, just as it has been the main positive driver in the related global governance field of corporate social responsibility.”
He added, “Most of the catastrophic foreign and domestic policies in recent years have resulted from secret and unaccountable decision making – often by public sector governing elites benefiting from unseemly collusion with private elites (e.g. Dick Cheney’s energy task force, the distortion of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, the distortion of debt ratings in the recent financial crisis). Those secret actions resulted in criminal human rights violations yet still no accountability.”
“I find it more than despicable that the US government is now threatening to prosecute as “spies” or “terrorists” those who’ve revealed this information instead of those who’ve committed, as Assange says, “human rights abuses and other criminal behavior,” Pitts said.
“And I find it more than despicable that the bipartisan establishment is joining in that historically discredited witchhunt chorus of “let’s kill the messenger.”
He continued: “The leaks thus far at least confirm the lamentable double standards of the US administration and the Department of State under Hillary Clinton – publicly claiming to be concerned about human rights but doing so very little behind the scenes to aggressively push these vital issues and, instead, actively seeking to undermine human rights accountability by covering up violations by CIA or other US personnel (as in the German investigations into the El Masri torture case, and the Spanish investigations into rendition, Guantanamo torture, and the killing of a Spanish journalist in Iraq) and foreign allies (as with the hundreds of extrajudicial killings by the Pakistani military in the SWAT valley or similar killings of civilians in Yemen).”
WIKILEAKS AND HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS
By William Fisher
Some of the nation’s leading human rights organizations are concerned for the safety of human rights advocates in countries with repressive regimes, where disclosure by Wikileaks could put them in deadly harm.
Groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Human Rights First (HRF) believe it would be a mistake for Wikileaks to publish the names of foreign human rights activists and organizations that receive support from the U.S. Government.
For that reason, HRF President and CEO Elisa Massimino wrote to WikiLeaks head Julian Assange several days before last Sunday’s document release. She said publishing the names of “individuals or organizations from repressive or authoritarian countries (such as Iran, China, Russia, Cuba etc.) is extremely reckless as it will increase their risk of persecution, imprisonment and violence.”
Her letter continued: “Human rights advocates in repressive and authoritarian countries face many dangers, as governments in those countries regularly harass, mistreat and imprison them. Not least among these dangers is being charged with receiving foreign support or ‘cooperating’ with foreign governments, as that can make them even more vulnerable to attack by governments and their agents.”
She said, “At the same time, many activists in repressive countries have very few options for financial support, as avenues of domestic support are effectively blocked. To protect themselves from the increased risk that comes with foreign support, many activists remain quiet about it.”
Massimino said, “We support freedom of expression and greater transparency in government. Yet, in releasing the information in the circumstances we describe above, the very real dangers to the health and well-being of human rights activists would outweigh the benefits.”
She urged Assange to remove any identifying information of human rights activists from the documents that Wikileaks will be releasing.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, confirms that “no names of human rights activists have been disclosed in any of the documents released by Wikileaks; nor have any such activists been put in danger.”
“In the recent disclosure, Wikileaks has only posted cables that were reviewed by the news organizations and in some cases redacted. The news organizations showed them to the Pentagon and agreed to some of the government’s suggested redactions. The U.S. claimed in the past that the release of the documents could endanger people, but now concedes that they have no knowledge that anyone was killed as a result of the prior releases,” Ratner told IPS.
In a related development, CNN is reporting that The State Department has offered to provide protection to human rights activists who may be in jeopardy after their identities were revealed in the latest publication of diplomatic cables by the website WikiLeaks.
That protection may include the temporary relocation of some people, the department said.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley said the State Department has reached out to human rights advocates around the world to warn them of the potential fallout from the publication by WikiLeaks of diplomatic cables that may contain their names or information about their organizations that could put them at risk.
"We have great concern," Crowley said. "There are clearly sources identified in these documents, particularly in authoritarian states, that have talked to us and we believe the release of these cables definitely puts real lives at risk. We have taken steps, in anticipation of this release."
Crowley said U.S. embassies have been in touch with both civil society and human rights activists.
“We have seen the negative, sometimes deadly ramifications for those Afghans identified as working for or sympathizing with international forces,” they wrote to Assange, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites an anonymous source. “We strongly urge your volunteers and staff to analyze all documents to ensure that those containing identifying information are taken down or redacted.”
Some of the nation’s leading human rights organizations are concerned for the safety of human rights advocates in countries with repressive regimes, where disclosure by Wikileaks could put them in deadly harm.
Groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Human Rights First (HRF) believe it would be a mistake for Wikileaks to publish the names of foreign human rights activists and organizations that receive support from the U.S. Government.
For that reason, HRF President and CEO Elisa Massimino wrote to WikiLeaks head Julian Assange several days before last Sunday’s document release. She said publishing the names of “individuals or organizations from repressive or authoritarian countries (such as Iran, China, Russia, Cuba etc.) is extremely reckless as it will increase their risk of persecution, imprisonment and violence.”
Her letter continued: “Human rights advocates in repressive and authoritarian countries face many dangers, as governments in those countries regularly harass, mistreat and imprison them. Not least among these dangers is being charged with receiving foreign support or ‘cooperating’ with foreign governments, as that can make them even more vulnerable to attack by governments and their agents.”
She said, “At the same time, many activists in repressive countries have very few options for financial support, as avenues of domestic support are effectively blocked. To protect themselves from the increased risk that comes with foreign support, many activists remain quiet about it.”
Massimino said, “We support freedom of expression and greater transparency in government. Yet, in releasing the information in the circumstances we describe above, the very real dangers to the health and well-being of human rights activists would outweigh the benefits.”
She urged Assange to remove any identifying information of human rights activists from the documents that Wikileaks will be releasing.
Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, confirms that “no names of human rights activists have been disclosed in any of the documents released by Wikileaks; nor have any such activists been put in danger.”
“In the recent disclosure, Wikileaks has only posted cables that were reviewed by the news organizations and in some cases redacted. The news organizations showed them to the Pentagon and agreed to some of the government’s suggested redactions. The U.S. claimed in the past that the release of the documents could endanger people, but now concedes that they have no knowledge that anyone was killed as a result of the prior releases,” Ratner told IPS.
In a related development, CNN is reporting that The State Department has offered to provide protection to human rights activists who may be in jeopardy after their identities were revealed in the latest publication of diplomatic cables by the website WikiLeaks.
That protection may include the temporary relocation of some people, the department said.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley said the State Department has reached out to human rights advocates around the world to warn them of the potential fallout from the publication by WikiLeaks of diplomatic cables that may contain their names or information about their organizations that could put them at risk.
"We have great concern," Crowley said. "There are clearly sources identified in these documents, particularly in authoritarian states, that have talked to us and we believe the release of these cables definitely puts real lives at risk. We have taken steps, in anticipation of this release."
Crowley said U.S. embassies have been in touch with both civil society and human rights activists.
“We have seen the negative, sometimes deadly ramifications for those Afghans identified as working for or sympathizing with international forces,” they wrote to Assange, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites an anonymous source. “We strongly urge your volunteers and staff to analyze all documents to ensure that those containing identifying information are taken down or redacted.”
Sleepwalking or Nightmare?
By William Fisher
As immigrant advocate groups held marches, demonstrations and hunger strikes across the U.S., and feverishly lobbied lawmakers in Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, announced he would file a motion today to permit the Senate to take up the DREAM Act, thus setting up a showdown over the controversial immigration bill.
The DREAM Act would provide many thousands of young people with a path to citizenship, which could be granted to those who were brought to the U.S. when they were children and graduated from U.S. high schools. The requirement for citizenship would be earning a college degree or volunteering to serve in the U.S. military for two years.
The faith community is among constituencies advocating for passage of the law during the current so-called “lame duck” session of Congress.
Protestant, Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders and organizations are ramping up the pressure on their Senators and Representatives to vote ‘yes’ on this legislation, which could come to the Senate floor as soon as this week.
Today the faith community plan s to bury Capitol Hill in telephone calls in support of the act and hold vigils and other public events in numerous states across the U.S.
In a telephone news conference, Rabbi Jack Moline, Director of Public Policy for the Rabbinical Assembly and rabbi of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, said, “Every faith community in this country includes young men and women who are thoroughly American in everything but name, and every one of those communities understands the need to affirm in law what is true in fact.”
He added that DREAM “can make that happen and is an important step.” He asked for the active support of Virginia Senators James Webb and Mark Warner.
But passage promises to be an uphill fight. For example, Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas said they will not vote for cloture on the bill.
But Republican Sens. Dick Lugar of Indiana and Bob Bennett, who was defeated in his Utah primary race, have signaled they will vote for the act. The bill’s supporters are counting on a handful of other moderate Republicans, including Sens. George Lemieux (Fla.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) and Scott Brown (Mass.).
Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat who is up for reelection in 2012, also predicted that Republicans “could take a hit at the polls if they continue to oppose immigration reform."
While a vote on the bill has not yet been scheduled, Sen. Reid has said he could bring it up for a vote as early as this week. Passage is considered a longshot, but more likely now than next year when Republicans will have a majority in the House and increased strength in the Senate.
The measure’s supporters have also been kept busy attempting to refute what they call the “lies and misinformation” being circulated by anti-immigration advocates.
For example, the measure’s critics contend that defeating the act must be, in the words of Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Steve King, “ a top priority before it provides an uncontrollable citizenship path to thousands of illegal immigrants.”
The right-wing publication Newsmax writes, “On the surface, the act would provide a road to citizenship for students who are illegal immigrants.” But it quotes the conservative Rep. King as saying “it would allow students to sponsor their extended families on that path.”
“We calculated that a single individual could bring in 357 people on a family reunification plan before we ran out of room on our spreadsheet,” King says.
Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be able to push the act through the lame-duck session of Congress, King told Newsmax. But Republicans should be able to use the filibuster to kill it in the Senate, he says.
“This is an out-of-control immigration path,” King says. “We need to fence that in and limit it to direct family members.”
King also intends to introduce a bill next year making clear that babies born to illegal mothers in the United States aren’t American citizens because they aren’t subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
A rebuttal to Rep. King came from Margaret Stock, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. .
"These are bizarre statements by Rep. King; he is apparently unfamiliar with Title 8 of the US Code,” she told IPS.
"DREAM Act beneficiaries get conditional green cards, not US citizenship; the way that the DREAM Act was drafted, most DREAM Act beneficiaries will have to wait upwards of 6 years to get US citizenship, after they get their conditional green cards.
She continued: "By law, a person with a conditional green card can only sponsor his/her unmarried children and his/her spouse. That's been the law for decades.”
Ms. Stock pointed out that "Only US citizens can sponsor their parents and siblings--and the siblings go on a waitlist that is more than a decade right now (and 20+ years for the Philippines). To sponsor one's parents to get a green card in the US, a US citizen has to be over 21--and the parents cannot have entered the US unlawfully. If the parents entered unlawfully, they must depart the US to get their immigrant visas approved, and their departure triggers a 10-year bar from the US, with no waivers available. They must wait outside the US for ten years before reentering.”
She also de-bunked another myth surrounding the act. “There are no immigrant visas at all for ‘extended family’ members, whatever that means.
I would also guess that one of Steve King's ancestors led to chain migration of a whole clan of King descendants, probably Democratic lawmakers will attempt to summon up their waning power by using the so-called “lame duck” session of Congress to pass what will likely be the closest they will get to comprehensive immigration reform.”
To provide additional ammunition for the bill’s supporters, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) released a new study, “Ineffective and Unjust: Our Broken Immigration System.”
The study says, “As Muslim Americans presenting a faith-based perspective to one of our nation’s biggest public policy challenges, we look to the Qur’an for moral guidance. In order to best satisfy the public interest, referred as maslaha in Islamic thought, we believe there are four values guiding our comprehensive immigration reform strategy. They are: Human Dignity, The Rule of Law, Enforcement, and Fiscal Responsibility.
The study says, “Those who argue against earned legalization believe it rewards undocumented individuals at the expense of those waiting to come legally, and argue it may become a magnet for future flows of unauthorized migrants. Others still, argue immigration harms native-born American workers’wages and job prospects.”
It continues: “The above perspective reflects legitimate concerns but fails to take into account three important points:
First, it misidentifies the root causes for unauthorized immigration. As noted earlier, the current legal immigration system is characterized by unrealistic quotas and bureaucratic inefficiencies. This creates perverse incentives for undocumented immigration. Additionally, legal enforcement has been insufficient and ineffective.
Second, it ignores the existing reality of 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States. Mass deportation is extremely costly.”
The study was carried out by Alejandro J. Beutel, MPAC’s Government Liaison; Aziza Hasan, Southern California Government Relations Director; and Maher Hathout, an MPAC Senior Advisor.
As immigrant advocate groups held marches, demonstrations and hunger strikes across the U.S., and feverishly lobbied lawmakers in Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, announced he would file a motion today to permit the Senate to take up the DREAM Act, thus setting up a showdown over the controversial immigration bill.
The DREAM Act would provide many thousands of young people with a path to citizenship, which could be granted to those who were brought to the U.S. when they were children and graduated from U.S. high schools. The requirement for citizenship would be earning a college degree or volunteering to serve in the U.S. military for two years.
The faith community is among constituencies advocating for passage of the law during the current so-called “lame duck” session of Congress.
Protestant, Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders and organizations are ramping up the pressure on their Senators and Representatives to vote ‘yes’ on this legislation, which could come to the Senate floor as soon as this week.
Today the faith community plan s to bury Capitol Hill in telephone calls in support of the act and hold vigils and other public events in numerous states across the U.S.
In a telephone news conference, Rabbi Jack Moline, Director of Public Policy for the Rabbinical Assembly and rabbi of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, said, “Every faith community in this country includes young men and women who are thoroughly American in everything but name, and every one of those communities understands the need to affirm in law what is true in fact.”
He added that DREAM “can make that happen and is an important step.” He asked for the active support of Virginia Senators James Webb and Mark Warner.
But passage promises to be an uphill fight. For example, Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas said they will not vote for cloture on the bill.
But Republican Sens. Dick Lugar of Indiana and Bob Bennett, who was defeated in his Utah primary race, have signaled they will vote for the act. The bill’s supporters are counting on a handful of other moderate Republicans, including Sens. George Lemieux (Fla.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) and Scott Brown (Mass.).
Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat who is up for reelection in 2012, also predicted that Republicans “could take a hit at the polls if they continue to oppose immigration reform."
While a vote on the bill has not yet been scheduled, Sen. Reid has said he could bring it up for a vote as early as this week. Passage is considered a longshot, but more likely now than next year when Republicans will have a majority in the House and increased strength in the Senate.
The measure’s supporters have also been kept busy attempting to refute what they call the “lies and misinformation” being circulated by anti-immigration advocates.
For example, the measure’s critics contend that defeating the act must be, in the words of Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Steve King, “ a top priority before it provides an uncontrollable citizenship path to thousands of illegal immigrants.”
The right-wing publication Newsmax writes, “On the surface, the act would provide a road to citizenship for students who are illegal immigrants.” But it quotes the conservative Rep. King as saying “it would allow students to sponsor their extended families on that path.”
“We calculated that a single individual could bring in 357 people on a family reunification plan before we ran out of room on our spreadsheet,” King says.
Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be able to push the act through the lame-duck session of Congress, King told Newsmax. But Republicans should be able to use the filibuster to kill it in the Senate, he says.
“This is an out-of-control immigration path,” King says. “We need to fence that in and limit it to direct family members.”
King also intends to introduce a bill next year making clear that babies born to illegal mothers in the United States aren’t American citizens because they aren’t subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
A rebuttal to Rep. King came from Margaret Stock, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. .
"These are bizarre statements by Rep. King; he is apparently unfamiliar with Title 8 of the US Code,” she told IPS.
"DREAM Act beneficiaries get conditional green cards, not US citizenship; the way that the DREAM Act was drafted, most DREAM Act beneficiaries will have to wait upwards of 6 years to get US citizenship, after they get their conditional green cards.
She continued: "By law, a person with a conditional green card can only sponsor his/her unmarried children and his/her spouse. That's been the law for decades.”
Ms. Stock pointed out that "Only US citizens can sponsor their parents and siblings--and the siblings go on a waitlist that is more than a decade right now (and 20+ years for the Philippines). To sponsor one's parents to get a green card in the US, a US citizen has to be over 21--and the parents cannot have entered the US unlawfully. If the parents entered unlawfully, they must depart the US to get their immigrant visas approved, and their departure triggers a 10-year bar from the US, with no waivers available. They must wait outside the US for ten years before reentering.”
She also de-bunked another myth surrounding the act. “There are no immigrant visas at all for ‘extended family’ members, whatever that means.
I would also guess that one of Steve King's ancestors led to chain migration of a whole clan of King descendants, probably Democratic lawmakers will attempt to summon up their waning power by using the so-called “lame duck” session of Congress to pass what will likely be the closest they will get to comprehensive immigration reform.”
To provide additional ammunition for the bill’s supporters, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) released a new study, “Ineffective and Unjust: Our Broken Immigration System.”
The study says, “As Muslim Americans presenting a faith-based perspective to one of our nation’s biggest public policy challenges, we look to the Qur’an for moral guidance. In order to best satisfy the public interest, referred as maslaha in Islamic thought, we believe there are four values guiding our comprehensive immigration reform strategy. They are: Human Dignity, The Rule of Law, Enforcement, and Fiscal Responsibility.
The study says, “Those who argue against earned legalization believe it rewards undocumented individuals at the expense of those waiting to come legally, and argue it may become a magnet for future flows of unauthorized migrants. Others still, argue immigration harms native-born American workers’wages and job prospects.”
It continues: “The above perspective reflects legitimate concerns but fails to take into account three important points:
First, it misidentifies the root causes for unauthorized immigration. As noted earlier, the current legal immigration system is characterized by unrealistic quotas and bureaucratic inefficiencies. This creates perverse incentives for undocumented immigration. Additionally, legal enforcement has been insufficient and ineffective.
Second, it ignores the existing reality of 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States. Mass deportation is extremely costly.”
The study was carried out by Alejandro J. Beutel, MPAC’s Government Liaison; Aziza Hasan, Southern California Government Relations Director; and Maher Hathout, an MPAC Senior Advisor.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Brits Ban Death Penalty Drug
By William Fisher
After first resisting the efforts of human rights and legal advocates, the British Government has now backed down and placed an immediate ban on the export of lethal injection drugs to be used in American executions.
The well-known legal charity, Reprieve, has been campaigning to secure a ban on the export of Sodium Thiopental to the U.S. for execution purposes for the past month. Yesterday the U.K. Government’s Secretary of State of Business Innovation and Skills agreed to impose such an order. The U.S. has run short of the drug, which is used in the execution protocol
Reprieve said: Originally, Secretary Vince Cable refused to act for two reasons: “the suggestion that if Britain did not provide the drugs someone else would, and the notion that sodium thiopental was exported to the U.S. for medical purposes.”
Reprieve said, “The first reason was unworthy of a response – if something is immoral, it does not matter that someone else will commit the offence.”
The legal charity and one of the UK’s leading law firms, Leigh Day, say they “proved that no sodium thiopental was imported from Europe to the U.S. for any medicinal use, and that it would be illegal to do so under the regulations promulgated by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
The charity added, “To their credit, Archimedes Pharma, which may unwittingly have been the source of the drugs used to execute prisoners, did not oppose the ban. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical company actively supported the effort to prove that the drugs were not legitimately imported into the US. “
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith said, “There is urgent work to do. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation – so named, notwithstanding their plan to execute a number of prisoners – expects to receive enough drugs to kill 86 people this week, perhaps as early as today, probably again from Britain. The British government must take active and urgent steps to prevent this from happening, and to make up for the delay in imposing a ban.”
But Stafford Smith had kind words for the manufacturer. “Let me congratulate Archimedes Pharma for doing the right thing as well. This should be a lesson to other companies that purport to be ethical – words are not enough. You have to take action.”
Despite the shortage of one of drugs in the execution protocol, death sentences continue in the U.S. On Monday, October 25, Jeffery Landrigan was executed in Arizona using drugs supplied by a British company, despite a plea for clemency from the judge who sentenced him to death. Reprieve said, “The Arizona consignment was sufficient for four executions, so the drugs sourced in Britain will contribute to three more deaths.”
The following week the American lawyers for Edmund Zagorski contacted Reprieve with a plea for help: Tennessee was seeking to purchase the drugs to kill Mr. Zagorski, apparently from the same British company. On Thursday, October 28, Reprieve and Leigh Day contacted the Government and asked for emergency measures to be taken to avoid British complicity in Zagorski’s execution.
On Monday, November 1, Secretary Cable responded that the British government would take no such step, relying primarily on his belief that Sodium Thiopental had medicinal uses in the U.S.
On Tuesday, November 2, therefore, Leigh Day filed a judicial review. The Government opposed an immediate and temporary export ban although to their credit the main pharmaceutical company involved, Archimedes Pharma, did not. No such order was interposed, in part because the Tennessee authorities had represented that they would secure the drugs on November 25 at the earliest.
Reprieve said, “it transpired that the Tennessee authorities had deceived everyone, and had already received the drugs on October 26. The source remains secret to date, but may well have been the UK, Reprieve said.
Ed Zagorski is scheduled to die on January 11th, 2011. He has been on death row in Tennessee for almost 27 years, and Reprieve says he has been a model prisoner. He protests his innocence, and an independent assessment from Physicians for Human Rights concluded that he had been “tortured” into implicating himself. The original trial prosecutor offered a life sentence, with eligibility for parole – evincing a clear view that the death penalty was not a necessary punishment.
Meanwhile, other desperate states sought sodium thiopental from abroad. California expects to receive enough to kill 86 prisoners this week. Oklahoma is trying to use Phenobarbital, the drug used to kill animals, at an alternative.
The 35 U.S. states that practice the death penalty have executed 1,233 prisoners since 1976. In 2010, executions will number 47, down from 52 a year earlier. Some 3,261 prisoners are currently on death row. States executing the most prisoners since 1976 were Texas (466) and Virginia (108). One hundred thirty-eight prisoners have been freed from death row, largely as a result of new DNA evidence.
After first resisting the efforts of human rights and legal advocates, the British Government has now backed down and placed an immediate ban on the export of lethal injection drugs to be used in American executions.
The well-known legal charity, Reprieve, has been campaigning to secure a ban on the export of Sodium Thiopental to the U.S. for execution purposes for the past month. Yesterday the U.K. Government’s Secretary of State of Business Innovation and Skills agreed to impose such an order. The U.S. has run short of the drug, which is used in the execution protocol
Reprieve said: Originally, Secretary Vince Cable refused to act for two reasons: “the suggestion that if Britain did not provide the drugs someone else would, and the notion that sodium thiopental was exported to the U.S. for medical purposes.”
Reprieve said, “The first reason was unworthy of a response – if something is immoral, it does not matter that someone else will commit the offence.”
The legal charity and one of the UK’s leading law firms, Leigh Day, say they “proved that no sodium thiopental was imported from Europe to the U.S. for any medicinal use, and that it would be illegal to do so under the regulations promulgated by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
The charity added, “To their credit, Archimedes Pharma, which may unwittingly have been the source of the drugs used to execute prisoners, did not oppose the ban. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical company actively supported the effort to prove that the drugs were not legitimately imported into the US. “
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith said, “There is urgent work to do. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation – so named, notwithstanding their plan to execute a number of prisoners – expects to receive enough drugs to kill 86 people this week, perhaps as early as today, probably again from Britain. The British government must take active and urgent steps to prevent this from happening, and to make up for the delay in imposing a ban.”
But Stafford Smith had kind words for the manufacturer. “Let me congratulate Archimedes Pharma for doing the right thing as well. This should be a lesson to other companies that purport to be ethical – words are not enough. You have to take action.”
Despite the shortage of one of drugs in the execution protocol, death sentences continue in the U.S. On Monday, October 25, Jeffery Landrigan was executed in Arizona using drugs supplied by a British company, despite a plea for clemency from the judge who sentenced him to death. Reprieve said, “The Arizona consignment was sufficient for four executions, so the drugs sourced in Britain will contribute to three more deaths.”
The following week the American lawyers for Edmund Zagorski contacted Reprieve with a plea for help: Tennessee was seeking to purchase the drugs to kill Mr. Zagorski, apparently from the same British company. On Thursday, October 28, Reprieve and Leigh Day contacted the Government and asked for emergency measures to be taken to avoid British complicity in Zagorski’s execution.
On Monday, November 1, Secretary Cable responded that the British government would take no such step, relying primarily on his belief that Sodium Thiopental had medicinal uses in the U.S.
On Tuesday, November 2, therefore, Leigh Day filed a judicial review. The Government opposed an immediate and temporary export ban although to their credit the main pharmaceutical company involved, Archimedes Pharma, did not. No such order was interposed, in part because the Tennessee authorities had represented that they would secure the drugs on November 25 at the earliest.
Reprieve said, “it transpired that the Tennessee authorities had deceived everyone, and had already received the drugs on October 26. The source remains secret to date, but may well have been the UK, Reprieve said.
Ed Zagorski is scheduled to die on January 11th, 2011. He has been on death row in Tennessee for almost 27 years, and Reprieve says he has been a model prisoner. He protests his innocence, and an independent assessment from Physicians for Human Rights concluded that he had been “tortured” into implicating himself. The original trial prosecutor offered a life sentence, with eligibility for parole – evincing a clear view that the death penalty was not a necessary punishment.
Meanwhile, other desperate states sought sodium thiopental from abroad. California expects to receive enough to kill 86 prisoners this week. Oklahoma is trying to use Phenobarbital, the drug used to kill animals, at an alternative.
The 35 U.S. states that practice the death penalty have executed 1,233 prisoners since 1976. In 2010, executions will number 47, down from 52 a year earlier. Some 3,261 prisoners are currently on death row. States executing the most prisoners since 1976 were Texas (466) and Virginia (108). One hundred thirty-eight prisoners have been freed from death row, largely as a result of new DNA evidence.
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