First Amendment Center

12/28/05

A suburban Kansas City man is appealing a ticket Prairie Village gave him for homemade yard signs opposing the war in Iraq.The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri is helping David Quinly appeal the citation in Johnson County District Court. Quinly sought the ACLU's help after losing an appeal in municipal court. At issue is a Prairie Village ordinance prohibiting signs bigger than 5 square feet and limiting the total area of temporary signs displayed on a property to 10 square feet. Signs can't be up more than 60 days. 'It's clearly a First Amendment issue,' said Quinly's attorney, John Simpson. 'We think ... that the Prairie Village sign ordinance is too restrictive.' ... Simpson said he would argue that Prairie Village restricts political signs more than other signs; the U.S. Supreme Court has deemed such content-based discrimination unconstitutional...

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=16238


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

By Kate Randall
13 October 2005

When New Orleans resident Robert Davis returned to the city last week to check on some homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the devastation inflicted by the storm to his family's property was not the only shock awaiting him. Davis, a 64-year-old retired school teacher, would become the victim of a brutal beating by New Orleans police officers that was videotaped and broadcast both across the US and worldwide.

Last Saturday evening at about 8 p.m. Davis, who is black, was walking on Bourbon Street in the New Orleans French Quarter. He approached an officer on horseback to inquire about the city's curfew. "I'm talking in a nice, cordial way to a black officer on a horse," David told the press on Tuesday. He said another officer on foot then "interfered and I said he shouldn't."

As he crossed the street, Davis said, "All of a sudden, the white officer hit me in the eye and dazed me and threw me up against the wall." A cop yelled, "I'm going to kick your ass," Davis recounted. He was then hit and pummeled to the ground, face down, suffering fractures to his cheek and eye socket. Two white officers were involved in the beating.

A crew from Associated Press Television News (APTN) was on the scene, taping the confrontation. A third cop shouted out to the APTN crew, "I've been here for six [expletive] weeks trying to keep [expletive] alive ... Go home!" This officer is accused of then grabbing and shoving APTN producer Rich Matthews.

Two volunteer relief workers from Florida witnessed the assault on Davis and approached and told a cop that they wanted to give a statement about what they saw. One of the volunteers, Calvin Briles, said a man in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vest grabbed him, threw him against a car and told him, "It's none of your business." The two were then handcuffed and held facedown on the pavement until they were released.

The cops involved in beating Robert Davis claimed he had been drinking. Davis, who maintains he hasn't had a drink in 25 years, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday morning to charges of public intoxication and resisting arrest. He was released on bond and a January 18 trial date has been set.

The three police officers were suspended without pay. They have pleaded not guilty to battery charges and will stand trial at the beginning of January. The US Justice Department opened an investigation into the beating on Monday.

Had the assault on Robert Davis and the news producer not been captured on videotape, the incident would have received little if any coverage in the mass media. Without this visual record, the vicious beating would have taken its place alongside similar instances of police brutality that are all-too-common, occurring on virtually a daily basis-whether in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston or another US city.

But the videotaped police beating, and subsequent interviews with its battered victim, put a face on one of the most barbaric aspects of contemporary life in America-the pervasiveness of police brutality and intimidation meted out against the working class, young people and the most oppressed sections of society.

The beating of Robert Davis at the hands of the New Orleans Police Department takes on a particularly insidious significance in light of the suffering city residents-overwhelmingly black and poor-have endured in the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath.

There was no practical plan in place to evacuate New Orleans in the event of a category 4 or 5 hurricane, despite the fact that much of the city lies below sea level. When the levees broke and flooded large parts of New Orleans-including the Ninth Ward, where Mr. Davis's family lived-hundreds of people who had not been evacuated perished in the floodwaters.

Those who had managed to evacuate were crammed into shelters without adequate food, water, sanitation or privacy. Lurid press accounts, promoted by the media and police authorities, depicted Katrina's victims as looters, killers and rapists. These reports were later refuted as fabrications.

The Bush administration's immediate response to the disaster was to flood the stricken region with National Guard and army troops as well as police from throughout the country. The atmosphere in the devastated city was one of military occupation, epitomized by the brutal treatment given to some of the residents-in some cases elderly and disoriented-who were forcibly evacuated from their homes.

Many who have lost their homes, like Robert Davis, are only now being allowed back into their neighborhoods to "look and leave"-to survey the damage to their property and then depart once again. The treatment he received last Saturday evening is an ominous indication that the working and poor residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina are not welcome in the "New" New Orleans envisioned by the city's rich and powerful.

The law-and-order frenzy whipped up in the wake of the Katrina disaster has served to encourage the most backward and sadistic elements within the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), a force notorious for decades for violence against its citizens. A 1999 study by Human Rights Watch found that the NOPD led the nation not only in brutality, but in corruption and incompetence as well.

A series of scandals rocked the New Orleans police force in the 1990s, a decade when police were arrested for crimes ranging from shoplifting and bribery to bank robbery, drug dealing, rape and homicide. Two former cops are on death row-one for the 1994 murder of a woman who had filed a complaint against him, one for a triple-murder committed in the course of a restaurant holdup in 1995.

This past March 19, complaints were lodged after police roughed up the annual St. Joseph's night assembly of Mardi Gras Indians, when black residents dress up in elaborate costumes. Participants said that police drove at high speeds on crowded streets, used foul language and manhandled revelers, inflicting numerous bodily injuries.

An investigation is also under way into allegations that in early August two officers beat a man before dropping him off at a hospital.

As stories of mass looting by evacuees were manufactured and circulated in the days after Katrina hit, New Orleans police officers were involved in driving away as many as 200 luxury vehicles from a Cadillac dealership. A probe is currently ongoing into the apparent theft.

Approximately 250 police officers, or nearly 15 percent of the department, are presently being investigated on charges that they deserted when Hurricane Katrina struck. On September 27, Police Chief Eddie Compass abruptly quit his post, giving no reason for his departure.

The majority of the approximately 1,450 New Orleans cops remaining on the force are being housed on a cruise ship and are working 12- to 14-hour days. Eighty percent of them have lost their homes. For officers trained in the backward police culture, the anger and resentment generated by these conditions find a reactionary expression. This provides some insight into the factors contributing to the violent assault last Saturday night.

However, the police union lawyer representing the three indicted cops insisted at a press conference Wednesday that stress had nothing to do with the incident, and that the three were merely following standard police procedures. "They didn't do anything wrong," said the attorney.

The lawyer also claimed that two FBI agents were involved in the attack on Davis, having come over to "assist in the arrest."

The cops patrolling Bourbon Street in post-Katrina New Orleans sense that they have a free hand. Two cops summarily assault a black man asking a question about the city's curfew. A news crew seeking to film the incident is viciously attacked by another, while witnesses are assaulted, handcuffed and intimidated. As far as the police are concerned, none of them have any rights whatsoever.

While such behavior may find a particularly sharp manifestation in New Orleans, it is indicative of the repressive and violent response of the ruling elite and its police agencies to the growing social polarization gripping the entire country. Like many of the developments witnessed since Hurricane Katrina made landfall August 29, it has further exposed the rot at the core of American society.


See Also: Bush seizes on flu threat to press for martial law power
[7 October 2005] In the wake of Katrina and Rita Bush administration to expand military powers, attack social programs [27 September 2005]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/nola-o13.shtml


Informant: Friends

by: szabadossandor@hotmail.com [UBRON]

I just finished watching a speech by Benjamin Ferencz, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial. Here is a recent article he wrote on the legality of the Iraq war.

Sandor


Heed the Lesson of Nuremburg: Let No Nation Be Above the Law

Published in The Forward, November 18, 2005

By Benjamin Ferencz

"We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow," Chief Justice Robert Jackson warned at the opening session of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, on November 20,
1945. "To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."

As we mark the 60th anniversary of the Nuremburg trials this week, it increasingly appears that Jackson's warning is falling on deaf ears in America.

Six decades have passed since we condemned Nazi war crimes and crimes against humanity, since "Never again!" became a universal slogan. Six decades have passed, but the more peaceful and humane world we envisioned at Nuremberg — one protected by rules of law that bind all nations large and small — remains elusive.

In response to the tragedy of the Holocaust laid bare at Nuremberg, the United Nations assigned legal committees to codify international law and establish a permanent international criminal court. The proposed court, commonly known as the ICC, would help deter such crimes in the future by holding personally accountable those leaders responsible for genocide and massive crimes against humanity. But faced with opposition by conservative American senators, it took 40 years before our government ratified the Genocide Convention in 1988.

A decade later, American obstinacy against codifying international law was again on display. In 1998, high representatives of 120 nations voted to accept carefully negotiated statutes for a permanent ICC. It was a historic achievement, hailed by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as "the hope of future generations."

Only seven countries voted against the new court. The United States, under pressure from the Pentagon and congressional conservatives, was among them. So, too, was Israel, which found, despite having worked long and hard for the establishment of such a court, a minor technicality for objection and reluctantly followed the United States in voting "no."

The next year, President Clinton told the U.N.'s General Assembly that he supported the establishment of an ICC. On December 31, 2000, shortly before he left office, Clinton instructed his ambassador, David Scheffer, to proceed to the U.N. on a snowy New Year's Eve to sign the ICC treaty. By pre-arrangement, Israel again followed America's lead and signed.

However, without ratification by two-thirds of the Senate, America's signing of the treaty merely indicated support for the ICC's goals and bound it only to not sabotaging its objectives. The powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, quickly made clear his unalterable opposition to the ICC. And so, despite hesitations by several other major powers, including China, India and Pakistan, nearly 100 nations ratified the Rome Treaty in record time and the ICC went into effect July 1,
2002 — without America's participation.

Helms no longer serves in Washington, but the Republican administration of President Bush has more than made up for the senator's absence. Two months before the Rome Treaty was ratified, John Bolton — a protégé of Helms who was then an assistant secretary of state and is now America's ambassador to the U.N. — sent a one- paragraph letter to the U.N., stating that the United States has no intention of ever becoming a party to the Rome Treaty, and hence is not legally bound by Clinton's signature. The repudiation of the official signature of an American president was unprecedented, and was seen by many as an unnecessary slap in the face of the great number of nations that had supported the ICC.

The Bush administration, backed by the Republican-led Congress, has boycotted the new court and done everything possible to destroy its power. Opponents of the ICC allege that its prosecutors may subject American servicemen to politically motivated charges that would inhibit foreign intervention for humanitarian purposes. Yet no other country in the world has raised this objection.

In fact, according to its own statute the ICC is permitted to deal only with crimes "of concern to the international community as a whole." This means that only leaders responsible for planning or perpetrating major crimes against humanity will be targets of the court.

The Bush administration's other objections to the court are equally untenable. To begin with, guilty knowledge and criminal intent must be established beyond reasonable doubt. Furthermore, the U.N. Security Council can direct the ICC to suspend any prosecution that might interfere with peace negotiations. And American objections on constitutional grounds are also unsupported by the facts.

Jingoistic slogans about protecting national sovereignty may sound appealing to an uninformed public, but try as the current administration might, it cannot eliminate the need for certain universally binding rules of humanitarian law in an increasingly interdependent world.

Simply put, current American fears are both misguided and unpersuasive. Not only does the ICC's carefully negotiated statute guarantee no retroactivity and fair trials, but it also requires nations to have priority to try their own citizens. The ICC can exercise jurisdiction only if the state of the perpetrator is unable or unwilling to provide a fair trial.

No prosecutor in human history has been subjected to as many controls as exist in the ICC. The prosecutor is under strict administrative and budgetary controls of the court's Assembly of State Parties, which includes such staunch allies of America as Great Britain, Canada, Australia and the European Union. The American Bar Association, every former president of the American Society of International Law and a host of the most renowned and respected international lawyers in the United States, Israel and around the world support the ICC.

How, then, to explain America's objections — which, to many informed observers, seem to border on the irrational?

The American public deserves to be told the truth: The stated opposition of the Bush administration to the ICC is a sham. It is disgraceful that our government expects the rest of the world to simply swallow the argument that the United States is above the law. Those who oppose the ICC — whose most fundamental premise is that law applies equally to everyone — do not believe in the rule of law.

One need only look at the American Service-Members' Protection Act to find evidence of the administration's belief in American exceptionalism. The legislation, mockingly called "The Hague Invasion Act" by many Europeans, authorizes the president to use "all necessary means" to liberate any American who might be held in custody by the ICC in The Hague.

For further proof, one could examine the various "immunity agreements" that all nations receiving American aid are requested to sign. If they refuse to stipulate that no Americans, or their employees, will be sent to the ICC, the nations risk forfeiting all American military and economic aid — even if the recipient country needs the funds in order to pursue terrorists and drug traffickers.

Such irrational behavior, of course, can only evoke suspicion about American intentions and resentment toward Washington by intimidated signatories. Not one single American has been helped in any way by these coerced agreements — not one.

And little wonder that many are suspicious of our intentions. Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed America's intention to bypass, if necessary, restraints on the use of force codified by the U.N. Charter. Washington reserves the right, he warned, to anticipate hostilities and to strike first and pre-emptively — alone, if necessary — to counter a perceived threat to our national security.

Now, I do not wish to compare any Americans to the Nazi leaders. But after hearing Rumsfeld's words, I could not avoid being reminded of the argument put forward by the lead defendant in the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremberg, S.S. General Otto Ohlendorf. When asked to explain why his unit murdered more than 90,000 Jews, including their children, the remorseless defendant casually explained that it was justified as anticipatory self-defense.

Germany anticipated an attack from the Soviet Union, Ohlendorf argued, and since Jews were perceived as supporters of Bolshevism, they presumably posed a potential future threat to German national interests. And if Jewish children knew that their parents had been executed, he continued, they, too, might become enemies of Germany, and therefore they had to be killed.

In a carefully reasoned judgment by the three judges presiding over the case — all of them American — Ohlendorf's defense was held to be untenable, and the S.S. general was hanged.

Sixty years later, I am afraid, this and other lessons from Nuremberg are lost on the Bush administration.

Benjamin Ferencz was chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen trial at Nuremburg.

Sandor Szabados
UBRON


Informant: Martin Greenhut

Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of US-based terror suspects without the court's approval.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122805Q.shtml

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=9715


Informant: beefree