“Challenging U.S. Human Rights Violations Since 9/11” - local book readings

Local civil liberties lawyer Ann Fagan Ginger will be speaking Modern Times Books on at September 27th for a discussion and book-signing at 7 pm (888 Valencia Street. However, so far, other stores like Cody's, Black Oak Books, etc., have not scheduled any speaking events. We urge you to contact them and ask for Anne to speak on this important book -

Black Oak Books
1491 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley
(510) 486-0698
blackoak [at] infoconex.com

630 Irving Street, San Francisco
(415) 564-0877
Open 10-10 every day
blackoak2 [at] infoconex.com

540 Broadway Street, San Francisco
(415) 986-3872
Open 10-11 Sun-Thurs
Fri-Sat until midnight
judith [at] blackoakbooks.com

Recently, MCLI member Steve Burnbaum spoke on the book while in the Netherlands. Here's what 'Democrats Abroad' had to say:

"Mr. Birnbaum highlighted Meiklejohn's excellent new book, "Challenging U.S. Human Rights Violations Since 9/11", which is a compendium of legal tools people can use to fight violations of human rights. These tools are available to non-US residents as well as to people who live in America.

One of the legal tools Mr. Birnbaum and the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute advocate is using international treaties as the basis for American legal cases. Article VI of our Constitution states that the Constitution itself plus "all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land". This means that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention Against Torture and every other treaty which the US government has signed are every bit as relevant as our own homegrown law - in fact they are our law."
http://www.democratsabroad.nl/newsarchives/000031.php

Here is the write-up on the book:

“Challenging U.S. Human Rights Violations Since 9/11”
Report by Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute
Ann Fagan Ginger, Editor
Prometheus Books, April 2005

[This book was submitted as a shadow Report to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and to the U.S. State Department in Washington on April 18, 2005.]

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"This report is a veritable roadmap to the countless ways in which the Bush Administration has used lies and the politics of fear to assault the Bill of Rights, trash human rights, and launch a phony 'War on Terror.' It is equally thorough, gripping, and frightening, but demands to be read by every concerned citizen. Aroused voters, not timid politicians, have always been the ones to set America back on course. This is both their call to arms and a loud alarm for the United Nations."
-- John Conyers, Jr. Ranking Member, Judiciary Committee, US House of Representatives.
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After carefully collecting and sorting all of the violations by all U.S. Government agencies since 9/11, MCLI editors enunciated 30 categories of rights and duties being violated.

From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo to NYPD to Los Alamos, the book includes 180 reports of 11 human rights violated by the U.S. Government (starting with 1. Right not to be killed or disappeared; 2. Right not to be tortured) and of 19 duties not performed by the U.S. Government (starting with 12. Duty to count votes accurately and report truthfully to the people, including 13. Duty not to send troops for regime change or 14. for invasion of Iraq; 18. Duty to protect people's rights to due process of law; 27. Duty to fund environmental protection. See Table of Contents with list of 180 reports.
Books and Law

The book lays out new paths to action for concerned people to take against a particular violation, from suing to filing a complaint with the Office of Inspector General to reporting to the three UN human rights reporting committees -— always invoking the Mobilization of Shame that has proved so effective, from South Africa to East Timor.

This publication can be ordered at:

http://mcli.org/store/index.html