♪ amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> that is what he did. he ran operation condor. he tortured them and killed them. what is the difference? i would ask the american people. amy: on the 20th anniversary of the opening of the u.s. military prison at guantanamo approaches, we look at the life and legacy of the pioneering radical lawyer

who spent decades in the courts and the streets fighting u.s. imperialism, including leading the effort to win habeas corpus rights for prisoners held at guantanamo. he died five years ago but his memoir was recently published. we will hear him in his own words and speak to three people who knew him well. >> all his life, mchael ratner spoke of the horrors from acrosshe world. no one was more suited to protecthe authotarianism that would emerge following 9/11. no one else had the vision, courage that he showed in sponding to the human rights crisis creat by the sh administration, including his desion to intervene.

amy: all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. congress has approved a bill to extend federal funding into early december, averting a government shutdown just hours before a midnight deadline thursday. the stopgap measure won the support of enough republicans to pass after it was agreed to drop a provision that would suspend a limit on the national debt. without action on the debt ceiling, the u.s. could default on loans in mid-october. house speaker nancy pelosi delayed a planned vote thursday on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill amid fractures in the democratic party among the build back better act. the $3.5 trillion to expand the social safety net.

west virginia democratic senator joe manchin told reporters thursday he would only accept a 10 year, $1.5 trillion social safety net bill. >> i believe in my heart that what we can do and the needs we have right now and what we can afford to do -- changing our whole society to entitlement mentality. amy: some democrats said it will not vote for infrastructure bill until senate democrats movethe's -- we leave behind childcare, paid leave, health care, climate action and a roadmap to citizenship. we are not going to leave working people, families and our communities behind. immigrant justice advocates are condemning a federal appeals

court's ruling that will allow the biden administration to continue mass expelling asylum seekers without due process, citing the pandemic as justification. last month, a lower court issued a temporary band that was set to go into effect today. attorney lee gelernt, who led the aclu's lawsuit against title 42, said, "if the administration is making the political calculation that if it acts inhumanely now it can act more humanely later, that calculation is misguided and of little solace to the families that are being sent to haiti or brutalized in mexico right now." this comes as cbs news reports, the biden administration has deported at least 5,400 haitian asylum seekers using title 42 in the last 11 days. meanwhile, four united nations agencies, including the human

rights office, are urging countries to stop deporting haitian asylum seekers without first properly assessing why they made their claims, a violation of international law. the united states reported more than 2,700 covid-19 deaths on thursday, as the official u.s. pandemic death toll rapidly approached 700,000. today, the drug company merck announced it's seeking emergency use of its anti-viral drug molnupiravir from the fda and other regulators around the world, after a late-stage clinical trial showed it reduced the risk of hospitalization or death in covid-19 patients by about half. if approved, the drug would be the first oral anti-viral treatment for covid-19. several democratic house members share their own experiences of getting abortions during a hearing thursday, amid a mounting assault on reproductive

rights across the united states. california congressmember barbara lee said she was just 16 when she had to travel to mexico for a so-called "back-alley abortion" in the days before roe v wade. lee said she was "one of the lucky ones" for surviving the procedure. meanwhile, congressmember cori bush said she had an abortion after being raped at 17. >> to all the black women and girls who have had abortions and will have abortions, we have nothing to be ashamed of. we live in a society that has failed to legislate love and justice for us. we demand better. we are worthy of better. that is why i am here to tell my story. as that nurse, pastor, activist, single mom to testify that in the summer of 1994, i was raped, i became pregnant and i chose to have an abortion. amy: a bill banning abortions at

eight weeks in cori bush's homestate of missouri was passed in 2019 but is on hold during legal challenges. missouri republicans say they plan on introducing an even more restrictive measure modeled on texas's near-total ban on abortions. washington's pramila japayal also testified at thursday's hearing. a new study in the lancet finds that over half of all police killings in the united states go unreported government data. that represents over 17,000 deaths at the hands of the police since 1980. police killings of black americans is the most undercounted, at a rate of 60 %. the police also kill black people at a disproportionate rate that's 3.5 times higher than white people. in lebanon, survivors of last year's devastating blast at the port of beirut took to the streets to protest the recent suspension of an investigation into the deadly incident. prior to the suspension, top

officials moved to dismiss the lead investigator, judge tarek bitar, from the case. this is karine hitti, who lost both her husband and her brother in the explosion. >> the judge is getting threatened by politicians. i do not know how the suspects have the right to submit a complaint about the judge. they are suspects. they should be investigated and have to prove they are innocent. amy: in el salvador, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital san salvador for another round of protests against president nayib bukele and el salvador's adoption of bitcoin as an official currency. critics warn of drastic fluctuations in cryptocurrency's value and worry about the economic impacts on poorer communities. this is one of the protesters. >> we do not agree with the bitcoin law. we want the lot to be removed

because it is money laundering in our country. regarding the constitution, we have a good constitution. the problem is he wants to be elected and change the constitution. amy: opponents are accusing bukele of being a dictator. you can go to democracynow.org to see our latest interview on salvador adopting bitcoin as they currency. this comes as last month, salvadoran supreme court judges, who were recently appointed by bukele's political party, ruled that the president could seek a second consecutive term, which until now has been prohibited in el salvador. here in new york, environmental and human rights lawyer steven donziger is being sentenced today after over two years under house arrest on pretrial misdemeanor charges. he has been targeted by chevron ever since he successfully sued the oil giant in ecuador on behalf of 30,000 amazonian indigenous people, for dumping 16 billion gallons of oil into their ancestral land.

this week, u.n. human rights experts called donziger's house arrest arbitrary and in violation of international law, calling for immediate release and reparations. a warning to viewers: this next story contains graphic images of animal abuse. animal rights defenders have released shocking footage taken inside a slaughterhouse run by california's largest poultry producer. a videographer with the oup direct action evywhere used miature infrar cameras to document worrs slamming live chickens onto a concte floor; failing to properly inspect birds; failing to stun birds before their throats are cut; and other abuses. activists say foster farms workers are underpaid; ordered to remain their feet for hours without breaks; and are forced by magers to work at a breaknecspeed that prevents thhumane treatment of anals. the u.s. fish and wildlife

service is restoring protections for migratory birds that were gutted during the final days of trump's presidency. a trump administration rule change in january allowed companies that kill birds to largely avoid punishment under the migratory bird treaty act. the interior department says that rule change would have led to hundreds of millions of bird deaths per year. this week, the biden administration said another 23 plant and animal species should be listed as extinct, including thivory-lled wooecker an seral typeof freshter mussel 's thlatest emple of unpredented ss of odiversi due to imate change a humans' eroachmen on natal habitats. in italy, thousands of youth climate activists marched through the streets of milan today, demanding world leaders meet their pledges to the paris climate agreement and keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees celsius. the protest came at the end of a three-day climate conference,

ahead of the u.n.'s cop26 climate summit in glasgow. on thursday, several youth climate delegates were briefly detained by police after they held a peaceful protest ahead of a speech by the italian prime minister. this is ugandan climate activist vanessa nakate. >> i, as an activist, will continue speaking and continue demanding for climate justice. there is no climate justice without acknowledging damage is here with us now. amy: in labor news, today marks 13ays since dozens of new york taxi drivers began a round-the-clock protest outside city hall, demanding relief for thousands of drivers who've been devastated by massive debt, accrued largely due to the artificially inflated cost of taxi medallions. data from 2019 shows medallion owner-drivers, who are mostly immigrants, owe nearly $500,000 on average, even though the market value for medallions has drastically collapsed.

drivers are also denouncing the mental health impacts triggered by the financial ruin. at least nine have died by suicide. in chicago, workers at el milagro tortilla plants led another protest thursday against low pay, staff shortages and abusive working conditions, including intimidation and sexual harassment. the latest action comes after el milagro management ignored workers' demands to meet and discuss their grievances. at a news conference, the workers announced they have also filed a formal labor complaint against el milagro. last week workers walked off the , job to denounce poor treatment. and in canada, a judge dismissed a challenge by the trudeau administration to a ruling that found the government underfunded first nations children's services. the canadian government was ordered to pay billions in compensation to the affected children, many of whom were forced into foster care as they had to leave their homes to accept government services. -- access government services.

this comes as canada marked its first ever 'national day of truth and reconciliation' thursday in honor of the lost children and survivors of government- and church-run schools for indigenous children. gatherings took place across canada, including in toronto. >> every single day, all of us are fighting to get it back. it is unfair of us to lose it. we should be living our lives on a reservation, getting our land back. it is hard sync all of these people protesting something like this. we are protesting a genocide. it is emotional. it is very emotional. amy: and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. when we come back, it is the 20th anniversary and we look back at the life and legacy of the pioneering radical lawyer, michael ratner, who spent

decades fighting u.s. imperialism, including reading the effort to win habeas corpus rights for prisoners after the 9/11 attacks. michael died five years ago, but his memoir was recently published, it is titled " moving the bar, my life as a radical lawyer." stay with us.

♪♪ [music break] amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. it's been nearly 20 years since george w. bush opened the u.s. military prison at guantanamo, where 779 men, in total, have been held, womanly without ever being charged. they were tortured, held in isolation and stripped of their rights. president biden is the fourth president to oversee guantanamo which is based at u.s. naval , base in cuba.

today, 39 men remain, including at least 10 who have already been cleared for release but remain locked up. the military prison is only one part of the history of guantanamo. in the early 1990's, the u.s. held over 12,000 haitian asylum-seekers at guantanamo. on part of the base, the u.s. set up the world's first detention camp for refugees with hiv. now the biden administration is , considering once again holding haitians at guantanamo. nbc recently reported that the biden administration is advertising for a new contract to operate a migrant detention facility at guantanamo with a requirement that some of the guards speak spanish and haitian creole. today we look at the life and , legacy of michael ratner, a trailblazing lawyer who first worked to shut down the guantanamo hiv camp in the 1990's, where haitians were held, and then later led the

fight to win habeas corpus rights for muslim prisoners held at guantanamo after the sept. 11 attacks. he was also a lifelong critic of war and u.s. imperialism. michael ratner died five years ago but his influence on the legal community can still be felt. o/r books recently published michael's posthumous memoir, "moving the bar: my life as a radical lawyer." it details his involvement in decades of legal battles while working at the center for constitutional rights. in a moment, we will be joined by three guests who knew michael well. but first, let's turn to michael ratner in his own words. he is speaking in 2007. michael: today, we are in the middle of a pitched battle to put this country back. on the page of fundamental rights and decency. the battle is difficult and the road is long and hard.

on occasion, i get pessimistic. sometimes, i and my colleagues feel like sisyphus. twice we pushed the rock up the hill and won rights for guantanamo detainees, and twice, the rock was rolled back down by congress over those rights. so we pushed it back up again. five days ago, we were in the supreme court for the third time. it was difficult -- more difficult than before -- because the justices have changed. some are lost forever to humanity. but before i get us all depressed, we have had our victories. we have gotten lawyers to guantanamo, stopped the most overt torture and freed half of the guantanamo detainees, over

300. [applause] we have gotten him out of syria. candida has apologized for his torture, given him a substantial recovery in canadian dollars, which is no embarrassment anymore. [laughter] they said he was an innocent man, but he remains on the u.s. terror list. we have slowed but not yet stopped the remarkable grab for authoritarian power. i also do not lose hope because i think about the early days of guantanamo. at first, we were few. but now, we are many. at first, when ccr began, we were the lonely warriors, taking on the bush administration at guantanamo. now, we -- just on guantanamo

alone -- or over 600 lawyers, most for major firms of every political stripe. [applause] these lawyers have an understanding of what is at stake. liberty itself. this struggle, this struggle will be seen as one of the great chapters in a legal and political history of the united states. [applause] today, war, torture, disappearances, murder surround us like plagues. most in this country go on their way oblivious. some do not want to know, like ostriches. some want to justify it all. some want to make compromises. but be warned, we are at a tipping point. a tipping point into lawlessness and medievalism.

we have work to do for each of us, the time for talking is long, long over. this is no time for compromise, no time for political calculation as we are admonished, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. we are reminded that the job for each of us is not to be on the side of the executioners. thank you, all. [applause] amy: pioneering radical attorney michael ratner speaking in 2007, when he was awarded a prize for creative citizenship, for his work for heading up the center for constitutional rights. michael ratner died in 2016, but his memoir has just been published. we are joined right now by three guests who knew michael well.

vince warren is the executive director of the center for constitutional rights. lizzy ratner is the niece of the late michael ratner and a senior editor at the nation magazine. and baher azmy is legal director of the center of constitutional rights. baher, i wanted to begin with you. if you can talk about guantanamo, because this week, we have a federal court hearing the case of guantanamo. you write, michael ratner knew from a lifetime fighting racism and torture that guantanamo, is unchecked, would become a centerpiece of american authoritarianism, where lawlessness and violence would go across american democratic stitutions. at the time, guantanamo was the crown jewel of the bush administration's war on terror.

since then, there has been president obama, president trump, and now president biden. guantanamo remains open from 779 prisoners to at this point 39 prisoners. but it remains open. can you talk about both guantanamo and michael ratner's legacy and trying to get shut down? baher: thank you, amy. i think michael saw from the very beginning what everyone else perceived possibly as a necessary compromise. what he saw is the possibility of creating a prison outside the law that was a marker of lawlessness, and therefore authoritarianism, th would single out, in this case, the most recent enemy, muslims.

not unlike what he saw 10 years before with the demonization, exclusion of black haitian refugees. what he saw is t connection between militarism and war, and domestic forms of authoritarianism and repression, and that was a key to his intervention guantanamo because bad things happen in dark places. not only bad things to the human beings locked up there, whose families are clamoring for understanding about what happened to them, but bad things happen to our institutions, our democratic institutions, massive executive power, the dismissal

of oversight by courts and the public. that intervention was critical to open up guantanamo and expose the lies, torture and incompetence of the project. he also soft, and we all recognize nap -- he also saw, and we recognize the american imperial project. it was taken in 1908 a part of a project of the spanish-american war and kept at the military base to undertake -- initially, we talked about guantanamo as exceptional. as you note, it is here 20 years later. i think given the way in which

we have solidified borders, militarized domestic police forces, and all sorts of things from the post 9/11 world, guantanamo is not particularly exceptional. fighting against it is critical. it is at the core of american forms of repression. it is a key understanding that he knew well. amy: i wanted to bring lizzy ratner into the conversation, the niece of michael ratner. there is this possibility, and is reporting, of footing haitian refugees, asylum-seekers once again and guantanamo. let's be clear, originally guantanamo, the idea of putting them outside the reach of u.s. law, but if you can talk about back in the 1990's, when haitian

refugees fleeing a coup in haiti are then put by bush and guantanamo, up to 12,000 peoe, and michael's role of trying to shut that down. lizzy: thank u so much for having me on. it is always wderful to talk about michael, his work and his legacy. the history of guantanamo and the haitian history of guantanamo is crucial to understanding wh we are seeing now while dealing with the detention of detainees. also come up what we are seeing with haitian refugees being sent back to haiti. it is a crucial moment to understand. there was a u.s.-backed to whe the leader of haiti was kicked out of the country.

there was horrible, horrible, horrible oppression in haiti. many haitians, average everyday people, fled in desperation. the united states, which for years has backed dictators in haiti, said we do not want haitians coming here. we are going to event them from arriving in the united stat. it is aey thingo understand. someone arrives in the united states, they have the right to make an asylum claim. how do you prevent people from making a claim? you prevent them from coming to the united states. what the united states did is they rounded up patients who were coming up to that -- they rounded up haitians coming to the united states on small boats and took them to guantanamo. they said this is not really the united states, do not have rights here. they processed people on

guantanamo to decide whether or not they had a credible cim standard for asylum. anyone they found whoid not have a credible fear, and there are debates out how well they made those judgments, anyone without a credible fear they sent back to haiti. there were many people on guantanamo while they were trying to determinef there was a credible fear. they forcibly tested people for hiv. when they found that several people had hiv, they refused to let them into the united states spite the fact that people would have had cdible claims tosylum. that is becausehere was horrible bigotry and racism against haitians, and people with hiv and aids.

rather than bringing people to the united states, they left them on haiti. they kept haians in this prison camp, the first hiv detention prison camp. we creat it the united states. they test several hundred haitians there for well over a year. law students at yale said this is outrageous. the united states is saying people on guantanamo, it is not part of the united states so u.s. law does notxtend to guantanamo. the protections of u.s. logic not exist there. he was fighting at the most basic level to get peop out of horrible conditions. also to say the united states could not create this kind of area in which it could do whatever it wants and just kind

of play all kinds of illegal games. i think that moment is crucial to understanding both the later work that michael did on guantanamo in regardo deinees, and it is crucial to understanding what is happening now with tit 42. the united states ce again seeing people from haiti who could make asylum claims and saying, we do not want you to come in. we want to circumvent the process and we will send you back, or possibly sent you to guantanamo. amy: vince warren, if you can talk more about this and this trajectory from the early 1990's to what we are seeing today. you started as a fellow at the center for constitutional rights. you are now the executive director of ccr and worked with michael for decades. vince: thank you so much for

having me, amy, and it is wonderful to be on with baher and lizzy. picking up on what lizzy was talking about, michael, people might mispercee what michael is about by just focusing on the specter of guantanamo. michael did decades of work on that particular institution and in the context of preventing a legal black hole. guantanamo has become iconic largely -- a negative icon -- largely because of michael's work. we now have seven presidents since that time havesed guantanamo as an offshore prison where they claim the law does not apply to dump all of the

people that are causing problems in terms of how they are working the question of border security or national security. what michael was able to do, even back in the 1990's, when a lot of folks were like i don't know what the big deal is, or i see what the deal is but how would you challenge that legally? does in the government have the right to keep a safe from people with hiv my putting them in guantanamo? microsoft that by conceding a blackhole structure in the united states would turn into something like guantanamo. they would be other people put there. i think history has shown, if you look at some of the fbi documents that are emerging now, that folks on the left, radicals, people who want a greater society, folks like myself, there were plans to put us and people like us in these

camps. michael was pushing the framework that if we allow the government to create a law free zone, it will create a legality around clearly illegal activities. the other thing that i would want to point out is the haitian hiv situation, but were taught about detainees -- like guantanamo detaine after 9/11 and the proposal to situate refugees and by currents in guantanamo -- migrants in guantanamo is a mythology. it is one of a great and consuming irrational fear on the part of the united states citizenry about feeling safe. in the 1990's, hiv was the thing that made people lose their minds in terms of fear. even though they did not understand the disease.

when you read the court papers, michael and harold had to explain to the government and the court that you could not catch hiv by talking to people. yet, there was hysteria around the question of hiv and what it would do. in the context of 9/11, the hysteria was around terrorism. every brown, black, muslim person with a turban represented an irrational fear in the united states and they wanted to keep those people out if at all possible. with respect to what is happening at the southern border and the alcu's work around asylum seeking, in the trump administration, the irrational fear was overrunning the border. in the biden administration, the irrational fear is covid. each one of these is fueled by an overarching hysteria that we have in the united states that

makes people want to side with incarceration and dehumanization in order to keep themselves feeling safe. amy: i also now wanted to turn to the whole controversy around a yale university professor's recent piece titled "michael ratner's tragedy and ours." in the piece, the yale professor writes, "in the years after 9/11, michael set aside the law of america's global wars and concentrated on legally battling for controls on how they proceeded. in recent history, no one has done more than this leader at the center for constitutional rights to enable a sanitized

version of permanent war by legalizing the manner of the conflict, ratner laundered the humanity or mutt began as a brutal enterprise by helping to re-codify a war that became endless legal and humane. i want to go back to baher azmy. he recently co-wrote an article. can you respond to professor moyn? baher: i think professor moyn makes, to me, somewhat, although i have not fully read his book, is somewhat unoriginal observation that lawyers he populated defense department's. in the united states or in the

ibf, and lawyers inside those regimes have fought to make war slightly less lethal, and within some sort of legal norms. ok, i suppose because that is a fairly standard claim, he goes further to make the provocative and ultimately fraudulent claim that michael ratner is somehow in that camp. michael opposed war with every fiber of his being. in every medium he had access to, the court room, the classroom, in the media, and he knew that legal challengers to protect humans from

authoritarian abuses, violence and torture were necessary. that was his project in guantanamo. he also knew about the horrors of war and could manage both at the same time. september 23, 2001, he gave a talk in which she said this is not a lawful basis for the u.s. to engage in war. this is a crime under international law, citing an argument we should not pursue war but war crimes and crimes against humanity against the perpetrators. over and over again, he was opposed war. the irony of lumping michael with people who try to make war humane, among many other pieces of evidence, michael's project

throughout the 2000s and before, from his experience in challenging war waged by the clinton administration in kosovo, is to say very specifically the idea of humanitarian war is impossible. because it is just a mask for u.s. forms of hegemony. professor moyn has somewhat walked back his critique, suggesting the title was chosen by the editor and not him, but i think the content of this article stands and is profoundly misguided. michael understood that lawyering has a particular role in society.

it is not where the war is won, but where the battle has to be fought, alongde all sorts of other means to leverage. the power of movements to challenge repression. that is what michael stood for, and in no way did he ever sanitize war. amy: lizzy ratner, michael ratner was known for these court challenges, from guantanamo to actual wars, taking on rumsfeld and others, suing against illegal war. he also most deeply believed in the streets. lizzy: i just want to echo what baher was saying. reading that piece was an out of body experience where he had someone speak authoritarian late and make sweeping claims.

and then you realize i know this person and this is sloppy and factually incorrect. it had no bearing on who he was or what he d. prior to the war on terror, michael was out in the streets and fighting legal battles on an array of topics. i want to focus on the last 15 years of his life, which could be looked at in one way as entirely an attempt to fight the so-cald war on terror, abroad and at home, in whatever way he could. michael believed the law was a tool. he believed the law was made by the wealthy and the powerful a as a way to hold onto power.

he talked extensively about doing what he could in the courts and work with people on the streets. i will get to those examples in a moment. i want to quote from michael's book since ware talking about it and it provides a powerful rebuttal to this claim by professor moyn that michael -- he has a wholeection working with julian assange and what he calls truth tellers toward the end of his life. he asked at one point, why did i become so fixated on the stories of chelsea manning, julian assange? he writes, i asked myself why e truth telle like them so important to m

if they had succeeded in what ccr and i have been trying to do in the so-called war on terror began after 9/1 for more than a decade, seeking to expose the war in afghanistan and iraq and the torture at guantanamo and otr secret u.s. prisons, we try to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes. he wrote wn people like chelsea manni, julian assange, edward snowden, acts of great courage. as part a much nded public discussion of the u.s. governnt's secrets and policies. they brought people into the streets. i feel like i can talk extensively about michael, t his own words told the story

about what he was trying to do. what he and ccr were trying to do. attack war. he was also speaking all the time from right after 9/11. he was out there protting. he was dng everything he possibly could to fight this war. amy: we are going to go to break. that is lizzy ratner, the niece of the late pioneering lawyer, michael ratner. we are talking to vince warren, the executive director of the center for constitutional rights, where michael ratner served as president. and baher azmy, a legal director. we come back, i want to ask vince warren about the lawsuits against war in general. i remember when we interviewed

michael in berlin, when he was suing donald rumsfeld, the defense secretary under george w. bush. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

♪♪ [music break] amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. that in 2006, attorneys with the centers for constitutional rights went to berlin, germany to file a war crimes lawsuit in germany against then-outgoing defense secretary donald rumsfeld and other high-ranking u.s. officials, for their role in the torture of prisoners in iraq and guantanamo. we spoke with then ccr president michael ratner from berlin. michael: what we did was file a 220 page complaint against 14

high-level u.s. officials, rumsfeld being the lead one. general sanchez being in there. and a number of the lawyers who wrote some of the so-called torture memos, particularly lawyers. the procedure is you file the complaint with the prosecutor and the prosecutor then decides whether or to have an investigation. we did file a similar case in 2004. the prosecutor and 2004 dismissed the case. he dismissed it for legal reasons on the face of it, but political reasons, as well. he said the united states, it appeared to him, was still investigating up the chain of command and making the effort to look into who is responsible for the war crimes in the torture. we thought that was the wrong ruling then, we did not think there was any evidence that u.s. was looking up the chain of command. in a different situation that

makes an excuse irrelevant and not possible again. two things that happen. 1.5 years of happen since we filed the last case and nothin has been done to go after donald rumsfeld or sanchez or any of the other people we have named. that alone says a lot about what the u.s. is doing. as you also mentioned that your opening, the u.s. has also meet -- these people from work crimes. yeah men's the statute that makes -- he amends the statute. he amended it not just going forward, but going backward. back to 9/11, 2001, essentially -- these officials in the united states from any prosecution for war crimes. now that we are in germany, a court of last resort, we cannot go to the u.s. courts, we cannot

go to the international courts, you have to go to national cour, where in germany, they have the best law on jurisdiction, but as far as we know today, some of the perpetrators are actually at military bases in germany. germany can no longer say if the u.s. is seriously investigating because the u.s. has essentially immunizized these defendants. amy: that was the late michael ratner. his book has come out, it is called "moving the bar: my life as a radical lawyer." we are joined by three people who knew him well. lizzy ratner, baher azmy, and then sworn. -- and vince warren. i don't know how many times,

vince, that i talked to you and i talked to michael about the challenges overall to war, and it is particularly important this week as we watch in the senate and the house, military leaders coming forward, being questioned in these inquiries around the last two weeks of the u.s. military troop presence in afghanistan and the chaos that happen. they are willing to talk about the last few weeks, but no one in the house and senate is holding a hearing on the entire last 20 years of the afghanistan war. talk about how michael's critique would inform us on what needs to happen. vince: it is very emotional to see clips of michael. that clip in berlin happened, i think they filed that case one month after i started as

executive director of centers for constitutional rights. a few things. number one, i want to bring back a frame that is do not do war, do not pursue war, pursue war crimes. that was a series of tools that michael, and peter, the vice president for the center for constitutional rights, and many other lawyers began to pursue. it became known as the rumsfeld case, which was filed in germany. it was accompanied by a case filed in france that was succeeded by a case filed in switzerland, which cap george bush -- which kept george bush and company from traveling to switzerland under fear of arrest. it was how we should be thinking abou war when the u.s. insists upon waging it and the u.s.

citizenry insists upon backing it. what is notable from the hearings we have been hearing on the afghanistan withdrawal, particular with respect, everyone in congress seems to be really, really deeply concerned about the question of failure, and no one seems to be concerned about the question of killing and lawlessness. had we had this level of congressional interest, congressional concern at the beginning back in the days after 9/11, when congress gave the president the green light to do whatever he wanted and advocated its role under the war powers, advocated its role to be a check on the president in terms of

waging war, if we had this level of engagement and attention at that point, we would not have been in afghanistan for 20 years . hundreds of thousands of afghan afghan residents would not have died. in a society that is more comfortable than being on the side of vision like michael was at the beginning when there was tremendous risk, this is what we end up with. connecting this to the moyn pi e ce, what he is doing is essentially whitewashing the question of the roles in lawyers of pushing back on the great in humanities we inflict on each other. there were lawyers that filed lawsuits that were largely unsuccessful during the nazi er

a. lawyers filed lawsuits to challenge apartheid. there were hundreds of lawyers that challenged in the united states the hegemonic tone and vector of united states military and military mite. this would be the function moving forward. we are going to see them under every administration, including this one. i have no doubt there will be a military intervention at some point, particularly when people are reelected, that will require the vision of michael. i am glad that michael gave that to us so we can prepare for the next time. amy: finally, the last word goes

to another ratner, lizzy ratner. if you can talk about michael as an institution builder. he helped to build the european center for constitutional and human rights. he was also with palestine legal. if you can talk about his commitment to palestinian human rights. lizzy: michael talked in the book a lot about his upbringing in a jewish family in the united states and how he over the years came to understand the story of palestine, to understand the story of oppression and he felt that his role could not be to sit on the sidelines, but to jo in and support in y way he could and play th role of a

supportive activist, support the struggle of palestinians in the u.s. and palestine. he worked closely to start palestine legal, which does heroic work in the united states. around the question of palestinian rights. we believe in free speech in this country but often not ound the question of palestine. being silenced and all manner of ways. he felt strongly that the next chapter of his life would be around the issue of palesti and was starting out and embarking on that when he became very sick. it is beautiful to see the work they are doing and to see the work ccr is doing, so many young

lawyers pushing forward a radical theory of lawyering. amy: i want to thank you all so much for being with us. lizzy ratner, vince warren, and baher azmy.