Saturday, October 1, 2011

20th anniversary radio special observing the brutal 1991 military coup in Haiti


Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio takes an in-depth look back to September 30, 1991 when the US-backed Haitian military overthrew Haiti's first democratically elected president in a brutal coup. Special guests Ira Kurzban and Burt Wides join us from Miami and Washington D.C.... but first this update from Port au Prince with independent journalist Ansel Herz.

Mr. Kurzban is former Counsel for the Governments of Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Panama. He is also an adjunct faculty member in Immigration and Nationality Law at the University of Miami School of Law and Nova Southeastern University School of Law and has lectured and published extensively in the field of immigration law, including articles in the Harvard Law Review, San Diego Law Review and other publications. He is the author of Kurzban's Immigration Law Sourcebook, the most widely used one-volume immigration source in the United States.

Burt Wides has worked on national security policy issues for more than four decades, serving as chief counsel to Senator Philip Hart, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Senator Paul Sarbanes; as Special Counsel to President Jimmy Carter; and as senior counsel to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers. Among other responsibilities held during that time, he was chief of investigations for the Church Committee, which set the standard for modern-day oversight of the intelligence community, and then was director of the President's Intelligence Oversight Board. He began his government career by working on strategic weapons planning in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy Administration, and he also has represented a variety of high-profile clients on controversial matters as an attorney in private practice.

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