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ACLU Weighs In On Protecting Civil LibertiesToday, with Donald Trump headed back to the White House, the nation is preparing for a devastating onslaught of civil rights and civil liberties abuses.Organizing, mobilizing, and resistance is going on all over the country. Within hours after the election, the ACLU made the following announcement."Starting on day one, were ready to fight for our civil liberties and civil rights in the courts, in Congress, and in our communities. We did it during his first term " filing 434 legal actions against Trump while he was in office " and well do it again. Weve done the work and, today, our track record shows that we know how to fight his attempts to restrict our civil liberties and civil rights."Guest - Ben Wizner is the director of the ACLUs Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. For more than two decades at the ACLU, Ben has litigated cases involving the right to protest, freedom of expression online, government surveillance practices, airport security policies, targeted killing, and torture. Since July of 2013, he has been the principal legal advisor to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Ben is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law and was a law clerk to the Hon. Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.----Jewish CurrentsThe Jewish left is in the midst of an identity crisis, grappling with its long and complex relationship with the State of Israel in the light of the genocide in Gaza. To help us understand this fraught situation, we have invited Daniel May, the publisher of Jewish Currents magazine. He holds a PhD in modern Jewish thought and has over two decades of experience in community and labor organizing.Jewish Currents was founded in 1946, but since its relaunch in 2018 with a new staff and design, it has sought to establish itself as an essential voice in the contemporary conversation. Today, the magazine covers antisemitism and its weaponization, the inner workings of Jewish communal organizations, the politics of Israel/Palestine on the ground and internationally, race and racialization, strategies and horizons of American left movements, the global rise of the far right, diasporic cultural expression, labor, climate, incarceration, immigration, and feminism.
Complicity In Genocide: CCR Case Against The Biden Administration UpdateLast fall, the internationally acclaimed Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of several Palestinian groups and individuals against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, alleging that Israel's actions in Gaza have amounted to genocide and that Biden, Austin, and Blinken have failed their obligation under international law to prevent Israel from committing genocide in Gaza.The lawsuit claimed that the 1948 International Convention Against Genocide requires the US and other countries to use their power and influence to stop the killing. and the lawsuit asked the court to bar the US from providing weapons, money, and support to Israel. At the time of the filing of that lawsuit here on Law and Disorder, we spoke with an attorney from CCR about the case. Since that time there have been a number of developments in the case.Guest - Attorney Maria LaHood, the Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, or CCR, to join us to bring us up to date on where the lawsuit now stands. Much of Maria LaHood's own work at CCR is on behalf of defending the constitutional rights of Palestinian advocates in the United States, such as in the case of Davis v. Cox. She was involved in defending the Olympia Food Co-op board members for deciding to boycott Israeli goods and the case of Awad v. Fordham, compelling the university to recognize Students for Justice in Palestine as a student club.----The Power Of Labor And A Workers' PartyThe forces of the gathering authoritarian storm in our country are evident in many ways. It is manifesting itself in powerful and continuing nationalism, in disdain for human rights, in the entwinement of government and religion, in a controlled mass media, in the protection of corporate power and the suppression of labor power and in the encouragement of violence.The power of labor has been channeled into the Democratic and Republican Party, the twin parties of capitalism. We need a workers party, but we dont even have the nucleus of one. Race and gender are formative in the building of authoritarian regimes. We see this in the United States. Haitians, who are Black, have been accused of eating cats and dogs. Womens right to control their own bodies is under attack from the Supreme Court on down and women are marked as childless cat ladies and told to stay home and bear children.Guest - Dianne Feeley is an editor of the magazine Against the Current. She is a leader of Solidarity, a socialist feminist organization. Dianne lives in Detroit where she has been an activist for many years in the United Automobile Workers union.
The Center for Climate IntegrityToday, were delving into a legacy of deception and destruction. For more than 50 years, Big Oil companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP have known that burning fossil fuels would raise global temperatures. Yet, instead of taking responsibility or warning the public, they have orchestrated campaigns of denial, disinformation, and delay.As a result, we are living with unprecedented climate disasters. Following the hottest year on record in 2023, extreme weather events have intensified, from record-breaking wildfires scorching California and Canada, to catastrophic hurricanes pounding the Gulf Coast. During this past June, nearly 5 billion people globally faced intense heat over nine days, with more than 60% of the worlds population encountering temperatures made at least three times more likely by climate change. These events not only devastate ecosystems and communities, but they also cost taxpayers billions of dollars in damage and recovery.Guest - Corey Riday-White, Managing Attorney at the Center for Climate Integrity, an organization that is fighting to hold Big Oil accountable for its deceit. The Center is supporting litigation efforts in several states, aiming to force fossil fuel companies to pay for the damage theyve caused. Lets hear more about their approach, and how the legal system might be used to confront this ongoing climate crisis.---- Surveillance Dragnet: Geofence WarrantsRecently, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a landmark decision in U.S. v. Jamarr Smith, holding that geofence warrants are categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. What is a Geofence Warrant? They compel companies such as Google to hand over data on every device in a particular geographical area over a set period of time. Not surprisingly they are a controversial tool in law enforcements investigative arsenal.Privacy experts argue they amount to a dragnet search that violates the privacy of countless innocent individuals. Proponents, on the other hand, see them as necessary for solving crimes in our digital world. The Fifth Circuit ruling is a major development in the ongoing debate over privacy and mass surveillance.Guest - Alan Butler, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center or EPIC, in Washington, DC. EPIC has been at the forefront of legal battles to improve data protection standards to protect individual rights in the rapidly advancing surveillance state. Alan Butler is Chair of the Privacy and Information Protection Committee of the American Bar Association Section on civil Rights and Social Justice. He has authored briefs on behalf of EPIC in significant privacy cases, including an amicus brief in Riley v. California that was cited in the Supreme Courts unanimous landmark ruling that the warrantless search and content seizure of cell phones during an arrest is unconstitutional.Notes: Dear station managers and program directors, please let us know when you air this program. We would love to count your station among our affiliates. Feel free to contact us through the contact page at lawanddisorder.orgPlease check to see if your station is on Law and Disorder's affiliate list.https://lawanddisorder.org/stations/If your station isn't on this list let us know through the contact page.https://lawanddisorder.org/contact-us/We will add your station and welcome you on air.
Separation of Powers And Project 2025The US Constitution created the three branches of the federal government to serve as a check on one another. In particular, the judiciary was intended to ensure that the actions of the Executive and Legislative branches did not violate the Constitution.But what happens when the Supreme Court is in the grip of a highly partisan, result-oriented super-majority half of whom were appointed by a President who has been convicted of 34 felonies and faces 57 more felony charges in three different criminal prosecutions, but claims absolute immunity for whatever he did while in office?And on top of all that, this ex-President - Donald Trump - is a nominee for President of the United States and has promised to "terminate" the Constitution.Meanwhile, in an almost 1000 page blueprint for the next conservative President titled Project 2025, a group of conservative organizations spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, has laid out a detailed plan under which the President would acquire almost dictatorial power over the entire federal government.Guest - Marjorie Cohn is professor of law emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is also Dean of the Peoples Academy of International Law and a member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She writes frequent articles about the Supreme Court for Truthout.----Larry Hebert's Hunger Strike Against US Weapons To IsraelIsrael's deadly and unrelenting assault on Gaza following Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel has had repercussions around the world. In Gaza itself the death toll is approaching 40,000 and the humanitarian crisis worsens every day. In the United States, as students are headed back to campus, colleges and universities are bracing for a new round of protests and counter protests. Israel's war in Gaza is dividing the Democratic Party just as Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are seeking to unite their party to stop Donald Trump from returning to the White House. Recent surveys show that 48% of Americans oppose Israel's military action in Gaza, while 42% support it.Guest - Larry Hebert [pronounced eh-BEAR], a very unlikely candidate to become an outspoken protestor against US military support for Israel, who would gain nationwide and international attention. Larry Hebert is a 26-year old U.S. Air Force Senior Airman and avionics technician assigned to Naval Station Rota in Spain, having served for 6 years in the military. At 10:00 am on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024 on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, Hebert began a hunger strike during an authorized leave from his post. Shortly before his hunger strike, he joined Veterans for Peace, an organization that opposes U.S. military actions.The organization argues that U.S. weapons shipments to Israel is a violation of U.S. law. In a press release issued by Veterans for Peace, the purpose of Hebert's hunger strike was described as highlighting "the plight of the starving children of Gaza." Hebert wore a sign that read, "Active duty airman refuses to eat while Gaza starves," with a photograph of an emaciated Palestinian infant. Hebert said he was inspired by the self-immolation of 25-year old serviceman Aaron Bushnell, who died on February 25, 2024 outside the Israeli embassy in Washington. Before he died, Bushnell declared he would "no longer be complicit in genocide" in Gaza. Hebert's hunger strike lasted 9 days but ended abruptly on April 9, when he was ordered to report immediately to Andrews Air Force Base for a return flight to his post in Spain. Hebert is pursuing a release from active duty as a Conscientious Objector.
Ralph Nader On Continuing War In GazaThe American supported Israeli war against the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza continues on since last October. The area, the size of Philadelphia, has been partially obliterated by American fighter planes, bombs, tanks, artillery shells, and bullets.The number of dead Palestinians is at least 186,000 according to a recent article in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently left Washington DC where he came to solidify support in our Congress. It was his fourth visit. Bidens support for the genocide has been vigorously challenged by Kamala Harris, his choice to replace him. Her election is doubtful. Donald Trump has vowed to finish the job."Guest - Ralph Nader, in a recent article wrote that the number the number of dead is higher than the 39 thousand figure set by Israel, America, and Hamas. Ralph Nader is an attorney, a significant figure in American politics, and a four-time presidential candidate in parties independent to the Republicans and Democrats. Ralph Nader one of the nations most effective and well-known social critics. He has raised public awareness and increased government and corporate accountability. As a young lawyer in 1965 he made headlines with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, leading to congressional hearings and passage of a series of life-saving auto safety laws in 1966. His example has inspired a generation of consumer advocates, citizen activists and public interest attorneys. Full biography.----Humanitarian Emergency In GazaAs of June 19, 2024, 37,396 people had been killed in Gaza according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. According to a report in Lancet, that number is likely an underestimate. Furthermore, the UN estimates that, by Feb 29, 2024, 35% of buildings in Gaza had been destroyed, so the number of bodies still buried in the rubble is likely substantial, with estimates of more than 10,000.Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the populations inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organizations still active in Gaza. Experts believe it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.Human rights groups believe an immediate and urgent ceasefire in Gaza is essential, accompanied by measures to enable the distribution of medical supplies, food, clean water, and other resources for basic human needs.Guest - Professor David Myers is Distinguished Professor of History at UCLA and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History. He serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy and he also directs the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate. He is the author or editor of many books in the field of Jewish history, including, with Nomi Stolzenberg, American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York published by Princeton University Press in 2022. It was awarded the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish studies. From 2018-2023, he served as president of the New Israel Fund.
Trump v United StatesOn July 1, the United States Supreme Court handed down one of the most important decisions in the history of our democracy. In the aptly named case of Trump verses United States, the six arch conservative justices awarded the ex-president - who appointed three of them - a vast and complex criminal immunity scheme.In three ways the majority delivered Trump a tailor made Stay-Out-of-Jail trifecta of expanded constitutional protections for Presidents: First, absolute immunity for crimes committed when a President engages in core official acts and a near-conclusive presumption of immunity for other official acts; Second, a brand new rule of criminal procedure making a Presidents motives irrelevant; and Third, another new rule excluding evidence of a Presidents official acts from a criminal trial for his unofficial acts, which prosecutors offer to prove the ex-presidents prior knowledge and intent.To help us understand exactly what the Court did and its impact not only on the 91 felony charges currently pending against Trump, but the future of the American presidency and our very democracy, we've ask one of our very own co-hosts.Guest - Stephen Rohde practiced constitutional law for almost 50 years. He's the author of American Words of Freedom, which examines the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. On issues of civil rights, civil liberties and the Americal political system, he is a regular contributor to Truthdig, LA Progressive, Los Angeles Review of Books, and LA Lawyer magazine. This Fall on Ms. Media, he is launching Speaking Freely: A First Amendment Podcast with Stephen Rohde.----The Palestinian Exception To The First AmendmentThe resistance organization Palestine Legal, headquartered in Chicago, was created by our own Michael Ratner and others to resist our governments practice of what Michael called the Palestinian exception to the first amendment.This exception to the supposedly protected First Amendment activity of speaking out and organizing by Palestinian solidarity activists is carried out by the repression of the US government nationally and locally. It has never been more ferocious than it is now.However, the mobilization against the Israeli genocide - carried out with total US support - has not been undeterred by peak anti-Palestinian repression. Palestine Legal has been in the vanguard in defending and promoting the rights of people expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.Guest " Dima Khalidi, founder and Director of Palestine Legal. Her work includes providing legal advice to activists, engaging in advocacy to protect their rights to speak out for Palestinian rights, and educating activists and the public about the repression of Palestine advocates. Prior to founding Palestine Legal in 2012, Dima worked with the Center for Constitutional Rights as a cooperating attorney on the Mamilla Cemetery Campaign, submitting a Petition to United Nations officials to stop the desecration of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, and advocating on behalf of Palestinian descendants of individuals interred in the cemetery.
A Brief History of Kill Lists, From Langley to LavenderTwo artificial intelligence systems are being used by Israel and the United States to compile kill lists of Palestinians in Gaza. They are called Lavender and Wheres Daddy. This has led to the indiscriminate slaughter of whole families and has killed mostly women and children. The CIA and the US military have always tried to use the latest data processing technology to identify and kill their enemies. The history of American government assassinations goes back to collaborating with ex-Nazi intelligent officers after World War II.Guest " Medea Benjamin, is co-founder of the international antiwar organization CODEPINK. She is the author of several books, including, with Nicholas J.S. Davies, War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as one of Americas most committed " and most effective " fighters for human rights by New York Newsday, and one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide.----A Trend In Abolishing Capital PunishmentA growing number of states have abolished capital punishment in recent years. However, the death penalty remains on the books in 27 states, although the number of executions in American is at an all-time low. It is well documented that the death penalty is riddled with fatal flaws. Literally, the flaws are denying defendants a fair trial and are killing innocent people. An average of 4 wrongly convicted death-row prisoners have been exonerated each year since 1973.According to recent research, jurors are three times more likely to recommend a death sentence for a black defendant than for a white defendant in a similar case. The death penalty does not serve as a deterrent. A study by the Death Penalty Information Center found that the South has consistently had by far the highest murder rate, yet the South accounts for more than 80% of all executions. The Northeast, which has fewer than 0.5% of all executions, has consistently had the lowest murder rate.Guest - Mike Farrell is the President of Death Penalty Focus, an organization on whose Board I've served for many years. Known to millions as B.J. Hunnicutt on televisions historic show MAS*H," he is also a writer, director and producer. A human rights activist for over 35 years, Mike has taken part in scores of aid missions and human rights delegations to countries all over the world. Mike has visited prisons and been personally involved in numerous death penalty cases across the U.S. for over three decades.
Defense for Children International " Palestine v. BidenThere are defendants in a lawsuit brought in the northern district of California called Defense for Children International" Palestine v. Biden. The plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and attorney Marc Vander Hout. Were going to talk about this lawsuit against President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Austin. This lawsuit follows a January 2024 historic hearing that included testimony from some Palestinian plaintiffs and witnesses to the scale of destruction in Gaza and its impact on their families and communities.Last week, a federal trial court in northern California found that Israels assault and siege of the Palestinian people in Gaza, possibly constituted genocide and implored the Biden administration to explain its unflagging support for Israel. Notwithstanding these findings, the court denied the Center for Constitutional Rights preliminary injunction motion and granted the governments motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that it lacked jurisdiction over the administration of foreign relations.The CCR appealed the decision. The appeal was argued on June 10, 2024.Guest " Attorney Katherine Gallagher is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights . Her areas of legal expertise include matters of torture, war crimes and militarism. Among her many major cases is the case titled, Situation of Afghanistan at the International Criminal Court; and the case titled, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests-v-Vatican. Prior to her work at the CCR, she worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia."-A Century Of Repression: The Espionage Act And Freedom Of The PressThese are dire times for freedom of speech around the world. According to a recently-released report, more than half of the worlds population now lives in countries that are in a state of crisis regarding freedom of speech. This is occurring during a year that has been marred by attacks on investigative journalism all over the world, which we have especially seen in elections in Mexico and India, as well as in the United States.Against this backdrop, the United States is only adding gasoline to a media-freedom fire by pursuing an ongoing prosecution and attempting to extradite WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange under a 100-year-old US law called the Espionage Act of 1917. This prosecution threatens to set a dangerous precedent for journalists everywhere during these perilous times.Guest " Carey Shenkman, is a constitutional lawyer and serves on a panel of experts at Columbia Universitys Global Freedom of Expression Program. He is co-author, along with Ralph Engelman, of A Century Of Repression: The Espionage Act And Freedom Of The Press. Carey has recently been appointed Legal and Policy Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression. [Source for 50% figure " Global Expression Report, published by the London-based free speech organization ARTICLE 19] https://www.globalexpressionreport.org/
I Am GitmoIts been 22 years since the United States opened its prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Specifically, it was four months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. And that was when we started seeing images of men and boys arriving there, bound and hooded, in orange jumpsuits, confined indefinitely without charges, legal process or trials. And it was not long after that we began hearing reports that the US government was using torture, and even that prisoners were dying there " again, without even being charged with any crime let alone tried by any court.The US justified its tactics as necessary to win the War on Terror. But UN Experts and human rights advocates globally have called for the US to close the facility due to its unrelenting human rights violations.In 2009, President Obama took steps to close Guantanamo but in 2018, Trump signed an executive order to keep it open. President Biden then came in, signaling hed close it, but the subject has been largely ignored ever since. Today, thirty prisoners remain. Where To Watch I Am Gitmo In TheatersGuest - Philippe Diaz, a filmmaker who is shining a spotlight on the humanity of the men and boys who have lived " and some who have died " in Guantanamo. His latest film, the award-winning I Am Gitmo, is a story about a Muslim schoolteacher in Afghanistan who was accused of being involved in the September 11th attacks and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay prison without charges or hope of being released. Philippe is not only the writer and director of I Am Gitmo, but he is also the founder of Cinema Libre Studio - a boutique film company created in 2003 with a consortium of partners to provide an alternative structure for intelligent, independent films to get developed, financed, produced and distributed.----22 Years of Guantanamo Bay Detention CenterThe notorious detention center at Guantanamo Bay is high among the most shameful steps taken during George W. Bush's War on Terror. It remains a symbol of lawlessness and human rights abuses. In a recent letter, 17 US Senators, argued that the detention facility continues to harm U.S. national security by serving as a propaganda tool for Americas enemies and hinder counterterrorism efforts and cooperation with allies.January 11 2024 marked the 22nd anniversary of Guantnamos opening. It has cost the United States $540 million each year. That's almost a total of $12 billion and counting. There are now still 30 men remaining in detention at Guantnamo"more than half of whom have not been charged with any crime and have been approved by US national security leadership for transfer out of Guantnamo. Some of these men have been approved for transfer for years, and at least one has been approved for transfer for more than a decade, yet these 16 men have continued to languish in indefinite detention. None of the innocent detainees has ever been compensated for their wrongful detention. Sadly, Guantanamo is but one example of the forms of torture which the United States engages in and supports.Guest - Rev. Ron Stief, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, who is the Executive Director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), an interfaith organization of more than 325 religious organizations committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture. Rev. Stief sits on the Steering Committee of Shoulder to Shoulder / Standing with American Muslims Upholding American Values, co-leads the national advocacy strategy of the Washington DC Interreligious Staff Community, and is a member of the Federal Anti-Solitary Task Force which works to end solitary confinement in federal prisons, jails and immigrant detention.
Counter Protest Tactics Attempt To Plague University Anti-Genocide EncampmentsAs the Israel-Gaza War rages on, protests have spread throughout American campuses as students oppose Israeli's military onslaught and the tragic humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Student have demanded a ceasefire, an end to US military support for Israel and that universities divest from Israel. In response, University officials have suspended and expelled students, banned pro-Palestinian student groups, called in the police and sent mixed messages on students' right to free speech. At UCLA, a group of counterprotesters launched a violent attack on pro-Palestinian protesters.Guest - Salam Al-Marayati, president and co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, where he oversees MPACs groundbreaking civic engagement, public policy, and advocacy work. Salam Al-Marayati is an expert on Islam in the West, Muslim reform movements, human rights, democracy, national security, and Middle East politics. He has spoken at the White House and on Capitol Hill and has represented the U.S. at international human rights and religious freedom conferences. He is very active in interfaith dialogue, which is where I first met him in the wake of 9/11 in my capacity as a leader of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.---- NYU Encampment and ArrestsIn early May, New York Police Department officers demolished pro-Palestinian encampments, and arrested 56 student protesters, at New York University and the New School. Officials at both universities enlisted the police their assistance in tearing down the tents.The NYU encampment was at the John A. Paulson Center on Bleecker Street. Professors there released a statement condemning the decision to call in the municipal police, calling it another shameful moment in NYU history that had put students at risk. NYUs Palestine Solidarity Coalition posted on social media: We have seen seven months of targeting pro-Palestinian speech on this campus, and thus cannot agree with the admins claims of acting in good faith.Supporting student protesters at several NYC campuses has been Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has called in to address them from Mahanoy state prison in Pennsylvania. Mumia has told students that they are on the right side of history by electing not to be silent and to speak out.Guest - Xavier Fitzsimmons-Cruz, Xavier recently earned his masters degree at NYU; this fall he will begin working toward his PhD in history at the City University of New York.
We remember cultural historian and scholar Bruce Franklin. H. Bruce Franklin, a regular guest here on Law and Disorder, passed away last week, on May 19, at the age of 90. He was one of the country's leading historians, and a scholar in American studies, science fiction, and other diverse fields. Bruce Franklin's memory lives on through his many books, and his hundreds of professional articles.---Crash Course : From the Good War to the Forever WarUS Army Ranger turned conscientious objector Rory Fanning recently wrote in this in The Guardian newspaper: Last week Sunday ,November 11, we celebrated Veterans Day. It used to be called Armistice Day and was a celebration of peace after the slaughter of World War One. Now it is called Veterans Day. The United States has 668 military bases around the globe. The United States has conducted military operations in 2/3 of the worlds countries since September 11, 2001. It has spent 3/4 of $1 trillion each year on its military " more than the next 13 countries combined. The US has taken hundreds of thousands of lives around the world these past 14 years and shows no signs of slowing down.Guest " H. Bruce Franklin, is one of Americas leading cultural historians, H. Bruce Franklin is the author or editor of nineteen books and more than 300 articles on culture and history published in more than a hundred major magazines and newspapers, academic journals, and reference works. He has given over five hundred addresses on college campuses, on radio and TV shows, and at academic conferences, museums, and libraries, and he has participated in making four films. He has taught at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, and Yale and currently is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark. Before becoming an academic, Franklin worked in factories, was a tugboat mate and deckhand, and flew for three years in the United States Air Force as a Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer.Professor Franklin is touring the country to speak about his just publish bookCrash Course : From the Good War to the Forever War.
The More Effective Of Two EvilsThe extensive growing repression and censorship in our country is manifest daily. Already some 3000 students have been arrested and many of their encampments on college campuses have been violently closed down. The leading newspaper, the New York Times, has instructed reporters not to use the words genocide or ethnic cleansing." Journalist Chris Hedges has been removed from The Real News Network for interviewing, Dennis Kucinich, the independent candidate for Congress in Ohio and for not supporting the presidential candidacy of Joe Biden.The necessity for independent political action, independent of both the Republican and the Democratic parties, is the lesson many social activists are drawing. The journalist, Glen Ford, of the Black Agenda Report , coined the phrase the more effective of two evils in describing the Democratic Party.The Democrats are trying to beat people into their camp by haranguing about how horrible Trump is. Thats true. But look at how effective Biden has been in supporting the Israeli genocide. It has only been the independent action of the courageous students that may succeed in tempering the onslaught. It has already had some effect. Activist are now focusing on the fact that it was the Democratic Party on a national and local scale that coordinated attacks on the Palestine solidarity encampments. Just as they did under Obama in closing down Occupy.The Democrats prevented Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination. Had he not supported the Democrats and became an independent our movement wouldve been much more effective than his lobbing Biden. He has been reduced to the edge of relevance. Significant social change comes from organizing people independently. The rise of the CIO, the civil rights movement and the movement to end the war in Vietnam are illustrations of this truth.In appreciating the role of the Democratic Party, social activists are increasingly concluding that independent, political action now will help us against Trump should he get elected. Conversely herding people in to supporting the Democratic Party will disarm us.Guest - Chris Hedges, the journalist and author about the collapsing media landscape, what happened to him at The Real News Network and how we preserve journalism. He spent two decades as a foreign correspondent serving as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. he is the author of 14 books including War is a Force That Gives us Meaning, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and The Death of the Liberal Class.----Early Detection: Catching Cancer When Its CurableThe war on cancer declared by President Richard Nixon over 50 years ago has been a failure. Mortality rates for victims of cancer have not decreased, except for the successful campaign against smoking.Attorney Michael Ratner, when he was the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, helped found Law And Disorder radio 20 years ago. We lost him to cancer eight years ago.Michaels younger brother Bruce Ratner has co-authored the book Early Detection: Catching Cancer When Its Curable. It Is dedicated to the memory of Michael Ratner. Bruce and Michael shared similar values. Over the years, cancer rates have pretty much remained the same. Very high. Particularly affected are poor people, rural people, and people of color.Most money spent on fighting cancer by big pharmaceutical companies goes into researching and developing medicines for late-stage cancers. These medicines have proven to only prolong life for several months. So, what is the answer to truly combating cancer? Early detection. And it must be quite early on.Funds currently misdirected could be used in this effort. Prostate, breast, colorectal, and lung cancers can be detected early. But too often they are not. Even when they are, many people dont follow up with treatment. A blood test has been developed to identify 50 different cancers. But what's missing is a massive program of education and organization to catch cancer in its early stages.Guest - Bruce Ratner studied science at Harvard, graduated from Columbia law school and then taught at NYU Law School. New York City Mayor John Lindsay appointed Bruce to be the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs. Bruce went on to develop real estate in Manhattan and Brooklyn and brought the first professional athletic team, the Brooklyn Nets, to Brooklyn, where he developed the Barclay Center. He also sits on the boards of Weil Cornell Hospital in Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. He has initiated the Michael D. Ratner Center for Early Detection of Cancer.
Free Speech: Protest Testing The Limits Of ProtectionAs controversy rages over protests, encampments, and arrests at hundreds of college campuses around the country, in reaction to the war in the Middle East, free speech is once again at the forefront of national debate. Time and again in American history, the nation has been gripped by the complex question of whether certain speech is or is not protected by the First Amendment. Recently, college presidents have been under fire for failing to protect free speech or for going too far in tolerating free speech. Some have been forced to resign and others have called in the police. Students have been attacked; others have been suspended; student political organizations have been banned. What's going on and where does the First Amendment fit into all this?Guest - Nadine Strossen, a leading expert on constitutional law and the First Amendment. Nadine Strossen is Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and served as President of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 until 2008. She is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education and is on the advisory boards of the ACLU, Academic Freedom Alliance, Heterodox Academy, National Coalition Against Censorship, and the University of Austin. The National Law Journal has named Strossen one of Americas "100 Most Influential Lawyers," and in 2023, the National Coalition Against Censorship selected her for its Judy Blume Lifetime Achievement Award for Free Speech.She is the author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018) and Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know (2023). Her book Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Womens Rights was named a New York Times notable book of 1995, and was republished this year as part of the New York University Press Classic series.
Police, Politics And Violent Repression Against Pro-Palestine Student ProtestDuring the Occupy Wall Street protests of late 2011 and early 2012, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a domestic terrorist threat. That was even though the Bureau acknowledged that organizers were calling for peaceful protests. Massive resources were deployed to track the movement, and FBI and counter-terrorism agents around the nation coordinated with local and federal law enforcement to track and gather intelligence, effectively serving as an arm for private business.More than a decade later, college administrators are calling local armed police"some in riot gear"to arrest and in many instances brutalize hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters in actions and encampments sweeping the nation. More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested over the last two weeks on campuses in states including Texas, Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, California and New Jersey. At UCLA, last week, after pro-Israel supporters carrying symbols of radical Jewish groups, not of student age, allegedly threw fireworks into a solidarity encampment, students defending the camp were attacked with stones and sticks. Yet, after an hour of violence, police standing nearby failed to intervene.Guest - attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and the Center for Protest Law and Litigation in Washington, DC. Mara is one of the nations leading litigators defending protesters and winning numerous reforms in police practices at mass assemblies and demonstrations.----Legacy of Protest At Columbia UniversityOne of the great events of the 60s is the Columbia student takeover of several key buildings on their campus in protest of the universitys complicity in the war against the Vietnamese people. The takeover was also a protest to building a gym in a public park in Harlem adjacent to Columbia University, considered to be a racist act.The student actions at Columbia brought down a terrific repression. Hundreds of students were arrested and beaten. Our own Michael Ratner, a cofounder of Law and Disorder, and a law student at Columbia, was also beaten by the police. For Michael, there was no turning back. He went on to become one of the great movement lawyers of his generation.Guest - anti-Vietnam war activist Eleanor Stein, like Michael, she was a student at the law school. Eleanor Stein went on to become an attorney, she is a climate change, environmental justice and human rights activist and advocate. She teaches climate change and human rights at the State University of New York, at Albany, and has just recorded a Continuing Legal Education session on this subject for the CUNY Law School. In addition, she facilitates international forums on climate change and energy. And for years, Professor Stein was an Administrative Law Judge at the NY state agency that regulates the energy industry.
Nationwide Peaceful Protests Against Genocide In PalestineAround the nation, peaceful campus protests against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza are spreading. And theyre meeting with a rash of arrests by local police departments, dozens of school suspensions, and evictions from student dormitories. Many of those evicted have been students of colors, students with disabilities, and first-generation students. In New York, the NYPD arrested 108 students at Columbia University, and gave them 14 minutes to gather their belongings and leave their dormitories. New York University erected a plywood wall around Gould Plaza, an outdoor campus space in Greenwich Village, where police had earlier arrested protesting students.All this because they took part at the large protest. Officials at Harvard University closed Harvard Yard in anticipation of possible protests and suspended the student group Palestine Solidarity Committee. Police arrested 9 students at the University of Minnesota for their refusal to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment. The California campus of Cal Poly Humboldt was shut down after students occupied a building. Shutitdown4Palestine.orgIn an April 23 letter to the New York Times, nearly 60parents of students at Columbia and Barnard, from a variety of religious faiths ad social backgrounds wrote that they find the actions taken by the administration deeply troubling and contrary to the principles of liberty, justice and academic freedom that are fundamental to the mission of higher education.Guest - Brian Becker is the director of the Answer Coalition, a founder of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and host of The Socialist Program.----Julian Assange Extradition Case UpdateRegarded by many as the greatest journalist of our generation for exposing American war crimes Julian Assange is about to be extradited at Americas request to a federal criminal court in Virginia to be tried for his journalistic activities which exposed extensive murderous American crimes and embarrassed the US government particularly the CIA.Julian was a young computer genius in Australia. He figured out a way to receive information from whistleblowers anonymously. This was done in order to protect them when his publication company WikiLeaks revealed to the world the activities of the CIA,the American military and U. S. diplomats.As published by WikiLeaks the Vault 7 revelations exposed the CIA had developed technologies to turn cell phones into listening devices, even when turned off and tap our personal computers, and even control our automobiles. WikiLeaks exposed American torture in Afghanistan. They published a video of an American gunship helicopter murdering Iraqi civilians, even children, and two Reuters journalists on the streets of Baghdad.Julian was given political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he holed up for seven years. Then five years ago the British police at Americas request removed him from the embassy and put him into solitary confinement in the notorious Belmarsh Prison.Now the United States has succeeded in getting a compliant British court to extradite Julian , despite the law, preventing extradition of political prisoners, especially to a country that has the death penalty, and no guarantee of free speech for foreigners.Guest - Vincent De Stefano is the National Organizing Director of the U.S. Julian Assange Defense Committee. Mr. De Stefano is on the Southern California ACLU board of directors and executive committee and he has worked with Amnesty International for more than four decades.
It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor StoriesAround the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings"beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients"render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government their sole opportunity, one unprecedented to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget the senseless slaughter of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it, the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
Can President Donald Trump Be President Again?Last year the U.S. Supreme Court became the most conservative it has been in 90 years, with conservative justices controlling decisions with a comfortable 6-3 majority. We can no longer take any Constitutional rights or liberties we thought we had for granted. Prior Supreme Court rulings that aimed at ensuring fairness, equal opportunity, reproductive freedom, and a participatory government"including for those who were not born into the favored, elite classes"are now at great risk.Today, with the help of Stephen Rohde, our favorite constitutional scholar as our guest, we examine two very important constitutional issues: first, the question of: How safe is freedom of the press in our country today? We do this by looking at the new challenges being leveled at the landmark 1964 case, New York Times v. Sullivan, a case granting protection to a newspaper when it prints a libelous story about a public official or public figure but does so without actual malice. Is that press protection about to disappear? Then, we change gears a bit and ask our guest about the currently much-discussed question flowing from the fact that former President Donald Trump, now faces criminal charges for seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election.The question stemming from this is: Does Sec. Three of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution stating that any American official who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution is disqualified from holding any future office if they, and I quote, engaged in insurrection or rebellion or provided aid and comfort to our enemies mean that Trump is now disqualified from becoming president again? The Constitution does not spell out how to enforce this ban, It was applied twice in the late 1800s, when it was used against former members of the Confederacy. Today, a number of State Attorneys Generals, and others, are contemplating this question and, in a few cases, preparing to take the matter to court, given their belief that Trump should now, because of his actions on and around the January 6th insurrection, be disqualified from holding any future federal office.Guest - Stephen Rohde recently published a fabulous review of a new book by Samantha Barbas, titled Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York v. Sullivan. Steve Rohde is a writer, lecturer, and political activist who practiced civil rights, civil liberties, and intellectual property law for almost 50 years. He is past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and a co-founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, while also playing a leadership role in many other organizations. He writes book reviews for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ms. Magazine, and Truthdig.org. And his articles appear regularly in many online publications.----A Sleeping Giant In American PoliticsWe are in the midst of a labor upsurge. One with the promise of delivering not only better wages, and working conditions, but the prospects of wider positive social change. There is a new fighting spirit in the land, expressed by this rise in labor militancy.We can look back five years ago to the beginning of the upsurge in teacher militancy in red states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, and Arizona, where teachers struck, often illegally, to better not only their situation, but that of the communities they lived in. This upsurge has continued.Recently, we have seen the great success of the Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, coming together to form a union and Starbucks workers across the country have also unionized. Meanwhile, the writers and actors in the Hollywood movie and television industry have been on strike for several months. The Democratic party, which get a lot of money from the entertainment industry, has not lifted a finger to help them.The unemployment rates for actors is 90% and only 2% of them can make a living out of acting.Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney said They no longer pay actors what they used to and with streamers you no longer get substantial residuals." Eighty percent of the union makes less than $26,000 a year, not enough to qualify for union health insurance.The captains of finance and industry run and control the Democratic Party. They made sure that Bernie Sanders did not get the nomination in 2016 and 2020. The leadership of the labor movement most often supports the Democratic party, explaining that they are the lesser of two evils. The late great journalist, Glen Ford called the Democratic Party, the more effective of two evils. He would have cited as proof of this the Biden administrations recent intervention which prevented the powerful railroad workers union from going on strike this summer.Guest - Al Bradbury is the editor of Labor Notes and an advocate and practitioner of labor militancy. Labor Notes is a media and organizational project since 1978 that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back into the labor movement. Editor, Al Bradbury join the staff of Labor Notes in 2012 after working with hospital workers as a researcher and organizer for the Service Employees local 49 in Oregon.Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith, Jim Lafferty and Maria Hall
Tompkins Square Park Police Riot 35th Anniversary SpecialThirty five years ago, a singular event occurred in Manhattans East Village that would prove transformative to many lives for years to come. Today on Law and Disorder we bring you a special program on the August 1988 Tompkins Square Park Police Riot as recounted by several individuals who were there for the entire event. We share firsthand observations of unbridled police violence, talk about how we came to be there, and discuss how the riot marked the linchpin to transform an entire neighborhood from a mecca of creativity and political activism, to the new home of TARGET, Starbucks and other hallmarks of American gentrification.Tompkins Square Park is bounded on the West and East by Avenues A and B, and on the North and South by 10th Street and 7th Streets. It falls in the part of that neighborhood often referred to as Alphabet City, named for its 4 Alphabet numbered avenues, that in the 1960s and 1970s were a haven for drug sellers and squatters and a large Puerto Rican community. The park had a history of activism as it was the site of a riot in 1874 on behalf of the citys labor movement.In 1988, a homeless encampment was erected in the park, attracting a wide range of activists, squatters, and homeless persons. Several local residents complained and in a controversial move, the local governing body, Community Board 3, on June 28, approved a 1 AM curfew from what had long been a 24-hour open park. The Avenue A Block Association supported the curfew as it represented the few local businesses that existed then. Many residents opposed the curfew, including those who would have to take a longer walk around the park to get home.The New York City City Parks Department agreed to enforce the curfew, and on July 31, 1998 protesters gathered at a rally there. Police, responding to alleged noise complaints, entered the park. A skirmish ensued, and several civilians and six officers were treated for injuries. Four men were arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and inciting to riot.
A Few Things Oppenheimer Leaves Out
The atomic bomb was developed by physicist, J, Robert Oppenheimer and his team in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was dropped unnecessarily on the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 8, 1945. It was a war crime.
The summer blockbuster bio-pic Oppenheimer does not tell this truth to the tens of thousands of people who have gone to see the movie. Historians have established that it was not necessary to stop the war because the Japanese were ready to surrender. Therefore the justification that it saved American lives because troops would not have to fight on the Japanese homeland is false. These two premises, thats the bomb was necessary, and that it save lives is a lie obscured then, and carried forward till today.
The Cold War against Russia started on August 6 and August 8, 1945 when the US dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities to scare the Russians. The movie does not show the effects of the nuclear bomb. Between 200 and 300,000 old people, children, and women were instantly incinerated. Hundreds of thousands got sick and died from radiation poisoning.
Oppenheimer was a great physicist. And a humanist. Although, not a member, he sympathized with the U.S. Communist Party because of their anti-fascism, anti-racism, and union building.
He had second thoughts about what he did in developing the bomb and told President Truman in a meeting at the White House that he felt like he had blood on his hands and that in the future, nuclear weapons should be placed under international controls. Truman threw him out of his office, calling him a crybaby. Because of his association with the Communist Party Oppenheimer was red baited, denied a security clearance, and ruined. He died young and broken.
The danger of red baiting in our country now is quite high. Trump is running on a platform, calling for American born socialists to be deported. The US Congress, with the support of many Democrats, overwhelmingly voted for a resolution denouncing what is it called the horrors of Socialism. Andrew's Substack article
Guest - Andrew Cockburn, Washington DC-based journalist and author of Spoils of War: Power, Profit, and the American War Machine. Verso Books 2021. Washington Editor at Harper's Magazine
Peace Movement Attacks And A Renewed War With Korea?
Many political commentators believe the driving force behind growing U.S. actions and hostility towards China are being carried out in preparation for war with China; war with China if China cannot otherwise be contained as it more and more challenges the might and global reach of the United States. Indeed, China already now has the second largest economy in the world and is on track to soon surpass that of the United States. A McCarthyite redbaiting hit piece on the front page of the New York Times on August 6th, against the peace group CODEPINK, and others who are organizing against the growing demonization of China, is a particularly troubling sign. So, we will ask our guest: is a war with China inevitable? Does not the fact that China, as well as the U.S., are nuclear weaponized nations make such a war unthinkable?
We will also ask our guest Ann Wright about Korea. Korea, with its claimed right to possess nuclear weapons, has also been the target of administrations from both parties. The Korean War ended in 1953. And yet thousands of U.S. troops are still stationed in South Korea and, of course, there is still no peace treaty, no true formal ending of the war, and so the country still remains divided. And those who advocate for peace in Korea are also sharply criticized and redbaited by the U.S. government, and in the press.
Is a renewed war with Korea also a possibility? Our guest, as I said is none other than Col. Ann Wright, now retired. Col. Wright is also a retired U.S. State Department official, known for her outspoken opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq. Ann Wright received the State Department Award for Heroism, in 1997, for helping to evacuate thousands of people during the war in Sierra Leone.
Guest " Ann Wright is a 29-year US Army/Army Reserves veteran, a retired United States Army colonel and retired U.S. State Department official, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She is most noted for having been one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Wright was also a passenger on the Challenger 1, which along with the Mavi Marmara, was part of the Gaza flotilla. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book Dissent: Voices of Conscience. She has written frequently on rape in the military. VoicesofConscience
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith, Jim Lafferty and Maria Hall
Judge Rejects CACI's Attempt To Dismiss Torture Case
In April 2003, the George W. Bush administration led an illegal invasion of Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. That war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. After the invasion, there was a mass roundup of Iraqis " primarily men and boys " with no plan or proper basis for detention. The United States then turned to contractors (mercenaries) to assist with interrogationsand provide interpretation services, many of whom lacked proper training. Indeed, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the most outsourced in U.S. history. It was against this backdrop that the horrors we all saw in the photos of Abu Ghraib happened.
In Iraq, unlike Guantanamo (and the CIA blacksites), there was never any question that the Geneva Conventions applied - and torture was illegal. CACI, a U.S. corporation, contracted with the United States military to provide interrogation services to the U.S. Army at Iraqs notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
In 2008, Iraqi civilians Suhal Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili, and Asa'ad Al-Zubae filed a lawsuit against CACI under the Alien Tort Statute seeking damages for the torture and abuse they suffered while detained at Abu Ghraib. The three plaintiffs allege that CACI employees conspired with and aided and abetted U.S. military personnel in subjecting them to torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and war crimes, in violation of international law. A U.S. Army General called their treatment sadistic, blatant, and wanton.
On July 31, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia rejected CACIs attempts to have the case dismissed.
Guest - Katherine Gallagher is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she specializes in the enforcement of human rights, including the prohibition against torture. She is one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit against CACI.
Three of Newburgh Four Released
On July 25, a judge ordered the compassionate release of three of the so-called Newburgh Four -- Onta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen. The men, who are Black Muslims from Newburgh, New York, were convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges in 2011.
In the July release order, US District Court Judge Colleen McMahon suggested that the FBI had invented a conspiracy. She said that FBI agents had used an unscrupulous operative to persuade the four to join in a plan to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx and fire Stinger missiles at military planes at Stewart Airport near Newburgh, New York. While bombs were, in fact, left outside a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, they were fakes built by the FBI.
Guest - Kathy Manley, New York appellate attorney joins us to talk about this late-in-coming victory. Among her many victories was the 2015 case of People v. Diack, which struck down county and local sex offender residence restrictions throughout New York State. Kathy works with several civil rights groups, including the Coalition Of Civil Freedoms.
The Coming War On China
Today we re-broadcast a recent interview we did with the great Australian journalist John Pilger about his film titled The Coming War On China. With the exception of a short break at the conclusion in 1975 of the Vietnamese war, the United States has been at war continually. The momentum of what President Eisenhower warned us against and described as being led by, the military industrial complex has been going on with successive wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now the American proxy war in Ukraine. The military industrial complex has been augmented by support from the CIA, Congress, and the corporate media.
As Pilger demonstrates, the United States, is building up for a war against China. This build up is both military and ideological and shaped by hostile propaganda. In this respect, an alarming full page New York Times article, 11 weeks in the making, and written by seven reporters, appeared on August 5, 2023. The article targeted the American peace organization CODEPINK as well as one of its financial backers. It is a hit piece that has alarmed many of us in the movement. John Pilger gives us the background to it.
Guest " John Pilger covered that war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Another 1 million people died in the Iraq war That war was based on the now well known lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was going to use against us and that he was responsible for 911. A similar campaign of fear mongering is going on now about China. The major news media parrot the governments fact free line that China is our enemy. In his article The Coming War With China John Pilger wrote a US war against China beckons and we have a responsibility to speak out. We know what is coming. Silence must be broken.
Greenwashing Climate Change
As the US presidential election season heats up, so too does the planet. July 2023 was the Earths hottest month on record, and as climate scientist Friederike Otto told the Associated Press, We should not care about July because its a record, but because it wont be a record for long. Its an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.
Indeed, millions of people are suffering at this very moment because of extreme weather, including unrelenting, deadly heat. One might expect that during election season, presidential candidates would be champing at the bit to promote their fabulous plans to save human life on earth, or at least slow its demise, right? I mean, who else has so much influence over changing the course of history than the President of the United States? Well, on the GOP side, the presidential hopefuls have mostly ignored the climate crisis, and some even dismiss it outright as a left-wing hoax.
On the Democrats side, we have Joe Biden. Now Biden does not shy away from admitting we have a problem. He appeared for an exclusive interview on the Weather Channel last week, calling climate change the number one issue facing humanity, and that combating climate change is a core tenet of his presidency.
Well, it might be a core tenet " a core principle and belief " but has that translated into action? When push comes to shove, in the office of President " and before that in the office of Vice President " has Joe Biden done everything he can to save humanity? Or is he just stating the obvious, because its what he thinks thats what voters want to hear, but is he in any rush to make changes that might alienate big oil and other corporate interests? And what about when he was Vice President, during the Obama administration, which set the stage for the Biden presidency? Do we even remember anymore?
Guest " Andrew Perez, not only remembers, but he has tracked and documented the forks in the road where the Obama Administration could have, but chose not to, take actions that could have slowed the warming of our planet. Andrew Perez is an investigative reporter and senior editor for The Lever, which was just awarded the 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement by Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College for its relentless work exposing the corrupting influence of corporate power on government and both major parties. The Center specifically highlighted Andrews work for exposing the largest known political donation in U.S. history " Chicago businessman Barre Seids $1.6 billion dark money transfer to conservative operative Leonard Leo who served as Donald Trumps judicial advisor. Andrew relentlessly pursues hypocrisy and corruption among all of the powers-that-be, wherever they fall on the political spectrum: left-right-or-center.
Julian Assange and Press Freedom
Facing the possibility of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assanges imminent extradition to the United States, Reporters Without Borders recently launched a week of advocacy meetings and a mobile truck through the streets of Washington DC to urgently call for his release.
The actions were organized after UK High Court Judge Jonathan Swift in June rejected Assanges appeal against the UKs order of extradition to the United States. Assange, who is being targeted for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes, is the first publisher prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. He faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Rebecca Vincent, Director of Campaigns for Reporters Without Borders said: US policymakers still have the power and the opportunity to make a difference in this case and take a stand for the protection of journalism and press freedom. Our call on the Biden administration is more urgent than ever before: drop the charges, close this case, and free Assange!
Reporters Without Borders is the only non-governmental organization to have monitored Assanges entire extradition proceedings despite extensive barriers to observation. In April 2023, its Secretary-General Christophe Deloire and Rebecca Vincent were arbitrarily barred from visiting Assange in Belmarsh prison where hes been held for more than four years. Reporters Without Borders continues to seek access to the prison and campaign globally for Assanges release.
Guest - Clayton Weimers, executive director of the US office of Reporters Without Borders. Clayton was previously the organizations Washington-Based Deputy Director for Advocacy.
63rd Anniversary Agent Orange Day
Although the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the debilitating effects of Agent Orange. Thats the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. military sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971. Agent Orange poisoned both the people and the land of Vietnam. On August 10, Agent Orange Day, we mark the 63rd anniversary of the first spraying of the toxic chemical on Vietnam.
Descendants of the roughly 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans exposed to Agent Orange and other toxins still suffer. They register disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of several diseases. U.S. veterans receive some limited compensation from the U.S. government, but very little if any assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, the intended victims targets of the defoliant Agent Orange.
The Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2023 will be introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California). If passed, the bill would increase benefits to children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. It would also expand research about Agent Orange and its effects on the health of exposed individuals; and provide medical, housing and poverty reduction aid to Vietnamese people, and their children, affected by exposure. And it would help to clean up the many remaining dioxin hot spots in Vietnam.
Guest - Paul Cox served in the U.S. Marines during the Vietnam War. He now serves on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, a project of Veterans for Peace (on whose board Paul also sits). We are fortunate to have Paul with us today to discuss the horrific legacy of what the Vietnamese people call The American War and the campaign to provide compensation for the victims of Agent Orange. HR3518 Victims Of Agent Orange Relief Act 2021 VN-agentorange.org
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn, and Julie Hurwitz
Lawyers Youll Like " Attorney Mel Wulf
Mel Wulf died at age 95 on July 1, 2023. He was one of the great constitutional litigators of his time. He served as Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. Today we bring you a re-broadcast of an interview that attorney Michael Ratner, and I, Michael Smith, did with Mel 10 years ago for a segment we called Lawyers Youll Like. It is a scintillating fast paced discussion with a relevance to our situation now
Were joined today by Attorney Mel Wulf, former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. He was a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more. Wulf was part of some of the greatest contributions to the civil rights movement. Hes now retired after practicing law for 54 years. As part of our Lawyers Youll Like series, we talk with Wulf about his work with the ACLU during the early 60s, and also about the forming of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee.
Guest " Attorney Mel Wulf, former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. He was a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more. Wulf was part of some of the greatest contributions to the civil rights movement. Hes now retired after practicing law for 54 years.
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Lawyers Youll Like: Attorney Bill Schaap
Attorney Bill Schaap, who died in 2016, was a friend and colleague of Mel Wulfs. Bill and his wife, Ellen Ray published the historic whistleblowing magazine Covert Action Quarterly that exposed to CIA. Then they started Sheridan Square Press. They published a number of memoirs of former CIA agents who revealed the truth about the activities of the CIA. Ex-CIA agent Phil Agee was one of Sheridan Square Press authors. He wrote Inside The Company which exposed the names of some 200 CIA agents involved in nefarious activities in South America. Mel Wulf represented Agee for 30 years and unsuccessfully tried to get his passport back when the government had it taken away.
Attorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70s and 80s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.
Guest " Attorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70s and 80s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.
In addition to being a practicing lawyer, Bill was a journalist, publisher and a writer specializing in intelligence as it relates to media. He was the co-publisher of a magazine called the Covert Action Quarterly for more than 20 years. He also published a magazine on propaganda and disinformation titled Lies Of Our Times. Attorney Bill Schapp has written numerous articles and edited many books on the topic of media and intelligence.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Ratner, Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian
The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
In 2012, journalist Michael Scott Moore went to Somalia to research a book on piracy. He was abducted by a gang of Somali pirates, who demanded $20 million from the US government. After protracted negotiations, and a payment of $1.6 million dollars, Moore was released"two and a half years later. His international bestseller, The Desert and the Sea, chronicles his 977 days in captivity.
More than a decade later, this past February, two men were convicted in federal court for helping to carry out his kidnapping.
On April 1, Michael sailed with a German rescue ship The Humanity I to write about migration across the central Mediterranean. In a recent piece published in Foreign Policy, Michael makes the connection between human trafficking and migration/asylum-seeking and pirating.
Guest " Michael Scott Moore, in addition to The Desert and the Sea, he has written the highly acclaimed book, Sweetness and Blood, about the history of surfing. He serves on the board of Hostage US, an organization that supports American hostages and their families.
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Nobodys Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.
In January 2019 New York State passed a bill to outlaw revenge porn, joining 41 other states that have passed similar laws. Revenge Porn is the term for the non-consensual sharing on the Internet of sexually explicit photographs or videos. Victims say it can be as damaging as any other form of abuse, but without the legal protections.
Private images can follow victims for years, turning up when employers or romantic partners search for their names on the Internet.
But in New York, victims have experienced years of helplessness in the courts. Prosecutors could not charge offenders for a practice that was not illegal, and judges turned down appeals for help on the grounds of free speech, even while other states were enacting protections. Under New Yorks new law, offenders can be punished by up to one year in jail.
The law also allows victims to sue the person who shared the revenge porn, which about a dozen other states also allow. And it would be the first in the nation to allow judges to order websites or social media platforms " in addition to the original poster " to take down the photos or videos.
Most have heard about high-profile instances of sexual images as blackmail or revenge have involving the rich and famous, such as singer Rihanna and actor Jennifer Lawrence. But it affects millions of people, from middle school students to Marines. As many as 10 million Americans have been victims of revenge porn.
Guest " New York Attorney Carrie Goldberg started a law firm to focus on defending victims of the practices. She has just come out with her first book titled Nobodys Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.
War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine
From Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria and on to little known deployments in a range of countries worldwide, the United States has been at perpetual war for at least the past two decades. Yet many of these foreign wars remain off the radar of average Americans.
We speak today with author and political analyst Norman Solomon about his new book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine.
Solomon writes that since the attacks on 9/11, more than 20 years ago, first in the war in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, a hugely consequential shift in (United States) American foreign-policy was set in motion: a perpetual state of war that is almost entirely invisible to the public. Solomon exposes how this happened and what the consequences are, for military and civilian casualties, and the draining of resources at home.
Compliant journalist add to the smokescreen by providing narrow coverage of military engagements, and by repeating the military's talking points. Meanwhile, the increased use of high technology, air power, and remote drones has put distance between soldiers and the civilians killed in action. Back home, Solomon shows, the cloak of invisibility masks massive Pentagon budgets and receive bi-partisan support even as housing, medical care, education, and infrastructure goes abegging.
Guest - Norman Solomon is cofounder of RootsAction.org executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. Hes written many books, but War Made Invisible, is his first one in 15 years. Solomon founded the Institute for Public Accuracy in 1997 and is its executive director. Immersed in anti-war, social justice and environmental movements since the late 1960s, he is the author of a dozen books including "War Made Easy" and "Made Love, Got War."
Israel Attacks West Bank City of Jenin
On fourth of July, as we in the US heard fireworks, people in the Palestinian city of Jenin heard real gunfire and fled from real explosions. On July 3, a thousand Israeli Defense Force soldiers descended on the city, with helicopters, drones and bulldozers, to execute a two day bombardment that leveled the city, reduced its buildings to rubble, damaged hospitals, knocked out utilities, and left at least 13 people dead: 12 Palestinians and 1 Israeli soldier. At least 100 were wounded, and now thousands " about 80% of those living in the camp " are without shelter, water or electricity.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres immediately condemned Israel for using excessive force and harming civilians. Hes refused to retract his statement even under enormous pressure from Israels UN Ambassador, who called Mr. Guterres criticism, shameful, far-fetched and completely detached from reality.
A handful of Arab countries and a European Union envoy have also criticized Israel. But others like the US? Well. its silence speaks volumes.
Guest " Sandra Tamari is a Palestinian organizer and the Executive Director of Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian advocacy organization that builds toward collective liberation through labor, cultural, and legislative campaigns.She holds a Masters degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. In May 2012, she was jailed and denied entry into Palestine by Israel because of her work to encourage U.S. churches to divest from the occupation.
How Affirmative Action Programs In Colleges and Universities Were Overturned
On June 28, the Supreme Court made front page headlines for gutting race-based affirmative action in colleges and universities. The decision rejected race-conscious admissions at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina. The Courts conservative supermajority ruled in favor of Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit founded in 2014, that sued Harvard and the University of North Carolina over their admissions programs. The group, headed by right-wing activist Edward Blum, alleged that the programs violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against Asian American applicants in favor of white applicants.
Paving the way for overturning 40-years of legal precedent was one group that weve covered for years on Law and Disorder: The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. This conservative, libertarian organization advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Over several decades, until recently working under the radar, the Federalist Society has dramatically altered the legal landscape in this country.
Guest - civil rights attorney Michael Avery, co-author with Danielle McLaughlin of the 2013 book, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, and a recent article in Truthout co-authored with Prof. Mark Brodin on the Federalist Societys attacks on affirmative action. Professor Emeritus at Suffolk University Law School, Michael was president of the National Lawyers Guild and served as president of the board of the National Police Accountability Project.
Heres What Moore v. Harper Means for Voting Rights Going Forward
On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case that protected voting rights from an obscure theory that could have eliminated the right of state courts to review new voting provisions enacted by state legislatures.
In Moore v. Harper, a 6-member majority of the high court rejected the independent state legislature doctrine. Conservative legislators in North Carolina had sought to maintain an extreme gerrymandered congressional map they had drawn that favored Republicans.
Although Chief Justice John Roberts has a track record of decisions that weakened the right to vote, he wrote the Courts opinion in Moore, as well as in Allen v. Milligan on June 8, both of which strengthen voting rights.
Guest - Marjorie Cohn wrote the article titled, Heres What Moore v. Harper Means for Voting Rights Going Forward, that was published by Truthout. Marjorie is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She is also on the advisory boards of Veterans for Peace, Assange Defense, and the American Association of Jurists. She writes frequent articles and provides commentary about legal and political issues. Marjories most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.
Indictments Unsealed Against Julian Assange
Press freedom is under constant attack both in the US and across the world. One of the highest profile battles on this front has been the one waged against award-winning Australian journalist, publisher, and founder of the nonprofit media organization, Wikileaks: Julian Assange.
In 2010, in partnership with five newspapers, Wikileaks published a series of documents and other media provided by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including classified documents evidencing war crimes committed by US forces during its war in Iraq. The US has since unsealed indictments against Assange, charging him with a number of crimes that well be discussing today.
Currently, Assange is languishing in a maximum-security prison in London, struggling to maintain his physical health, his sanity, and his connections with loved ones. And in the meantime, an international movement of human rights and press freedom advocates are desperately fighting for his freedom, and against his potential extradition to the United States.
Guest - Stephen Rohde is a constitutional law scholar, author and past Chair of the ACLU of Southern California. Hes also founder and Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace and a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, TruthDig and LA Progressive.
Weaponizing Antisemitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn
Asa Winstanley has written an important book titled Weaponizing Antisemitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. His book has a lessons for those working for social justice in the United States.
Corbyn and the socialists in the Labor party in England were crushed by the mounting of a massive campaign cynically labeling Corbyn as an antisemite. It was a preposterous charge that stuck. The neo- liberal Labor party changed after the influx of several hundred thousand young people and elected long time socialist activist, Jeremy Corbyn as its leader in 2015.
Despite the huge campaign against him, led by the Israeli lobby, Corbyn was almost elected as the Prime Minister in 2017. Had he won, the history, not only of England, but of the world wouldve been different. Over the years Corbyn became popular especially among hundreds of thousands of young people who had recently joined the labor party.
He got his start in the trade union movement. He spoke out against racism and fascism and for immigrant rights. He opposed privatization cuts, and austerity. He campaigned against wars and military occupations. Asa Winstanley writes that probably more than anything else, Corbyn was known among activists for his involvement in the Palestine, solidarity movement.
The possibility of Corbyn being elected terrified the right and its allies. The Israeli lobbys campaign against Corbyn got help from British intelligence, the entire British media, the right wing of the Labor party and even the CIA.
The most powerful, well-healed part of the American pro-Israeli Lobby is AIPAC, The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. Justice Democrats wrote that it is a sinister right wing group. They supported Donald Trump, endorsed 106 insurrection Republicans, and spent millions to defeat progressives targeting and trying to intimidate black and brown women candidates across the country, threatening to spend against them if they even slightly criticize Israels far right apartheid policies. They conflate criticism of the Israeli apartheid state of with antisemitism.
Guest - Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and author who writes primarily about Palestine and the Israeli lobby. He lives in London. He is an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada, the worlds leading Palestinian news site in the English language. Asa Winstanley is cohost of The Electronic Intifada.
Peace Plan? Biden Administration Continues Full Support In Escalating Ukraine War
Sixteen months ago, Russia launched an illegal invasion of Ukraine, albeit in the context of a history of threats to its security by NATO countries. It is estimated that as of February, Russia has suffered 189,500 to 223,000 casualties and Ukraine has suffered 124,500 to 131,000 casualties.
Meanwhile, the United States and its allies continue to provide Ukraine with all the weapons it requests and impose increasingly harsh sanctions on Russia. But there appears to be little appetite in the U.S. for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the bloodshed.
Guest " Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she is the director of the New Internationalism Project and works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Todays UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
Peace In Ukraine: Peace Groups Convene In Vienna Austria To End Ukraine War
For the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, peace groups from around the world convened -- on June 10 and 11 in Vienna, Austria. Their mission was to discuss creative solutions and to promote negotiations to the Russia-Ukraine war. Groups included the International Peace Bureau, CODEPINK, Europe for Peace, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Peace in Ukraine Coalition, Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security, and several Austrian peace groups. Conference attendees grappled with controversial issues related to Russia's aggressive invasion of Ukraine.
Representatives discussed the devastating consequences of this war on their countries. The conference concluded with an urgent global appeal, the "Vienna Declaration for Peace," calling on all sides to work toward a ceasefire and negotiations. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright noted, For those of us in the U.S., it is important to remind our elected leaders that we want peace in our world, not war, and for them to get moving on peace talks. The former U.S. diplomat added, The U.S. is a belligerent in this war, just like Russia and Ukraine, and our taxes are funding the deaths of Ukrainians and Russians.
Guest - Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the international antiwar organization CODEPINK. She is the author of several books, including, with Nicholas J.S. Davies, War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as one of Americas most committed " and most effective " fighters for human rights by New York Newsday, and one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide.
Remembering South Dakota Senator Jim Abourezk
South Dakota senator Jim Abourezk was an important figure in American politics. He died four months ago at age 92. Abourzeck was the son of immigrants from Lebanon. He grew up on the Rosebud Sioux Indian reservation. Politically he was part of the radicalization of the 60s. He served one term in the US House of Representatives and another in the United States Senate. Elected in 1973, Abourezk fought for policies that are crucially relevant today. He was against American imperial power and opposed the war in Vietnam. He tried to rein in the murderous CIA. He attempted to break up the powerful of big oil companies. He fought for Native American rights, normalization of American relations with Cuba, a government the USA has been trying to overthrow since the Cuban revolution of 1959.
After six years, despite extreme pressure from those who supported him, he left the Senate. disgusted by the power wielded by the monied influence of big business. Jim Abourezk went back to South Dakota and back to the his law practice. Jim Abourezk founded the Arab-American anti-discrimination committee because of the oppression Arabs faced both of United States and abroad, particularly in Palestine.
Guest " Charlie Abourezk, from Rapid City, South Dakota and is a trial attorney, longtime activist and community organizer in the native American community in South Dakota. He is also a documentary film maker, his most recent is the feature length documentary A Tattoo On My Heart: The Warriors of Wounded Knee 1973 which played on public television stations around the United States. He is the current Chief Justice of the Rosebud Sioux Tribes Supreme Court and a member of the South Dakota Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights. His client base is made up largely of Native Americans, tribal schools and Indian tribal governments, but he also represents plaintiffs in civil rights litigation.
Guest - Alya James - Architectural Designer living in New York City.
Former San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin Teaching At Berkeley Criminal Law and Justice Center
We turn to the subject of the criminal justice system " or, as a growing number of advocates refer to it, the criminallegalsystem. One reason for the name change is because its clear that our system of policing, prosecuting, judging, and sentencing rarely brings aboutjustice. After all, our system was born nearly 250 years ago, at a time when slavery was legal and only white men with property could participate in public life, including voting. Non-white people were thought of as less than human, and women were afforded little if any autonomy apart from the men in their lives.
Since then, weve tried to correct course with laws and constitutional amendments that aim to protecteveryoneequallyfrom the abuse of government power. But real-world statistics show that still " in 2023 " the criminal legal system does not treat all defendants equally, and not all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Black men, for example, are arrested more, charged more, and given higher sentences than others in similar circumstances.
Guest - Chesa Boudin, founding executive director of Berkeley Laws new Criminal Law & Justice Center is embarking on a new journey to study, brainstorm, experiment and transform for the better how the criminal legal system operates. He is uniquely suited for this new role, since hes had experience not only in the public defenders office representing criminal defendants, but also as the former District Attorney of San Francisco. And hes unique in the legal profession for another reason: when he was just 14 months of age, he was separated from his parents, radical activists David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin. They were serving very long prison sentences for their part in an armored truck robbery which went astray and where three people killed. He saw firsthand the harmful impact of incarceration on those inside, as well as their families, communities, and society as a whole. These experiences informed his studies as a Rhodes scholar and as a student at Yale, his work as a lawyer, and most importantly, as a devoted husband, father and son. @berkeleylawcljc
The SuperMajority : How the Supreme Court Divided America,
In late June 2022, a package of Supreme Court decisions drastically altered the nations legal landscape and divided the nation. It took just three days to roll back some of the most consequential gains for civil rights, voting, the separation of church and state, a womans right to choose, and more.
In his new book The SuperMajority : How the Supreme Court Divided America, Michael Waldman offers an in-depth analysis of the 2022 key rulings and the radical ways in which they were crafted. He provides historical context for how the Supreme Court has amassed power far beyond what the Framers intended, and how the current supermajority ascended to the high court. Waldman also points to previous Courts (on both the right and the left) that overreached and describes their consequences for the country. Significantly, he writes that the seizure of so much power by a few members of the Court, and their energetic wielding of it, poses a crisis for U.S. democracy.
A backlash against the Court is underway. Rather than seeking a supermajority of their own, Waldman writes that, Liberals must fall out of love with the Supreme Court. He recommends reform measures to curb the Courts power while applying other pressure points " such as in the court of public opinion.
Guest - Michael Waldman is the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. An expert on the Constitution and the courts, Waldman served on President Joe Bidens commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of The Fight to Vote and The Second Amendment: A Biography. Waldman was director of speechwriting during the Clinton administration.
First Amendment Auditor: Big Nick South Florida Accountability
Most of the populace, some police officers and federal employees may not realize that its every photographers right to take photos and video of federal buildings on public property. The easing of restrictions began when the New York Civil Liberties Union had looked into several cases of people who were wrongly harassed, detained and arrested by federal agents while photographing or shooting video of federal buildings from public plazas and sidewalks.
In 2010, the NYCLU brought a suit against the US Department of Homeland Security in federal court to end this practice. In October of 2010, a judge actually signed a settlement where the US government agreed that no federal statures or regulations bar people from photographing the exterior of federal buildings.
The US government agreed to issue a directive to members of the Federal Protective Service on photographers rights. A decade later, the rights attained in this decision are recently being put to the test in whats known as First Amendment audits.
Guest " Nick Freeman " First Amendment Auditor with millions in view counts joins us to talk about his work in Fort Lauderdale being part of a long emerging trend to educate local law enforcement about the right to photography and subsequent issues such as police accountability.
The Alliance of Families for Justice
The Alliance of Families for Justice ("AFJ") was founded seven years ago by attorney Soffiyah Elijah. Its headquarters is in Harlem, a community heavily impacted by mass incarceration. AFJ also has satellite offices in Albany and Ithaca.
AFJ seeks to heal families and individuals who suffer from their own imprisonment or that of a loved one. It seeks moreover to organize and empower them to challenge and change the system of mass incarceration. AFJs legal support unit provides free legal representation to incarcerated people and their families. AFJ holds weekly community organizing meetings and family empowerment circles, and monthly healing circles for formerly incarcerated people. Its organizing and advocacy unit spearheads various campaigns including one to #Shutdown Attica and another to end felony disenfranchisement. AFJ's Youth Empowerment Project has serviced over 400 NYC young people ages 16-24 in its 3yr tenure. All of AFJ's services are free.
In New York State and most places nationwide incarcerated people lose their voting rights. This is both un-democratic and, because most incarcerated people are Black or Latinix, it is a racist policy and a vestige of Jim Crow laws that permeated New York and most states. The loss of voting rights remains a significant obstacle to criminal justice reform.
Guest - Attorney Soffiyah Elijah, knows intimately what happens to families whose loved ones are put in prison. She has been able through AFJ to support, motivate and educate these families to become advocates for civil rights and justice reform. Attorney Elijah has headed legal clinics at the City University of New York School of Law and has served as the Deputy Director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University, under Professor Charles Ogletree. She was the first woman and first Black Executive Director of the 170yr old Correctional Association of New York where she helped expose and bring to justice several Attica prison guards for brutally beating a man almost to death.
Dark Money And Conservative Courts
When Donald Trump became president in 2016, one of the most terrifying prospects was that he could signal a new era for the Supreme Court of the United States " where vacancies would be strategically filled to create one of the most conservative courts in nearly a century, which could roll back constitutional rights and liberties weve been taking for granted. Indeed, even though Donald Trump was not re-elected in 2020, the conservative 6-3 majority that exists, and the havoc they are wreaking, could last for decades. While Im sure Donald Trump would like to take all the credit, the battle to buy Supreme Court influence and push votes to the right long precedes his tenure as president.
Guest - Andrew Perez, has devoted his life and career to exposing the money, influence and secret transactions made among the most powerful people in the world to control the United States laws, government and people. He is an investigative reporter and senior editor for The Lever, which was just awarded the 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in the independent media by Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College for its relentless work exposing the corrupting influence of corporate power on government and both major parties. In announcing the award, the Center for Independent Media highlighted Andrews work for exposing the largest known political donation in U.S. history " Chicago businessman Barre Seids $1.6 billion dark money transfer to conservative operative Leonard Leo who served as Donald Trumps judicial advisor " and guess who Leonard Leo appears to ready to back now Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis.
The Nakba Didnt End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians DailyOn May 15, Palestinians marked the 75th anniversary of al-Nakba, which means the catastrophe in Arabic. On that date in 1948, Israelis ethnically cleansed nearly 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and destroyed more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages. In addition, on May 15, for the first time ever, the UN General Assembly officially condemned the Nakba.May 15 was also the day that Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt to stop the violence that resulted in the deaths of 33 Palestinians and 2 Israelis. The Israeli assault on Gaza was the sixth such attack since 2007, when Israel imposed a permanent siege on Gaza, controlling the ingress and egress of Palestinians.Israel maintains an illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. And the United States enables this occupation by providing $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel each year.Guest - Michel Moushabeck, is a Palestinian American writer, editor, translator and musician. He is the founder and publisher of Interlink Publishing, a 36-year-old, Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house. Michel wrote the article titled, The Nakba Didnt End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians Daily, which was recently published by Truthout.----Junior ROTC In High Schools: Pressure To JoinOn her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas and several other freshmen at Detroits Pershing High School learned they were enrolled in a class called J.R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps. School administrators told them the program was mandatory.Funded by the U.S. military, the program required students to wear military uniforms in class, recite patriotic declarations, and obey orders from an instructor who often yelled at them. When several tried to drop the class, school officials refused permission, even though the Pentagon says that requiring students to take the programs runs counter to its guidelines. The New York Times recently learned that thousands of public-school students were enrolled in J.R.O.T.C. either as a requirement or through automatic enrollment. Most of the schools with high enrollment numbers were attended largely by nonwhite students and those from low-income households.Critics of Junior ROTC say that the programs militaristic discipline prioritizes obedience over independence and critical thinking. And as we reported earlier on Law and Disorder, and now noted by the Times, the programs textbooks often rewrite or downplay the failings of the U.S. government. With its concentration in schools with low-income and nonwhite students, some claim J.R.O.T.C. encourages students to enlist in the military rather than explore other routes to college or jobs in the civilian economy.Guest " Rick Jahnkow works for two San Diego-based anti-militarist organizations, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, or YANO, and the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft. We spoke earlier with Rick about YANOs J.R.O.T.C. textbook review project.Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious FreedomAmerica was not founded as a Christian nation. Church and state were separated. The founding fathers were mostly deists, not Christians. They did not believe in a personal all powerful God that knew everything and intervened in human affairsThey separated church and state because they understood from European history that bad and bloody results resulted when the government acted in the name of God.All this is changing in America now under the thumb of a right wing activist politicized majority on our Supreme Court. They were put there by an extremely well funded well organized conglomeration of ultra right wing figures and organizations. They have an agenda and they are carrying it out.The newest Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a message for new lawyers. She said being a lawyer is but it means to an end. and the end is building the kingdom of God. This ascendant ultra-right wing can best be described as white Christian nationalists. These white Christian nationalists have won significant victories and are on roll. Taking away a womans right to control their own bodies in the recent overturn of Roe versus Wade is just the latest example. They have stacked the federal courts and particularly the Supreme Court where they have a 6 to 3 majority.Guest - Andrew Seidel, author of American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom. He is a constitutional attorney with more than a decade of experience arguing about religion and law as a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a director at the Freedom From Religion Foundation He is the author of The Founding Myth the definitive book which demonstrates that Americas not founded by Christians as a Christian country.----John Pilger: The Coming War With ChinaIs China a threat to (the United States)? Is the fear being stirred up about China legitimate? We speak with 83-year-old renowned journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker John Pilger from his home in Australia about his most recent article The Coming War With China.China has the second largest economy in the world. It will soon be the first. In response to Chinas commercial threat the United States of America has responded militarily by surrounding the Chinese industrial heartland with 400 bases in what has been called a noose. The USA has some 1100 bases around the world, China has six.President Obama initiated a multi trillion dollar vast nuclear buildup. This was coordinated with what he termed a pivot towards Asia. Most of the U.S. Navy now patrols the waters off of China. Tensions have been exacerbated with respect to who governs Taiwan.The US Government has shored up its military alliances with the surrounding countries around China of South Korea, Japan the Philippines, and Australia, The USA is selling billions of dollars worth of nuclear submarines to Australia.We live in a country whose government has been in a perpetual war the last 3/4 of a century, except with a brief interlude after its 20 year old war Vietnam ended in defeat. 3 million Vietnamese died in the American war.Guest - John Pilger covered that war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Another 1 million people died in the Iraq war That war was based on the now well known lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was going to use against us and that he was responsible for 911. A similar campaign of fear mongering is going on now about China. The major news media parrot the governments fact free line that China is our enemy. In his article The Coming War With China John Pilger wrote a US war against China beckons and we have a responsibility to speak out. We know what is coming. Silence must be broken."
The First Amendment And Julian AssangeThe pending criminal case against journalist Julian Assange is the most significant far reaching First Amendment matter in our lifetime. It will have, in fact it already has had, an impact on publishing and journalism. This is so because it constricts our freedom to know as well as journalists and publishers freedom to publish.Our government functions as the executive committee of the ruling rich. It intends to keep it this way, in the words of the great civil rights attorney William Kunstler, by any means necessary and for as long as possible.If as is likely the imprisoned journalist Julian Assange is extradited at Americas request from his solitary prison cell in Londons Belmarsh prison where he has been kept for four years and sent to Virginia to be tried for espionage he will be certainly be convicted and sentenced to life in prison.His victimization is being accomplished under the 1917 Espionage Act, a law originally put into place during World War I to imprison spies. It is now used to get truth tellers like Julian Assange silenced.Guest - Kevin Gosztola who more than anyone has covered the whistleblower situation since he attended the court martial trial of Sergeant Chelsea Manning. Manning was convicted of giving government secrets to Julian Assange. Kevin Gosztolas book Guilty of Journalism was published by Seven Stories Press and Censored Press last month.----A Set Of Ideas Under ThreatAmerican history has been marked by ongoing conflicts between those who are seeking an open, equal and inclusive society and those who cling to the racist origins of the United States and seek to literally whitewash that history and perpetuate white privilege.We find ourselves in the midst of one of those conflicts today.The right of Black people to learn their own history is being denied them. The same is true of anyone who is not heterosexual.The teaching of critical race theory is increasingly disallowed. The study of human sexuality in schools is being obliterated. Books are being banned in record numbers, and curricula is being rewritten to conform to a sanitized version of American history.Seven states, including Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Utah, have already passed laws limiting materials in librariesand at least 113 bills are pending across the country that would negatively impact libraries or curtail peoples freedom to read.As Jonathan Friedman, the Director of free expression and education at PEN America, a free speech organization said, People need to understand that its not a single book being removed in a single school district, its a set of ideas that are under threat just about everywhere.Guest - Stephen Rohde is a noted constitutional scholar and activist. He is the past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the founder and current Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; the author of American Words of Freedom, and of Freedom of Assembly. Steve Rohde is a regular contributor to TruthDig as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Prosecution Of Assange Would Lead To End Of 1st Amendment Experts WarnMay 3rd marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, established by the UN to remind governments about the necessity to respect their commitment to freedom of the press.The Biden administration touts press freedom but continues the Trump administrations efforts to extradite Julian Assange from the UK to the United States for trial on Espionage Act charges that could lead to 175 years in prison. Assange is being prosecuted for obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents evidencing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the first publisher to be charged under the Espionage Act for revealing state secrets.The Biden administration hypocritically criticizes Russia for arresting Evan Gershkovich, a US journalist, for espionage while trying to extradite and try Assange, who is an Australian citizen. Both men are journalists detained in a foreign country on espionage charges for doing what journalists do.Guest - Marjorie Cohn is a member of the national advisory board of Assange Defense. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her new article about Assange and Gershkovich was just published by Truthout.---- Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of Americas Surveillance SocietyThe U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys program If You See Something, Say Something, launched in 2010, urges citizens to be aware of and to report, potential threats. Examples of suspicious activity include unattended packages or baggage; circumstances that appear out of the ordinary, like an open door that is usually closed; a person asking for detailed information about a buildings layout or purpose, and changes in security protocol or shifts. Also of concern is any person seen loitering around a building, writing notes, sketches, and taking photographs or measurements.The DHS website is careful to note that, Factors such as race, ethnicity, and/or religious affiliation are not suspicious. Yet as listeners know, incidents of ethnic profiling are many, including one in which a Southwest Airlines passenger was taken off a flight for speaking Arabic.The history of citizen spying and reporting on others is not new in this country. And the See Something campaign isnt the only civilian spying program around. Many jurisdictions have Neighborhood Watch programs. The U.S. Department of Justices National Neighborhood Watch initiative enlists community members to assist crime prevention and to prepare neighborhoods for disasters and emergency response.Guest " Joshua Reeves author of Citizen Spies, The Long Rise of Americas Surveillance Society . He is associate professor of New Media Communications and Speech Communication at Oregon State University, where hes also a fellow in their Center for the Humanities. An associate editor of the journal Surveillance and Society, hes also written the just-released book, Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine.Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
Workers' Rights And Leadership Moving ForwardEx-president Donald Trump was indicted three weeks ago in New York City by progressive prosecutor Alvin Bragg on 34 separate counts for paying hush money to two women before the 2020 election. The charges are serious and provable. These are the first; there will likely be three even more serious indictments in other jurisdictions. Although Trump looks like the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, the accumulation of charges against him will both narrow but harden, invigorate, and mobilize his political support.Trump is the most prominent figure in what has quite accurately been described as an American version of fascism called white Christian nationalism. These forces have captured half the state houses in the country, many courts, and many local governments all the way down to school boards. Bertold Brecht, the great German playwright and political thinker, observed during the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany that in order to understand fascism you must understand capitalism from which it springs.Under a viral form of capitalism. known as neoliberalism, inequality of wealth has reached enormous proportions. Half the population of our country are poor or near poor. Healthcare, education and housing go abegging with 15 million people about to lose their health care and hundreds of thousands of others sleeping on the streetsSections of the American working class are fighting back. Workers are organizing in Amazon and Starbucks. 9000 of them are on strike at Rutgers University. United Automobile Workers are gearing up for a strike. Polls show that most working people would like to be in a union.But Americans are fighting back with one hand tied behind their backs. They have no independent working class party that defends their interests Both the Republican and Democratic parties are Corporate capitalist parties. In fact, last year, the Democratic Party received more massive dark money than Republicans.Fascism is characteristically antiworker, anti-democratic, racist, nationalistic, misogynist, and violent. It is irrational. It believes in a make-believe past when America was once great.Guest - Paul Street, historian and activist has written 10 books, most recently This Happened Here : Neoliberalis, Amiericaners, and the Trumping of America. He wrote the introduction to Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA co-edited by Law And Disorder cohost Michael Steven Smith. He writes regularly for Counterpunch and manages The Paul Street Report on Substack.----Mumia Abu Jamal's New Trial, Exculpatory EvidenceAmerican political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has served over 40 years in Pennsylvanias harshest prisons; 16 of them on death row -for the murder of aPhiladelphia police officer that he did not commit. His trial was a sham from day one. The judge who convicted him was overheard promising, Im going to help fry the N-word.Before Mumias conviction, he was a nationally broadcast, award winning radio journalist, and the head of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He reported on the murderous racial violence of the Philadelphia police department and its notorious Police Chief, and later Mayor, Frank Rizzo. Mumia had been a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party. While in prison, Mumia has written 13 books and had a weekly radio show, Live from Death Row.He holds a masters degree and is working on a PhD in history.Most recently, Mumias attorneys have sought a new trial for him based on their discovery of exculpatory evidence clearly supporting his innocence. The newly discovered evidence had been wrongly kept from Mumias lawyers at the time of his trial, being deliberately buried in the prosecutors files. This evidence documented that key witnesses had received promises of money and favorable treatment in their own criminal cases, in exchange for their perjured testimony in Mumias original trial. The petition also documented the unconstitutional practice of striking Black jurors during Mumias original trial.But sadly, despite the obvious significance of this newly discovered evidence, his petition for a new trial has been denied.Guest - Noelle Hanrahan, is a Pennsylvania attorney and longtime supporter of Mumia, and the producer the long-running radio show, Prison Radio. She was in the courtroom when the newly discovered evidence was presented in support of Mumias petition for a new trial, and again when it was recently denied.
It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor StoriesAround the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings"beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients"render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government their sole opportunity, one unprecedented to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget the senseless slaughter of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it, the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
UN Report Sounds Alarm On Climate ChangeA new flagship United Nations report on climate change shows that harmful carbon emissions have never been higher in human history. And that this is proof that the world is on a fast track to disaster, with scientists arguing that its now or never to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Indeed, the reports scientists claim that at the dismal rate matters to address climate change are now going, the world has but ten years"ten years--until catastrophic climate change is irreversible.Or as the UNs General Secretary Gutierrez puts it, the planet is now nearing the point of no return. In a Washington Post op-ed article, Gutierrez described the latest IPCC report as a litany of broken promises, which revealed a yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality. Indeed, the reality is that despite ever-increasing awareness of the consequences of climate change and the central role humans play--given our continuing use of fossil fuels, in bringing the change about--the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere every year continue to rise every year and are each year greater than the prior year. For as Gutierrez wrote, corporations and high-emitting governments have not just turned a blind eye to the problem, they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries.Already millions of the worlds people have been displaced by climate change, and the world now experiences a greater and greater increase in severe storms, unprecedented heat waves, widespread water shortages, and the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals.Guest - Eleanor Stein, professor of law at Albany Law School, where she teaches Transnational Environmental Law is the author of Book Review: The Philosophical Foundations of Environmental Law: Poverty, Rights and Nature, as well as the book, Ecological Sensitivity and Global Warming: An International Human Rights Violation?NY Times ON CLIMATE newsletter with Somini Sengupta, climate writings in NYT by David Wallace-Wells; NOT TOO LATE by Solnit and Lutunatabua; FALTER by Bill McKibben and all his current writings (and his breakthrough 1989 book on climate, The End of Nature and its sequel, EAARTH); Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker; Websites of WEACT (We Act for Environmental Justice), www.weact.org; UPROSE (United Puerto Ricans of Sunset Park), www.UPROSE.org, NYC-EJA, NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, www.nyceja.org.----CCR Lawsuit: Louisiana's Cancer AlleyThe call it cancer alley. It is the 135 mile long strip along both sides the Mississippi river between Baton Rouge, Louisiana south down to New OrleansIn an environmental racism case, three Louisiana organizations sued on March 21 in Federal District court in New Orleans against the Parish Council of St. James Parish. A Parish is a county in New Orleans and the Parish Council is their government.The predominantly white Parish Council granted a permit for a company to build $9 billion petrochemical plant to make plastics. The plant is expected to spew 6000 tons a year of cancer-causing chemicals into the atmosphere.The lawsuit seeks to protect Black neighborhoods and is asking for a moratorium on the building of more hazardous petrochemical plants where people live and breathe and where Black people are getting sick and dying in disproportionate numbers.Guest - attorney Astha Sharma Pokharel of the Center or Constitutional Right where she specializes in international human rights law and in challenging racial and environmental injustice. In the cancer rally lawsuit she represents the Mount Trump Baptist Church and inclusive Louisiana. A project at the Tulane law school represents RISE St. James. These are the three Black neighborhood organizations that are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
You Might Go to Prison, Even Though Youre InnocentThere is a common belief that if youre arrested, you are probably guilty because where theres smoke, theres fire. People assume that only the guilty confess to crimes because why would an innocent person confess to a crime they didnt commit? And when a person pleads guilty or is convicted by a jury, thats the end of the matter, in the minds of most people.In fact, many innocent people are arrested, especially people of color, due to racial profiling and other forms of discrimination by law enforcement. Implicit bias often infects the case as it moves through the criminal legal system " from the initial police stop, to interrogation, arrest, charging, trial and sentencing. This is particularly tragic when a person is charged with a capital crime for which the death penalty is imposed and that sentence is carried out.However, it is estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 people are currently serving time in prison after being convicted of crimes they did not commit, largely due to prosecutorial misconduct and police misconduct. Unfortunately, even when exonerated, the psychological and physical damage done is so extensive that many people are never able to fully recover from the trauma. In addition, when the wrongful conviction is solely the result of prosecutorial misconduct, those convicted have no legal recourse to be compensated for the wrong done to them because of prosecutorial immunity.Guest " Justin Brooks criminal defense attorney and law professor has spent decades working to free innocent people from prison. The Founding Director of the California Innocence Project, Brooks is the author of the provocative new book, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though Youre Innocent. In it, he discusses false identifications, junk science, lying snitches, and incompetent defense lawyers " which too often lead to the imprisonment of innocent people.----Expert Panel On Grutter v. BollingerLast October, Law and Disorder aired a segment exploring the possibility that the Supreme Court might be poised to overruleGrutter v. Bollinger and gut affirmative action.That's the landmark 2003 case that held that the 14thAmendment allows public universities to consider race as a factor to assemble a diverse student body.Around the time of our interview, the National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter and the Society of American Law Teachers, or SALT, held an educational panel exploring the two affirmative action cases that the Supreme Court will decide by June or July. As many await the high court's decision, we are pleased to present excerpts from this panel.The speakers are Victor Goode, former Executive Director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and Professor Emeritus at CUNY School of Law. Corinthia Carter is a board member of the NLG-NYC Chapter Foundation and president of the Legal Services Staff Association of the UAW. Rounding out the panel is law professor Vinay Harpalani from the New Mexico School of Law and a member of SALT's board of governors. The panel was moderated by Olympia Duhart, co-president of SALT and a law professor at Nova Southeastern University College of Law.
Economic Update: Banking Collapse Contagion?On March 10, 2023, the Silicon Valley Bank, the most important bank in Silicon Valley, failed. This bank held the money of some of the wealthiest people in the world, venture capitalists who invested in tech businesses.The government bailed it out hoping to prevent the crisis from becoming a nationwide contagion like the one in 2008 when even larger banks failed. As a consequence in 2008, 8.7 million people lost their jobs. Unemployment jumped to 10%. There was a 1/3 drop in the value of homes and 10 million people lost their homes. The government did nothing to help them.After the Silicon Valley Bank crashed the Signature Bank in New York crashed followed by the Republic Bank and then Credit Suisse. We speak with the economics professor Richard Wolff on why the economy was threatened with collapse and what must be done to protect us from the unstable banking system.Guest - Richard Wolff is emerita professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts where he taught for for 35 years and a visiting professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the Nee School University, NYC. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their national syndicated show Economic Update. Professor Wolff has authorized numerous books on capitalism and socialism, including most recently The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself, Understanding Socialism; and Understanding Marxism, which can be found at democracyatwork.info.---- Upcoming Supreme Court CasesThe ever more conservative and activist Supreme Court has already heard arguments this term in a number of cases of vital importance. The cases involve the legality of President Bidens student debt relief plan, the fate of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other independent agencies, and the liability of social media cites where it is claimed that Googles algorithms sent people to a hateful site that the plaintiffs in the case claim led to an Islamic State attack that killed their child.Also of concern is the Supreme Courts refusal to take an appeal from a lower count opinion upholding the State of Kansas law forbidding the State from doing business with any company that refuses to certify it does not support the boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS movement against Israel. And there is the Helaman Hansen case that addresses the question of whether the First Amendment permits criminal punishment of speech that merely encourages a noncitizen to remain in the United States, without any requirement of intent to further illegal conduct, and when remaining in the United States unlawfully is itself not a crime.Julian Assange Movie - IthakaGuest - Attorney Stephen Rohde is a noted constitutional scholar and activist. He is the past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the founder and current Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; the author of American Words of Freedom, and of Freedom of Assembly. Steve Rohde is a regular contributor to TruthDig as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books, and is a leader in the national campaign to free the imprisoned investigative journalist, Julian Assange.
My Country Is the World: Staughton Lynds Writings, Speeches, and Statements against the Vietnam WarStaughton Lynd was an activist, historian and attorney who became a leading critic of the U.S. war in Vietnam which claimed the lives of more than 3 million Vietnamese people and 58,000 Americans. He argued that the United States was committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and should immediately and fully withdraw from Vietnam.Lynd traveled to Hanoi with Tom Hayden and Herbert Aptheker at the end of 1965 to the beginning of 1966 to try to open diplomatic channels between the U.S. and the Vietnamese. For that effort, he was denied tenure at Yale University and his passport was revoked. Lynd and his wife Alice worked in the draft resistance movement and advocated civil disobedience including the non-payment of taxes to confront the war machine.Guest - Luke Stewart is a historian and has collected many of Lynds writings and speeches against the Vietnam War and published an important book called My Country Is the World: Staughton Lynds Writings, Speeches, and Statements against the Vietnam War.----Detroit Poet Warrior: Dr. Gloria Aneb HouseAround Detroit, one woman has touched many lives in many ways: artistically, intellectually and spiritually. A poet-warrior on the front lines of the fight for social justice, Dr. Gloria Aneb House has lived for decades at the intersection of art, education and urgent political movements -- from the 1960s free speech movement in Berkeley, and the civil rights struggles organizing sharecroppers in Alabama and her involvement in SNCC, to the movement for justice for Cuba, and the anti-war movement, to the current movement to end racist police brutality. During Detroits water shutoffs, and other human rights and anti-war causes, she was in the streets protesting.Among other accomplishments, she taught and fought discriminatory policies at Wayne State University for 27 years, and then went on to develop and direct the African American Studies major at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for 10 years, until her retirement in 2014. She has also been an instrumental leader in the efforts to win freedom for several political prisoners over the years, including former Black Panther Ahmad Rahman.Guest - Dr. Gloria Aneb House has published several books of poetry since the 1980s under her chosen African name Aneb Kgositsile. She has also published essays and books since the early 1980s and taught at universities from Michigan to South Africa. Among her many awards, she received the Kresge Eminent Artist Award in 2019.Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
Zachary Sklar: The Work: A Jigsaw MemoirScreenwriter and journalist Zachary Sklar grew up in Hollywood as, in his words, a child of the blacklist." His fine book The Work: A Jigsaw Memoir has just been published. We will speak with him today.In the 1950s, Zachs father George Sklar, a playwright and screenwriter, was blacklisted from the movie industry for his past membership in the Communist Party. His mother, Miriam Blecher, was a modern dancer in the Martha Graham company and founding director of The New Dance Group. During the McCarthy era, many of their friends were hauled in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, calIed HUAC. Several of them fled the country. Others were imprisoned. As a result, Zach grew up in an atmosphere of all-pervasive fear.Richard Nixon rode to power on fear. After he retired, a reporter asked him what his secret was. He replied instantly, It was fear, fear, and they dont teach you that in the Boy Scouts.Zachs beautiful collection of personal essays tells his story of how he overcame the fear he experienced as a child growing up in Hollywood during the blacklist years.Guest - Zachary Sklar is a writer, editor, and teacher. A graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, he has taught magazine writing at that institution and also has served as the executive editor of The Nation magazine. Zach Sklar edited several books about the CIA for Sheridan Square Press, including Ari Ben-Menashes Profits of War and New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison's bestselling On the Trail of the Assassins, which makes the case that the CIA was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Zach later co-wrote with Oliver Stone the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the movie JFK. He has been a creative adviser at Sundance Screenwriting Labs for more than two decades, and currently teaches screenwriting for the Harlem Dramatic Writing Workshop in New York. Zach Sklar was a friend of our shows co-founder Michael Ratner and edited Michael's memoir Moving the Bar: My Life as a Radical Lawyer.---- Exploiting The Labor Of Migrant ChildrenThe New York Times headline, in its February 25th edition, says it all: Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S. Yes, last year 130,000 unaccompanied minors entered the United States, and last year the federal agency responsible for placing these children in suitable situations as their cases are processed, lost track of at least 85,000 of them. But we know where all too many of them can be found: working 10-12 hours a day in violation of our nations child labor laws in the American supply chain for many major brands and retailersretailers like Ford and General Motors. Retailers like Walmart and General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Nature Valley, and PepsiCo, which owns Frito-Lay and Quaker Oatsand the list goes on.So, underaged children, here in the U.S., and needing to earn money to send to their destitute families back home, or pay off the smuggler who brought them to the United States, are working under long, unsafe and exploited conditions, for some of Americas largest corporations. Never mind that the federal child labor provisions, authorized by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, also known as the child labor laws, were enacted to ensure that when minors do work, the work is safe and does not jeopardize their health, well-being or educational opportunities, and that sets age limits for various types of work.As we will shortly learn from our guest for this topic today, that Act is being violated over and over again in 2023. Twelve-year old roofers in Florida and Tennessee, underage slaughterhouse workers in Bidens home state, Delaware, and children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota. The shame of this should be mind boggling for the American people. But as we now begin interviewing todays guest, this is still the despicable reality of the lives of these minors now in our country.Guest - Professor Sara Rogerson, the Director of the Justice Center at Albany Law School, where she is also the faculty Director of the Immigration Law Clinic, in which students represent immigrant victims of crime. Her scholarship addresses flaws in the administration of immigration laws and policy, including intersections with domestic violence and international law. SSRN.com
The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United StatesAs the notion of perpetual war and a militarized society are normalized, notably absent are antiwar protests by faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, academics, and others. A new book, The Trillion Dollar Silencer, details this absence while laying bare the devastation wrought in the United States and abroad by the military industrial complex.Author Joan Roelofs delves into the pervasive role of military contractors and bases that have come to be economic hubs of their regions. She discusses how state and local governments are intertwined with the Department of Defense (DoD), including economic development commissions at all levels. Contracts and grants to universities, colleges, and faculty come from the DoD and its agencies, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Minerva Initiative funds social scientists for military research. Civilian jobs in the DoD provide opportunities for scientists, engineers, policy analysts, and others. The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) programs are subsidized by the DoD.In addition to businesses large and small, nonprofits receive DoD contracts and grants, including environmental and charitable organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and Goodwill Industries. Individuals, arts institutions, charities, churches, and universities share in the profitability of military-related investments. Pension funds for public and private employees and unions are replete with military stocks. In other words, the military industrial complex is so embedded in our political economy that it has become virtually impossible to find any sector of our society that is not intertwined with militarism.Guest - Joan Roelofs, Professor Emerita of Political Science at Keene State College. She teaches in the Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning and writes for scholarly and political publications. Joan is the author of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, and Greening Cities: Building Just and Sustainable Communities. She has been an anti-war activist ever since she protested the Korean War.Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Julie Hurwitz
How The United States Took Out The Nordstream PipelineThe war in Ukraine is illegal. Its a violation of international law. Peace forces in the United States are demanding a ceasefire and negotiations,and the recognition of Russias legitimate security concerns. And, of course, at the same time, we recognize that the Russians were provoked by the USA and NATO in to invading Ukraine, having placed so many military bases and bombs on Russias border.The latest development of enormous economic and political consequences is the American blowing up of the two pipelines that provided cheap Russian natural gas to Europe. The great investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, has recently discovered and published a hugely significant investigative article on Substack, proving that the United States,despite its vehement denials, was, in fact, responsible for the blowing up of the two pipelines.This was done to prevent the integration of Russia into the European economy. Because now the United States and Norway sell liquefied natural gas, and natural gas, to Western Europe at four or five times the price of Russian gas.Guest - Seymour Hersh, has won a Pulitzer Prize and five Polk awards, beginning with his expose of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam where American troops killed 500 women, children and old men. His important articles were published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other mainstream media outlets. But his article on the US blowing up of the two pipelines had to be self-published on his Substack platform.---- Denouncing The Horrors Of SocialismOn February 2nd of this year, the now Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution denouncing the horrors of socialism."It passed overwhelmingly in a 328"86"14 vote. More than half of the Democrats voted for it, while 86 voted against it and 14 voted present. The resolution is made up of lies and half truths. We urge listeners to read it for themselves. It is online. The resolution is three pages in length and 99% of it consists of a series of whereas clauses pointing out with the Republican authors of the resolution believe are examples of the horribles of Socialism.What is socialism? Socialism has never really existed anywhere yet there have been attempts starting with the great Russian revolution of 1917 which effectively ended the slaughter of World War I. It was overthrown in 1991 when the USA and others successfully restored capitalism. What would a socialist society be like? First of all it would be democratic politically and economically and it would not be run by the one percent.America has a rich history of electing people with a socialist vision. Socialism would illuminate racism and economic want. It would provide for education and healthcare, housing and employment for everybody. Production would be for human needs, not for profit. It would clean up the environment and eliminate the threat of catastrophic man-made climate change.Guest - Jeff Mackler is the National Secretary of Socialist Action and was their candidate for president in 2016 and in 2020. Mr. Mackler also serves on the Administrative Committee of the United National Anti-war Coalition, or UNAC. He is the Director of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and a steering committee member of the National Julian Assange Defense Committee. A lifelong activist, Jeff Mackler is the author of 25 books and pamphlets and political, economic, and anti-US imperial war movements.
Ending Structural Police Violence And AbuseOn January 7, after an unlawful traffic stop, several police officers in the SCORPION unit of the Memphis Police Department beat, kicked, punched and tased Tyre Nichols, who posed no threat to the public or the officers. He died in the hospital 3 days later. SCORPION, which was disbanded following Nicholss death, stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in our Neighborhoods. In reality, SCORPIONs targets " as with similar such units around the country -- were primarily Black men. Far from restoring peace, these officers escalated the violence and killed Nichols. The officers later lied about stopping him for reckless driving and the police chief admitted there was no legal basis for stopping Nichols.One month later, in his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden introduced Nicholss parents who were in the audience and he called for police reforms. We all know that racist police violence is nothing new. It has shown itself over and over throughout our history, and has led to calls for reform of the police, and abolition. But structural and systemic racism and police violence persist nevertheless.In spite of the worldwide outrage at the public execution of George Floyd in 2020, and several superficial reforms, police killings continue to increase, not decrease.Guest - Jonathan Moore, civil rights attorney in New York City who, since the late 1970s, has specialized in police and governmental misconduct, employment discrimination, First Amendment advocacy, and international human rights. Jonathan represents the family of Eric Garner, who was killed in broad daylight in 2014 by the New York City police for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. He was also the lead attorney in the New York stop and frisk case in 2013 that led to the historic ruling that banned the practice as unconstitutional. And he represented the Exonerated Five (formerly known as the Central Park Five) in their successful wrongful conviction case against the City of New York.----The Secret Files: Bill de Blasio, the NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police ReformThe issue of police reform looms large across the nation, with daily reports and images of lethal police violence against Black and Brown persons striking a collective raw nerve. A new book by journalist Michael Hayes reads like both an investigative report and a gripping saga of the nations largest police department. Its protagonists are the New York City Police Department (NYPD), its powerful union, Black and Latino New Yorkers, and the Mayor. The book is The Secret Files: Bill de Blasio, the NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.Bill de Blasio, mayor from 2014 to 2021, focused his campaign on making the NYPD more accountable to the public. Previously, while serving on the City Council, he introduced legislation to expand the purview and clout of the watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board. While in office, de Blasio tried to end the NYPDs long-standing stop and frisk policy, among other pernicious practices. But from the beginning of his tenure, after two officers were fatally shot in Brooklyn in December 2014, the police department and its union doubled down in opposition to reform. One example was to effectively prevent public disclosure of internal investigation files or the identities of police officers known to be the subjects of those investigations.Guest - Michael Hayes, in addition to his recently released book, Michael has long reported on the policies and practices of U.S. police departments and covered major criminal trials across the country.
Black History Month And Racist Police ViolenceFebruary is Black History Month in America. And on the very first day of Black History Month this year, Tyre Nichols, a young Black man, was laid to rest in Memphis, Tennessee, having been murdered by police officers of the Memphis police department, as he simply tried to get home.I find it almost impossible to keep track of all the hundreds of cases of racist police violence against innocent Black and brown men and women in America. At the moment our nation is transfixed and in a state of great anger and anguish over the brutal murder of Tyre Nickols in Memphis, Tennessee. And the killings keep coming. In my city, Los Angeles, were outraged by the police murder of Keenan Anderson, the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder, Patrice Cullers. Both murders were filmed, and so once again the American people saw with their own eyes just how violent and despicable the police can be; and how indifferent the offending police officers are to the fact that what they are doing is being captured on film for all the world to see.Now, the overwhelming percentage of victims of police assaults are people of color whove been murdered, or otherwise brutalized by white cops. But as the Nichols case demonstrates, police violence is so ingrained in policing in America that Black cops, too, often do not hesitate to employ gross violence in the course of their policing.What accounts for this epidemic of cop killings of people of color in America? Is it connected to Americas history of Black enslavement? And, if requiring the police to be filmed while making arrests has not ended police violence, what will it take to finally end this epidemic of racist policing?Guest - Attorney Carl Douglas is a partner in the law firm, Douglas/Hicks, one of Keenan Andersons family attorneys whove just filed a $50 million dollar claim against the City of Los Angeles for what the LAPD did in the Keenan Anderson case. Attorney Douglas, after working 6 years as a Public Defender, then spent 12 years in the Los Angeles law firm of famed, and now deceased, anti-police abuse attorney Johnnie Cochran. And now, his own law firm, the Douglas/Hicks law firm, specializes in police misconduct and other civil rights cases, criminal defense work, as well as personal injury and employment discrimination cases. In short, he is a true lawyer for the people.----CIA Spied On Julian Assange Embassy Visitors: Lawsuit UpdateWe speak today with New York City attorney Deborah Hrbek who along with her law partner Margaret Ratner Kunstler are suing the CIA, its former Director Mike Pompeo, and the Company they contracted with to spy for them on Julian Assange and his visitors including attorneys at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange lived there for seven years having been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government. The CIA contract employee DC Global copied information off of their cell phones and computers when they visited their client Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.They are demanding an injunction forbidding the CIA to use the private information they stole from their devices. The CIA says that it has every right to do what it did because the plaintiffs had no right to expect privacy.Julian Assange is one the greatest journalist of our time. His exposures of American war crimes, corruption in the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and CIA spying on us using our cell phones and smart TVs was the most embarrassing revelations ever revealed about the American war machine and its diplomatic corps.In retaliation the US establishment and its institutions including both political parties and the intelligence agencies took their revenge on Julian by first smearing him, according to a Defense Department directive, and then threatening him with being charged as a spy under the Espionage Act so that he had to take refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy.Then former President Donald Trump indicted Assange for espionage and had their British collaborators remove him from the Ecuadorian Embassy and put him in Londons Belmarsh, a notorious maximum-security prison, where he has been tortured daily for the last three years by being held in solitary confinement and denied adequate medical care.The United States and its servant the British Crown Prosecutorial Service trashed the rule of law throughout the entire extradition proceeding. They lied about the conditions of confinement Assange would face in United States. Even the trial judge thought he might kill himself. The extradition order is eminent.AssangeDefenseGuest - Deborah Hrbek is a founding partner at Hrbek Kunstler, a Manhattan entertainment law firm that has represented WikiLeaks in media law matters since 2015. In the course of her work with WikiLeaks journalist and filmmakers she has visited Julian Assange many times, both at the Ecuadorian Embassy at London where he was there as a political Ashlee and in recent years in Belmarsh prison, a maximum-security prison where he has been incarcerated since April 2019. Hrbek is one of the plaintiffs in Kunstler versus the CIA, an action that seeks to hold the US government accountable for its illegal activities in connection with its prosecution of Julian Assange.Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
The Movement To Stop "Cop City"Less than two weeks after Atlanta police fatally shot an environmental activist, officials held a news conference to announce they are moving forward with plans to build a massive police and firefighter training center. Protesters have dubbed the $90 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center "Cop City."Plans to build the training center have met with opposition from the local community and out-of-staters. Trees would be felled, undermining the citys efforts to save its tree canopy and increasing the risk of flooding. Others oppose the center for its practice of "urban warfare" and its proximity to poor and majority-Black neighborhoods. The Atlanta Police and Fire Chiefs claim the center will replace substandard trainings and boost morale. The police department especially has had difficulty hiring and retaining officers.The January 31 news conference came nearly two weeks after the January 18 police killing of an activist known as Tortuguita, after officials claimed that the 26-year-old shot a state trooper. Officers said they fired in self-defense, but protesters question the police narrative, noting the lack of body camera footage of the shooting. Joining us to talk about Stop Cop City and the national epidemic of police violence is Kamau Franklin.Guest - Kamau Franklin is a former practicing attorney from New York, the founder of the national grassroots organization Community Movement Builders, and co-host of the podcast Renegade Culture.----No Equal Justice: The Legacy of Civil RightsProfessor Peter Hammer is the Director of the Damon J Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State Law School, and has long been a strong advocate for shining light on the intersection of race, class, power and the law. He has published scores of articles and books covering such critical issues as the Flint Water Crisis, the Detroit Future Cities, healthcare, education, racism and capitalism, among others.What brings us here today is that he and his colleague, Professor Emeritus Edward Littlejohn, recently wrote a critically acclaimed book No Equal Justice: The Legacy of Civil Rights Icon George W. Crockett Jr, just released in 2022. This book tells the amazing story of George W. Crockett and his trailblazing life. He was the grandson of a slave and son of a carpenter. Crockett became the only Black graduate of University of Michigan Law School in 1934, the first Black man to work as a staff attorney for the United Auto Workers in the 1940s, the first Black law partner in the first integrated law firm in the country in the 1950s, one of the first Black men to be elected as a judge on Detroits criminal court in the 1960s, and the oldest African American ever elected to the U.S. Congress.He was also, along with Ernie Goodman and Maurice Sugar, one of the founders of the National Lawyers Guild, the first integrated bar association in the country, in which he played a critical role during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, including the creation of the NLG Committee to Assist Southern Lawyers.Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
The January 6 ReportThe January 6 Report by the House January 6 Committee has just been published by Harper Collins. It is a page turner. Most strikingly, the report documents the multi-pronged attack that Trump plotted. The crucial point made by the January 6 Committee report is its demonstration that it is a profound misconception to view the January 6 invasion of the Capitol as merely a group of Trump supporters gone wild. The plot was not limited to the January 6 violence at the Capital.Rather, as the report documents, January 6 was a culmination of months of plotting by Trump to overthrow a lawful election and stay in power. He came very close to accomplishing a coup dtat, a blow against the state. Democracy in the United States, however limited, wouldve ended.The American constitution was written in Philadelphia in 1787. Benjamin Franklin was there. When they concluded Franklin famously said we have a republic, if we can keep it. Can we keep it? Will Trump be indicted by the Department of Justice and convicted for the criminal activity he orchestrated in order to keep himself in power, after losing the election two years ago by seven million votes? If he is not indicted, what will be the impact on the future of democracy in the United States?Guest - attorney Stephen Rohde who recently reviewed The January 6 Report with a forward by the author Ari Melber. Rohdes review appeared in Truthdig and in the LA Progressive. Attorney Stephen Rohde is a constitutional scholar, past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of California, an author of books on the Constitution, who frequently reviews books for the Los Angeles Review of Books. And Mr. Rohde is a leader in the national campaign to free the imprisoned investigative journalist Julian Assange.---- Martin Luther King Jr. : A Dream RealizedWe take a look at where the long struggle to end racial injustice stands in the United States today. Oh, some progress has surely been made, but to say weve a very long way to go before Martin Luther King Jr.s dream can be considered realized is both true and also a sad and gross understatement; a sad commentary on the role that white privilege and racial hatred continue to play in the United States, hundreds of years since our founding.Guest - Attorney Sharon Kyle is the publisher and co-founder of the LA Progressive on-line newsletter and a former president of the Peoples College of Law, a law school in Los Angeles established by the National Lawyers Guild and other minority bar associations. Sharon Kyle is a member of the board of the ACLU Affiliate of Southern California and is its representative to the national board of the ACLU. Sharon Kyle is also an active member of the Los Angeles area Julian Assange Defense Committee; a member of the editorial board of the Black Commentator.com. Years before immersing herself in the law and social justice, Sharon Kyle was a member of several space flight teams at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Supreme Court Is About To Eviscerate The Right To StrikeSixty-four years ago, workers and unions gained protection from state lawsuits while pursuing unfair labor practice claims with the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On January 10, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that threatens to unravel those protections. A company called Glacier Northwest is suing the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local Union No. 174, after 85 truck drivers walked off the job. If the high Court rules in favor of Glacier, unions will have to defend against costly lawsuits. And that will likely discourage them from going on strike. A Court decision is expected by the end of June.Seventy-one percent of the U.S. public supports labor unions. Thats the highest number since 1965. And with an increase in economic inequality, union strikes are on the uptick.Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.2 million workers in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. Teamsters President Sean OBrien remarked that: Workers in America have the fundamental right to strike, and American workers have died on picket lines to protect it. In recent years, however, the ultra-right-wing Supreme Court majority has issued decisions systematically eroding these rights.Guest " Attorney Marjorie Cohn is a legal and political analyst who provides commentary on local, national and international media. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Marjorie Cohn at Truthout----Free Range KidsYou may have heard about the shaming of parents who let their son or daughter walk to school by themselves, or ride public transportation alone. Theyre often ridiculed on social media and cast as neglectful. But in some instances, the consequences have gone beyond public shaming.In 2015 parents in Silver Spring, Maryland made national headlines they were investigated for child neglect for letting their children, ages 6 and 10, walk home from a park by themselves.In another case Lenore Skenazy, a former New York Daily News columnist was called Americas worst mom after writing a column in 2008 about why she let her 9-year-old son ride the subway by himself.Last year, Utah passed a law making it not a crime for parents to let their children play in a park withoutsupervision or walk home alone from school. This is hopeful news for our guest Lenore Skenazy who has been advocating for so-called free range parenting laws for many years.Under the law, neglect does not include allowing a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities such as going to and from school by walking, running or bicycling, going to nearby stores or recreational facilities and playing outside.A recent U.S. Census showed that 7 million of the nations 38 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are left home alone on a regular basis, while the average time spent alone is six hours per week. Only a few states legislate an age under which kids may not be home alone.Guest " Lenore Skenazy "New York City columnist-turned-reality TV show host got that title after letting her 9-year-old son take the subway, alone. In response to the enormous media blowback, she founded the book and blog, Free-Range Kids, which launched the anti-helicopter parenting movement.She has lectured internationally, including talks at Microsoft Headquarters and the Sydney Opera House, and has written for everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Mad Magazine. Yep. The Mad Magazine. And shes a graduate of Yale.Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or ItselfWe all know almost instinctively that there is a connection between politics and economics. Today we talk with Professor Richard Wolff about that connection. We live in a world in economic turmoil, all the more so because of the US and NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.At home in the United States, we have the greatest wealth disparity and income disparity in a century. When Standard Old,now Exxon, owner John D. Rockefeller died he was worth $3 billion. Now Jeff Bezos is worth about $180 billion. There has not been a national increase in the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in decades. Half the people in America are poor or near poor.There has been a dramatic increase in labor militancy by American workers not seen since just before and just after World War II. US world hegemony is starting to fray even as the military budget increases.This month Congress passed a budget bill with half of it going to the military. The military received 45 billion dollars more than they even asked for. What is going on? What are the prospects for political action independent of these two capitalist parties?Guest - Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, NYC. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. His latest book is The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself, which can be found along with his other books Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism at www.democracyatwork.info.----Israel's Far Right AgendaAs reported in the New York Times, less than two weeks into its tenure, Israels new and extreme neo-fascist right-wing government has already undertaken a wave of items from its far-right agenda. Items that are designed to weaken the judiciary, entrench Israels control of the West Bank, and bifurcate the militarys chain of command so as to give far-right ministers greater control of matters related to Israels occupation.It is likely to have profoundly negative implications for the Palestinian people, as well as profound implications for the already dismal chances of finding a peaceful resolution of the decades long Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Even a great numbers of Israelis have grave concerns about its new government and what its announced plans may mean for them.Guest - Sandra Tamari is a Palestinian organizer and the Executive Director of Adalah Justice Project. She was the Co-chair of the Steering Committee for the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights from 2015-2018 and a lead organizer of the Palestinian contingent to Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
You Might Go to Prison, Even Though Youre InnocentThere is a common belief that if youre arrested, you are probably guilty because where theres smoke, theres fire. People assume that only the guilty confess to crimes because why would an innocent person confess to a crime they didnt commit? And when a person pleads guilty or is convicted by a jury, thats the end of the matter, in the minds of most people.In fact, many innocent people are arrested, especially people of color, due to racial profiling and other forms of discrimination by law enforcement. Implicit bias often infects the case as it moves through the criminal legal system " from the initial police stop, to interrogation, arrest, charging, trial and sentencing. This is particularly tragic when a person is charged with a capital crime for which the death penalty is imposed and that sentence is carried out.However, it is estimated that 10,000 to 20,000 people are currently serving time in prison after being convicted of crimes they did not commit, largely due to prosecutorial misconduct and police misconduct. Unfortunately, even when exonerated, the psychological and physical damage done is so extensive that many people are never able to fully recover from the trauma. In addition, when the wrongful conviction is solely the result of prosecutorial misconduct, those convicted have no legal recourse to be compensated for the wrong done to them because of prosecutorial immunity.Guest - Justin Brooks criminal defense attorney and law professor has spent decades working to free innocent people from prison. The Founding Director of the California Innocence Project, Brooks is the author of the provocative new book, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though Youre Innocent. In it, he discusses false identifications, junk science, lying snitches, and incompetent defense lawyers " which too often lead to the imprisonment of innocent people.----- Junior ROTC In High Schools: Pressure To JoinOn her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas and several other freshmen at Detroits Pershing High School learned they were enrolled in a class called J.R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps. School administrators told them the program was mandatory.Funded by the U.S. military, the program required students to wear military uniforms in class, recite patriotic declarations, and obey orders from an instructor who often yelled at them. When several tried to drop the class, school officials refused permission, even though the Pentagon says that requiring students to take the programs runs counter to its guidelines. The New York Times recently learned that thousands of public-school students were enrolled in J.R.O.T.C. either as a requirement or through automatic enrollment. Most of the schools with high enrollment numbers were attended largely by nonwhite students and those from low-income households.Critics of Junior ROTC say that the programs militaristic discipline prioritizes obedience over independence and critical thinking. And as we reported earlier on Law and Disorder, and now noted by the Times, the programs textbooks often rewrite or downplay the failings of the U.S. government. With its concentration in schools with low-income and nonwhite students, some claim J.R.O.T.C. encourages students to enlist in the military rather than explore other routes to college or jobs in the civilian economy.Guest - Rick Jahnkow works for two San Diego-based anti-militarist organizations, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, or YANO, and the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft. We spoke earlier with Rick about YANOs J.R.O.T.C. textbook review project.
Cars and Jails: Freedom, Dreams, Debt and CarceralityWhat is the connection between cars and jails? Every day more than 50,000 Americans are pulled over by police officers while driving. Most of them will come away from this encounter owing money to the municipality or county in which they were stopped. Some will be arrested. They will join the nearly 9,000,000 Americans to cycle through our countries jails each year.Police can choose from hundreds of traffic code violations to make a pretext stop and conduct a vehicle search. This may result in a fine or or an arrest.American consumer lore has long held the automobile to be freedom machine consecrating the mobility of a free people. Yet paradoxically, the car also functions at the crossroads of two great systems of unfreedom and immobility " the credit economy and the American carceral system.Guest - Andrew Ross who along with his co-author Julie Livingston has investigated this paradox and written the book Cars and Jails: Freedom, Dreams, Debt and Carcerality. It was just published by OR Books. The book shows how the long arms of debt and the carceral state operate in tandem in the daily life of car use and ownership. Andrew Ross is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, and a social activist and analyst. He has authored and edited numerous books and has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, The Nation, and Al Jazeera.----Remembering Michael RatnerHosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith remember Michael Ratner as cohost, activist, radical attorney, author and close friend. In this show, hosts reflect on Michaels work and listen back to several monologue updates. They include his work as co-counsel for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the Dahiya Doctrine, SNAP- Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, NSA survelliance in the Bahamas and Guantanamo Bay prisoner exchange.Michael Ratner (1943-2016) was president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. Michael worked for decades, as a crusader for human rights both at home and abroad litigating many cases against international human rights violators resulting in millions of dollars in judgments for abuse victims and expanding the possibilities of international law. He acted as a principal counsel in the successful suit to close the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees on Guantanamo Base, Cuba. Michael Ratner has litigated a dozen cases challenging a Presidents authority to go to war, without congressional approval. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Center has focused its efforts on the constitutionality of indefinite detention and the restrictions on civil liberties as defined by the unfolding terms of a permanent war. Among his many honors were: Trial Lawyer of the Year from the Trial lawyers for Public Justice, The Columbia Law School Public Interest Law Foundation Award, and the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award.Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian
Alternatives to PolicingOne of the pressing issues of the day is policing in America, notably how to confront the disproportionate unconstitutional use of force, shootings, arrests and prosecutions of Black African Americans and other people of color, with impunity. Can it be reformed? Or, must it be dismantled? On December 6 our own Julie Hurwitz facilitated a panel discussion at Wayne State Law School called Alternatives to Policing. It was sponsored by the NLG, Mich Coalition for Human Rights, Coalition for Police Transparency and Accountability and the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights.The panelists at this event:Erin Keith: Managing Policy Counsel for Detroit Justice Center and an outspoken advocate on behalf of the Abolition/Defund movement, presents a thoughtful and clearheaded analysis of the fact-based evidence in support of this movement.Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib: Discusses her efforts to fight from within US legislature to redirect resources away from policing and toward a broader understanding of "public safety to include the need to confront head-on poverty, homelessness, health care, mental illness and the criminalization of people of color.Andrea Ritchie: Attorney, writer, gay activist, and nationally recognized expert on policing and criminalization; Addresses the particular impact that policing in America has on Black/Women/Queer/trans people, and discusses her recently released book No More Police.Michigan State Senator Stephanie Chang: discusses her efforts within the Michigan legislature to introduce state-wide laws that would create a modicum of accountability around: the use of force, decertification of bad cops, choke holds, no-knock warrants, foot pursuits and body worn cameras.Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Julie Hurwitz.
The Greatest Evil is WarThe United States has been at war almost continuously over the last 80 years. Chris Hedges has titled his latest book, The Greatest Evil is War. What is the driving force behind this nearly a century of war? Who is responsible? What are the institutions in United States that carry it on? What is to be done about it? What forces in our country can stop the slaughter and the constant waste of resources that is consuming us and threatening us with the possibility of nuclear war, which would wipe out all life on our planet.Today we will explore the economic, institutional, and ideological underpinnings of the American war machine. We will talk about the military industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned us. We will talk about its handmaidens, the media, Congress, the universities and the think tanks which advocate for war. We will talk about the political consequences of permanent war and the fascist dIrection America is increasingly going in. Most profoundly we will talk about capitalism and fascism from which it springs. And finally we will talk about the social forces necessary to stop and reverse war. Guest - Chris Hedges joins us in our discourse. He was a war correspondent for two decades in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. For 15 of these years he worked for the New York Times where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Chris Hedges is the author of 14 books including his just published The Greatest Evil is War. We will talk about this unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war. ----Mumia Abu-Jamal New Trial UpdateAmerican political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has served 40 years Is Pennsylvanias harshest prisons-16 of them on death row -for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer which he did not commit. The judge who convicted him was overheard promisingIm going to help fry the N-word.Mumia is an important figure in African-American history. Before his conviction he was a nationally broadcast award winning radio journalist and the head of the Philadelphia Association of Black journalists. He reported on the murderous racial violence of the Philadelphia police department and its notorious Police Chief and then Mayor Frank Rizzo.He had been a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party. While in prison Mumia has written 13 books and had a weekly radio show Live from Death Row. He holds a masters degree and is working on a PhD in history. On October 26, 2022 Mumias attorneys appeared in court in an effort to get him a new trial.His defense petition included newly discovered evidence that had been buried in the prosecutors files. This evidence documented a key witness receiving promises of money for their testimony and evidence of favorable treatment of another in a criminal case. The petition also documented the unconstitutional practice of striking Black jurors during Mumias original trial.Judge Lucretia Clemons preliminarily denied his constitutional right to present this information. She is likely to finalize this ruling on his upcoming court date in Philadelphia on December 9, 2022.Guest - Noelle Hanrahan is the director of Prison Radio, a multimedia production studio that brings to the public the voices of incarcerated women, men and children. She seeks to honor the agency and humanity of prisoners by bringing their uncensored essays into mainstream discourse. She has produced over 3,500 multimedia recordings from over 100 prison radio correspondents, including the critically acclaimed work of Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 1995, she brought out of prison his first book, Live From Death Row (Harper Perennial), which became a best seller. In 2013, she co-produced the theatrically released feature documentary Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary (Street Legal Cinema/First Run Features). She received her BA in Gender, Race and Class in the 19th and 20th Centuries from Stanford University, and an MA in Criminal Justice from Boston University. She also holds private investigator licenses in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless ConflictSince February 24, 2022, the day that Russia illegally invaded Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have been killed or otherwise become casualties. Eight million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes, and hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled conscription. Millions of people in Ukraine have no heat, electricity or water and temperatures are below freezing. The war has devastated 35% of Ukraines economy.Western sanctions on Russia have led to skyrocketing inflation in Europe, and a dangerous squeeze on energy supplies is crippling manufacturing. The war has also devastated infrastructure, reducing electrical grids, railways, apartment buildings and oil depots to rubble. It has filled the air with pollutants and toxic waste that is contaminating rivers and groundwater.The war is also exacerbating the climate crisis. The fossil fuel industry is profiting from the sanctions which provide it with an excuse to increase dirty energy exploration and production.The Western media portrays the war as a conflict between the evil empire Russia and the innocent Ukraine. Lost in the heartbreaking images, however, is a nuanced understanding of the context for the war, what caused it, and how it can be ended. The role of the United States in the historical backdrop to the war and the current U.S. resistance to a peaceful settlement are absent from the coverage in the corporate and even much of the alternative media.Guest - CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, who has co-authored with Nicolas Davies the new book, War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. Medea is one of the leading activists of our time. Wherever people are hurting, we can expect to see Medea and CodePink there.------Disengaging from Violent Far Right ExtremismSince 2019, the number of white nationalist networks in the United States has been declining. More centralized ones, however, are supplanting them. An example of this, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is how founders of the podcast platform The Right Stuff have switched from organizing pool party groups to focusing on building the racist and antisemitic National Justice Party.Many prominent leaders in this new iteration of white nationalism say their primary goal is to challenge Conservatism, Inc. Live-streamer Nick Fuentes is one. He recently dined with Donald Trump and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago and was present outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Fuentes seeks to harness the grievances of Trump supporters into an overtly ethno-nationalist political movement, forming the Republican partys core.Ideas once confined to the organized white power movement are now openly discussed within the broader political right. The so-called great replacement conspiracy, holding that white people are being systematically replaced across the Western world by multiculturalists and Jews, is routinely cited as a reality by some elected officials and media pundits.Guest - Patrick Riccards is the CEO of Life After Hate, an organization that helps people leave the violent far right. Founded in 2011 by former violent extremists, its the only nationally recognized and federally funded nonprofit positioned to assist those wishing to disengage from violent far right extremism. An expert in education, Patrick also founded the Driving Force Institute for Public Engagement, an initiative aimed at transforming how U.S. history and civics are taught. An award-winning writer, Patrick serves on the boards of several nonprofits.
Books UnbannedAuthoritarian institutions and regimes ban books. They tell people what they can and cannot read. The Catholic Church once banned the book by mathematician Johannes Kepler which demonstrated that the earth travels around the sun and not vice versa.Many of us know about the bonfires of banned books by the degenerate Jews Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx that the Fascist Hitler regime lit with a frenzy.Can this happen in America? It has already started. Many state legislatures have moved to ban books. Some 250 titles have been put on a list of books that cannot be assigned to grade schoolers and highschoolers including such classics in the American canon as To Kill a Mockingbird and even Catcher in the RyeThe censors dont want to encourage free spirits. They dont like criticism. For them the ideal citizen does not think for himself or herself, keeps her mouth shut, and goes along.The Brooklyn public library is fighting for the rights of teenagers and young adults to read what they like, discover themselves, and form their own opinions. The library launched a campaign called Books Unbanned in response to the increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books from shelves which tackle a wide range of topics.There were 1597 individual book challenges last year, the highest of 20 years since the American Library Association has been keeping track.The Brooklyn public library is the sixth largest in the country. It started defending the right to read last April by giving free library cards to young people in every state in the union. So far 5100 cards have been given out. 52,000 e-books or audiobooks have been checked out. The books that are most frequently challenged are those on sexuality and those on racism.Guest - Nick Higgins, Chief Librarian at Brooklyn Public Library, leading the development of transformative library services and spaces for the borough's residents at 61 sites. Along with providing traditional programs and experiences for Brooklynites, Nick and his team have expanded the Library's reach by creating unique programs for older adults, individuals and families impacted by the justice system, immigrants, and people experiencing homelessness. Nick holds a BA in Literature from Hunter College and a MLS from the Pratt Institute. Booksunbanned@bklynlibrary.org----Law and Disorder hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith remember New York City Attorney and publisher Bill Schaap.Bill Schaap died in his home on February 25th, 2016 after a long illness. He was 75. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law school in 1964 Schaap worked for the Center for Constitutional Rights on its project in Japan representing antiwar GIs during the Vietnam war. For 20 years he and his companion the late Ellen Ray lived in Washington DC and published and wrote for the magazine Covert Action Quarterly which exposed the crimes of the CIA. In its early years they named CIA agents, until a naming names act was passed by Congress making the exposure of agents a crime. In the early 80s they moved to New York City and founded Sheridan Square Press. They published books about the CIA by former CIA agents. Most prominently they published New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrisons book On the Trail of the Assassins showing CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was the basis for the Oliver Stone movie JFK. In the early 90s they founded the Institute For Media Analysis and began publishing the magazine Lies of Our Times, a magazine of media criticism. Bill Schaap was a recognized expert in government propaganda and wrote and spoke widely and frequently on the topic."-Lawyers Youll Like: Attorney Bill SchaapAttorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70s and 80s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.Attorney William Schaap:One of first cases at this big Wall Street firm, they had some outside counsel working on it, one of whom was David Lubel, and Dave Lubel who had I think been a recruiter for the Communist Party in his youth, was always good at spotting somebody who was always worth recruiting and he started to tell me there was this convention of this lawyers group.Guest " Attorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70s and 80s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.In addition to being a practicing lawyer, Bill was a journalist, publisher and a writer specializing in intelligence as it relates to media. He was the co-publisher of a magazine called the Covert Action Quarterly for more than 20 years. He also published a magazine on propaganda and disinformation titled Lies Of Our Times. Attorney Bill Schapp has written numerous articles and edited many books on the topic of media and intelligence.
Can A Lawsuit Against The CIA Affect U.S. Extradition Attempt of Julian Assange?
In August 2022, a group of U.S. citizen attorneys and journalists sued the CIA and its former director Mike Pompeo. They alleged that the CIA, during Pompeos tenure, spied on them during meetings with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The WikiLeaks founder sheltered there for 7 years in an effort to avoid extradition to the United States.. Assange is charged with 17 counts under the Espionage Act for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes. If convicted, he faces 175 years in prison.
The lawsuit says that the CIA violated the privacy rights of those journalists and lawyers. Plaintiffs include journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz, and New York City attorneys Margaret Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, who have represented Assange. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the plaintiffs for the violations of their rights. It also seeks the removal of any information held by the CIA which was collected from them during their visits to see Assange and prevention of the release of any this information to a third party.
The CIA, as listeners may know, is prohibited from collecting intelligence on U.S. citizens, although several lawmakers have alleged that the agency maintains a secret repository of Americans' communications data. Richard Roth, the lead attorney in this case, had this to say: "The United States Constitution shields American citizens from U.S. government overreach even when the activities take place in a foreign embassy in a foreign country.
Journalists and lawyers visiting Assange were required to surrender their electronic devices to Undercover Global before each visit. U.C. Global is a private security company which was providing security to the embassy. The lawsuit alleged that the company copied that information and handed it over to the CIA.
In early November, Deborah Hrbek and our own Marjorie Cohn discussed the lawsuit and the case against Assange, in a program sponsored by the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee. For our show today, were delighted to bring you their remarks and answers to several audience questions. Deborah Hrbek starts off the event. In addition to being a member of the Assange defense team, her law practice focuses on entertainment and small business law. Marjorie is a member of the national advisory board of Assange Defense.
Hosted by Attorney Heidi Boghosian
To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissene Habre
Human rights attorney Reed Brodys page turning book To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissene Habre is being released in November 2022. Habre was the dictator of Chad, a landlocked country in central Africa from 1982 to 1990. He was deposed by a coup and exiled to nearby Senegal.
Attorney Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch led a coalition of human rights activists, lawyers, and victims which brought Habre to justice. The lead trial lawyer for the victims was African attorney Jacqueline Moudeina.
Habre was found guilty in a courtroom in Dakar, Senegal in May 2016 of rape, sexual slavery, torture, and the killing of over 40,000 citizens of Chad. He was the first former head of state to be convicted of crimes against humanity in the courts of another country.
We speak today with Reed Brody who worked for 18 years with Human Rights Watch alongside Hissene Habres victims.
Guest - Reed Brody has helped pursue dictators Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Jean Claude baby doc Duvalier of Haiti, and Yahya Jamaeh of Ghana. He also uncovered atrocities of US backed contras in Nicaragua, led UN missions in El Salvador, in the Congo, and exposed Bush " administration torture.
Fairness and Accuracy In Election Coverage
Virtually everyone agrees that the mainstream corporate media in the United States plays a major role in who wins elections. But on the right, a great many are convinced that what they characterize as the liberal media is not to be believed, thanks to Trump and his cries of the lying media, while on the left, most argue that since the mainstream media is corporate, it operates for the benefit of those candidates most likely to advance the interests of corporate America.
So today we examine the role played by the mainstream media in our elections. How truthful is its election reporting? What role does social media play in the electoral process? If, indeed, the mainstream media plays a role in our elections, is it, in fact, a decisive role? And if it is, how does it do that? Well, if you stay tuned, I truly believe you will be surprised by some of what you learn today. I say that because today weve got the perfect guest to help us examine this topic in all of its permutations. He is Norman Solomon, certainly one of Americas true champions of a free and honest press.
Guest - Norman Solomon is a longtime associate of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (F.A.I.R.), which has proved to be a powerful watchdog of the American media. Norman Solomon is the co-founder of the online activist organization RootsAction.org, and he is also the Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is, of course, the author of too many articles to recite here, as well as a number of books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death; also, the book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with Americas Warfare State.
A Poem by Raymond Nat Turner About L.A. City Council
Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
Israel Authorizes Military to Kill Palestinians With Drones
In October, the Israeli government announced that commanders of the Israeli Occupying Forces have been authorized to use armed drones to kill Palestinians in several parts of the occupied West Bank, with the approval of Chief of Staff-Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi.
Since 2008,the Israeli Air Force has been killing Palestinians in Gaza with drones, especially during protests against the Annexation Wall and colonies. Drones have also been used to fire gas bombs and live rounds at residents in cities, towns, and refugee camps of occupied Jerusalem. Drones are employed for surveillance, but this is the first time that weaponized drones will be used in the occupied West Bank. Drones make up 80% of the total flight hoursin the Israeli Air Force.
Here to discuss this disturbing development is our own Marjorie Cohn, who recently published an article in Truthout titled Israel Authorizes Military to Kill Palestinians With Drones in the West Bank.
Guest - Attorney Marjorie Cohn is a legal and political analyst who provides commentary on local, national and international media. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.
State Of The Free Press: The News That Didnt Make the News And Why 2023
The United States has a disinformation problem so endemic that the government says it threatens our national security. Effective solutions have proven elusive. When the Department of Homeland Security created a disinformation board in April, critics from all sides denounced it as a potential tool of censorship. Thats no surprise given that censorship is on the minds of many. During the past school year, more than 1,600 books were banned, according to a PEN America report. And the cancel culture movement teeters between a tool of accountability and outright shaming, often with little regard for the truth.
Since 1976, one group has been working to raise awareness about censorship in our society, and the urgent need for media literacy. Founded as a media research program, Project Censored focused on student media literacy and critical thinking skills as applied to the US news media. In 1993, the Project began publishing an annual book with a list of what it considered the most significant but most under-reported news stories of the year.
Dr. Andy Lee Roth is associate director of Project Censored. Along with Mickey Huff, he co-edits the State of the Free Press Yearbook series. He also helps coordinate the Project's Campus Affiliates Program, which links students at faculty at several dozen US college and university campuses in the collective effort to identify and vet important but under reported news stories.
Guest - Andy Lee Roth joins us to talk about the 2023 edition of State Of The Free Press: The News That Didnt Make the News and Why, that will hit bookstores in December. In addition, the Censored Press and Triangle Square Books for Young Readers recently published The Media and Me. It contains critical thinking skills, practical tools and real-life perspectives, intended to help young adult readers become independent media users.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
Project Blueprint: Haiti
Haiti is a nation in crisis, spiraling out of control since last year's assassination of its president, Jovenet Moise. The government has cratered, and 200 violent gangs have seized control. Theres no fuel, and food and water are hard to come by. Businesses and schools are shuttered and hospitals, banks, and grocery stores teeter on the brink of closure. Clean water is scarce, and Haiti faces another cholera outbreak. An estimated one million people are starving in the middle of Haitis biggest city. Kidnappings, human trafficking, homicides and sexual and gender-based violence are rampant.
Last week, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti. It calls for sanctions on groups and individuals threatening peace and stability in the impoverished nation. The sanctions resolution implicated Jimmy Barbecue Cherizier, whose gang has blockaded a central fuel terminal. Cherizier is a former police officer leading a group of gangs known as the G9 Family and Allies. He now faces asset freeze, an arms embargo and a travel ban.
Institute For Justice and Democracy In Haiti
Guest - Human rights attorney Brian Concannon, Executive Director of Project Blueprint, and the founder and former Executive Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Brian has been qualified as an expert witness on conditions in the country of Haiti in more than 40 cases in courts both in the United States and Canada.
A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press
For more than a century, the 1917 Espionage Act has been used by the United States government to target critics of its foreign and military policy. From suppressing criticism of U.S. participation in World War I to present-day attempts to silence whistleblowers, political dissidents and journalists who expose our nations war crimes, the Espionage Act is a dangerous weapon in the federal governments legal arsenal. It has been employed to limit freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of information.
In their new book, A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press, Ralph Engelman and Carey Shenkman trace the use of the Espionage Act against Eugene Debs, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, among others. During World Wars I and II, the Act was primarily directed at political opposition to government policies. During the Cold War, it was used to criminalize leaks, manipulate the flow of information, and mold public opinion. And during the War on Terror, the Act has been used as a means to combat digital disclosure and journalism.
Journalist Julian Assange, founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, is currently locked up in a maximum security prison in London while the Biden administration attempts to have him extradited to the United States to stand trial on Espionage Act charges that could result in 175 years in prison. The basis for the indictment against him is WikiLeaks revelation of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Guest - Carey Shenkman, a constitutional lawyer and litigator focusing on freedom of expression, transparency and technology. He serves on the panel of experts at Columbia Universitys Global Freedom of Expression Program, and consults on media rights issues before the United Nations and around the world.
Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution
Time is running out for humanity to avoid a catastrophic planetary tipping point. The globalized system of capital accumulation has induced humanity to foul its on nest. The result is a planetary emergency that threatens all present and future generations and thrown into question the continuation of civilization and ultimately the very survival of humanity itself. Only by addressing the social aspects of the current planetary environment is it possible to develop the ecological and social resources for a new journey of hope.
The United Nations international panel on climate change, the IPPC, predicts that as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases by the year 2050 there will be 1 billion climate refugees. Temperatures must be held within a 1.5 Celsius increase. If it goes up, as predicted, an increase of 4 degrees would end civilization.
The crises we are in our multiple. Species extinction, ocean acidification, sea level rise depletion of soil, forest fires, broiling heat waves, hurricanes and drought have plagued us in the last few years. One third of Pakistan was underwater.
Guest - John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review magazine and a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon. He has written many books including The Robbery of Nature and The Return of Nature. His most recent book is Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution.
Impending Threats To American Democracy
In a recent New York Times article, by David Leonhardt, titled A Crisis Coming: The Two Twin Threats to American Democracy, Leonhardt, after first identifying the first threat being that things are now in place where for the first time in U.S. history, a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office, he identifies the second threat, as follows: The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: the power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion. The run of Supreme Court decisions"both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular"highlight this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades.
And another headline in a recent edition of the New York Times reads, Three Huge Supreme Court Cases That Could Change America. And that article is simply one of many, of late, warning of how the ever-more conservative, indeed one could say, reactionary Supreme Court, in its just opened fall term, may well change America in a number of vastly different ways...and ways inconsistent with the majority political views of the American people.
Guest - Steve Rohde is the past chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He is a widely recognized expert on the U.S. Constitution, as well as a political activist. He is a prolific author. His books include American Words of Freedom and the book Freedom of Assembly. He has written numerous book reviews and articles on civil liberties and constitutional law, and his book reviews can be found frequently in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Analysis: States Respond To Overruling Of Roe v. Wade
Since June, when the right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and retracted the constitutional right to abortion, many states have enacted onerous restrictions or outright bans on abortion. In states like California, the right to abortion has been safeguarded by legislation and judicial interpretations of the California Constitution. But if in the future, Republican governors in California appoint a majority of conservative justices to the state supreme court, the right to abortion will be imperiled.
On November 8, voters in three states " California, Michigan and Vermont - will decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitutions. People in Kentucky will vote on an amendment that specifically excludes the right to abortion from constitutional protection. In August, Kansas voters rejected a similar amendment that would have explicitly said that its constitution does not provide the right to abortion.
Guest - Law and Disorder co-host and legal scholar Marjorie Cohn discusses why its crucial that states amend their constitutions to protect the right to abortion. Marjorie is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, who writes a regular column at Truthout called Human Rights and Global Wrongs. She has published several books and does political and legal media commentary for local, national and international media outlets.
Attorney Deborah LaBelle: Planned Parenthood v. State of Michigan
Deborah LaBelle is a Michigan attorney and writer whose work centers on constitutional and civil rights in class actions and community representation utilizing a human rights framework. Ms. LaBelle has been lead counsel in over a dozen class action lawsuits that have successfully expanded the civil and constitutional rights of her clients in both federal and state courts, including before the U.S. Supreme Court and in international fora.
Ms. LaBelle has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Lawyers Guilds Law for the People Award, the National Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from Public Justice Foundation, and the Federal Bar Associations Wade McCree Jr. Award; Michigan ACLU Civil Libertarian of the Year Award; as well as several others too long to list here.
She is currently co-counsel (with me and others) on the Flint Water class action litigation " a case in which we successfully argued to the Michigan Supreme Court that our state constitution has embedded within it the fundamental due process right to bodily integrity.
What brings her here today, is Ms. LaBelles most recent involvement in the historic case of Planned Parenthood v. State of Michigan. This case was triggered by the nation-wide crisis created by the U.S. Supreme Court in its reversal of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson. Dobbs awoke a long-dormant 1931 felony statute in Michigan which criminalizes all medical and legal actions taken to support a person who seeks or needs an abortion. This month, in the Planned Parenthood case, the Michigan Court of Claims issued a historic state-wide injunction against that criminal law, holding that it violated the now-recognized Michigan constitutional right to bodily integrity. While this injunction is still in effect (and inevitably on its way to being appealed), we have seen another pro-choice victory in Michigan, that is, successfully getting Proposition 3, a constitutional amendment referendum, on the ballot that would explicitly recognize the constitutional right to abortion in Michigan.
Trump Affidavit Contains Broad-Based Probable Cause of Three Federal Crimes
On August 8, FBI agents seized 33 boxes, containers or items of evidence with more than 100 classified records from Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago compound. They included information classified at the highest levels. The Department of Justice had applied for the search warrant after Trump stonewalled them for seven months.
A federal judge found probable cause to believe that agents would find evidence of three federal crimes at Mar-a-Lago. They include a violation of the Espionage Act, which has recently been used to prosecute whistleblowers, publishers and journalists who publicize evidence of government wrongdoing.
Trump claims that the documents are his but in fact they belong to the National Archives. He is seeking the appointment a special master to review the documents for possibly privileged material. Attorney General Merrick Garland will use the seized documents to inform his decision about whether to indict Trump and/or his associates.
Guest - Law and Disorder co-host Marjorie Cohn, A former criminal defense attorney and professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Marjorie does frequent written and broadcast commentary about these and other legal and political issues.
Nationalizing The Fossil Fuel Industry
Thomas Hanna has been Research Director for the Democracy Collaborative since 2015, after working for five years as a research assistant to Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative and well-known historian and political economist. The Democracy Collaborative was founded in 2000 as a research center at the University of Maryland, to develop a theoretical and historical framework for building a truly democratic society, based on the principles of democratic economy, community wealth building and the democratization of ownership.
Hannas areas of expertise include public ownership, privatization, local government, democratic ownership and banking. He is the author and editor of a number of books, articles and reports, including Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States which was published by Manchester University Press in 2018.
Hannas recent article, The Supreme Court is Gutting the Regulatory State. Lets Look at our Other Options, published in In These Times, provides a fascinating analysis of the historical evolution of the regulatory system in the United States. Since the New Deal and the end of World War II, the use of regulatory legislation has been used to protect capitalism, based on the notion that the excesses and injustices of capitalism can be ameliorated primarily through state regulation of private enterprise, rather than large-order shifts in the ownerships of these enterprises. In his article, Hanna articulately explains how these historical attempts to regulate capitalist power within the context of capitalism is destined to fail because of its own structural limitations.
In the wake of the existential threat of catastrophic climate change and rising tide of right-wing extremism, we are seeing " predictably " the explicit dismantling of that regulatory system. Hanna explores the recent rulings from the new right-wing majority on the US Supreme Court, particularly the case of West Virginia v. EPA, in which the court literally kneecapped the agencys ability reduce the devastating effects of corporate pollution in order to protect private profit and free enterprise. Hanna explores an alternative vision of creating a system of economic and political democracy based on public and collective ownership of important assets, enterprises and services, including the fossil fuel industry.
Israeli Forces Raid and Shutter Seven Palestinian Human Rights Organizations
On August 18, the Israeli military raided the offices of seven leading Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations, ransacking and shuttering them. Three days later, the Israeli Occupying Forces summoned the directors of two of the groups for interrogation.
Last October, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz reported that Israel had baselessly designated six of the groups as terrorist organizations because they had links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a leftist political party with a military wing. In November, the Israeli military commander in the occupied West Bank declared the six to be unlawful associations. But in the ensuing months, Israel has failed to come forward with competent evidence that links the six groups to the PFLP. A new classified report from the CIA says it could find no evidence to support the terrorist designations.
Progressive organizations in Israel and the United States condemned the raids. But the Biden administration has refused to denounce them, stating that it is awaiting further information from Israel.
Guest - Law and Disorder co-host Marjorie Cohn is interviewed about the ramifications of the terrorist designations and recent raids on the organizations. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
A New Wave Of Book Banning
Book banning is the most widespread form of censorship in the United States. Its when government officials, private individuals, or organizations remove books from libraries, school reading lists, or bookstores because they object to the content or themes contained therein. Childrens books are the main targets.
Often, complaints are that the book contains is sexually explicit, contains graphic violence, has offensive language, or shows disrespect for parents and family. Censors claim theyre afraid the contents are dangerous for kids, or that theyll cause young people to raise questions, and incite critical inquiry among children that parents, political groups, or religious organizations deem inappropriate or arent ready to address.
Before the 1970s book bans typically focused on obscenity. Lady Chatterleys Lover by D. H. Lawrence and Ulysses by James Joyce were often banned. From the late 1970s on, attacks focused on ideologies. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Catcher in the Rye, and Harry Potter are among the 50 of the top banned books in this country.
A new wave of book banning in public and school libraries is sweeping the nation in 2022. Its been under way since debates have percolated over critical race theory and what students should learn in the classroom. Several states are cutting funding for books written by authors in specific communities.
Guest " Christopher Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. He previously served as president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the booksellers voice in the fight against censorship. Before that, he was executive director of Media Coalition, a trade association that defends the First Amendment rights of producers and distributors of media. Christopher is the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America by Beacon Press, which won the 2008 Eli Oboler Award of the American Library Association. His forthcoming book is How Free Speech Saved Democracy.
Lawsuit Against CIA Filed By Journalists and Lawyers For Alleged Spying During Assange Visits
Journalist Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, is in a London prison fighting extradition to the United States. Donald Trumps CIA director Mike Pompeo was angered by the 2017 WikiLeaks revelation of the CIAs Vault 7 program (whereby the CIA was able to tap into peoples cell phones and smart TVs, turning them into listening devices). The Trump administration filed an indictment against Assange which takes aim at him and WikiLeaks for their 2010 exposure of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
The Biden administration is pursuing Assanges extradition and prosecution. If he is extradited, tried and convicted, Assange could receive 175 years in prison.
When Assange was living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London under a grant of asylum, the CIA hired UC Global, a private security company, to spy on Assange and his visitors and turn over images from the cellphones and laptops of lawyers, journalists and doctors to the CIA.
On August 15, some of the lawyers and journalists who visited Assange sued the CIA and Pompeo in US District Court for violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. They are requesting money damages, an injunction to prevent the CIA from revealing their private communications, and the purging of CIA files of this information.
The lawsuit against the CIA was filed by The Roth Law Firm in New York City.
Guest Attorney Richard Roth, the lead lawyer who represents the plaintiffs. Highly regarded for his successful and creative representation, Roths clients include celebrities, nationally recognized artists, singers, actors, songwriters and Hall of Fame and all-star athletes, directors, producers and professional sports organizations. Roth worked in the U.S. Attorneys office and interned for a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeal. The recipient of numerous awards, Roth is a frequent media commentator .
Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of Americas War on Terror
September 11 will mark the 21st anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by 19 hijackers. They provided a pretext for the USs 20-year war in Afghanistan and its subsequent invasion of Iraq, an illegal US war of aggression which was based on a lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That war killed morethan 1 million people.
Today we rebroadcast the Law And Disorder interview we did with retired Florida Senator, the courageous Bob Graham. Graham did more than anyone to expose the connection between the horrific criminal attacks and the complicity of the Saudi government.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been a US ally in the Middle East for decades. Twenty-one years ago, Saudi officials gave financial, logistical, and other support to the 9/11 hijackers. Fifteen of the 19 men were Saudis.
This explosive history was documented in 2002 in the 28-page final section of the report of The Joint Commission of Inquiry of the Senate and the House, which Senator Graham chaired. These 28 pages were hidden and not declassified and released until July 15, 2016. They were released because of the efforts of Senator Graham and the families of the 9/11 victims. By blocking the release of these pages, Senator Graham states, the US government sent a message to the Saudi government that they can do anything.
Grahams prediction was borne out by the 2018 assassination of the journalist and Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered and dismembered in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Turkey, by order of Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Nevertheless, last month, President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with Mohammed bin Salman and greeted him not with a customary handshake but with a collegial fist bump. This occurred despite Bidens earlier declaration that Khashoggi was in fact murdered and dismembered and I believe at the order of this crown prince. Oil and arm sales are the reasons why the United States continues to embrace Saudi Arabia as a close ally. Saudi Arabia has the second largest supply of reserve oil in the world. The US needs it now because of Russias war in Ukraine. According to the US State Department statement of May 11, 2022, Saudi Arabia is the United States largest foreign military sales (FMS) customer with more than $100 billion in FMS cases.
Law and Disorder co-hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith interviewed Senator Bob Graham before the missing 28 pages of the 9/11 report were finally released. These pages confirmed Senator Grahams belief that the hijackers could not have pulled off the operation alone. It reveals that the hijackers were part of a support network involving the Saudi monarchy and government which helped plan, pay for, and execute the complicated 9/11 plot.
Senator Graham has written the book Intelligence Matters: the CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of Americas war on Terror. It provides a candid insight into US and Saudi relations.
Guest - Senator Bob Graham is the former two-term governor of Florida and served for 18 years in the US Senate in addition to 12 years in the Florida Legislature for a total of 38 years of public service. As governor and senator, Graham was a centrist, committed to bringing his colleagues together behind programs that serve the broader public interest. He was recognized by the people of Florida when he received an 83% approval rating as he concluded eight years as governor. Bob Graham retired from public service in January 2005.
White Nationalism and the Republican Party: Toward Minority Rule in America
White supremacy has been a guiding principle of the United States since its birth. From the genocide of the Indians to the pernicious institution of slavery, racism has permeated every aspect of this nation. After the short-lived period of Reconstruction, Jim Crow followed and it continues to animate race relations in the U.S. While the Civil Rights Movement led to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the Republican Party and now the right-wing Supreme Court have adopted policies to undermine the protections of the promise of racial equality. False claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and the ensuing attempted insurrection have shaken the institutions of democracy to their core.
Trump rode racism and nativism to the presidency, making it the nucleus of his reign. After descending the escalator to announce his presidential campaign, Trump singled out Mexico, declaring, Theyre bringing drugs; theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. One of his first acts as president was the creation of the Muslim Ban, which married white supremacy with nativism.
White nationalism didnt begin with Trump. Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan planted the seeds for Trump to adopt white supremacy as the explicit centerpiece of his campaign and his presidency. Whether or not Trump runs for president in 2024, Trumpism is unfortunately alive and well in our political system.
Political science scholar John Ehrenberg has just published a book titled White Nationalism and the Republican Party: Toward Minority Rule in America. In it, he explains how Trump weaponized the use of race, drawing on his Republican predecessors.
Guest " John Ehrenberg, Senior Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Political Science Department at Long Island University in New York. He has devoted his life to research and writing about political ideologies and the history of political thought. He is the author of Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea, Proudhon and His Age and The Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Marxisms Theory of Socialist Democracy. Full disclosure: In the 1960s, John and I both participated in the Stanford University honors program called Social Thought and Institutions.
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The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court
The nation is still reeling from the Trump administrations assaults to the rule of law, and their ripple effects on democratic institutions. But these attacks were the result of strategic planning over decades, and the handiwork of networks of well-funded think tanks and lobbyists. Some of the countrys richest and most conservative individuals are, with so-called Dark Money, anonymously supporting these efforts.
Chief among these forces is the Federalist Society. Not well known until recently, the Society has worked quietly since the Reagan administration to overhaul the Supreme Court into a bastion of conservatism. Enriched with Dark Money, its had an outsized impact on the composition of the federal and the Supreme Court. Recently, weve witnessed how hard-fought social gains of the 20th century have been taken away from Americans, and landmark Supreme Court decisions have been overruled such as Roe v. Wade and a womans right to reproductive freedom, and Lemon v. Kurtzman, guaranteeing the separation of church and state.
Guest " Attorney Lisa Graves, is the founder, director, and editor-in-chief of True North Research. Her analysis of such research has been cited by every major newspaper in the country. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government. Lisa served as chief counsel for the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy. She was also a career deputy assistant attorney general the US Department of Justice. Lisa has spent the past 12 years examining the impact of dark money on judicial selection.
January 6 Committee Has Provided Sufficient Evidence for Garland to Indict Trump
During the course of eight public hearings, the House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack presented overwhelming evidence of former President Donald `Trumps guilt of at least 2 federal crimes and crimes in the state of Georgia. Although it has been more than 2 years since Trump initiated his wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Attorney General Merrick Garland still has not indicted the ex-president.
Through the testimony primarily of Trump loyalists, the Committee demonstrated that Trump was the fulcrum of a multipronged conspiracy to fraudulently declare himself the winner of the election. The Committee has provided Garland with more than enough evidence to indict Trump. But will Garland bring charges against Trump?
Guest - Marjorie Cohn, is a former criminal defense attorney, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She has published several books and writes a regular column for Truthout. Her most recent piece is titled, January 6 Committee Has Provided Sufficient Evidence for Garland to Indict Trump.
Lawyers You'll Like: Attorney Bill Goodman
Bill Goodman, the son of Ernie Goodman, who was one of the founding members of the National Lawyers Guild, is a legend in his own right. A past national president of the NLG, one of the founding officers of the NLG National Police Accountability Project, the former Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and a founding board member of the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, Bill was also a partner in the first racially integrated law firm in the United States. He is currently a partner in the Detroit civil rights firm, Goodman Hurwitz & James, where he continues to work tirelessly for the rights of victims of government and corporate abuse. Bill is also an adjunct professor of law at Wayne State Law School, where he teaches Constitutional Litigation. Bill has successfully litigated numerous police and government misconduct cases as well as other high-profile cases on behalf of prisoners, toxic tort victims, the wrongfully convicted and victims of racism, always in the pursuit of constitutional, social and economic justice.
Full disclosure, Bill is also my law partner in Goodman Hurwitz & James and a former long-term partner in life " weve known each other a long time! We'll discuss two cases that have been brought to confront the unconstitutional and inhumane conduct of individual police officers, but more importantly, the historically unconstitutional and inhumane ways in which police departments institutionally tolerate, promote and reward such behavior by their officers.
Remembering The Life Of Glen Ford
Glen Ford died last July 28 of lung cancer. I knew Glen the last seven years of his life. I first met him in 2014 after a speech that he gave at Harlems Riverside Church church on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the Black Agenda Report of which he was the executive editor. The two other editors were Margaret Kimberley, who has taken over as the editor, and the late Bruce Dixon of Chicago who died two years ago. They were a formidable threesome. That night he spoke about what he called the Black misleadership class, a description he coined, and how it was an enemy of the movement. He said the Democratic party, which they populate, was not the lesser of two evils but the most effective of two evils. In particular, he zeroed in on New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. I kept in touch with Glen. He was a guest on Law And Disorder several times. I helped assemble a selection of his writings titled The Black Agenda which will very soon be published by OR books. Two months ago the publisher of OR books, Colin Robinson and I drove out to New Jersey to visit Glen.
He had just got out of the hospital where they took fluid out of his cancerous lung. He was somewhat frail but pretty chipper. We ate bagels and cream cheese at the dining room table and talked politics for two hours. As we left Colin remarked that it was a shame we hadnt recorded our conversation. Glen was brilliant. Glen was the real thing. A Black nationalist and a socialist, as he described himself. He was a former Black Panther and usually wore a black beret when he spoke. He ended his speeches with his right arm held high in the air saying power to the people.
The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy
We go now to hear Glen Ford speaking at the Black Agenda Report 7th anniversary gathering at Harlems Riverside Church. The theme of the event was The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy. Ford gives strong criticism of newly elected New Jersey Senator Cory Booker as the essence of Black misleadership, showing the many ties of the current Newark mayor to corporate America.
The Case Of Bernina Mata And Clemency
In 1998, Bernina Mata was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of John Draheim, who shed met at a local bar. After he tried to rape her, she fought back in defense and stabbed him. At trial, prosecutors portrayed Mata as a man-hating lesbian, and literally described her as a hard core lesbian who they claimed killed because the victim made an unwanted sexual pass at her. They claimed Matas sexuality was the motive and showed the jury books from her apartment"Call Me Lesbian,Homosexualities, andBest Lesbian Reading"to support their theory. Prosecutors claimed that a normal heterosexual person would not be so offended by the (victims) conduct as to murder.
The jury found Mata guilty and sentenced her to death. In 2003, her sentence was commuted from death to life in prison after former Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of everyone on death row in that state in response to a historic organizing clemency campaign. Now, Matas defense team - are asking Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to grant her release from prison. They filed a petition for executive clemency, saying her case was plagued by racism and anti-lesbian oppression.
FreeBernina
Guests - Attorney Joey Mogul and Deana Lewis, Joey Mogul is a partner at the Peoples Law Office and has represented Mata since 2002. Deana Lewis is an Associate Director at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Deana is involved in the work of several Chicago community and national organizing collectives including Love & Protect, Just Practice Collaborative, and Survived & Punished.
Joanne Page: The Fortune Society
Each year in the United States, more than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons. A staggering 6.9 million people are on probation, in jail, in prison, or on parole. On top of that, an additional nine million persons cycle through local jails.
As grim as these numbers are, more sobering is the fact that more than two-thirds of prisoners are rearrested within 3 years of their release. Half of those are reincarcerated.
Why is this recidivism rate so high? It has much to do with the failure of re-entry support programs. We have the worlds largest carceral state but no effective support system for people finishing their sentences and re-entering society. Consequently, crime rates soar, more individuals are victims of crime, families and communities suffer when we fail to deal with the consequences of over-incarceration. When reentry fails, the costs are high " more crime, more victims, and more pressure on already-strained state and municipal budgets. There is also more family distress and community instability. Community reintegration impacts several larger areas such as community health, education, employment, family relationships and housing.
In every aspect, failure to support recently released individuals is costly to society.
Guest " JoAnne Page is the President and CEO of the NY-based Fortune Society. Policymakers and researchers frequently cite the organization for its pioneering work. A graduate of Yale Law School, Page cultivated and created many of Fortunes signature programs including substance abuse treatment, counseling, family services, HIV/AIDS health services, mental health programs, job training and employment services, parenting initiatives, and supportive and permanent housing. Page is a leading authority on issues including prison reform, solitary confinement, wrongful convictions, the over-incarceration of young men of color, sentencing reform, violence prevention, homeless housing, effective policing strategies, legislation, sex offender registries, and more.
Extradition Of Journalist Julian Assange
On June 17, Priti Patel, the UK Home Secretary, ordered the extradition of journalist Julian Assange to the United States to stand trial on Espionage Act charges that could lead to 175 years in prison. The Obama administration, which prosecuted more whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined, decided not to file criminal charges against Assange. But Donald Trumps regime indicted Assange for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. And Joe Bidens government is continuing to pursue the extradition of Assange to the United States.
Assange has been confined in the UK for more than a decade. If he is extradited to the United States, he will be tried in the Eastern District of Virginia, one of the most conservative districts in the country. The judge to whom his case has been assigned jailed Chelsea Manning for refusing to appear before a grand jury investigating Assange.
Assange will appeal Patels decision. But if he is ultimately extradited, tried and convicted, it will pose a major threat to investigative journalism. People around the world are supporting Assange but the Biden administration is continuing Trumps campaign to extradite Assange and try him in the United States.
Guest - Kevin Gosztola, an American journalist who writes about whistleblowers, WikiLeaks, national security and civil liberties. Kevin is managing editor of Shadowproof and he curates The Dissenter. He is producer and host of the weekly podcast Unauthorized Disclosure and co-author of Truth and Consequences: The US vs. Bradley Manning. Kevin has covered the Assange case extensively.
Chicago Torture Cases Cost Taxpayers 210 Million
Sixty years ago, the great social satirist and comedian Lenny Bruce quipped that Chicago is so corrupt, it is thrilling. Today the corruption may not be so transparent but the amount of money spent to protect and defend cops who kill and torture people is staggering.
A few years ago, the city of Chicago sold its parking meters to a private corporation even as it was closing public schools and mental health clinics ostensibly for lack of funding. But as of now and for the last 15 years, Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois has spent at least $212 million of taxpayer money for expenses in torture cases involving the infamous Chicago torturing cop, Jon Burge, and his crew. They operated in Chicagos brutal Area 2 where they extracted false confessions from more than 125 African-American men through the use of torture.
$37.5 million of the $212 million has gone to what has been called pinstripe patronage lawyers, who defended the police torturers. $19-1/2 million has been spent on special prosecutors in Cook County where Chicago is located. At least $38.7 million has been applied to pension payments for the offending cops, $7.9 million has been spent on the state Torture Commission and Court of Claims payouts, and finally, $108.2 million has gone for settlements, verdicts, and reparations. And the cases, and the payments, continue to this day and will continue into the future.
Guest - Chicago civil rights attorney Flint Taylor who led the litigation against Jon Burge and his torture crew. Taylor is a founding partner of the Peoples Law Office in Chicago and has represented dozens of clients subjected to torture and other police misconduct. He is the author of The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago. His most recent case involves the police murder of Joseph Lopez in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The Menace of American Authoritarianism
Law And Disorder Radio was launched 18 years ago by four lawyers for the purpose of defending democracy and the rule of law.
This was just after the United States attacked Iraq under the false pretense that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction.
We have seen democracy and the rule of law consistently disintegrating. Starting perhaps 40 years ago under the Reagan administration, this disintegration has brought us to the crisis of today. A committee of the House of Representatives is actually holding televised hearings on the attempted coup dtat by the last president, Donald Trump.
At the first hearing, it was demonstrated that Trump planned to ignore the results of an election which he lost by 7 million votes. The insurrection that he initiated was unsuccessful. The Capitol was attacked after Trump incited the insurrectionists and Trump did nothing to stop it for over three hours. When Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along with Trumps scheme to overthrow the election results, Trump suggested that hanging Pence was a good idea. The insurrectionists had built a gallows on the grounds of the Capitol.
What has brought us to this critical point?
We live in a country where inequality is increasing, where, as Bob Dylan wrote, money doesnt talk; it swears. Nearly half the population is poor or near poor. Neoliberalism, an extreme form of capitalism, has taken hold and hollowed out the country. Schools have been privatized and there is no national healthcare system. Students are 1.7 trillion dollars in debt just as a result of attending college. The countrys infrastructure is crumbling, theres no decent railroad service, there are mass shootings almost every day, and the US government is spending $813 billion on war this year. The United States refuses to help negotiate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. The twin threats of nuclear war and climate catastrophe hang over our heads. Things are dreadful.We have reached a point summarized by the great Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned by a fascist dictator. Gramsci famously wrote from his prison cell: The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
Guest " Professor Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University chair for a Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department. He has written many books, most recently The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism and American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Facism.
Lawyers Youll Like: Professor Holly Maguigan
In our Lawyers Youll Like series were joined by Professor Holly Maguigan, Professor of Clinical Law at the New York University School of Law, where she teaches Comparative Criminal Justice Clinic: Focus on Domestic Violence and Evidence. Professor Maguigan is an expert on the criminal trials of battered women. Her research and teaching is interdisciplinary. Professor Maguigan is a member of the Family Violence Prevention Funds National Advisory Committee on Cultural Considerations in Domestic Violence cases. She serves on the boards of directors of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. She is a past co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest membership organization of law professors in the U.S.
Professor Holly Maguigan:
I was doing medieval history and I was at Berkeley. It was 1967 and Oakland stopped the draft. I got very interested in the anti-war politics. I hated lawyers. I really hated lawyers. They were boring. They talked about themselves all the time. They only had stories about their cases and how great they were and they would never post bail when people got arrested. The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia is where I stayed for 17 years. First I started out as a public defender. I loved being a public defender, it was the beginning and end of everything I hoped it would be. Thats where I met David Rudovsky and David Kairys. They were then defenders while I was a student. After they went out on their own, they kept inviting me to join them. I kept putting it off because I loved being a defender so much. In Philadelphia there was much more actual litigation, not just motion litigation theres a lot of that here in New York City but actual trials. You had a sense, there was an analysis that people were doing life on the installment plan and you needed to do what you could to kick them loose any particular time. It was a community in its own odd way and I found it difficult to leave it. I was doing major felonies within a couple of years. David Kairys was very focused on constitutional litigation and government misconduct. He did the Camden 28 which was a big draft resistance case. My interest was more into criminal defense. Grand juries (all over the country) convened to investigate the alleged transportation of Patty Hearst by the SLA from California where she had been captured. He was a killer. (Frank Rizzo) There was no question. More people died in police actions before or since. I dont mean to suggest that all the police started out as homocidal. This was a situation which from the top down came the message if youre a good cop then youre going to take people out however you think you need to. I knew about race and class bias in the court room as much as a white woman who was middle class could know. I was just blown away by what happens when you add hatred of women to hatred of black people and hatred of poor people. Judges would go by me in the hall and say Maguigan, ahem, you didnt give me anything this Christmas, not even one lousy bottle, youre not getting any assignments. Judges would do things, like open the drawer in their chambers, and there would be wads of bills, and theyd let you know. I developed a specialty on women who kill men. In the early eighties a group in Philadelphia called Women Against Abuse began working and they did advocacy for battered women accused of crime and meant a huge difference. The battered women cases I was working on were quite consuming because people then didnt know very much in how to try these cases. The judges expected you to plead insanity or guilty. Reasonable doubt was a consideration at sentencing not at trial. There were cases that did require teams. There was no question. I wanted to be in court. I wanted to be in the presence of that conflict between the authorities and regular people. I went to NYU where I taught in the criminal defense clinic for many years. To see students react to the great stories their clients have is just amazing. SALT (Society of American Law Teachers) is about who gets into law school, what they learn and who teaches them. Its about access to justice. Its about relating to law school as a place where you train people to do social justice. SALTs focus is on students and teaching. Holly Maguigan to be honored by Society of American Law Teachers.
Guest " Professor Holly Maguigan teaches a criminal defense clinic and one in comparative criminal justice as well as a seminar in global public service lawyering and a course in evidence. She is an expert on the criminal trials of battered women. Her research and teaching are interdisciplinary. Of particular importance in her litigation and scholarship are the obstacles to fair trials experienced by people accused of crimes who are not part of the dominant culture. Professor Maguigan is a member of the Family Violence Prevention Funds National Advisory Committee on Cultural Considerations in Domestic Violence cases. She serves on the boards of directors of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. She is a past co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest membership organization of law professors in the U.S.
Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants
California has a water crisis that is rooted in racism. About 1 million Californians in 130 communities still do not have access to clean, safe drinking water. Most of these people live in rural areas primarily populated by farmworker families.
This inequality can be traced to the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North at the beginning of the 20th Century. Met with discriminatory real estate practices, they were forced to build or rent homes in colonias with no water mains, sewer lines or lighting.
That racist legacy continues to plague people (primarily of Mexican descent) who live in San Joaquin Valley, one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. Growers who pump large amounts of water from the soil are at the top of the chain when it comes to water access. Next come residences and businesses. At the bottom of the water access chain are the residents of the colonias.
But the people are organizing and they have achieved a victory in their decade-long struggle for equal access to water.
Photojournalist David Bacon has documented this shameful inequality and the legislation the people have secured in his article, The Color of Water, which was published in April by The Nation and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. We are lucky to have David here with us today to discuss the racist water crisis in California.
Guest " David Bacon is an author, political activist, and former union organizer who has focused on labor issues, particularly those related to immigrant labor. He is Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute and the author of several books and numerous articles. His most recent book is More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro which documents the communities on either side of the Mexico/U.S. border in photographs and journalism.
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Disturbing Shift Away From Passwords And Into Biometric ID Systems
Are passwords becoming obsolete? Recently our own Heidi Boghosian published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on the disturbing shift away from passwords to fingerprints, eye scans, and other biometrics authentication systems. A consortium of businesses is working with security experts to develop more secure ways to access online accounts. Each year the United States loses TRILLIONS of dollars from avoidable data breaches. And that figure is growing. Compromised login credentials are responsible for at least one fifth of all these breaches.
Enter the FIDO Alliance, or Fast Identity Online. Alliance members Google, Apple and Microsoft are working on enabling a password-free world, suggesting users switch to a simple verification of their fingerprint or face"or biometrics.
What are the benefits and risks of such a transition? Heidi is here to fill us in on some biometrics basics, and to demystify how new password-less systems might work, and when we can expect to see them. Heidi is the author of the 2013 book, Spying on Democracy, and the 2020 book: I Have Nothing to Hide: And 20 Other Myths About Surveillance and Privacy.
Guest " Attorney Heidi Boghosian is executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute, a charitable organization providing support to activist organizations. Before that she was executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. Her book is coming out in July 2021(Beacon Press). She received her JD from Temple Law School where she was editor-in-chief of the Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review. She has an MS from Boston Universitys College of Communication and a BA from Brown University. Heidi is the author of the 2013 book, Spying on Democracy, and the recent book I Have Nothing to Hide: And 20 Other Myths About Surveillance and Privacy.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's Leaked Draft Opinion
In 1973, the Supreme Court held in Roe v. Wade that the Constitution protects a womans right to abortion until the fetus becomes viable, that is, when it can survive outside the womb (which is about 23 weeks of pregnancy). Nearly 20 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court reaffirmed the central holding of Roe and said restrictions that placed an undue burden on a womans right to abortion were unconstitutional.
In perhaps the most significant leak in the history of the Supreme Court, Politico published a draft opinion that Samuel Alito wrote in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, which would overturn Roe and Casey. At least four other members of the Court would have to sign Alitos draft in order to overrule the constitutional right to abortion.
But Politico also reported that, in a straw poll following oral argument in December, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to overrule Roe, Casey and the constitutional right to abortion, and they all continue to hold that position. The Court will issue its final opinion in Dobbs by the end of June.
Although two-thirds of the American people believe that Roe should not be overturned, it appears that the Supreme Court is poised to do just that. Moreover, if the Court says that abortion is not a constitutional right, many other so-called unenumerated rights that are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution will also be in jeopardy.
Guest - Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of Berkeley Law School. Dean Chemerinsky is one of the nations preeminent constitutional scholars. He has written 14 books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction. He also represents clients and has argued several times before the Supreme Court.
Government Agencies Delay Food Safety FOIA Requests Part 2
The US Freedom of Information Act is a 1967 federal law requiring federal agencies to disclose information to the public. The logic being: a government of, by and for the people, is transparent and accountable to those people. In the last half-century, FOIA requests have became critical tools for both journalists and activists seeking to illuminate federal agency activities.
However, since 2014 its gotten harder to wrest information from recalcitrant government agencies. Federal agencies began both heavily redacting information, or ignoring requests entirely. Delays have also been noticeably lengthier. The law gives agencies 20 business days to respond. Yet by 2019, the average wait time for a reply to your FOIA request was nearly six months (177 days).
Todays guest experienced this frustrating process" waiting seven years for the US Fish and Wildlife service to respond. He filed his FOIA in 2014, receiving nothing for ten months, and finally a reply with much the data blacked out. This forced him to sue.
Guest - Attorney Nicholas Arrivo, managing attorney and champion of endangered species at Humane Society of the U.S.
Paralysis In The US Antiwar Movement
The proxy war between the United States and Russia has been going on in Ukraine, according to some, since February. Others argue its been happening since 2014 with the U.S.-organized coup which overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and replaced it with a government more favorable to U.S. interests.
The corporate news media in the United States have downplayed the U.S. role in the 2014 coup, which brought fascists into a European countrys government for the first time since World War II. At that point, the coup government launched a military action against the Russian speaking population of the eastern Donbas region which had declared its independence by a popular vote. This military action by Ukrainian forces resulted in 14,000 deaths.
It is the position of many antiwar activists in the United States that Russia initiated a war of aggression by invading Ukraine this past February. Other antiwar activists say that Russia acted in self-defense, considering what happened in 2014, the expansion of NATO and military bases up to Russias borders; they have refused to outright condemn the Russian invasion.
This disagreement has caused a paralysis in the U.S. peace movement. Moreover, the United States has supplied the Ukrainian government with billions of dollars worth of weapons and has demonstrated no inclination to support a cease-fire or a negotiated settlement.
Some have observed that the United States will fight the Russians to the last drop of Ukrainian blood.
The danger of a nuclear conflagration between the United States and Russia, the worlds two most heavily nuclear armed countries, increases daily. The United States has now articulated its goal in the war: to subjugate the Russians and overthrow the Putin government.
For its part, the Ukrainian government is under tremendous pressure from right-wing forces in the country (the same forces that participated with rifle fire in the 2014 coup) to refrain from engaging in peace discussions. The Ukrainian government is operating under martial law and has banned all opposition parties, including socialists and those advocating for negotiations and peace. Repression in Ukraine is being carried out by the SUB, the Ukraine political police, with advice from the CIA.
What will it take to mobilize antiwar Americans so they act together in a unified way? What demands should they raise?
Guest - Medea Benjamin, a leader for many years in the U.S. peace movement and the cofounder of CodePink, a major antiwar organization in our country.
Free Speech And Censorship In The United States
We are taught from a very young age that one of the many blessings of living in an open and democratic nation is that we all have the right to say publicly what is on our mind; that free speech is one of the great hallmarks of our democracy. And yet, throughout our nations history there have been periods of time when the constitutional guaranty of free speech has been under serious assault. And this is one of those times. Less than 50% of students, as well as all other American adults, feel the right of free speech is fully secure in the United States today. And I'm afraid they are correct.
In recent years a number of public opinion surveys have disclosed that a goodly number of Americans believe people with hateful or very controversial views that might unduly excite people, or insult people, should not be allowed to express those views in the public arena. And this is true of both liberals and conservatives. At least one in four college students think its fine to ban highly controversial speakers from their college campus and, in fact, one in six students believe that if all else fails, they can resort to physical intervention to prevent them from speaking on campus.
Well, as the old adage about it not being legally permissible to shout fire in a crowded movie theater, what are the limits on free speech today? Should racist speech be allowed? How about misogynous speech? Or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel speech? Does the fact that our nation is very divided, very tribal today, inform the answers to such questions? Well, weve a lot to cover today. Lets get started.
Guest - Attorney Nadine Strossen is the New York Law Schools John Marshall ll Professor of Law, Emerita. From 1991-2008 she served as the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, the first woman to do so. When she stepped down as ACLU president in 2008, three US Supreme Court Justices participated in her farewell and tribute luncheon: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Antonin Scalia. Her 2018 book, is HATE: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship, and her earlier book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Womens Rights, was named a notable book of 1995 by the New York Times.
Russia, Deescalation And Nuclear Disarmament
If the U.S. nuclear policy doesnt change immediately and rapidly we are in a lot of trouble. Seventy-seven years ago, the United States became the first, and so far the only, country to use nuclear bombs when we destroyed the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki to frighten the Russians and secure an immediate and unconditional surrender of Japan in World War II. The dropping of these bombs was the first move against Russia that would devolve two years later in 1947 into the Cold War.
The threat of nuclear war has never eased and it is now imminent with the fighting in the Ukraine which could draw the U.S. and NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. We are now in a new stage of this war. It has become hot and so perilous it threatens all of humanity, all of earths creatures, with annihilation. Any mistake, any miscalculation would quickly and irretrievably doom us all. This almost happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis where nuclear war was avoided, according to scholars, by luck and decent leadership.
What has been the history of attempts to contain and roll back the threat of nuclear war? What has been tried and what is failed? What will it take to get the nine countries who possess nuclear weapons to give them up?
The Veterans for Peace organization spelled it out clearly. There should be a no first use policy and nuclear missiles must be taken off hair trigger alert. The United States should rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, from which George W. Bush and Donald Trump withdrew, respectively. The U.S. should sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Our country should initiate negotiations to reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons, as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which the U.S. is a party.
To start, there must be a cease-fire in the Ukraine, the withdrawal of Russian forces, and guarantees of Ukrainian sovereignty and Russian security.
Guest " Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University and directs the Nuclear Studies Program. at that institution. Peter and Oliver Stone wrote The Untold History of the United States and also produced a showtime documentary series based on the book.
World Peace Through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule Of Law
In 1945, following World War I and World War II, wars that claimed millions of lives, the nations of the world enacted the United Nations Charter to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. The Charter prohibits the use of military force except in self-defense after an armed attack by another state or when the Security Council approves it. The five victors of World War II, who became the permanent members of the Security Council, agreed to the Charter because they each received a veto over matters of war and peace.
The United States is a party to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nevertheless, it continues to violate the provision of that treaty that requires the parties to move toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. Although he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obamas administration advanced a policy, which Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued, to develop leaner and meaner nuclear weapons. The proposed U.S. budget calls for nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years to build two new bomb factories, missiles, planes, submarines and redesigned warheads. In spite of the UN Charter and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we are now facing the most dangerous threat of nuclear war in the last 60 years.
Guest - James Ranney is a retired Adjunct Professor at Widener Law School, co-founder of the Jeanette Rankin Peace Center, a legal consultant to the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and a board member of the Project for Nuclear Awareness. Professor Ranney has written a book called World Peace Through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule of Law. In this book, he calls for arms reduction, including the abolition of nuclear weapons, and global alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, with enforcement mechanisms.
Repairers Of The Breach: Reverend Dr. William Barber
As political scientist Barbara Walter has recently warned, violent extremism is on the rise globally, and theres even an increasing likelihood of a second civil war in the United States. At the same time, a Harvard University poll of 18- to 29-year olds revealed that nearly two-thirds are more fearful than hopeful about democracys future. Respondents blamed politicians and money in politics as key factors, along with structural racism, and lack of access to higher education. Both polls came as President Joe Biden addressed international leaders at a Democracy Summit, and said the survival of democracy depended on their decisions. For his part, Biden has promised to rebuild the backbone of the country " the middle class " and has claimed that his Build Back Better Act will do just that. He promises to set the United States on course to meet its climate goals, create millions of good-paying jobs, enable more Americans to join and remain in the labor force, and grow the national economy. The most profitable corporations, and the wealthiest Americans, will pay their fair share of taxes.
Guest - Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is a member of the National NAACP Board and a pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, NC since 1993. He has been called one of the most gifted organizers and orators in the country today, and the closest person we have to Martin Luther King Jr. in our midst. The Reverend is the president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
In Memory Of Glen Ford
Glen Ford died of lung cancer last summer in July at the age of 71. Cornell West wrote that He was the most brilliant, courageous, and consistent writer and journalist in the Black radical and independent tradition of his generation. Of himself Glen said I am a Black nationalist and a socialist. He had been executive editor of the Black Agenda Report, which she helped found in 2006. Today on Law And Disorder we speak with three people closest to Glen Ford. We talk with his daughter Tonya Rutherford, Margaret Kimberley and Ajamu Baraka. Just before he died Glen was able to complete the manuscript for The Black Agenda. The book is available from OR Books.
Margaret Kimberly worked with Glen. She wrote the introduction to his book and is now the Managing Editor of Black Agenda Report. Glen was her mentor and teacher. Ajamu Baraka is an editor and frequent contributor to BAR. He is the Executive Director of the Black Alliance for Peace He ran as the Green Party candidate for vice president in 2016. Raymond Nat Turner is the poet in residence at BAR.