Law and Disorder Jan 25, 2010 [57:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Heidi Boghosian Speaks At Emergency Rally for Mumia Abu Jamal

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The Death Penalty Loses Support of The American Law Institute

In late 2009, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual structure for the current capital justice system for nearly 50 years, essentially announced that its project has failed. The American Law Institute or A.L.I. is made up of around 4 thousand judges, lawyers and law professors, streamlines law and model codes to provide coherence in a federal legal system that is usually taking a varied approach. In a 1962 Model Code,  the best legal minds of the institute framed a way for the death penalty to be carried out fairly, it then was re-instated in 1976. Now, the same people disavow the structure saying there is no fair system of capital punishment. The New York Times, in one article wrote (quote) the institute’s move represents a tectonic shift in legal theory. The article also points out that capital punishment was plagued by problems including racial disparities.

David Seth Michaels:

• American Law Institute, the intellectual group that tries to cobble together federal law in the United States including capital punishment.  The capital punishment rules that they invented fifty years ago,  have been the groundwork on which everything has happened since.
• So, it comes as a bit of a shock that fifty years later, they say “oh, oh.” It doesn’t work. It won’t work, we can’t make it work, so we’re going to fold up our tents. We won’t have anything else to do with it.
• Unworkable elements in the system:   They’re troubled by the racial disparity on who gets executed, there’s tremendous disparity that is regional across the U.S. The prospect of capital punishment is ridiculously expensive. There’s risk of executing innocent people and politics of appointed judges who wantonly convict.
• It’s one of these circumstances that it is irreparably falling apart, broken. Everywhere you turn you find horrendous errors, egregious discrimination.
• The murder rate is higher in places where they have the death penalty than places where they don’t have the death penalty. Public support for the death penalty has been slowly and gradually decreasing.
• In the early 70s I became concerned about conditions in the prisons and mental hospitals in Tennesee and Mississippi. This is after the restoration of the death penalty in 1976.
• I can’t wait for the day that capital punishment is abolished. This system can’t die soon enough. You got nobody supporting the death penalty on an intellectual basis.
• National Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

Guest – Attorney David Seth Michaels.  David has represented clients for 30 years, clients such as prison inmates in Mississippi and Tennessee. He’s worked with Brooklyn Legal Services B and with the Federal Defenders Service Appeals. He is also a novelist, has his own practice in New York.

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Lawyers You’ll Like: Jim Lafferty Part II

We’re delighted to have back with us attorney Jim Lafferty for the second half of our Lawyers You’ll Like series.  He is the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show, a weekly public affairs program on Pacifica radio sister station KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

He has served as a chief officer of, and spokesperson for, various national anti-war coalitions, including the National Peace Action Coalition, the anti-Vietnam War coalition that organized the largest protests during that war; the National Coalition for Peace in the Middle East; and, the National Campaign to End U.S. Intervention in the Philippines. In the 60s and 70s, his law firm, Lafferty, Reosti, Jabara, Papakian & Smith, represented virtually all of the left political movements in and around Detroit, Michigan, during which time he became one of this nation’s leading experts on Selective Service law and military law.

In the early 80’s, Mr. Lafferty founded and chaired the largest A.C.L.U. Chapter in the State of Michigan. In New York City, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, he traveled the world organizing on behalf of the labor rights of merchant seafarers. During this time he also taught a course at the New School for Social Research, entitled, Vietnam: The War at Home and Abroad.  More recently, Jim Lafferty was the Coordinator of the L.A. Coalition to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal, as well as a member of the national steering committee of the Campaign to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Jim Lafferty:

• The man who was presented to me as my uncle, when I was sixteen he died, my mother acknowledged that he was my father.  A friend of mine, she was a white nurse and she was married to a white school teacher and had a 3 year old daughter.
• She divorced that man and married a black surgeon. Her mother and former husband wanted custody feeling it was inappropriate for child to be raised in biracial home. George Crockett was one of the lawyers in the National Lawyers Guild in Michigan, took the case only if I clerked and read every opinion on domestic relations given down by the Michigan Supreme Court.
• We lost that case, and I continued working with that firm. They made a movie about that called “One Potato, Two Potato”
• The firm had been lawyers for UAW.  I had gone down South to work with the lawyers guild in 1963, I was taking depositions for the Freedom Democratic Party. That’s where I met Mary Robinson.
• Bill Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy / Bill Kunstler’s book (1966) Deep In My Heart
• Michael Smith:  Jeff Haas says Fred Hampton had Bill’s book, Deep In My Heart on his bed.
• When you finally take a stand, even though it leads to your incarceration and apparent lack of freedom, you’re finally free.  Anti-war movements: Some friends of mine ran as peace candidates just to bring up the question of the war. We ran the entire campaign for 3300.00.   Including 10 small billboards. Later we put together the Detroit Coalition to End the War in Vietnam Now.
• I wasn’t representing people anymore, but as the head of this coalition, you were doing public speaking, and getting an appreciation for what the power of people could do.   To the credit of those lawyers who were winning those victories, even then they were saying to younger lawyers like me, but the real important thing is what goes on in the streets.
• Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, – Labor Movement is vital. The anti-war movement is vibrant.  You can’t blame the young activists for not knowing history, because nobody’s bothered to teach them.  I’d like to see the movement coalesce around a meaningful left socialist third party.
• On the issue of the war, we’re worse off than we were with Bush.
• Healthcare plan: boondoggle for insurance companies, if you insure people who haven’t been insured, the profits of insurance companies aren’t gonna go down, you and I will pay more. Whereas the government should be paying more.  NY Times article: putting aside the public option, you get past it by not dealing with it.

Guest – Attorney Jim Lafferty,  Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show, a weekly public affairs program on Pacifica radio sister station KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A.

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 Law and Disorder December 07, 2009 [56:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Gregory Craig Steps Down As Whitehouse Lawyer
• Obama Adds Troops In Afghanistan (Pipelanistan)
• Illinois: MCC College Calls Off GTMO Lecture, Cites Not Prepared For Crowds?
• McHenry County College, 8900 US Hwy 14, Crystal Lake, Illinois 60012-2738 – (815) 455-3700
• WBAI Listeners Click Here For Rundown
• (NEW) Michael Ratner – Muting Our Criticism of Obama: If We Don’t Speak Out Who Will?
  

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Talking With Sartre: Conversations and Debates

Professor John Gerassi, author of the recently published book titled – Talking With Sartre: Conversations and Debates joins hosts in studio. As a child, Gerassi’s parents had become close friends with the French existentialist philosopher, playwright, and novelist, Jean Paul Sartre. Later in his life, Gerassi conducted a series of interviews in the early 70s. These interviews are now edited into book form and as one review states, – quote – it has produced this revelatory and breathtaking portrait of one of the world’s most famous intellectuals.

The brings into to focus Sartre’s thinking on the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the disintegration of colonialism, it also reveals how Sartre has wrestled with the apparent contradiction between his views on freedom and the influence of social conditions on our choices and actions.

John (Tito) Gerassi:

• My father was an artist and said ridiculous things like I don’t care if my son starves or my wife starves, first I paint.
• This appealed to Sartre who said in effect the same thing as a man of letters.
• Sartre became fascinated by my father. My father refused to join the OSS / CIA
• Gerassi to Sartre: You have a problem uniting the idea of free choice that you have in existentials because you begin with the I, to the Marxist situation which is a class derivative to which you want to align. I don’t see how you can align them.
• After a series of criticisms to this dichotomy, Sartre said, “This kid’s brilliant.” And so I became part of the family.
• Sartre always supported counterterrorism. Those who fought the establishment’s terrorism.
• Sartre’s anti-position has always been consistently correct.
• He opposed Ridgeway when Ridgeway took over NATO. Get your base out of France.
• No country is free with a foreign base on its territory. If you get rid of Ridgeway don’t put in a European general.
• During the Algerian War, the magazine that Sartre basically created called Modern Times, supported the Algerians right from the beginning.
• It supported sedition, that was a step further than any lefty in France.
• Supporting sedition is one thing, but they actually supported it in action.
• They were called the suitcase carriers, they gave medicine and ammo to Algerians in suitcases.
• The editor in chief of Modern Times assembled 120 intellectuals and produced the Declaration of 121.
• It included Sartre and existentials but also the Catholic left and notable communist intellectuals.
• That began the split in the communist party.
• In Algeria, the communist party there was in favor of the Algerian revolution.
• Sartre : Never judge the powerless by the same criteria that you judge the powerful.
• That means you support the Palestinians, and you praise the suicide bombers because you judge them with a different criteria than Israelis who have tanks, airplanes etc . .
• Sartre interpretation:  The fact that he (Ft Hood shooter) is a member of a dominated class, and he is rebelling against the dominating class. He is perfectly justified in what he’s doing.
• Sartre: The trouble with all revolutions is they give up too soon.
• He did go to all sorts of places and because he was Sartre, he got to see the leaders of Russia and China, the only influence where he was pleased with contact was Che Gueverra.
• Supporting the early action of the Palestinians: When Israel subjugates the Palestinians, takes away their lands. . I’ve always supported counterterror against established terror.
• Marxist – Group Infusion – people briefly connecting, moving from I to we.

Guest – Professor John Gerassi, once an editor at Time magazine, then at Newsweek, who obtained his PhD at LSE, is a long time civil rights and anti-war militant. He is the author or editor of ten books and scores of articles and pamphlets published on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York.

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 Law and Disorder December 22, 2008 [57:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host Updates:

• Outpouring of Support For Shoe Thrower
• Ramsey Clark Receives United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights
• Cheney Confesses To Have Role In Approving Torture
• Mumia Supporters Organize Globally
• 334 Taser Related Deaths: AI Report – Co-host, Dalia Hashad
  

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Sit In Victory at Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors Plant

Last wee, angry laid off workers from Republic Windows and Doors agreed to leave the closed Illinois plant they’ve occupied in protest for six days. The workers accepted a deal that will give each of them about 6 thousand dollars, accrued vacation time and two months of helathcare coverage. About 1.75 million will be put into an escrow account to be supervised by the worker’s union.

Paul Buhle:

• Why stand outside where you slug it out with cops and scabs while you can be inside defending your job.
• The sit down strike goes all the way back to the Wobblies in 1907
• We have entered a new era, the nation has acquired more political oxygen than it has in a long time.
• There’s a spirit of empowerment that people feel they have to change the situation immediately around them.
• In the way of occupying universities, we can move things much better than those in charge with their foot upon us.
• Now is the time to develop those abandoned factories into living spaces, so they don’t become targets of firebugs.

Guest- Paul Buhle, senior lecturer at Brown University, a historian of American radicalims., a former member of Students for a Democratic Society and author of many books including images of American Radicalism. Also, Che, A Graphic Biography, and Isordore Duncan, a graphic biography by Sabrina Jones.

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Verdict Against Holy Land Charity Could Have a Chilling Effect on the Muslim Community

Last month, a jury in Dallas, Texas found five Palestinian men guilty of more than 100 charges in the nation’s largest terrorism financing trial since 9/11. We talk with Laila Al-Arian, a Washington based journalist, who recently wrote a powerful Alternet article about this case and its impact on Muslim charities.

As many listeners may know, Holy Land was the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the the Bush administration shut it down after the September 11th attacks, and arrested five officials from the charity. In her article Al-Arian describes how the prosecution use unrelated video of suicide bombers to emotionally sway the jury. We’re later joined by Linda Moreno, a defense attorney in the case.

Laila Al-Arian:

• One of the witnesses (in this recent case) was an expert witness, he was a Shin Bet agent.
• The way the US government is trying to prove that these Zakaat Committees are funding Hamas is through the testimony of this Israeli witness. The testimony can’t be authenticated.
• The first time in a US court room that an expert witness, not a fact witness, testified under a pseudonym.
• How do you detect perjury, or how does the defense cross-examine without background.
• Expert witness lied to the jury about the Zakat committees being tied to Hamas
• What you’re really doing is prosecuting an Israeli Palestinian conflict in an American courtroom.
• For Muslims giving charity is a religious obligation.
• There will be an appeal on the grounds of the expert witness Shin Bet agent.
• Joe Lieberman and George Bush commented on the verdict of this case.
• All this does is punish people who are suffering, and punishing those who want to help them.

Linda Moreno:

• The government began its exhibit with a photograph of a bombed out bus, which had nothing to do with the accused in the Holy Land case.
• They also showed video of children doing skits, an art form that is a result of culture under occupation.
• Children in the US get to play violent video games, but they get to turn that off and go back to the safety of their home, go into your bedroom and shut the door. When you’re a Palestinian child, you don’t have that luxury.
• We know because we proved in both trials, that the US Government through USAID and other organizations was giving to the exact same Zakat Committees that were at issue in the indictment of this case.
• And the notion that you have to vet the recipient of charitiable donations, I believe is un-American.
• There’s just something wrong about criminalizing humanitarian aid. Charities under fire.

Guests – Laila Al-Arian, a Washington DC based journalist. Linda Moreno, high profile defense attorney.

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Harpers Magazine Panel: Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration

We hear from our own Michael Ratner President, Center for Constitutional Rights. The event discussed methods available to a democracy to prosecute high officials in the Bush Administration and responded to Scott Horton’s Harper’s Magazine cover story called “Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration.” We will hear more from the other speakers in the coming weeks.

• Elizabeth Holtzman, Author, The Impeachment of George W. Bush
• Scott Horton, Contributing Editor, Harper’s Magazine
• Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, House Subcommittee on the Constitution
• Antonio Taguba, Major General (U.S. Army Ret.)

 

 Law and Disorder October 27, 2008 [57:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Michael Ratner on the Cuban Five, a Cuba Visit, the Uighurs and the Latest on Guantanamo.
• US Drops Charges for 5 Guantánamo Detainees
  
• US missiles’ Hit Pakistan school
• Blackwater Sends Warship to Gulf of Aden
• North American Army Created Without OK by Congress
• Guantanamo Guards Struggle With Hunger Striker
• U.S. Helicopters Attack Syrian Village
  

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Stay Issued In Case of Troy Davis

Monday, October 27 was the day set for the execution of Troy Davis. A third stay has been issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. A 3 judge panel ordered attorneys to draft briefs that address whether Troy Davis can meet requirements for a next round of appeals. Attorneys have 15 days to file briefs.

Two weeks ago the Supreme Court refused to hear Troy Davis’ death penalty appeal, despite broad out pouring of support from former President Jimmy Carter, the European Parliament, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to Jessie Jackson Jr. and this list goes on.

Lawyers Launch New Appeal Effort

Guest – Jessie Cohn with the Death Penalty Abolition Campaign Amnesty International USA

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Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge Arrested

Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was arrested last week near Tampa Florida on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. The sixty year old retiree was picked up in his Apollo Beach home for allegedly lying about whether he tortured suspects in Chicago decades ago. According to People’s Law Office Attorney Flint Taylor, torture techniques included electric shocks and dry submarino, (suffocating with bags)

Under Seventh Circuit law if there’s a conspiracy to cover up the evidence in a civil case to show fraud then you can bring the case again. The People’s Law Office brought the case in 2005 and the city of Chicago refused to settle the case while pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars in that case. Flint Taylor says the city has spent over the 10 million dollars in aiding the defense of Commander Jon Burge.

• Chicago Mayor Daley Issues Sarcastic Apology for Torture
• Prosecutors Widen Chicago Police Torture Probe
• Law and Disorder Chicago Torture Archive

Guest – G. Flint Taylor, attorney at the Peoples Law Office.Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University School of Law and a founding partner of the People’s Law Office.

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Luis Posada Carriles: A Tribunal

We hear the last of the speeches from this tribunal. Brian Becker, Director, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition.

From the New York Daily News: “It took years, but he is finally going to be charged in the U.S. for his crimes – even if only symbolically. It will occur here, in New York, when a tribunal composed of scholars and human rights activists take up the case of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, a man who is responsible for a long list of murderous attacks.

Posada, though, is a very lucky man. Despite his dark history, Posada remains free to roam Miami’s sunny streets and happily lives at home with his family. His rap sheet is long and deadly.  A convicted terrorist in two countries – he escaped Venezuela and was pardoned in Panama – Posada is considered the mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines Fight 455, which killed the 73 passengers on board, including the Cuban national fencing team. He is believed responsible for a string of hotel bombings in Cuba, resulting in the death of Italian tourist Fabio diCelmo. But these are only two examples of his treachery. Posada later boasted about the diCelmo killing in a New York Times interview, which should give everybody a clear idea of what kind of person this man is.

Inexplicably, the Justice Department has refused to classify the former CIA operative as a terrorist. The reason may have to be found in Posada’s long and extensive ties with the CIA and several other nation’s intelligence agencies.”

 

 Law and Disorder October 10, 2008 [57:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Troy Davis Update
  
• Dr. Alan Berkman: Fighting Cancer
• Alan Berkman on Marion Control Unit
• European Center For Constitutional Rights: Nora Marx Case
• DHS Spy Satellite Violates Posse Comitatus
  
• Bailout Bill Loops In Green Tech, IRS Snooping
• Taxes Could Get Sky High With Aerial Technology
• There’s No Difference Between Martial Law and The Threat Of Martial Law
  

Economics Professor Rick Wolff: The Capitalist Crisis

In this interview Professor Rick Wolff focuses on the larger issues beyond finance such as banking, money lending and credit, he says it was a problem in the making for the last 30 years. He describes historic underlying causes such as the end of the wage increase back in 1970. From 1820-1970 the American economy delivered a rising standard of living, wages went up every decade in that time and they used that money to buy more things.

In the last 30 years the wages in the United States did not go up. In order to keep buying things, people worked more hours and borrowed money, exhausting themselves in additional work and taking on more debt. From the workers point of view, there is increased anxiety and exhaustion, their lives are strained, pressurized. Meanwhile financial markets and banks compete with each other to profit from the workers’ massive debt.

Bail outs and extreme right anti-immigration moves will not solve underlying problem. A fundamental reorganization of the American economic system will not be done by the people who run the corporations, yet the change has to begin at the Board of Directors, the small groups of people heading corporations who have been making decisions in a classical way for 150 years.

Rick Wolff – Possible Solutions:

• Reorganize the way business works so that the people become there own board of directors.
• Corporations reorganized so that workers collectively become there own boss.
• Mon-Thurs – You come to work and do your job as you always did, less hours, wage increase.
  
• Friday – Attend meetings all day to assess the impact of the product on the community, what products to make, what to do with profits. Cultivating the community.

“This, instead of a handful of people, “the bosses” set against the employees in a conflicted situation that periodically makes each group behave in antagonistic ways in turn destroying the community – which is where we are now.”

Guest – Rick Wolff, Professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts at Amherst Rick teaches at the Brecht Forum and the New School in New York City. (Read Rick’s article, Economic Blues in the Monthly Review)

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Economic and Political Analysis: Historic Financial Crisis and Bailout

Michael Smith and Michael Ratner host a lively discussion with economist Max Wolff and political science professor and author John Ehrenberg. Max Wolff begins with an anatomy of the financial collapses – “Low wage growth for majority of Americans, meanwhile global capacity for productive enterprise has skyrocketed and the way to make money is to find something to produce for very low wages. This creates a classic problem of insufficient aggregate demand. We can make it cheap, we can find this 11 year old in the rain forest to work in the factory for 39 cents an hour. Not successful if you can’t find a buyer. So, your success breeds a nightmare, the nightmare is resolved by international financial markets and growing debt.”

In the last half hour John Ehrenberg joins in. He says the US needs a new New Deal, and though this is a dangerous time, it could be an opportunity for strong social movements. The Republican vetting of Palin is a major concern – “The sneering contemptuous disdain for serious thought or consideration for deliberation.” Faux populism that rewards capital and punishes labor and yet coming forward as a party for the common man.

Guest – Max Fraad Wolff , freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. Max’s work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, SeekingAlpha and many other outlets.

Guest – John Ehrenberg, author of the book “Servants of Wealth: The Right’s Assault on Economic Justice.” A professor of political science at Long Island University, in this, his third book, critically analyzes the rise of an ideologically coherent Right. He dissects their themes of military weakness, moral decay, racial anxiety, and hostility to social welfare to reveal their central organizing objective of protecting wealth and assaulting equality.

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 Law and Disorder June 30, 2008 [57:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• House Approves Unconstitutional Surveillance Legislation
• The Late George Carlin and WBAI
• John Yoo, David Addington Stonewall Congress
• CCR Attorneys File First New Habeas Petitions
• UK: Surveillance Onslaught is Creepy

The Framing of Mumia Abu Jamal by J.Patrick O’Connor

J.Patrick O’Connor delivers a powerful interview for the full program. O’Connor lays out the case based on his in-depth research that Mumia Abu Jamal was framed. O’Connor argues that the former black panther journalist did not shoot Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The real shooter says O’Connor, was Kenneth Freeman a business partner of Mumia’s brother. Freeman, was found dead in 1985, bound and cuffed in a Philadelphia parking lot after a massive police raid on the counter-culture group MOVE.

One review writes: “In this account of the trial of controversial death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, O’Connor, editor and publisher of crimemagazine.com, clearly lays out his case that Abu-Jamal should receive at least a new trial, if not complete exoneration. O’Connor asserts that Abu-Jamal was framed for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner because of a vendetta by Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo and the police due to Abu-Jamal’s defense, as a journalist, of the group MOVE.

Review excerpt by Linn Washington Jr : Carefully citing trial proceedings, O’Connor book lists odious instances of wrongdoing by police prosecutors – accomplished with judicial complicity.

“From the beginning of this case, it was corrupt. It was a railroad job,” O’Connor said recently during a reading/book signing at a small venue on Baltimore Ave in West Philadelphia sponsored by the organization, Journalists for Abu-Jamal. “I wrote the book to show not only that Mumia did not kill Officer Faulkner but to show how and why they framed Mumia,” said O’Connor who lived in the Philadelphia area at the time of the brutal December 1981 crime at the heart of this controversial case.

Guest – J. Patrick O’Connor, editor and publisher of Crime Magazine. He has worked as a reporter for UPI, editor of Cincinnati Magazine, associate editor of TV Guide, and editor and publisher of the Kansas City New Times.

Can the Media Continue to Ignore “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal”?

 

 Law and Disorder April 14, 2008 [55:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hosts Update

• Mumia Abu Jamal Ruling
• Indecency Law in Indiana
• Lawyers Move To Get Torture Memo Author Yoo Tried As War Criminal

  In a press release, National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn stated:

  “John Yoo’s complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act,”

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An Innocent Man In Guantanamo: Five Years of My Life

Today we hear excerpts from the event An Innocent Man In Guantanamo: Five Years of My Life. That’s the title of the memoirs recently released by Murat Kurnaz who was detained at Guantanamo for five years. Kurnaz is a Turkish citizen and legal resident of Germany, he traveled to Pakistan to learn more about his Muslim faith and was later arrested at a checkpoint, handed to the United States and eventually taken to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We hear part 1 of a 3 part series from this discussion.

The event presented by Friends of the Library, brought together a panel of lawyers from the U.S. and Germany who fought for Murat’s release and a Guantanamo chaplain who was accused of espionage and imprisoned. The panel was moderated by our own Michael Ratner. Speakers include:

• Baher Azmy – Professor at Seton Hall Law School, where he directs a civil rights clinic and teaches constitutional law. His litigation work on national security and human rights cases emerging from the “war on terror” include lawfulness of extraordinary rendition, torture and indefinite executive detention. In July 2004, Azmy began representation of Murat Kurnaz imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay until his release in August 2006.
• Bernhard Docke – a lawyer since 1983, specializes in criminal law, since 1989 partner of the law firm “Dr. Heinrich Hannover und Partner” in Bremen, Germany. He has been a lawyer for Mr. Kurnaz since 2002.
• Wallace Shawn – an Obie-winning playwright and a stage and screen actor. His plays include The Designated Mourner, Marie and Bruce, The Fever, and Aunt Dan and Lemon. He co-wrote and starred in the art-house classic My Dinner with Andre and he also performed in numerous Woody Allen films including Manhattan and Radio Days. Our Late Night and a Thought in Three Parts: Two Plays will be published in Spring 2008.
• James Yee - the former US Army Muslim Chaplain of Guantanamo Bay. His book, For God And Country, Faith and Patriotism Under Fire, tells the story about being wrongly accused of espionage and imprisoned by the U.S. military. In 2004, the government dropped all charges against him and he received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army.
• Phillipe Sands – an international lawyer and a professor of law at University College London. He is the author of Lawless World and is frequently a commentator on news and current affairs programs including CNN, MSNBC and BBC World Service. Sands has been involved in many international cases, including the World Court trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the treatment of British detainees at Guantanamo Bay. His article in Vanity Fair “The Green Light,” looks at how high level members of the Bush administration pressured underlings to use torture tactics at Guantanamo. He is also the author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values.

Music at Break: Patti Smith – Without Chains

 

 Law and Disorder April 4, 2008 [57:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Please Help Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

Today on Law and Disorder we update listeners on the death row case of Troy Anthony Davis. Since our last July report on the case, Davis had a 90 day stay of execution and now on March 17, this year, the Georgia Supreme Court decided 4-3 to deny a new trial for Troy Anthony Davis, despite significant concerns regarding his innocence. Troy Davis was initially sentenced to death in Georgia, for the murder of a police officer. The case against him was built almost entirely of witness testimonies that were full of inconsistencies, even at the time of trial.

Amnesty International Report: Where is the Justice for Me (pdf)

Again, there is no physical evidence linking Troy Davis to the crime and no murder weapon has ever been found. Troy Davis was convicted of murder solely on the basis of witness testimony, and seven of the nine non-police witnesses have since recanted or changed their testimony, several citing police coercion. Others have signed affidavits implicating one of the remaining two witnesses as the actual killer.

Guest : Martina Corriea, Troy’s sister, who has been very active in fighting for justice in her brother’s case.

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The Arrival of the American Police State – Left Forum 2008

“However narrow and restricitive American bourgeois democracy was before 9/11, it’s jridical and institutional underpinnings have been transformed by the Bush Administration (with the complicity of the Democratic Party) intor what can now most accurately be described as a police state.”

We hear from C. Clark Kissenger, long time activist, creator of the Not In Our Name project.

Watch and listen to entire Left Forum panel here

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Deepening Economic Crisis: What Laws Are In Place To Protect Against Economic Fleecing of the United States?

Two million families are on the brink of foreclosure, tent cities pop up along US city outskirts, and as UK press declare “depression” in the United States, we talk with Max Fraad Wolff , instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, New School University. The media has reported that millions of US families took out loans to big for their incomes and were foreclosed, but hosts look at The Glass Steagall Act, mortgage sharking and banking predators.

Max is a freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. His work can be seen at the Huffington Post, TheAsia Times, Prudent Bear, and many other outlets.

 

 Law and Disorder Dec.31, 2007 [58:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On this last day of 2007, Law and Disorder will look at the stories that have taken civil liberties in this country many steps in the wrong direction. We start with the question of impeachment, what happened, why it stalled, we’ll look at damaging supreme court decisions and draconian legislation that took large bite out of the right to free speech and dissent in this country.

We begin by checking in with John Nirenberg, he’s marching from Boston to Washington DC. His goal, to walk 485 miles to deliver his message of impeachment to Nancy Pelosi. Nirenberg explains to hosts how after reading The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. One slogan from www.marchinmyname.org reads. . . “when voting isn’t enough, when letter writing isn’t enough, when signing petitions isn’t enough, when outrage isn’t enough.”

Guest – John Nirenberg former Professor of Organizational Behavior. He started his career as a Social Studies and American History teacher.

Impeachment?

Hosts discuss the “magnificent failure on impeachment followed by the continued approval for war funding in Iraq and Afghanistan and connect it with the Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.

Co-host Michael Ratner enumerates several key stories of torture in 2007, including the destruction of the CIA videotapes, the Mahar Arar case, and the confirmation of Attorney General Michael Mukasey who says he’s not certain if water-boarding is torture.

Law and Disorder hosts then talk about the recent Supreme Court arguments regarding the remaining Guantanamo Bay Cuba detainees and the horrible failure to restore habeas corpus. This case may determine once and for all whether there is a constitutional right to habeas corpus – that is, a fair hearing before a real court – for everyone detained by the U.S. government at Guantánamo.

Increases in surveillance powers were also on the list of wrong-turn stories this year, co-host Heidi Boghosian points out the legislation that extends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In the wake of Congress approving a dramatic expansion of U.S. warrant-less wiretapping powers, the Center for Constitutional Rights has argued that the NSA’s program is unconstitutional and should be struck down. The argument in CCR v. Bush comes after Congress and the Bush administration passed the Protect America Act of 2007 which broadly expands the government’s power to spy on Americans without getting court approval.

Hosts also examine the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Legislation that appears an effort to re-create the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was a standing commission in the fifties and sixties to root out “un-American” ideas among political activists. This, with the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2007 is key to installing the police state apparatus and declaring martial law.

The New Supreme Court: The Trifecta 2007

• The 5-4 ruling that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools. Free speech not an option for students regarding (Bong Hits For Jesus).
• Campaign Finance Reform – The Supreme Court has thrown out part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that placed restrictions on corporations and unions from buying television ads close to elections
• The citizens’ ability to challenge government violations of the separation of church and state, Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation 5-4, the Justices ruled that taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the White House program on federal aid to faith-based organizations.
• On a lighter note, Supreme Court justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that judges cannot hand down a lighter punishment because they disagree with wide disparities for crack and powder cocaine sentences. Blacks account for about 80 percent of the federal crack cocaine convictions.

Michael Ratner’s Acceptance Speech

We end this year-end program with an acceptance speech delivered by co-host, attorney, author and Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner. Michael received the 2007 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.

“One of the country’s foremost defenders of human rights and civil liberties, Michael Ratner has led the fight to demand due process for Guantánamo detainees, adequate safeguards against intrusive government surveillance, and an end to torture and extraordinary rendition.”

 

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Law and Disorder Update

Co-hosts Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian discuss recent key votes in Congress on the Iraq war, warrant-less electronic surveillance and lethal injection.

Enemy Combatant Doctrine

In a recent essay A System of Wholesale Denial of Rights published in the Monthly Review, Research Professor of Law, Michael Tigar describes how the term enemy combatant was created through the rulings in the anti-terrorist case Padilla v. Rumsfeld and the implications for civil liberties and human rights in the United States. Implications that support a system whereby the president can lock up anyone he chooses and never have to explain why to a court.

The Bush Administration has taken the language from those in favor of slavery and oppression of Native Americans. Instead of prisoner, instead defendant, instead of person they create a category of enemy combatant. (Non-People – Invoking the characterization of someone not entitled to claim justice.) Tigar says this is a tactic of repressive governments. Tigar says, the term enemy combatant doesn’t exist in the Constitution or within International Law, therefore enemy combatants have no rights, are denied access to courts and fall under military regime.

Michael Tigar in his article points out the historic parallels such as the Dred Scott case, Japanese internment and the Cherokee Nation. Frederick Douglas and several anti-slavery people thought that it would be possible to make an argument that slavery so violated the norms of the constitution that it had to be illegal everywhere. The Cherokee Nation, says Tigar was classified as “subject people.” Subject People is not found in Article 3 in the Constitution. Therefore, “subject people” are not entitled to sue in federal courts.

Michael Tigar is a Research Professor of Law at Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, D.C., where he teaches Federal Courts, International Human Rights, and Criminal Law. Tigar argued seven cases in front of the US Supreme court, he’s represented many controversial clients since then such as Angela Davis, Terry Nichols, Lynne Stewart and members of the Chicago Seven. He is the author of the recent book, Thinking About Terrorism: The Threat To Civil Liberties in a Time Of National Emergency.

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40th Anniversary of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna Murder

We mark the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara’s murder. He was captured in Bolivia during a military operation supported by the CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces. Guevara was summarily executed by the Bolivian Army in the town of La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967.

Guest – author and professor John Tito Gerassi, about Che Guevara’s influence. Gerassi describes how he was poisoned by the CIA while dining with Fidel Castro and about his guerilla training with Che.

Gerassi currently teaches at Queens College of the City University of New York. Gerassi, born in France in 1931, is the author many books including the Great Fear in Latin America and The Premature Antifascists, the only authorized biography of Jean Paul Sarte.

Che photos by redredpei – flickr