Law and Disorder August 20, 2012 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Guatemala Medical Experimentation Victims to Appeal Dismissal of Suit
• International Agent Orange Day 2012: 51 years of US Spraying Agent Orange In Vietnam

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A Challenge to a Brutal Anti-Latino Law

Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently went on trial in Arizona for discriminating against Latinos and for usurping federal authority with roundups of undocumented immigrants. In a related action, a coalition of groups is asking a federal court to block enforcement of Section 2(B) of SB 1070, the Arizona law that compels all law enforcement agencies in that state to enforce the Arpaio model.

In June the Supreme Court rejected the premise of SB 1070 on grounds that making foreign policy – of which immigration law is a part – is a federal government’s domain. However, the Court upheld the law’s “show me your papers” section that requires officers to check the immigration status of anyone they stop, arrest or detain on another basis if the officer has a “reasonable suspicion” the person is in the country illegally.

The motion to block Section 2(B) “involves additional claims, evidence, and irreparable injuries beyond what the Supreme Court had before it.” The challenge explains harms so obvious and unconstitutional that the judge does not need extensive proof of the section’s impact to enjoin it. The Legislature “explicitly intended Section 2(B) to codify the practices” of Arpaio, the motion says, even after his powers had been restricted by earlier investigations into and challenges to his racial profiling. The practices include prolonged stops and detentions of Latinos to check their status or for other immigration-related purposes.

The plaintiffs are also asking the court to enjoin another Arizona law, which turns alleged violations of a federal anti-harboring law into a state crime. Courts have enjoined similar laws in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina since, like Arizona’s, they were clearly pre-empted by federal law.

Lena Graber:

• The law enforcement in Joe Arpaio’s district have been really outspoken about their intention to stop Latinos and fight immigration.
• The issues around racial profiling are really huge. I think it’s worth separating out the different lawsuits that are going on.
• Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs this incredibly punitive jail where they barely feed people enough it’s a 120 degrees, and he’s been sued literally thousands of times for the conditions of his jail.
• Thats been going on since he was elected in the early nineties.
• In the last several years he’s really gotten on this tough on immigration, let’s do sweeps through the Latino neighborhood.
• The ACLU and other civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against him for racial discrimination, violation of equal protection, and violation of civil rights.
• They filed that 2007, about six months later the Department of Justice initiated a civil rights investigation into Joe Arpaio and his operations in Arizona.
• In the meantime the state of Arizona passed SB 1070.
• There are both civil rights groups and non profits filing one lawsuit and the federal government filing a parallel.
• The Arizona Supreme Court recently ruled on the Arizona law, not on Joe Arpaio, where they struck down most of the law and upheld “show me your papers.”
• The federal government did not argue that the law was unconstitutional because of racial discrimination.
• Litigation tends to effect the way law enforcement operate pretty dramatically.
• Joe Arpaio has been elected five times.
• The federal government has been very slow on the game to chastise Joe Arpaio.
• The Department of Homeland Security formed their largest 287G agreement with Sheriff Joe for his deputies to be trained to enforce federal immigration law. At that point the violations really started to go through the roof.

Guest – Lena Graber, a Soros Criminal Justice Fellow who focuses on detention and deportation and state and local enforcement.  Lena Graber’s work seeks to reduce the government’s abuse of immigration detainers–a tool used to maintain custody of potentially deportable individuals in local jails or prisons nationwide.  Lena previously worked at the National Immigration Forum in Washington, D.C.
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Mondoweiss: Israel Trip and the Future of Palestine

We welcome back returning guest Philip Weiss, the founder and co-editor of Mondoweiss.net, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East. Philip has recently returned from a trip to Israel and was struck by the ongoing apartheid against Palestinians. During his trip, he traveled an Israeli’s only road. He saw the massive barrier in the West Bank. He toured many Israeli settlements, such as Ma’ale Adumim, the first settlement to be declared a city. Interestingly Philip also saw some of the fund raiser entourage of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney while in Jerusalem.  We talk with him about his trip and the future of the Palestinian state.

Philip Weiss:

• The last few times I’ve come back I felt a real sense of bleakness.
• When you’re there and you see just how much force is arrayed on one side and the status quo is of complete inequality.
• The sense of martial law is overwhelming. Spiritually, it’s awful.
• When you’re over there you see there is very little left in terms of contiguous territory in the West Bank to create a viable state.
• You see the settlements all around you, giant swimming pools next to villages with walls around them, to separate themselves from Palestine villages in occupied land.
• Jeff Halper says the 2 state solution is dead.
• Area C is ours they say.
• I saw one ad on my commute here today that read – It’s Not Islamaphobia to Blame Islam for Terrorism.
• This is extremism, it’s intolerance, it’s racism.
• It’s statements that we would not accept, that have become off limits in American discourse in almost any other context.
• One thing I saw there was the separation, the complete separation of two societies.
• You really get a sense of ethnic purity at work.
• The denial of that humanity is so profound and offensive.
• I’ve been struck by the famous Arab hospitality in that region.
• The sense of sovereignty and domination is profound.
• It’s hard sometimes to meet people’s eyes, because you know that you’re an author of their humiliation and this human being with a lot of dignity has suddenly become humiliated before your eyes and it’s upsetting.
• John Brown said the idea that all people are created equal is the exact same idea as do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• It’s kinda scary to think that a bunch of Americans to send a signal to Obama would have to go raise a million dollars at the King David hotel in Jerusalem and have Romney talk about Iran and he’s with Netanyahu on Iran. These were powerful political signals being sent while I was there.
• I think Romney is behaving in an irresponsible manner. It seems like he’s being used in this situation.  Within the Israeli security establishment there is some sense it does not want this attack.
• They don’t care about Iran, they care about cleansing the West Bank of Palestinians.
• If there is a war with Iran it’s a perfect opportunity and a crisis to push more Palestinians out of area C into the cities.
• I’m for BDS. Every time I go there I’m upset by what I see. The question is that whether the South African connection is kicking in. (BDS Collective)
• I get a lot of criticism from Jews for exposing my people to danger.
• Jeff Halper studies the occupation and knows it in a granular way.

Guest – Philip Weiss,  founder of Mondoweiss, longtime journalist and regular contributor to the Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute.  Philip is the author of two books a political novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and American Taboo, an investigative account of a 1976 murder in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga.  Weiss is one of the editors of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.

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Law and Disorder September 1, 2008 [ 55:23 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates

• Labor Day – Unions
• Pre-RNC Raids
• 5 arrested, dozens detained in pre-RNC raids
• Halliburton Sued For Human Trafficking
• Hacker Loses Extradition Appeal
• Government Conclusions on GTMO Deaths Do Not Absolve Gov’t of Responsibility

The Prosecution of President Bush and Other Administration Officials for War Crimes

This month, Larry Velvel, dean and co-founder of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will hold a conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other administration officials for war crimes. The conference will take on the issues of both domestic and international crimes committed by high level Bush officials, including Federal judges and members of Congress. A coordinating committee of legal groups will also be created, among the legal groups are the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild. Official Site

“This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred,” says convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. “It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.” related article

Velvel Interview Notes:

• Conference will be held in undisclosed location for the time being.
• Until people have the fear they will be brought to book if they violate the law in a very serious ways that cause tens of thousands of deaths, what will stop them from doing it in the future?
• Unless there is something to look back on, like the Germans and the Japanese apparently know, don’t do it again because people swung.
• Who’s to say it won’t happen 20 or 30 years in the future again.

Guest – Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean of Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law. Mr. Velvel is a 1960 graduate of the University of Michigan and a 1963 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, where he served on the law review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He was a law professor from 1966-1978, first at the University of Kansas and then at Catholic University. He has been a partner in major law firms in Washington, D.C., and was the first chief counsel of an organization established to write United States Supreme Court briefs in support of state and local governments. read more.

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New Guidelines Would Give F.B.I. Broader Powers

A Justice Department proposal which could be made public in a month, has given the government even broader license to open terrorism investigations, without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on racial or ethnic profiling. Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons, such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated, to investigate US citizens and legal residents. Last month, The Council on American Islamic Relations decried the forthcoming plan as “unconstitutional and un-American.”

This proposal is among other aggressive plans the Bush administration has put in place such as new wiretapping regulations and authorizing greater sharing of intelligence information with the local police. The Director of National Intelligence has set up - Information Sharing Environment – where certain police authorities will have access to information produced by the FBI, by the intelligence community and also by police departments around the country.
It is “one stop shopping” for all these different police agencies and even private companies to have access to this highly speculative, accusatory, fragmented and often erroneous information.

Intelligence Fusion Centers – which I think is a real problem, particularly since there’s very little oversight of these centers
there’s no way to correct these watch files, – a main problem with the closed system, where no one has an opportunity to go in and say you got this piece wrong.

Related Article : Colorado ‘fusion center’ to step up intelligence gathering during DNC

Mike German Quotes:

• Giving the FBI more authority to collect more information isn’t helping the FBI be more effective.
• Gathering information about innocent people won’t help find guilty people.
• There is no terrorism profile, people are drawn to terrorism for all sorts of reasons.
• Terrorism watch list : 1 million individual records – clearly nobody believes there’s a million terrorists out there.
• The FBI don’t know to this day, how many national security letters they’ve issued.
  

Guest – Mike German, attorney with the ACLU and former FBI agent. Mike German is a recognized expert in terrorist group behavior, counter-terrorist operations, and right-wing extremism. He has appeared on Dateline NBC, Paula Zahn Now, CNN, and MSNBC and his commentary has been published in the National Law Journal and the Washington Post. Mike served for sixteen years as a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and is one of the few agents credited with actually having prevented acts of terrorism before it became the FBI’s number one priority.

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Law and Disorder July 28, 2008 [ 56:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Updates:

• Ex-Guantánamo Detainees Effectively Disappeared After Transfer To Algeria Nearly Two Weeks Ago
• CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren Denounces Mukasey Scheme to Have Congress Delay Habeas Hearings
  
• Creepy ‘camera head’ project a reaction to Seattle surveillance cameras
• Pakistan: Pakistan’s New Government Must Reveal Truth about Enforced Disappearances.
• USA: 9/11 defendants warned on lack of access to classified information and other disadvantages of self-representation
• Second Arrest Attempt On Karl Rove In Iowa Leads To 4 Arrests.

House Judiciary Committee Hears Impeachment Resolution.

For nearly eight years, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have manipulated and lied to the U.S., and not without the help of Congress and the mainstream media. Here on Law and Disorder we’ve been with listeners during 4 of those 8 years, chronicling the injustices of the “global war on terror.” Now, in this late stage of the Bush/Cheney administration, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich is pushing for impeachment. Last week the house voted 238 to 180 to send a single article of impeachment to the Judiciary Committee. The same committee that stopped Kucinich’s impeachment effort is allowing a hearing on Bush’s reasoning for taking the country to war in Iraq. In Kucinich’s words it is quote “deceiving Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq WMDs to fraudulently obtain support for an authorization of the use of military force against Iraq.” Kucinich: citizen petition.

If this article of impeachment is tabled, Kucinich says he would then begin to propose other articles. There are 35 articles of impeachment, among them are:

• Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government
• Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes,
• Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives, 4. Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act,
• Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. told Congressional Quarterly, “We’re not doing impeachment, but he can talk about it.” Kucinich says holding George W. Bush and Dick Cheney accountable now, could prevent an attack on Iran.

1. Conyers Tries To Kill Impeachment Hearings Before They Start.
2. Impeachment Hearing? – Do Not Accuse, Do Not Name Names, Do Not Say Impeach.
3. CSPAN Coverage: Watch Impeachment Hearings.

Guest – Ohio Congressman, Dennis J. Kucinich

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The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

Members of the Bush administration may soon be questioning if they will be prosecuted for war crimes. George W. Bush and other senior officials have enjoyed years of immunity from criminal lawsuits but, once out of office, they can be held accountable.

Bugliosi: Will U.S. State Attorney Generals and District Attorneys do the right thing?

In his latest book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Vincent Bugliosi lays out the legal framework of a meticulously researched case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq.

One strategy in The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder is to establish jurisdiction in the cases for Attorney Generals in each state and also the approximately 900 district attorneys in the counties of those states. Bugliosi says it’s not unreasonable to believe that at least one prosecutor will be courageous enough to step up. Bugliois says, one of the key pieces of evidence to prosecute George W. Bush is the Manning Memo from January 31, 2003.

Manning Memo: In March 2003, Bush said that if Saddam Hussein did not give up his weapons of mass destruction, Iraq would face war. But earlier, in a January 31 closed-door meeting, Bush told his British buddy Tony Blair that the attack would take place even if no WMDs were found. Indeed, George and Tony candidly conceded that the discovery of such weapons was unlikely. This deliberate deception is revealed in a confidential five-page memo written by David Manning, Blair’s top foreign-policy advisor, who was at the meeting. Manning records that both Bush and Blair were uptight that the WMDs were not going to be found, so George W offered another fabrication to give them an excuse to attack. He suggested that the U.S. would paint one of our own surveillance planes in the colors of the United Nations and fly it over Iraq, hoping that Saddam would be provoked into shooting it down. Then the U.S. and Brits could invade, claiming that they were retaliating for Saddam’s attack on the UN.

Bugliosi: Points To Consider

• While young soldiers age 18, 19, who never had a chance to live out their dreams, were getting blown to pieces in Iraq. Bush was having a lot of fun and enjoying life to the very fullest.
• George Bush took 908 days off / about 36 percent of his presidency.
• Juxtaposing Hussein with 9/11 – then saying later Hussein was involved in a terrorist relationship with Al-Qaeda. Al Qaeda was trained in Iraq in making bombs and poison.
• You have troops over there in Iraq fighting thinking that its payback time … so you have this grotesque spectacle.
• The white paper that congress saw never had the intelligences of the 16 US agencies, that Hussein was not an imminent threat. Opinons were changed into facts while dissenting opinions deleted.

Guest – Vincent Bugliosi, former prosecutor and bestselling author of many books including The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

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Law and Disorder February 25, 2008 [ 58:00 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Hosts Update: Fidel Castro and Cuba in the news.
  

Encore Segment: Naomi Wolf – The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

Law and Disorder hosts were live in the studio with Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolf is a feminist, social critic and political activist. The New York Times called her book, The Beauty Myth, one of the most important books of the 20th century. Wolf is the co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, teaching young women to become leaders and agents of change. Naomi Wolf blog in the Huffington Post

Her latest book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot is a call to return to the beliefs of our founding fathers. Wolf’s new book illustrates ten steps historically taken by leaders who are attempting to dismantle a democracy. Wolf jokingly called it the The Greatest Hits of Facism.

In The End of America, Wolf gives voice to the cause of every American patriot: the preservation of the Constitution and the liberties it embodies and protects.

“Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty,” stated Wolf.

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Servants of Wealth: The Right’s Assault on Economic Justice

“Freedom and democracy” are two words we’ve been hearing from the right wing in this country for 25 years. In their quest to shore up support for the politics of wealth and privilege, the Right has organized patiently and consistently by focusing on a core ideology to amass a formidable base. The Right’s commentary on world affairs, morality, the state, and the economy, though, has had an overarching focus, namely to eliminate social equality as a legitimate public policy goal. Its success has resulted in one of the most dramatic, undemocratic, and insidious transfers of wealth and power in recent American history.

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 November 19, 2007 [ 57:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

‘A Coup Has Occurred’ . . . Daniel Ellsberg

Law and Disorder hosts talk with Daniel Ellsberg about his recent speech. Ellsberg, former Defense Department analyst who leaked the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, describes to listeners a dire scenario if the Bush administration attacks Iran.

Excerpt from his speech - “If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Guest – Daniel Ellsberg, served in the Pentagon in 1964 under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. He then served for two years in Vietnam working for General Edward Lansdale as a civilian in the State Department, and became aware that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.

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The National Lawyers’ Guild Calls for Demonstrations in Solidarity with Lawyers in Pakistan

Co-hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith speak with lawyers and activists on the street. The National Lawyers Guild, NYC-NLG Chapter, Center for Constitutional Rights, SALT, Alliance for Justice, have called for demonstrations at Pakistani Consulates in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles & Boston in solidarity with Lawyers in Pakistan.

Speakers include NLG NYC Chapter President Daniel L. Meyers; Michael Heflin, Amnesty International USA; Jeannie Mirer, Secretary General, International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

The National Lawyers Guild demands that President Musharraf immediately withdraw the emergency declaration of November 3, 2007, the Provisional Constitutional Order No. 1 of 2007 (PCO), which suspends Pakistan’s Constitution. This declaration includes suspension of the right to life and liberty, freedom of speech, assembly and association, and equal protection of the law, all of which are guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

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James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928

James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928 is meticulously and creatively researched. Palmer’s book situates American communism’s formative decade in the dynamics of a specific political and economic context, never losing sight of the mobilizations and militant strikes of the period. This study also locates this historical drama–to an unprecedented degree–alongside the personal life and particular experience of a native son of working-class radicalism. – University of Illinois Press

Guest – Bryan Palmer Canada Research Chair at Trent University and the editor of Labour/Le Travail. He is also the author of ten books, including Descent into Discourse and Cultures of Darkness.

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November 13, 2001: Coup d’etat in America by Michael Ratner

I am writing this on November 13^th. That day probably has little significance for most readers of this blog. But it is a day, as they say, that should live in infamy. On that date in 2001, two months after 9/11, President Bush issued Military Order Number 1. Read More . . . .