Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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CCR And Others Issue Complaint Against U.S. Death By Incarceration
The United States condemns one out of every seven prisoners–or more than 200,000 people– to die in prison, over two-thirds of them people of color. “Death by Incarceration,” or DBI, includes extreme sentences such as life, and life without possibility of parole. DBI violates two treaties the U.S. has ratified, the Convention Against Torture and the Race Convention. DBI “is the devasting consequence of a cruel and racially discriminatory criminal legal system that is designed not to address harm, violence, and its root causes, but to satisfy the political pressure to be tough on crime,” according to a complaint filed with UN special rapporteurs on September 15.
Valerie Kiebala helped bring together organizations including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Drop LWOP Coalition, and the Abolitionist Law Center, to file the 31-page complaint.
Related Article: Human Rights Groups Urge UN to Call for Abolition of Death by Incarceration by Marjorie Cohn.
Guest – Valerie Kiebala is a writer, organizer, and artist. She is the communications director for Straight Ahead, a nonprofit lobbying organization fighting for the human rights and liberation of incarcerated people. Valerie previously worked as an editorial manager and staff writer for Solitary Watch, a nonprofit organization documenting and exposing the use of solitary confinement across the U.S. Her work has appeared in the Root, the Appeal, Truthout, the Chicago Reporter, and Shadowproof.
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Fog Data Science: Constant Surveillance
Each time we access the internet, we open the door for companies to track our behavior and our location. This information is gathered and sold by data brokers, but not just for the purpose of helping marketers send us targeted ads. Our movement data is also marketed to law enforcement agencies around the nation. State sheriffs, highway patrol, and local police now can trace millions of Americans’ everyday movements dating back several years. One Virginia data broker contracts to sell telephone geolocation data to state and local law enforcement, according to an investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF.
EFF Staff Technologist Bennett Cyphers led the investigation. He and his team found that Fog Data Science sells access to a database with information about where a person was at any point in time over the past several years. The surveillance isn’t limited to possible crime scenes. It includes homes, churches, workplaces, health clinics—places in which we have constitutionally-protected expectations of privacy.
Guest – Bennett Cyphers is a staff technologist on EFF’s Tech Projects team. He focuses on consumer privacy, competition, and state legislation. He also assists with development of Privacy Badger, a browser add-on that stops advertisers and trackers from secretly tracking your movements.
Hosted by Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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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 Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo was angered by the 2017 WikiLeaks revelation of the CIA’s “Vault 7” program (whereby the CIA was able to tap into people’s 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 Assange’s 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, Roth’s 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. Attorney’s office and interned for a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeal. The recipient of numerous awards, Roth is a frequent media commentator .
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Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of America’s 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 US’s 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 more than 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.”
Graham’s 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 Biden’s 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 Russia’s 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 Graham‘s 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 America’s 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.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Racist Police Violence
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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 `Trump’s 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.”
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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.
Host Attorney Julie Hurwitz: Bill is also my law partner in Goodman Hurwitz & James and a former long-term partner in life – we’ve 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.
Hosted By Attorneys Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Racist Police Violence
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The Case Of Bernina Mata And Clemency
In 1998, Bernina Mata was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of John Draheim, who she’d 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 Mata’s sexuality was the motive and showed the jury books from her apartment—Call Me Lesbian, Homosexualities, and Best Lesbian Reading —to support their theory. Prosecutors claimed that “a normal heterosexual person would not be so offended by the (victim’s) 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, Mata’s 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 People’s 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.
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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 world’s 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 Fortune’s 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.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Climate Change, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, U.S. Militarism
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Far Right Supreme Court Decisions Not Seen Since 1931
During its last term, the Supreme Court demonstrated that it is the most right-wing court since 1931. In cases involving reproductive rights, entanglement of church and state, the right to carry guns, and the ability of congressionally-mandated administrative agencies to regulate climate change, the high court’s conservative members handed down reactionary rulings. The court has agreed to hear a case next term that could radically change our electoral system.
Guest – Stephen Rohde is an author and social justice advocate who practiced civil rights and constitutional law for more than 45 years, including representing two men on California’s death row. He is the former chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and former national chair of Bend the Arc, a Jewish Partnership for Justice. He is also a board member of Death Penalty Focus.
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ALEC: Five Decades of Government Influence
The United States underwent a “public interest” revolution in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the first half of the ’60s, Congress passed precedent-setting environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Water Quality Act. And in just three years, from 1969 to 1972, the federal government adopted a raft of new environmental, public health, workplace and consumer protections and established new agencies to administer them, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
That revolution sparked a counterrevolution that is still reverberating today. Wealthy conservatives, corporations and libertarian foundations poured money into new think tanks and advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation and Charles Koch’s Cato Institute. A less-well-known group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, was founded around the same time. It goes by its acronym, ALEC.
Unlike Heritage and Cato, ALEC—a network of nearly 300 corporations, trade groups, law firms, and libertarian foundations—operates at the state level. The group provides state legislators with a variety of ready-made bills that, among other things, roll back voting rights, thwart efforts to address climate change, and bolster corporate profits.
State lawmakers introduced nearly 2,900 bills based on ALEC’s recommendations from 2010 through 2018, according to an investigation by USA Today, the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. More than 600 of them became law.
Lately ALEC has been coaching state legislators on how to spin the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. ALEC has also been working behind the scenes to amplify the false GOP narrative on voter fraud. Writer Elliott Negin has been following ALEC off and on for the last decade, and he recently posted an essay that explains in detail how ALEC turns disinformation into law. We are fortunate to have Elliott as our guest today.
Guest – Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a national science advocacy organization. Prior to joining UCS in 2007, he was the Washington communications director for the Natural Resource Defense Council, a former news editor at National Public Radio, the managing editor of American Journalism Review, and the editor of Nuclear Times and Public Citizen magazines.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prison Industry, U.S. Militarism, War Resister
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- Michael Smith Commentary – Recall Of District Attorney Chesa Boudin
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Opposition Grows Against Florida’s Don’t Say Gay Law
In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education bill, known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The bill bans instruction or classroom discussion about LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third grade. Older students may discuss gay and transgender issues if they are “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” Florida’s legislators believe that classroom education about sexual orientation and gender shouldn’t start at an early age, and that parents can have the final say about what their children learn and when.
Sex education has already been banned in Florida and many other states until the fifth grade. Critics contend the new law focuses on a problem that doesn’t exist for the state’s youngest students. By limiting discussions about LGBTQ issues, it could stifle conversations for kids who need to process their own gender or sexual-identity questions, they say.
Many school librarians have accused their schools of removing race- and LGBTQ-related books from their shelves to avoid a fight. The Washington Post reported that schools with small budgets cannot afford to contest court challenges that the law will surely draw. Some schools are reportedly peeling off rainbow safe-space stickers from windows. As with other restrictive laws, the chilling effect is already being seen in schools across the nation.
Joining us today is K&L Gates attorney Michael Komo – a triple alumnus of George Washington University. Michael is well known for his work on behalf of the LGBTQ community and has been recognized at the local, state, and federal level, with accolades including Pittsburgh Magazine’s 2021 40 under 40 honorees and City and State PA’s 2022 Pride Power 100 honorees. He co-founded the LGBTQIA+ Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative with the FBI, started the Pride Night Series for Pittsburgh’s professional sports teams, and serves as the chair of the LGBT Rights Committee of the Allegheny County Bar Association.
Guest – attorney Michael Komo is well known for his work on behalf of the LGBTQ community, with accolades including Pittsburgh Magazine’s 2021 40 under 40 honorees. He co-founded the LGBTQIA+ Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative with the FBI, started the Pride Night Series for Pittsburgh’s professional sports teams, and serves as the chair of the LGBT Rights Committee of the Allegheny County Bar Association.
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Investigating The Assassination Of Palestinian American Journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh
The Zionist colonial settler state of Israel is not the moral legatee of the victims of the Holocaust much less the moral legatee of the ancient prophets of the Jewish people.
Never has this been more evident than last month with the exposure of the Israeli army’s assassination of the beloved Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh. Assassination is a political murder.
Shireen had covered the Israeli military’s occupation of the West Bank for Al Jazeera for 25 years. The day she was killed she was reporting on the Israeli military invasion of Jenin, an Arab town on the West Bank occupied by the Israeli army for 55 years. She was wearing a helmet and a protective vest marked “PRESS.”
It is the practice of the Israeli army to shoot journalists and otherwise suppress the truth of their war crimes including the illegal theft of Palestinian lands. Israel’s brutal occupation has been going on since it illegally seized the West Bank as a prize of the 1967 war between Israel and three of its neighbors. Since then the Israeli military has ruled the native Arabs. Shireen is the 86th journalist to be killed while covering Israel’s illegal occupation since 1967.
The murder of Shireen was not adequately exposed by the U.S. press. The United States supports Israel politically, ideologically, economically, and morally. The U.S. gives the state of Israel more than $3.8 billion a year in weapons. Shireen was killed by a high-velocity armor-piercing 5.56 mm bullet fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semi automatic rifle – a weapon made in the U.S.
Israel has refused to conduct an investigation of Shireen’s assassination, because it “would provoke opposition and controversy within the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] and in Israeli society in general,” according to the Israeli government. Although complaints have been filed in the International Criminal Court against Israel, the court does not appear to have the political will to thoroughly investigate those charges.
There is an apocryphal story of three rabbis dispatched from a Zionist congress in Vienna many years ago to report back on the situation in Palestine. They reported back that the bride is beautiful but she’s married to another man.
The claim of the Zionist is that Israel was built on a land without a people for a people without a land. This is Israeli propaganda. This propaganda is less and less swallowed by the new generations in the United States and Europe as they witness Israel taking over more and more of historic Palestine and attempting to prevent the truth of what they are doing from coming out.
Guest – Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and Director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. He was educated at Yale and Oxford universities and is the author of many books on the Middle East. He is also the author of Under Siege: PLO Decision Making During the 1982 War, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East and recently The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017.
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