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We at Law and Disorder mourn the passing of our friend, co-host and co-producer Michael Ratner on May 11, 2016. Michael’s radical legal and political analysis, and his enormous compassion, was a rarity in the field of legal affairs broadcasting.
We shall miss him dearly.
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Updates:
- Co-host Michael Steven Smith Remembers Kent State Shootings May 4, 1970 and Jackson State University Shootings May 15, 1970.
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Discrediting the Red Scare: The Cold War Trials of James Kutcher, The Legless Veteran
Historian Robert Goldstein has just come out with the book “Discrediting the Red Scare: The Cold War Trials of James Kutcher, The Legless Veteran”. James Kutcher exposed some of the worst abuses of the red scare. His cases got massive publicity and contributed to the red scare’s demise and the discrediting of The Federal Employee Loyalty Program. Kutcher was a socialist in the 1930s and joined a small socialist organization. He was drafted shortly before American entry into World War II. He fought in north Africa and then Italy, where both of his legs were blown to pieces by a German mortar shell in 1943. After having both legs amputated and learning to walk with artificial limbs and two canes. In 1946, Kutcher was hired in a menial position at the veterans administration as a file clerk with no access to national security information.
However, as a result of President Truman’s March 1947 Federal Employee Loyalty Program, and more specifically due to the listing of Kutcher’s organization, the Socialist workers party, and the attorney generals list of subversive organizations mischaracterizing it as seeking to violently overthrow the government Kutcher was fired from his VA position. The government then sought to take away his World War II disability pension and then to evict him and his aged parents from there public housing project in Newark, New Jersey.
Goldstein’s book tells a dramatic story about a shy and timid person with true fortitude who fought for 10 years to establish his and all Americans’ constitutional rights to due process,freedom of speech and association. Robert Goldstein tells the story of a true American hero.
Guest – Robert Justin Goldstein is emeritus professor of political science at Oakland University. His many books include Flag Burning and Free Speech: The Case of Texas v. Johnson and American Blacklist: The Attorney Generals List of Subversive Organizations, both from Kansas.
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Saudi Arabia Threatens To Dump US Assets If Blamed For 911
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC and has written several books on the Middle East. She joins us to to talk about the alleged Saudi Arabian connection to 911 and Obama’s impending meeting with the Saudi Arabian king. The United States Congress is presently considering a bill to lift the sovereign immunity Saudi Arabia enjoys which protects their government from the pending wrongful death lawsuits brought by the families of the September 11, 2001 attack victims . Legislation to do this is backed by both Republicans and Democrats and opposed by the Obama administration.
The Saudi Arabian government has threatened, some have called it black mail, to dispose of the $750 billion in American assets, including treasury bonds, that it owns to protect itself if it’s sovereign immunity is lifted. Saudi Arabia along with Israel is America’s key ally in the Middle East.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis, directs the New Internationalism Project at IPS. She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst, and activist on Middle East and UN issues for many years. In 2001 she helped found and remains on the steering committee of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. She works closely with the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, co-chairs the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine, and since 2002 has played an active role in the growing global peace movement. She continues to serve as an adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues.
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