Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Human Rights Attorney Steven Donziger Faces Contempt Trial Without Jury, Before Federalist Society Judge
Since the inception of Law And Disorder Radio 15 years ago we have endeavored to chronicle the decline of democracy and the rule of law in our country. A low point has been reached with the prosecution of human rights ex-attorney Steven Donziger who goes to trial in January. He is charged with criminal contempt. He will be tried without the benefit of a jury before Federalist Society right wing pro-corporate Judge Loretta Presca in the Southern District of New York.
Three decades ago Donziger successfully brought a lawsuit against the oil giant Chevron which had contaminated in the area of Ecuador the size of Rhode Island. He won over $9 billion in an Ecuadorian court. Chevron has not paid a penny of the judgment nor has it cleaned up the area it ruined. Lives of thousands of indigenous Ecuadorians have been wrecked by the cancer causing pollution.
Donziger has been targeted by Chevron which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and used over 2000 lawyers to prevent the paying of the judgment and to victimize Donziger. It attempted to send a message to environmentalists that we will crush you if you try to protect yourself from us. When federal Judge Louis Kaplan, a former tobacco company attorney, found Donziger in contempt of court for refusing to turn over his computer and cell phone to Chevron’s attorneys on the grounds that it contained privileged information on his clients, Kaplan caused Donziger to be disbarred and put under house arrest. Kaplun assigned his friend Judge Presca to try the contempt case against Donziger without a jury. The trial starts in New York City in January.
Guest – Steven Donziger is a renowned advocate, writer, and public speaker with a focus on addressing human rights abuses and corporate malfeasance. He is part of the team working with indigenous and farmer communities in an area of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest suffering from high cancer rates and other health ailments related to the massive oil pollution caused by Texaco, now owned by Chevron. In 2011, the affected communities won a historic $9.5 billon judgment against Chevron for the environmental cleanup of what experts consider to be one of the worst oil-related catastrophes in the world. Known for his “Herculean tenacity” (Business Week), Steven has represented the affected communities since first visiting the region in 1993. Steven also founded Project Due Process, a legal advocacy group for Cuban detainees who arrived in the United States in the Mariel boatlift.
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The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
Two years ago a Yale School of Medicine professor and psychiatrist told Congress that President Trump is mentally unstable, could be dangerous, and could even be involuntarily committed. Bandy Lee argued in briefings that Trump should undergo a capacity evaluation to assess his fitness for duty. Lee argues that Trump may actually be a dangerous person—one who’s shown a “pattern of violent behavior and violent tendencies”—and she’s considered whether the president should be involuntarily committed to a hospital mental-health program. “We can forcibly commit somebody and could be held legally liable if we don’t when the signs are obvious,” Lee told the Atlantic Magazine.
In Trump’s case, the pattern of violent behavior” includes incendiary tweets, comments about groping women on Access Hollywood, his encouraging violence against protesters at campaign rallies, and his defense of white nationalists. Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland, one of a dozen lawmakers who have met with Lee, proposed creating an independent commission to determine presidential capacity. “The framers foresaw a time when this could become an issue,” Raskin has said, referring to the 25th Amendment. “And we simply have to have the courage and sense of responsibility to implement the procedure they set up.” Lee has noted that this is a matter of human survival, and that psychiatrists “could be held legally liable if we don’t [speak out] when the signs are obvious.”
Guest – Professor Bandy Lee, forensic psychiatrist, an expert in violence, president of the World Mental Health Coalition and editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Attorney Michael Tigar: Sensing Justice
Democracy and the rule of law have been in decline long before the Trump administration came at the office. The decline is accelerating. We can trace it back at least 19 years to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The Patriot Act resulted and put in place the surveillance state making Americans the most spied on people in history.
The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United allowed for dark money guided by the right wing Federalist Society to pack the federal judiciary with 200+ Trump appointed right wing judges, Amy Comey Barrett being the latest. Local police forces have been militarized and we have seen the results of this in the Black Lives Matter uprisings since June.
The attack on democracy has been bipartisan. The Obama administration claimed the right to assassinate anyone without due process including American citizens, even children. They put more whistleblowers in prison than ever before. Trump initiated the unprecedented prosecution of Julian Assange, a whistleblowing publisher who exposed US war crimes. Now Trump, with the backing of the Republican Party and gun toting militias have promised not to honor the results of the upcoming election if he loses.
Guest – Constitutional attorney Michael Tigar, professor emeritus from The Washington College of Law and has taught at the University of Texas and Duke University. He is the author of Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power. He has practice before the Supreme Court, arguing his first case when he was 24 years old. Tigar has written or edited more than a dozen of important books including “Law and the Rise of Capitalism.“ Since 1996 he has practiced law with his wife Jane B. Tigar. Michael Tigar’s blog Tigarbytes.
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The Chicago Seven: Attorney Bill Kunstler At Carolines Comedy Club
We hear part of the presentation by William Kunstler at Carolines Comedy Club in 1995.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Pen Pal: Prison Letters From a Free Spirit on Slow Death Row
Tiyo Attalla Salah-El died in 2018 on “ Slow Death Row” while serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison. He was a man with a dizzying array of talents and vocations: author, scholar, teacher, musician, and activist: he was the founder of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons. He was also an extraordinarily eloquent correspondent.
Today we are going to talk with his friend Paul Alan Smith about the letters that Smith exchanged with Tiyo which were written over a decade and a half. We will also speak with Paul’s friend the actor Carl Weathers who read the letters for the audiobook. The book is called Pen Pal: Prison Letters From a Free Spirit on Slow Death Row. It has a preface by Mike Africa, Jr.
Guest – Carl Weathers, multi-talented director, actor and former professional football athlete. Carl Weathers learned about the life and letters of Tiyo and read the letters for the audio book version of Pen Pal.
Guest – Paul Alan Smith, an agent and manager representing directors working in both film and TV. He’s most recently known as the founder of New Deal Mfg. Co., which seeks to shift representation to a more client-centric approach, rather than focusing on the needs of corporations.
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Chris Hedges Analysis Of Pre-Election Society In The United States
We are living in extraordinary times. At the same time we face both tremendous danger and extraordinary opportunity. The danger comes from a failed state, a failed racist capitalist state they cannot afford safety let alone opportunity to its citizens. Our opportunity comes from the massive social mobilizations that we have not seen in 75 years. A young generation has risen up. White people are involved with black people who are providing leadership. Perhaps 20 million have taken to the streets.
Trump is desperate and resorts to stoking fear of violence, race baiting, lying, explaining to his followers that all the unrest is due to agitators, antifa, Marxist and socialists.
The Democratic Party has chosen to oppose Trump with Joe Biden. The best you can say about him is that he’s not Trump. He has vowed to veto a medicare for all bill if it comes across his desk and has suggested that police violence could be curbed if they shot people in the legs, not the chest. He is for giving police departments more money. The worst you can say about Biden and the Democratic Party is that they are not a bulwark against fascism.
The big financial backers of the Democratic Party crushed the Sanders campaign indicating they would rather have Trump than a social democrat who would cost them money and raise expectations. Sanders for his part missed his historic moment, twice, when he refused to break from the Democratic Party in both 2016 and 2020.
Instead he performs the function of a sheepdog herding people back into a moribund capitalist party that has nothing to offer as a way out of the combined climate, economic, race, the health crisis, and nuclear annihilation and nuclear annihilation
Guest – Chris Hedges about where we are at, how we got here, and what to do next. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He was the foreign correspondent for the New York Times for 15 years and served as middle eastern bureau chief. He is the host of Emmy award nominated RT America show On Contact and the author of numerous books Including America: The Fairwell Tour, Empire of Illusion, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself
COVID-19 did not cause the current economic devastation to billions of people around the world. It triggered the crisis. It illuminated the inherent instability in the capitalist system itself. Capitalism exacerbates unemployment, inequality, racism, and patriarchy and threatens the health and safety of workers and our communities.
We are in the worst economic crisis since the great depression of 90 years ago. Half of the American population is poor or near poor. Twenty million people are unemployed. It is estimated that 400,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by the end of the year. Most of these people will be Black, Latino, the poor and the elderly.
The large corporations have bought out both the Republican and Democratic parties. Neither one of these parties has put forward an effective plan on what to do to get us out of this catastrophic situation.
Guest – Professor Richard Wolff, author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. His previous books are Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism.
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Julian Assange Extradition Case Update
The decline of democracy and the rule of law, already advanced under Obama , has accelerated under Trump. By his own admission it is widely known that President Trump will not consent to leaving office if he loses the election. What is not so widely known is the case that he caused to be prosecuted against journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange.
Assange is being railroaded in the Old Bailey courthouse in London in an effort by US government, in collaboration with its British ally, to extradite Assange and send him to the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Assange told the truth about American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2010. He is 49 years old and in terrible mental and physical health. If he loses and is sent to the Eastern District of Virginia for trial and successfully prosecuted, which is a given, it will be the death of free journalism and a blow to the first amendment which is a keystone of our democracy because it involves the right to learn.
Assange Defense
@defenseassange – Nathan Fuller twitter
Defend.wikileaks.org
Guest – Attorney Nathan Fuller who has been attending Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London. He leads the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Update:
- Hosts Remember Attorney Kevin Zeese
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President Trump And The 2020 Election
What if President Donald Trump is voted out of office on November 3, 2020 but on January 20, 2021 when he is scheduled to vacate the White House he refuses to go. His lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen predicted this in his congressional testimony before he went off to prison.
President Trump is already casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election which is less than two months away. He says there will be massive voter fraud, that absentee balloting, which will be widely prevalent because of the Covid crisis, is easily open the fraud.
Can Trump send federal troops to Washington DC, or other cities? Can he deploy the National Guard of the various states? Can he suspend habeas corpus, arbitrarily detained people, or declare martial law? Can he investigate opponents, freeze their assets, control communications, initiate a foreign crisis, or get help from attorney general William Barr? What can we do about it?
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, the past president of the National Lawyers Guild and former professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
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Detroit Will Breathe, et al, v. City of Detroit
Black Lives Matter protests have occurred in Detroit since May 29. For the first five days Detroit Police responded to the protests with excessive force. They used tear gas and rubber munitions, and freely using batons and shields to assault and beat protesters. In total, they arrested more than 400 protesters.
The local NLG chapter joined the Detroit Coordinated Legal Defense Coalition to provide legal support. The other groups are: The National Conference of Black Lawyers, Detroit Chapter; the Detroit Justice Center; the Neighborhood Defender Services; the Wayne County Criminal Defense Bar Association; and Michigan Liberation. As well, the protesters formed an organization called Detroit Will Breathe, which continues to hold daily protests.
On August 31 the Coalition filed a civil lawsuit against the Detroit Police Department to obtain injunctive relief from the use of unlawful violence against protesters. Detroit Will Breathe, et al, v. City of Detroit.
On Sept. 4 the court granted in part the plaintiffs’ motion for a Temporary Restraining Order. Police Chief Craig is continuing his public relations campaign and continuing to falsely claim that the Detroit Police have acted lawfully.
Guest – Detroit attorney Julie Hurwitz, a longtime National Lawyers Guild member based out of Detroit, Michigan.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Update:
$600M to Settle Flint Water Crisis Litigation
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Julian Assange Update August 2020
President Obama prosecuted and imprisoned more whistleblowers than any other president. But President Trump did one thing that Obama did not do. He indicted Julian Assange for conspiracy under the Espionage Act charging that in 2010 Assange and his publishing organization WikiLeaks released truthful information about American war crimes.
Obama held off making such a charge because the US government has never before gone after a publisher; not even the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon papers.
Assange sits in solitary confinement in the notorious Belmarsh prison in London. He awaits the outcome of the USA’s extradition request.
His partner, Stella Moris, the mother of their two young children said: “Julian is being targeted by the United States for the crime of journalism. He helped expose the war crimes and human rights abuses which the US would have preferred to keep hidden from public view. He revealed the killing of unarmed civilians and the torture of innocent people. No one has been held responsible for the serious crimes Julian has exposed. This extradition aims to entomb and silence him forever.”
He is in bad shape mentally and physically. Nels Melzer, The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture visited Julian and reported that he was being tortured by the months on end of solitary confinement. He hasn’t seen his lawyer in five months nor his companion and their two children. He can’t prepare his defense. He was finally given a computer but the keys were glued down. When he last appear in court he could barely pronounce his name. Defend.wikileaks.org
What is at stake is the future of free journalism. Journalists have a right to publish and we, their audience, have a right to learn. This is what the US government is attempting to take away.
Guest – Nathan Fuller, the American head of the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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Open Letter To The Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League pretends to be a civil rights organization, but the ADL is not an ally. It has a legacy of supporting racist policing, surveillance, colonialism and the silencing of social justice activism. It has branded itself as a civil rights organization in ways that conceal and legitimatize is right wing activities, undermined the rights of Black, immigrant, queer, Muslim, and Arabs.
In August 2020, 100 organizations signed an open letter exposing the ADL. Among the signatory organizations whose work Law And Disorder has covered on this radio program include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and Palestine Legal.
These 100 organizations signed an open letter announcing the publication of a pamphlet written by a working group with contributions from the American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Palestine Legal.
Guest – Lesley Williams, member of the coordinating committee for Jewish Voice for Peace in Chicago, the advisory board of speakers bureau for Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, and a founding member of the Tzedek Chicago, a non-Zionist pro social justice synagogue in Chicago. She is the author of “The Anti-Defamation League Kills the Black Jewish Alliance” and “We Can’t Fight Anti-Semitism and anti-Black Racism in Isolaton“. She works with a local coalition of teachers and activists to bring Palestinian history into school curricula.
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