Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
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Political Prisoner Lynne Stewart – December 2012 Update
Criminal defense attorney, political prisoner and good friend, Lynne Stewart continues to inspire people around her while serving a 10 year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth Texas. As many listeners know, Lynne was convicted on charges related to materially aiding terrorism, related to her representation of Omar Abdel Rahman. Her original 2 year sentence was increased to 10 years after the government pressured the trial judge to reconsider his sentencing decision.
Co-host Michael Smith reads a few paragraphs from a recent letter by Lynne. Lynne Stewart turned 73 this past October, she’s a breast cancer survivor and has recently come out of surgery. She says she’s feeling better and ready to take on the next step in her case.
“I am now beginning my fourth (4th) year of imprisonment. It does not get better and I have to gut check myself regularly to be certain that I am resisting the pervasive institutionalization that takes place. A certain degree of reclusiveness with the help of good books, interesting people to correspond with, writing on topics of public interest, seems to work for me. Of course I still am working with any woman who needs help but I know that my sometimes truth-telling self is not what folks here want to hear. I do try to give folks whatever comfort I can. An old timer here, 18 years in, has begun an initiative to mobilize for prison reform by getting people on the outside to sign off on her well written petition to the White House. She is straight out of the courage and style of the old southern civil rights struggle but has now dedicated herself to this. The demands are modest. I have placed her petition on this, my website. Please sign on.”
Guest – Ralph Poynter, activist and Lynne’s partner. Please write to Lynne Stewart: #53504-054 / Federal Medical Center, Carswell / PO Box 27137 / Ft. Worth, TX 76127
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Michael Ratner Speech On Bradley Manning in Washington DC.
We hear a speech by our own Michael Ratner delivered at the Bradley Manning support event. Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Attorney David Coombs also speaks about the case of his client, Bradley Manning. He is preceded by Emma Cape of the Bradley Manning Support Network. The event was held at All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington DC, December 2012.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, RFID, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Heidi Boghosian: EyeSee Mannequins and Surveillance State: “In-Person Community” Destroyed
- Michael Ratner: Bradley Manning Case Update
- New York Times Fails To Cover Manning Testimony
- Michael Ratner: Julian Assange Ecuador Embassy Update
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Marijuana Laws: State Votes v. Federal Government
Washington State and Colorado are the first political jurisdictions to legally approved marijuana to be regulated like alcohol. However, federal laws explicitly criminalize marijuana transactions and the federal government can continue to enforce those laws by blocking the progress of state initiatives. For example, it’s likely that the federal authorities will step in when large transactions and large scale production begin in Washington or Colorado. Meanwhile, the Colorado provision allows personal possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and the growing up to six plants at home.
Ethan Nadelmann:
- Colorado and Washington are the first 2 political jurisdictions in the world to do this.
- The United States of America is emerging as the global leader of marijuana law reform.
- As of now it’s legal under state law to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and in Colorado legal to have up to six plants in the privacy of your own home.
- Parts of the initiative that authorize the state to set up a legal regulatory system like with alcohol that doesn’t kick in in Colorado until July, and in Washington state until next December.
- Not in public, let’s be clear.
- My colleagues at Drug Policy Alliance led a broad coalition effort and pushed back the mayor and police chief, rallied the DA’s to say this policy (stop and frisk) made no sense.
- The opportunity here for the federal government to say, let’s get Washington and Colorado a chance to figure this out; a way to effectively regulate this stuff.
- From the public health perspective if you have something that’s being consumed by millions of Americans you want authorities regulating quality and potency.
- The Federal Controlled Substance Act of 1970 is in conflict with this.
- There are now 18 states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Colorado already has a model of regulation on marijuana in respect to medicinal use.
- The fact is you hundreds if not thousands of dispensaries in many states, some are very open ended such as California.
- If the Feds prevent the state governments in Washington and Colorado from responsibly regulating this stuff, you’re essentially going to have a defacto alliance between the federal government on one side and an irresponsible elements of the marijuana community on the other.
- The worst possible thing in Mexico is the legalize drugs in the US. They would lose out just like Al Capone after the alcohol prohibition.
- Latin American leaders: They know that what Washington and Colorado did is the beginning of the ending of the global drug prohibition system which has wreaked havoc in that region for decades.
- People are realizing that among the other ingredients in marijuana, CBD which is the anti-anxiety and anti-inflammatory property of marijuana.
- It’s all about reducing the harms of drugs and the harms of failed prohibitionist policy.
Guest – Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.
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Egypt and Syria Update: Glen Ford
Protests and violence continue in Egypt as Islamist President Mohamed Morsi pushes toward ratifying a draft constitution. Egyptians who oppose the controversial new constitution argue it weakens human rights doesn’t guarantee women’s rights and that it was written by an Islamist dominated assembly. The opposition National Salvation Front says it will not recognize the draft constitution. We talk about that and the disturbing events unfolding within the ongoing conflict in Syria with Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report. We welcome him back to Law and Disorder. Glen Ford is also a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Glen Ford:
- In the Muslim world, the Left has been decimated not once, not twice, but over and over again in the last 50 years. That’s occurred in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq.
- It would be expected that in Egypt, the part of secular Egypt that is Left, secularized would represent 15-20 percent of the people.
- The language of politics in that world is spoken in an Islamic dialect.It’s difficult for Left folks here to understand it.
- Leftists here get confused by the corporate media which inflates business secularists in contests all over the world.
- How many people realize that the opposition party, party number two, in Russia is the Communist Party?
- Everybody is at work in Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and freelance millionaires from all over the region are sponsoring their own brigades and fighting forces.
- Before the CIA and the Pakistanis got together to create a force to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan no such thing existed as a national Jihadi network.
- Syrian situation really heated up after the fall of the “Libyan regime”. 600 to 900 of the Libyan Jihadis were then sent directly to Syria.
- It’s really not in U.S. hands.
Guest – Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report and many other media forums. Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities.
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Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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Updates:
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Facing The U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong
As many listeners may know the United States has incarcerated more people than any other country in the world, and also within the history of humanity. The newly published book titled Facing The U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong by Shawn Griffith gives the reader a rare perspective from an ex convict who served a 20 year sentence in some of the harshest conditions. These include being confined to a small cement cell in the late Florida summer without sheets, laying in pools of sweat on a plastic covered mattress. Vindictive prison guards and case workers in the criminal justice system had made life nearly unbearable for Shawn Griffith. His book hopes to inspire movement building among the families of prisoners to develop a non-profit corporation called the Prisoner Family Union.
Shawn Griffith:
- As a youngster, it was a very difficult childhood.
- My parents were very religious, there was a lot of alcohol abuse.
- Early on I went on a truth seeking thing. I also became very rebellious at a young age.
- At 16, I met these people who were crack cocaine addicts. They were the only place I could find to stay off the street. They introduced me to the drug, which I had no knowledge of, how addictive it was.
- Then they told me I had to help them support their habit. They started training me, taking me to homes showing me how to burglarize them, steal cars, a number of things to support our habits.
- When I committed an armed robbery for 100.00 ended up with a 24 year sentenced in which I did 20 years.
- I knew that I had some emotional problems, I started studying psychology for about 4 years. By the age of 23, I attempted to escape initially.
- In Chapter 1, where I explain in detail, some of the sentencing laws that were passed in Florida, those same laws that were passed show decreases in crime rate before the laws were instituted.
- Inmates and their families are by majority below the poverty line. They don’t have a lot of resources to fight back.
- These large groups that influence the correctional system, they are unionized.
- Speakoutpublishing.com
Guest – Shawn Griffith, founder of Speak Out Publishing and has been an institutional teacher of adult basic education for the past sixteen years. He has received many teaching and writing awards from professors and others with whom he has worked, as recently as 2011. He is author of the recently published book Facing The U.S. Prison Problem 2.3 Million Strong
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Professor Francis Boyle: Palestine Observer Status
Now that Palestine has been voted in as a new non member state status within the United Nations, Palestinian leaders can join the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and challenge Israel’s violations of international law. We talk with Professor Francis Boyle, the leading expert in international about his role as a Palestine observer. In his book Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Professor Boyle outlines 6 critical points, among them are:
1. “Palestine can join the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court and file a Complaint with the ICC against the illegal settlements and settlers, who are committing war crimes;
2. “Palestine can join the Statute for the International Court of Justice, sue Israel at the World Court, and break the illegal siege of Gaza;
3. “Palestine can join the Law of the Sea Convention and get its fair share of the enormous gas fields lying off the coast of Gaza, thus becoming economically self-sufficient;
4. “Palestine can become a High Contracting Party to the Four Geneva Conventions [this deals with the laws of war];
5. “Palestine can join the International Civil Aviation Organization and gain sovereign, legal control over its own airspace;
6. “Palestine can join the International Telecommunications Union and gain sovereign legal control over its own airwaves, phone lines, bandwidths.”
Professor Boyle is the author of many books including Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, The Palestinian Right of Return Under International Law, and United Ireland, Human Rights and International Law.
Professor Francis Boyle:
- The negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians broke off because Israel continued to build settlements. The Palestinians took the position that well, we’re negotiating over a pizza while you eat it.
- I went back with them with a proposal longstanding with President Arafat, that we apply for membership in the United Nations organization.
- That was approved by the PLO executive committee. The Obama Administration bottled the application up in the UN Security Council.
- The mainstream news media has it wrong, Obama can exercise over their admission if they want to, but under the Uniting For Peace Procedure, they can turn it over to the General Assembly where Palestine can be admitted as a full fledged state by a 2/3 vote.
- They took an intermediate step last Spring, the PLO executive committee that serves as the provisional government for the state of Palestine created by the 1988 Declaration of Independence, voted to apply for UN observer status.
- Look at what Switzerland did from the founding of the United Nations to about 10 years ago as a UN observer state. Palestine can now if it wishes join pretty much every international organization in the world and treaties.
- They can simply use the Swiss model, join the International Criminal Court, join the International Court of Justice, join the Law of the Sea convention, join the International Civic Aviation Convention.
- We already filed a complaint with the ICC after Operation Cast Lead.
- If you follow the Israeli press they’re deathly afraid of prosecution by the ICC.
- The step we saw last week, took two years in the making. The Palestinians had to go all over the world to line up that support.
- It’s been my advice, we go after the settlements now – what they do is up to them (PLO)
- The second legal step is to sue Israel at the International Court of Justice at the Hague. The so called World Court of the United Nations system.
- I’ve offered to do that work for them and try to break that genocidal siege of Gaza.
- You or I aren’t going to decide this.
- We have to stand back and support the Palestinians and let them decide what they’re going to do.
Guest – Professor Francis Boyle, leading American expert in international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. He served as legal adviser to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993.
In 2007, he delivered the Bertrand Russell Peace Lectures. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign and is author of, inter alia, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Destroying World Order, Biowarfare and Terrorism, Tackling America’s Toughest Problems, and The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka. He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Green Scare, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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Updates:
- Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan To Rule In Stop and Frisk Case
- NYPD Subpoena Phone Records of Stolen Phones – Amassing Database
- Julian Assange Book – Cypherpunks
- Bradley Manning Hearing Update
- Husband of Jeremy Hammond’s Judge Victim Of Stratfor Email Hack
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Who Bombed Judi Bari?
Who Bombed Judi Bari? is a recently released documentary film about the car bombing of labor and environmental organizer Judi Bari. Judi Bari was a natural leader that rallied thousands of activists to camp out and protest the clearcutting of red wood forests during the timber wars in 1990’s. Though Judi was crippled and in chronic pain from the car bomb, she went on to sue the authorities for civil rights violations winning a settlement but eventually died from cancer seven years after the bombing.
Darryl Cherney:
- Judi Bari was a union organizer and an Earth First organizer, she was the mother of two children, a professional carpenter, here in the Redwood region of California.
- That in a way is what made her so dangerous to the status quo because that what we know so well, a world divided and conquered by those that would rather us fight each other than those at the top.
- Judi Bari was a unifier, she was somebody who brought loggers, timber workers, mill workers, truck drivers together with environmentalists to find our common goals, and to focus attention on the corporate elites who are manipulating all of us.
- The issues are the same today as they’ve been for the last 6000 years of recorded history.
- Human beings have been logging the forests since the cedars of Lebanon. Judi was taking on the issue of mowing down ancient Redwood trees that stand 350 feet tall, 15 feet wide, 2000 years in age.
- A single Redwood can hold 4000 gallons of water. They’re worth 50 thousand dollars a piece.
- Redwood Summer did emulate Freedom Summers sometimes called Mississippi Summers in the deep South.
- The point was the same as long as things happened in the deep South without anybody looking, they could continue, Jim Crow would continue.
- The mowing down of our eco-system which we believe is a civil rights movement as much as a environmental movement because our ability to live on this planet depends on our ecosystem staying intact.
- We invited college kids as well as anyone who wanted to participate and that’s what Redwood Summer was.
- We received about 3 dozen death threats mostly by letter, by phone and some in person over a short period of time, about a month and a half, right after we announced Redwood Summer.
- We decided to get out of rural areas, so we were touring universities, as we were leaving Oakland, where Judi had spent the night heading toward Santa Cruz. Judi ordered me into her car, we drove for a couple of minutes a bomb exploded under her seat.
- Fracturing her pelvis, causing intestinal damage, pulverizing her lower vertebrae.
- Instantly within 5 minutes the FBI and Oakland Police showed up.
- They knew the bomb was a booby trap, designed to only go off in a moving car.
- They looked at the death threats and immediately dismissed them as irrelevant.
- Violence is a dominant gene. You can have a thousand peaceful people but one violent person can ruin for everybody else.
- The FBI and the Oakland Police were eventually found liable for violating the First Amendment of the US Constitution. It wasn’t that they were mistaken, they knew we were innocent.
- They found the motion trigger that said the bomb could only go off in a moving vehicle.
- Right to her death, the FBI and the Oakland never asked Judi one question.
- Judi Bari was a full-time working carpenter. She supervised a construction crew.
- WhoBombedJudiBari.com
Guest – Darryl Cherney, born in New York City where he was a child actor. For 20 years he has been an activist, topical singer -songwriter and organizer in Humboldt County California. He helped spearhead the successful campaign to protect the redwoods, including Headwaters Forests, now a national preserve. As creator and president of Environmentally Sound Promotions, the non-profit organization, he has produced five albums of his original songs dedicated to environmental protection. He also produced Judi Bari?s spoken word CD, Who Bombed Judi Bari?, and the benefit compilation, If a Tree Falls.
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Lincoln 2012: Analysis
As many listeners may know the recent film titled Lincoln hit theaters this fall. The film recounts how President Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to pass an amendment to the United States Constitution that would formally abolish slavery in the country. In January of 1865, Lincoln was expecting the Civil War to end within a month but concerned that his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation may be discarded by the courts once the war ends and the 13th Amendment defeated by the returning slave states. In the film, we see Abraham Lincoln working to pass the amendment by the end of January.
Professor Bruce Levine:
- Its a civil war movie that unlike so many others properly places slavery and the Republican Party’s determination to see slavery die at the center of the story.
- I think the movie is deficient in a number of ways. The prior course of the war. The growth of anti-slavery sentiment in the Union.
- It wasn’t Lincoln who came up with the idea of the 13th Amendment.
- Compromise and political manipulation was not at the heart of the success of Lincoln’s presidency.
- What we should be recognizing as Lincoln’s greatness is not is ability to bend, but his refusal to do that at most of the important points on which he was challenged.
- By the end of the civil war closer to 200 thousand black men served either as Union soldiers or sailors.
- This is somebody who grew during his presidency. He grew intellectually, and he grew politically and morally.
- Fall of the House of Dixie attempts to tell the story of the American Civil War as a social and political revolution.
- As slavery began to break down during the course of the US Civil War.
Guest – Professor Bruce Levine, is the James G. Randall Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A noted scholar of the Civil War, he is author of Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (2nd ed., 2005), Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War (2005), and The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Destruction of Slavery and the Old South during the Civil War (2013). Levine will deliver a lecture on recent trends in Civil War scholarship.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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Michael Ratner and Michael Smith discuss Jeremy Hammond Court Case
- Jeremy Hammond is charged with hacking into the computer system of intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting Inc.
- Hammond is one of five charged with conspiracy to commit computer hacking and other charges
- Michael Smith and Michael Ratner visited him in prison.
- November 20, 2012 – Michael Ratner and Michael Smith go to federal court – Jeremy Hammond’s case.
- Defense Council, Liz Fink, Margie Ratner Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler and a couple of other people were at the table.
- Emily Kunstler was there as a paralegal.
- Jeremy came into the room, he looked very good – in a blue jumpsuit.
- Then the hearing happened, an hour and a half on getting bail. It’s up to the government to prove why shouldn’t this person be out on bail. You haven’t been convicted of anything so you should be out on the street.
- The government has to prove you will abscond, not come back to trial. The other thing they have is the burden of proof on is that you’re a danger to the community. Michael Smith offered a spare room for Jeremy Hammond to stay.
- It was a hostile hearing and the judge reads her decision denying bail. It was obvious it was prepared way in advance.
- Jeremy’s lawyer Liz Fink: He’s got to be free (on bail) in order for us to work together to prepare his defense.
- Factor 1: Is he going to flee if he gets out on bail? Factor 2: He flaunts legal authority.
- Liz Fink said to the judge, he doesn’t have a passport and his parents are putting up their home for bail.
- He could get 39.5 years. Freehammond.com
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- Israel and Gaza Bombing Update
- Israel The Third Largest Arms Seller Globally
- Weapons Experimenting In Gaza
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Iyad Burnat, Head of the Popular Committee in Bil’in, Palestine
We hear excerpts of the presentation by Iyad Burnat, head of the Bil’in Popular Committee and a leader in the village’s non-violent popular resistance movement. Since 2005 citizens of Bil’in have held weekly demonstrations against the building of the Israeli separation wall through the community’s agricultural lands, and the steady encroachment of illegal settlements. The demonstrators are joined by Israeli and international peace activists, and have maintained a commitment to non-violent methods of resistance in spite of armed, military opposition that has resulted in many injuries and some deaths.
These demonstrations are the subject of the recent award-winning documentary film 5 Broken Cameras, which was made by Iyad’s brother, Emad Burnat. Iyad was born in Bil’in in September of 1973. He is married and has four children. He became involved in popular resistance as a teenager, and was arrested by the Israeli military for the first time at age 17. He was accused of throwing stones, and imprisoned for two years. Since then he has been arrested and imprisoned by the Israeli military several more times. The event was recorded at Unitarian Church of All Souls in Manhattan.
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JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by Jim Douglass
JFK, The Unspeakable, is the first book of 3 on the assassinations of the 1960s. Orbis Books has commissioned author James W. Douglass to write about the murders of JFK, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and his the third will be on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. The heart of JFK the Unthinkable, is not how Kennedy was killed or how Kennedy became a threat to the systemic war machine, but why DID Kennedy die? Author James Douglass says Kennedy knew that he would die and had the guts to stand up to the system and take the hit. This narrative was lost for decades, obscured by disinformation about Kennedy’s character and the conspiracy of his assassination. One review summarizes Douglass’s book in this way : JFK’s belated effort to turn America from an armed culture of victory to a member of an international peaceful world was shot down in Texas for a reason.
Jim Douglass:
- John F. Kennedy’s experience in WWII: He was in the South Pacific, he volunteered. He was on that PT boat.
- What happened on that PT boat, is that it got split into two by a Japanese destroyer. He lost brothers and friends at that time. An extraordinary experience being adrift on the ocean warning other PT boats. The experience create a distrust in military authority.
- He said that he wanted to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter to the winds.
- As Kennedy said to his friends, “they figured me all wrong.”
- The Unspeakable: the kind of evil and deceit that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to describe. The midst of war and nuclear arms race, the assassinations of Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcom X that the term was used.
- JFK’s vision is articulated in the address June 10, 1963, arising from the turnaround of the missile crisis and Bay of Pigs.
- He wanted to move step by step into a disarmed world. Nikita Khrushchev put that speech all over the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a deeply misunderstood part of our history, because it’s usually portrayed as Kennedy going to war with Nikita Khrushchev and beating him.
- The truth was that Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were in over their heads, the US generals wanted nuclear war, because they had more warheads than the Soviets.
- Nikita Khrushchev: We now have a common enemy from those pushing us toward war.
- At that point the Cold War turned upside down because Kennedy and Khruschev became closer to each other than either was toward their own military power system.
- Vietnam: Kennedy’s military people would not give him an exit policy. He signed the withdrawal order from Vietnam before he was assassinated.
- His friends said that he had an obsession with death. It was not an obsession but a real assessment that he was going to die. If you try to turn around a national security state that is dominating the world,
- and you do so as president of the United States, of course you’re going to die. Kennedy knew that.
- The book is a story on the deliberate destruction of hope, the vision of change, a turning of this country all of which was happening and had to be stopped. US Agencies killed Dr. Martin Luther King – 1999 Verdict
- We’re in the same scene right now with Petraeus and McChrystal setting up Obama. They were dictating terms to Obama, unlike Kennedy, he did not face them down.
- We need to get out ahead of Obama so that he can do something.
Guest -author, James W. Douglass. He’s a longtime peace activist and writer. James and his wife Shelley are co-founders of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Birmingham, Alabama.
Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- Jeremy Hammond Case Update: Currently In MCA
- Julian Assange Update: Ecuador Embassy, London
- Bradley Manning Hearing at Fort Meade – November 27-December 22
- National Security State Eats Its Own? General Petraeus Scandal Analysis
- Israel Bombing Gaza: Operation Pillar of Cloud. Timeline
- CCR Files Complaint Against the UN Committee Against Torture: Canada Directly Violates Convention Against Torture
- UN Vote On Cuba Embargo: Israel Is Among Major Investors In Cuba
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National Lawyers Guild 75 Years
Hundreds of National Lawyers Guild members and allies gathered to celebrate the organization’s 75th anniversary at the Law for the People convention in Pasadena, California. We hear excerpts from speeches from the National Lawyers Guild Convention by Attorney Jim Lafferty The 2012 Law for the People Award was given to Jim Lafferty.
Scholar and activist Angela Davis delivered the keynote address and among the convention honorees will be Margaret Burnham, a professor of civil rights law who, as a young lawyer, helped secure Davis’s 1972 acquittal on high-profile charges.
Founded in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar association in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has members in every state.
Jim Lafferty, Executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show on Pacifica’s KPFK 90. 7 FM.
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