Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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Tompkins Square Park Police Riot 35th Anniversary Special
Thirty five years ago, a singular event occurred in Manhattan’s East Village that would prove transformative to many lives for years to come. Today on Law and Disorder we bring you a special program on the August 1988 Tompkins Square Park Police Riot as recounted by several individuals who were there for the entire event. We share firsthand observations of unbridled police violence, talk about how we came to be there, and discuss how the riot marked the lynchpin to transform an entire neighborhood from a mecca of creativity and political activism, to the new home of TARGET, Starbucks and other hallmarks of American gentrification.
Tompkins Square Park is bounded on the West and East by Avenues A and B, and on the North and South by 10th Street and 7th Streets. It falls in the part of that neighborhood often referred to as Alphabet City, named for its 4 Alphabet numbered avenues, that in the 1960’s and 1970’s were a haven for drug sellers and squatters and a large Puerto Rican community. The park had a history of activism as it was the site of a riot in 1874 on behalf of the city’s labor movement.
In 1988, a homeless encampment was erected in the park, attracting a wide range of activists, squatters, and homeless persons. Several local residents complained and in a controversial move, the local governing body, Community Board 3, on June 28, approved a 1 AM curfew from what had long been a 24-hour open park. The Avenue A Block Association supported the curfew as it represented the few local businesses that existed then. Many residents opposed the curfew, including those who would have to take a longer walk around the park to get home.
The New York City City Parks Department agreed to enforce the curfew, and on July 31, 1998 protesters gathered at a rally there. Police, responding to alleged noise complaints, entered the park. A skirmish ensued, and several civilians and six officers were treated for injuries. Four men were arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and inciting to riot.
Guests – Susan Howard, East Village Community Activist, John McBride, Photographer and Arthur Nersesian, East Village Writer.
Written by Attorney Heidi Boghosian and produced by Geoff Brady.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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A Few Things Oppenheimer Leaves Out
The atomic bomb was developed by physicist, J, Robert Oppenheimer and his team in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was dropped unnecessarily on the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 8, 1945. It was a war crime.
The summer blockbuster bio-pic “Oppenheimer“ does not tell this truth to the tens of thousands of people who have gone to see the movie. Historians have established that it was not necessary to stop the war because the Japanese were ready to surrender. Therefore the justification that it saved American lives because troops would not have to fight on the Japanese mainland is false. These two premises, that’s the bomb was necessary, and that it save lives is a lie obscured then, and carried forward until today.
The Cold War against Russia started on August 6 and August 8, 1945 when the US dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities to scare the Russians. The movie does not show the effects of the nuclear bomb. Between 200 and 300,000 old people, children and women were instantly incinerated. Hundreds of thousands got sick and died from radiation poisoning.
Oppenheimer was a great physicist and a humanist. Although, not a member, he sympathized with the U.S. Communist Party because of their anti-fascism, anti-racism, and union building.
He had second thoughts about what he did in developing the bomb and told President Truman in a meeting at the White House that he felt like he had blood on his hands and that in the future, nuclear weapons should be placed under international controls. Truman threw him out of his office, calling him a crybaby. Because of his association with the Communist Party, Oppenheimer was red baited, denied a security clearance, and ruined. He died age 62, a broken man.
The danger of red baiting in our country now is quite high. Trump is running on a platform, calling for American born socialists to be deported. The US Congress, with the support of many Democrats, overwhelmingly voted for a resolution denouncing what is it called “ the horrors of Socialism.“ Andrew’s Substack article
Guest – Andrew Cockburn, Washington DC-based journalist and author of Spoils of War: Power, Profit, and the American War Machine. Verso Books 2021. Washington Editor at Harper’s Magazine
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Peace Movement Attacks And A Renewed War With Korea?
Many political commentators believe the driving force behind growing U.S. actions and hostility towards China are being carried out in preparation for war with China; war with China if China cannot otherwise be contained as it more and more challenges the might and global reach of the United States. Indeed, China already now has the second largest economy in the world and is on track to soon surpass that of the United States. A McCarthyite redbaiting hit piece on the front page of the New York Times on August 6th, against the peace group CODEPINK, and others who are organizing against the growing demonization of China, is a particularly troubling sign. So, we will ask our guest: is a war with China inevitable? Does not the fact that China, as well as the U.S., are nuclear weaponized nations make such a war unthinkable?
We will also ask our guest Ann Wright about Korea. Korea, with its claimed right to possess nuclear weapons, has also been the target of administrations from both parties. The Korean War ended in 1953. And yet thousands of U.S. troops are still stationed in South Korea and, of course, there is still no peace treaty, no true formal ending of the war, and so the country still remains divided. And those who advocate for peace in Korea are also sharply criticized and redbaited by the U.S. government, and in the press.
Is a renewed war with Korea also a possibility? Col. Wright is also a retired U.S. State Department official, known for her outspoken opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq. Ann Wright received the State Department Award for Heroism, in 1997, for helping to evacuate thousands of people during the war in Sierra Leone.
Guest – Ann Wright is a 29-year US Army/Army Reserves veteran, a retired United States Army colonel and retired U.S. State Department official, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She is most noted for having been one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Wright was also a passenger on the Challenger 1, which along with the Mavi Marmara, was part of the Gaza flotilla. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” She has written frequently on rape in the military. VoicesofConscience
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith, Jim Lafferty and Maria Hall
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Judge Rejects CACI’s Attempt To Dismiss Torture Case
In April 2003, the George W. Bush administration led an illegal invasion of Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. That war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. After the invasion, there was a mass roundup of Iraqis – primarily men and boys – with no plan or proper basis for detention. The United States then turned to contractors (mercenaries) to assist with interrogations and provide interpretation services, many of whom lacked proper training. Indeed, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the most outsourced in U.S. history. It was against this backdrop that the horrors we all saw in the photos of Abu Ghraib happened.
In Iraq, unlike Guantanamo (and the CIA “blacksites”), there was never any question that the Geneva Conventions applied – and torture was illegal. CACI, a U.S. corporation, contracted with the United States military to provide interrogation services to the U.S. Army at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
In 2008, Iraqi civilians Suhal Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad Al-Zubae filed a lawsuit against CACI under the Alien Tort Statute seeking damages for the torture and abuse they suffered while detained at Abu Ghraib. The three plaintiffs allege that CACI employees conspired with and aided and abetted U.S. military personnel in subjecting them to torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and war crimes, in violation of international law. A U.S. Army General called their treatment “sadistic, blatant, and wanton.”
On July 31, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia rejected CACI’s attempts to have the case dismissed.
Guest – Katherine Gallagher is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she specializes in the enforcement of human rights, including the prohibition against torture. She is one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit against CACI.
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Three of Newburgh Four Released
On July 25, a judge ordered the compassionate release of three of the so-called “Newburgh Four” — Onta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen. The men, who are Black Muslims from Newburgh, New York, were convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges in 2011.
In the July release order, US District Court Judge Colleen McMahon suggested that the FBI had “invented” a conspiracy. She said that FBI agents had used an “unscrupulous operative” to persuade the four to join in a plan to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx and fire Stinger missiles at military planes at Stewart Airport near Newburgh, New York. While bombs were, in fact, left outside a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, they were fakes built by the FBI.
Guest – Kathy Manley, New York appellate attorney joins us to talk about this late-in-coming victory. Among her many victories was the 2015 case of People v. Diack, which struck down county and local sex offender residence restrictions throughout New York State. Kathy works with several civil rights groups, including the Coalition Of Civil Freedoms.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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The Coming War On China
Today we re-broadcast a recent interview we did with the great Australian journalist John Pilger about his film titled The Coming War On China. With the exception of a short break at the conclusion in 1975 of the Vietnamese war, the United States has been at war continually. The momentum of what President Eisenhower warned us against and described as being led by, “the military industrial complex” has been going on with successive wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now the American proxy war in Ukraine. The military industrial complex has been augmented by support from the CIA, Congress, and the corporate media.
As Pilger demonstrates, the United States, is building up for a war against China. This build up is both military and ideological and shaped by hostile propaganda. In this respect, an alarming full page New York Times article, 11 weeks in the making, and written by seven reporters, appeared on August 5, 2023. The article targeted the American peace organization CODEPINK as well as one of its financial backers. It is a hit piece that has alarmed many of us in the movement. John Pilger gives us the background to it.
Guest – John Pilger covered that war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Another 1 million people died in the Iraq war That war was based on the now well known lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was going to use against us and that he was responsible for 911. A similar campaign of fear mongering is going on now about China. The major news media parrot the government’s fact free line that China is our enemy. In his article “The Coming War With China” John Pilger wrote “a US war against China beckons and we have a responsibility to speak out. We know what is coming. Silence must be broken.”
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Greenwashing Climate Change
As the US presidential election season heats up, so too does the planet. July 2023 was the Earth’s hottest month on record, and as climate scientist Friederike Otto told the Associated Press, “We should not care about July because it’s a record, but because it won’t be a record for long. It’s an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well.”
Indeed, millions of people are suffering at this very moment because of extreme weather, including unrelenting, deadly heat. One might expect that during election season, presidential candidates would be champing at the bit to promote their fabulous plans to save human life on earth, or at least slow its demise, right? I mean, who else has so much influence over changing the course of history than the President of the United States? Well, on the GOP side, the presidential hopefuls have mostly ignored the climate crisis, and some even dismiss it outright as a left-wing hoax.
On the Democrats’ side, we have Joe Biden. Now Biden does not shy away from admitting we have a problem. He appeared for an exclusive interview on the Weather Channel last week, calling climate change the number one issue facing humanity, and that combating climate change is a “core tenet of his presidency.”
Well, it might be a core tenet – a core principle and belief – but has that translated into action? When push comes to shove, in the office of President – and before that in the office of Vice President – has Joe Biden done everything he can to save humanity? Or is he just stating the obvious, because it’s what he thinks that’s what voters want to hear, but is he in any rush to make changes that might alienate big oil and other corporate interests? And what about when he was Vice President, during the Obama administration, which set the stage for the Biden presidency? Do we even remember anymore?
Guest – Andrew Perez, not only remembers, but he has tracked and documented the forks in the road where the Obama Administration could have, but chose not to, take actions that could have slowed the warming of our planet. Andrew Perez is an investigative reporter and senior editor for The Lever, which was just awarded the 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement by Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College for its relentless work “exposing the corrupting influence of corporate power on government and both major parties.” The Center specifically highlighted Andrew’s work for exposing the largest known political donation in U.S. history — Chicago businessman Barre Seid’s $1.6 billion dark money transfer to conservative operative Leonard Leo who served as Donald Trump’s judicial advisor. Andrew relentlessly pursues hypocrisy and corruption among all of the powers-that-be, wherever they fall on the political spectrum: left-right-or-center.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Maria Hall
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
– A Message From The Law and Disorder Hosts
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Julian Assange and Press Freedom
Facing the possibility of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange’s imminent extradition to the United States, Reporters Without Borders recently launched a week of advocacy meetings and a mobile truck through the streets of Washington DC to urgently call for his release.
The actions were organized after UK High Court Judge Jonathan Swift in June rejected Assange’s appeal against the UK’s order of extradition to the United States. Assange, who is being targeted for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes, is the first publisher prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. He faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.
Rebecca Vincent, Director of Campaigns for Reporters Without Borders said: “US policymakers still have the power and the opportunity to make a difference in this case and take a stand for the protection of journalism and press freedom. Our call on the Biden administration is more urgent than ever before: drop the charges, close this case, and free Assange!”
Reporters Without Borders is the only non-governmental organization to have monitored Assange’s entire extradition proceedings despite extensive barriers to observation. In April 2023, its Secretary-General Christophe Deloire and Rebecca Vincent were arbitrarily barred from visiting Assange in Belmarsh prison where he’s been held for more than four years. Reporters Without Borders continues to seek access to the prison and campaign globally for Assange’s release.
Guest – Clayton Weimers, executive director of the US office of Reporters Without Borders. Clayton was previously the organization’s Washington-Based Deputy Director for Advocacy.
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Agent Orange Day: 63rd Anniversary
Although the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the debilitating effects of Agent Orange. That’s the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. military sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971. Agent Orange poisoned both the people and the land of Vietnam. On August 10, “Agent Orange Day,” we mark the 63rd anniversary of the first spraying of the toxic chemical on Vietnam.
Descendants of the roughly 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans exposed to Agent Orange and other toxins still suffer. They register disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of several diseases. U.S. veterans receive some limited compensation from the U.S. government, but very little if any assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, the intended victims targets of the defoliant Agent Orange.
The Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2023 will be introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California). If passed, the bill would increase benefits to children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. It would also expand research about Agent Orange and its effects on the health of exposed individuals; and provide medical, housing and poverty reduction aid to Vietnamese people, and their children, affected by exposure. And it would help to clean up the many remaining dioxin “hot spots” in Vietnam.
Guest – Paul Cox served in the U.S. Marines during the Vietnam War. He now serves on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, a project of Veterans for Peace (on whose board Paul also sits). We are fortunate to have Paul with us today to discuss the horrific legacy of what the Vietnamese people call “The American War” and the campaign to provide compensation for the victims of Agent Orange. HR3518 Victims Of Agent Orange Relief Act 2021 / VN-agentorange.org
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn, and Julie Hurwitz
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
In 2012, journalist Michael Scott Moore went to Somalia to research a book on piracy. He was abducted by a gang of Somali pirates, who demanded $20 million from the US government. After protracted negotiations, and a payment of $1.6 million dollars, Moore was released—two and a half years later. His international bestseller, The Desert and the Sea, chronicles his 977 days in captivity.
More than a decade later, this past February, two men were convicted in federal court for helping to carry out his kidnapping.
On April 1, Michael sailed with a German rescue ship The Humanity I to write about migration across the central Mediterranean. In a recent piece published in Foreign Policy, Michael makes the connection between human trafficking and migration/asylum-seeking and pirating.
Guest – Michael Scott Moore, in addition to The Desert and the Sea, he has written the highly acclaimed book, Sweetness and Blood, about the history of surfing. He serves on the board of Hostage US, an organization that supports American hostages and their families.
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Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.
In January 2019 New York State passed a bill to outlaw “revenge porn,” joining 41 other states that have passed similar laws. Revenge Porn is the term for the non-consensual sharing on the Internet of sexually explicit photographs or videos. Victims say it can be as damaging as any other form of abuse, but without the legal protections.
Private images can follow victims for years, turning up when employers or romantic partners search for their names on the Internet.
But in New York, victims have experienced years of helplessness in the courts. Prosecutors could not charge offenders for a practice that was not illegal, and judges turned down appeals for help on the grounds of free speech, even while other states were enacting protections. Under New York’s new law, offenders can be punished by up to one year in jail.
The law also allows victims to sue the person who shared the revenge porn, which about a dozen other states also allow. And it would be the first in the nation to allow judges to order websites or social media platforms — in addition to the original poster — to take down the photos or videos.
Most have heard about high-profile instances of sexual images as blackmail or revenge have involving the rich and famous, such as singer Rihanna and actor Jennifer Lawrence. But it affects millions of people, from middle school students to Marines. As many as 10 million Americans have been victims of revenge porn.
Guest – New York Attorney Carrie Goldberg started a law firm to focus on defending victims of the practices. She has just come out with her first book titled Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.
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