Censorship, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims
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Israeli Forces Raid and Shutter Seven Palestinian Human Rights Organizations
On August 18, the Israeli military raided the offices of seven leading Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations, ransacking and shuttering them. Three days later, the Israeli Occupying Forces summoned the directors of two of the groups for interrogation.
Last October, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz reported that Israel had designated six of the groups as “terrorist organizations” because they had links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a leftist political party with a military wing. In November, the Israeli military commander in the occupied West Bank declared the six to be “unlawful associations.” But in the ensuing months, Israel has failed to come forward with competent evidence that links the six groups to the PFLP. A new classified report from the CIA says it could find no evidence to support the terrorist designations.
Progressive organizations in Israel and the United States condemned the raids. But the Biden administration has refused to denounce them, stating that it is awaiting further information from Israel.
Guest – Law and Disorder co-host Marjorie Cohn is interviewed about the ramifications of the terrorist designations and recent raids on the organizations. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.
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A New Wave Of Book Banning
Book banning is the most widespread form of censorship in the United States. It’s when government officials, private individuals, or organizations remove books from libraries, school reading lists, or bookstores because they object to the content or themes contained therein. Children’s books are the main targets.
Often, complaints are that the book contains is sexually explicit, contains graphic violence, has offensive language, or shows disrespect for parents and family. Censors claim they’re afraid the contents are dangerous for kids, or that they’ll cause young people to raise questions, and incite critical inquiry among children that parents, political groups, or religious organizations deem inappropriate or aren’t ready to address.
Before the 1970s book bans typically focused on obscenity. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and Ulysses by James Joyce were often banned. From the late 1970s on, attacks focused on ideologies. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Catcher in the Rye, and Harry Potter are among the 50 of the top banned books in this country.
A new wave of book banning in public and school libraries is sweeping the nation in 2022. It’s been under way since debates have percolated over critical race theory and what students should learn in the classroom. Several states are cutting funding for books written by authors in specific communities.
Guest – Christopher Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. He previously served as president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the bookseller’s voice in the fight against censorship. Before that, he was executive director of Media Coalition, a trade association that defends the First Amendment rights of producers and distributors of media. Christopher is the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America by Beacon Press, which won the 2008 Eli Oboler Award of the American Library Association. His forthcoming book is How Free Speech Saved Democracy.
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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, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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White Nationalism and the Republican Party: Toward Minority Rule in America
White supremacy has been a guiding principle of the United States since its birth. From the genocide of the Indians to the pernicious institution of slavery, racism has permeated every aspect of this nation. After the short-lived period of Reconstruction, Jim Crow followed and it continues to animate race relations in the U.S. While the Civil Rights Movement led to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the Republican Party and now the right-wing Supreme Court have adopted policies to undermine the protections of the promise of racial equality. False claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and the ensuing attempted insurrection have shaken the institutions of democracy to their core.
Trump rode racism and nativism to the presidency, making it the nucleus of his reign. After descending the escalator to announce his presidential campaign, Trump singled out Mexico, declaring, “They’re bringing drugs; they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” One of his first acts as president was the creation of the “Muslim Ban,” which married white supremacy with nativism.
White nationalism didn’t begin with Trump. Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan planted the seeds for Trump to adopt white supremacy as the explicit centerpiece of his campaign and his presidency. Whether or not Trump runs for president in 2024, Trumpism is unfortunately alive and well in our political system.
Political science scholar John Ehrenberg has just published a book titled “White Nationalism and the Republican Party: Toward Minority Rule in America.” In it, he explains how Trump weaponized the use of race, drawing on his Republican predecessors.
Guest – John Ehrenberg, Senior Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Political Science Department at Long Island University in New York. He has devoted his life to research and writing about political ideologies and the history of political thought. He is the author of “Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea, Proudhon and His Age” and “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Marxism’s Theory of Socialist Democracy.” Full disclosure: In the 1960s, John and I both participated in the Stanford University honors program called Social Thought and Institutions.
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The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court
The nation is still reeling from the Trump administration’s assaults to the rule of law, and their ripple effects on democratic institutions. But these attacks were the result of strategic planning over decades, and the handiwork of networks of well-funded think tanks and lobbyists. Some of the country’s richest and most conservative individuals are, with so-called Dark Money, anonymously supporting these efforts.
Chief among these forces is the Federalist Society. Not well known until recently, the Society has worked quietly since the Reagan administration to overhaul the Supreme Court into a bastion of conservatism. Enriched with Dark Money, it’s had an outsized impact on the composition of the federal and the Supreme Court. Recently, we’ve witnessed how hard-fought social gains of the 20th century have been taken away from Americans, and landmark Supreme Court decisions have been overruled such as Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to reproductive freedom, and Lemon v. Kurtzman, guaranteeing the separation of church and state.
Guest – Attorney Lisa Graves, is the founder, director, and editor-in-chief of True North Research. Her analysis of such research has been cited by every major newspaper in the country. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government. Lisa served as chief counsel for the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy. She was also a career deputy assistant attorney general the US Department of Justice. Lisa has spent the past 12 years examining the impact of dark money on judicial selection.
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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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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Immigration
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Kennedy v. Bremerton School District: Rights To Religious Expression In The Workplace
On June 27, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. At issue was school employees’ First Amendment rights to religious expression while on the job. The Court held that a school district infringed on football coach Joseph Kennedy’s First Amendment rights when it disciplined him for engaging in “private” prayer. Kennedy was a coach at the Bremerton School District in Washington State. After games, he knelt on the field with some students joining him in prayer.
That so-called private prayer occurred on the 50-yard line. The school district forbade the coach to pray on the field after games. It did allow him to pray in a private location behind closed doors. After Coach Kennedy continued on the field to give his thanks to God, the school district placed him on administrative leave. It gave him a poor evaluation, despite a history of positive ones. Kennedy did not return the following year and sued, seeking reinstatement. He also relocated to Florida. The Supreme Court upheld Kennedy’s right to pray in public on the field after the game.
Guest – Andrew Seidel is a constitutional attorney and vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which litigated Kennedy v. Bremerton. He’s also the author of several books including The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American and American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom, which hits shelves in September and explains a lot of what is happening at the court right now.
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Attorney John Philo: Sugar Law Center
Maurice Sugar was a workers’ lawyer and a socialist, one of the founding members of the National Lawyers Guild, the first General Counsel to the United Auto Workers and a staunch defender of working people’s rights. He was also a talented poet and songwriter of political songs and poems. In the 1950’s, during the height of the Cold War, Walter Reuther was elected President of the UAW. His first official action was to fire Sugar. Maurice and his wife Jane Sugar, who was an activist and union organizer of teachers, homesteaded over 100 acres of property in the Black Lake area of Michigan. At their deaths – he in the 1970s and she in the 1980s – a trust was created which formed the financial seed money for the founding of the Maurice and Jane Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice in Detroit, Michigan.
In 1990, shortly after the death of Jane Sugar, a group of National Lawyers Guild national leaders, including NLG founding member Ernie Goodman, former National President Bill Goodman – both Trustees of the M & J Trust – and former national president Debra Evenson, used the endowment from the Sugar Trust to establish the Sugar Law Center. It brought to life a long-standing vision of creating a national public interest project of the NLG that would tackle the critical questions of the intersection between civil rights and economic justice. The Sugar Law Center began with a primary focus on plant closings and worker dislocation and Julie Hurwitz was the founding Director. Now, 32 years later, as a nationally recognized public interest workers rights’ law project, the work of the Sugar Law Center has expanded to take on issues of runaway corporate power, racism, community dislocation, gentrification, poverty, environmental injustice; women’s rights and many others.
Guest – Executive Director of the Sugar Law Center, John Philo. John has litigated cases in dozens of states representing low-wage workers, communities, and injured persons on matters of employment, constitutional, and tort law. John is also a former president of the Detroit Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and a contributing author to the National Lawyers Guild’s Employee and Union Member Guide to Labor Law and the Institute of Continuing Legal Education’s Torts: Michigan Law and Practice.
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