Law and Disorder November 27, 2023

CCR Files Suit: Palestine v Biden

Since the illegal October 7 attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 people in Israel, the Israeli occupying forces have mounted a massive military assault on the Palestinian people. As of November 21, more than 14,128 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 5,600 children and over 3,550 women; at least 30,000 have been injured; and about 1.7 million out of 2.2 million people in Gaza have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have mounted mass protests against Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza.

On November 13, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed suit on behalf of Palestinians against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for failure to prevent genocide and complicity in genocide.

Guest – Maria LaHood is Deputy Legal Director at CCR, with expertise in constitutional rights and international human rights. Maria works closely with Palestine Legal to support students and others whose speech is being suppressed for their Palestine advocacy around the country. She graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and was named a 2010 Public Justice Trial Lawyer of the Year Finalist. Maria and other lawyers from CCR wrote the complaint filed in federal court.

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Remembering Professor Holly Maguigan

Holly Maguigan, noted professor and attorney who was a pioneer of the battered woman defense, has died. Holly was Professor of Clinical Law at the New York University School of Law, where she ran the Criminal Justice Clinic: Focus on Domestic Violence and Evidence. She practiced law in Philadelphia in the 1970s and ‘80s, both as a public defender and in private practice, specializing in the defense of victims of domestic violence who assaulted or killed their abusers and then faced criminal prosecution. Judges and juries were largely unsympathetic to women who stayed with their abusive partners even though many were emotionally and psychologically unable to leave those relationships. Traditional self-defense principles require that the abused person have a reasonable belief that she is about to suffer imminent death or great bodily injury. But some people kill their abusers preemptively, before the next attack can occur.

Sue Osthoff, a founder of the Philadelphia-based National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, who worked with Holly for decades, said, “I do believe many, many victims of battering would not have done as well as they did” without Holly’s work. Many defendants were acquitted, and several others were not charged at all.

Holly once wrote that criminal defense attorneys must “explain the impact of intimate violence without appearing to pathologize battered women and deny their reason and capacity.” Holly was a member of the Family Violence Prevention Fund’s National Advisory Committee on Cultural Considerations in Domestic Violence cases and she was a co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers.

Professor Holly Maguigan:

  • I was doing medieval history and I was at Berkeley. It was 1967 and Oakland stopped the draft.
  • I got very interested in the anti-war politics.
  • I hated lawyers. I really hated lawyers. They were boring. They talked about themselves all the time. They only had stories about their cases and how great they were and they would never post bail when people got arrested.
  • The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia is where I stayed for 17 years.
  • First I started out as a public defender. I loved being a public defender, it was the beginning and end of everything I hoped it would be.
  • That’s where I met David Rudovsky and David Kairys. They were then defenders while I was a student.
  • After they went out on their own, they kept inviting me to join them. I kept putting it off because I loved being a defender so much.
  • In Philadelphia there was much more actual litigation, not just motion litigation there’s a lot of that here in New York City but actual trials.
  • You had a sense, there was an analysis that people were doing life on the installment plan and you needed to do what you could to kick them loose any particular time.
  • It was a community in its own odd way and I found it difficult to leave it.
  • I was doing major felonies within a couple of years.
  • David Kairys was very focused on constitutional litigation and government misconduct. He did the Camden 28 which was a big draft resistance case.
  • My interest was more into criminal defense.
  • Grand juries (all over the country) convened to investigate the alleged transportation of Patty Hearst by the SLA from California where she had been captured.
  • He was a killer. (Frank Rizzo) There was no question. More people died in police actions before or since.
  • I don’t mean to suggest that all the police started out as homocidal. This was a situation which from the top down came the message if you’re a good cop then you’re going to take people out however you think you need to.
  • I knew about race and class bias in the court room as much as a white woman who was middle class could know.
  • I was just blown away by what happens when you add hatred of women to hatred of black people and hatred of poor people.
  • Judges would go by me in the hall and say Maguigan, ahem, you didn’t give me anything this Christmas, not even one lousy bottle, you’re not getting any assignments.
  • Judges would do things, like open the drawer in their chambers, and there would be wads of bills, and they’d let you know.
  • I developed a specialty on women who kill men.
  • In the early eighties a group in Philadelphia called Women Against Abuse began working and they did advocacy for battered women accused of crime and meant a huge difference.
  • The battered women cases I was working on were quite consuming because people then didn’t know very much in how to try these cases.
  • The judges expected you to plead insanity or guilty. Reasonable doubt was a consideration at sentencing not at trial.
  • There were cases that did require teams. There was no question.
  • I wanted to be in court. I wanted to be in the presence of that conflict between the authorities and regular people.
  • I went to NYU where I taught in the criminal defense clinic for many years.
  • To see students react to the great stories their clients have is just amazing.
  • SALT (Society of American Law Teachers) is about who gets into law school, what they learn and who teaches them. It’s about access to justice. It’s about relating to law school as a place where you train people to do social justice.  SALT’s focus is on students and teaching.
  • Holly Maguigan to be honored by Society of American Law Teachers.

Guest – Professor Holly Maguigan teaches a criminal defense clinic and one in comparative criminal justice as well as a seminar in global public service lawyering and a course in evidence. She is an expert on the criminal trials of battered women. Her research and teaching are interdisciplinary. Of particular importance in her litigation and scholarship are the obstacles to fair trials experienced by people accused of crimes who are not part of the dominant culture. Professor Maguigan is a member of the Family Violence Prevention Fund’s National Advisory Committee on Cultural Considerations in Domestic Violence cases. She serves on the boards of directors of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. She is a past co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest membership organization of law professors in the U.S.

Hosted by attorneys Michael Ratner, Michael Smith, Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn

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Law and Disorder November 20, 2023

Jewish Voice For Peace Leads US Ceasefire Protests

In 1948, 750 thousand Palestinians were terrorized, murdered and driven out of their homeland in Palestine where they had lived for thousands of years. Many fled to Gaza at the southern end of what is now Israel.

Gaza is tiny strip of land along the Mediterranean and is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. More than 500 of their villages were destroyed and the remaining Palestinians were left to live in 22% of historic Palestine. The process of murder, terror, and displacement is going on again. 1.5 million Palestinians, many of them descendants of the refugees from 1948, have been driven out of northern Gaza. Their homes have been bombed and destroyed, their hospitals, schools, mosques, and churches have been bombed. To date, 11 thousand have been killed, almost half are children.

Israel has cut off clean water, medicine, electricity, fuel and food and ordered Palestinians to get out or be killed. Israeli ground troops are going door to door mopping up those who have not fled.

This genocidal operation has the full support of the American establishment and the corporate media. Israel is a strategic military ally of the United States and gets support from the military industrial complex and right wing Republican oriented American Jews.

But this time there is a push back. Thousands of young American Jews have not been taken in by the propaganda and identify with the new organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)

JVP has organized thousands of people in spectacular demonstrations that have shut down Grand Central Station in New York, blocked entrances to Congress, sat in on the Capital rotunda, and amassed at the Statue of Liberty. These have been some of the largest acts of civil disobedience since the Iraq war, and the largest demonstrations of Jewish people in solidarity with the struggle for Palestine freedom ever.

Guest – Elena Stein, Director of Strategy for Jewish Voice For Peace. She lives in New York.

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What Will It Take To End The War In Gaza?

Israel’s war in Gaza, which has already created a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions, now threatens to spread even more death and destruction as Israel’s military force, the IDF, has now occupied the last hospital in Gaza still barely functioning, as it attempts to operate without electricity or medical supplies. And this at a time when Israel’s IDF forces claim to control all of northern Gaza and Gaza City. Notably, the Israel forces occupying the hospital, despite its earlier claims to the contrary, has failed to produce any proof that the hospital was being used by the forces of Hamas for military purposes.

Of course, for some weeks now, many world leaders and United Nations officials have declared that what Israel is doing in Gaza amounts to genocide. And so far, even efforts at achieving any meaningful pause in the fighting, let alone a real ceasefire, remains beyond reach, still being opposed by Israel and the Biden Administration.

Meanwhile, no one is prepared to predict an end to the slaughter in Gaza, as the civilian death toll continues to grow, and as Gaza’s infrastructure continues to disappear. And so, the protests over the war, the accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity on the part of Israel continue to grow, as well. Indeed, in the last week there have been huge anti-Israel protests, including a massive one organized by the orthodox Jewish community in the United States. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is coming under more and more attacks from members of its own Administration. Already more than 400 high level and mid-level government officials in the Biden Administration have sent Biden letters protesting his refusal to ask Israel to declare a ceasefire, and many of them have resigned in protest.

Guest – Attorney Ameena Qazi the Co-Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Law Center in Los Angeles. She formerly served as the Deputy Executive Director and Staff Attorney for the Greater Los Angeles Area Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (or “C.A.I.R.”), the largest American Muslim civil rights and advocacy group; and Ms. Qazi is also a former Executive Director of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. US Campaign For Palestinian Rights

Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty

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Law and Disorder November 13, 2023

US Obligation To The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

A United Nations body has issued a damning report blasting the United States for its rampant violations of a major human rights treaty that it ratified in 1992. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, or ICCPR, enshrines fair trial rights, the right to life, to vote, and to freedom of expression and assembly. It prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It also forbids discrimination in the enjoyment of civil and political rights based on race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status (which includes sexual orientation).
The Human Rights Committee is a group of 18 independent experts that monitor the implementation of the ICCPR by its States Parties, each of whom files periodic reports on their progress in implementing the obligations in the treaty.

In its November 3, 2023 report on U.S compliance with the ICCPR, the Human Rights Committee found 30 some violations of the treaty by the United States. Racial discrimination permeated two-thirds of the documented U.S. violations.

In addition to discrimination based on race, the Committee found several instances of discrimination against women, particularly in the area of reproductive rights. The Committee also found discrimination on the basis of real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

Guest – Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans for Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her books include “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse” and “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.” Marjorie is founding dean of the People’s Academy of International Law. Her article about the report of the Human Rights Committee was published last week by Truthout.

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Voices of Mass Incarceration: A Symposium

Opening with a keynote discussion featuring Angela Davis, Pam Africa, Julia Wright, and Johanna Fernández, the event featured two dozen experts and artists working and studying incarceration and its wide-ranging effects on society. The second day of the symposium also marked the opening of the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers for research at the John Hay Library with the launch of the exhibit, Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Portrait of Mass Incarceration. This exhibition centers on the writing, music and art of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose papers anchor the John Hay Library’s Voices of Mass Incarceration in the United States collection. Mumia has been imprisoned for 43 years for allegedly killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

One of the panels focused on how systemic changes have strained the existing healthcare system. With 44% of prison detainees receiving a psychiatric diagnosis, prisons are now among the largest providers of healthcare, more so than major hospitals and other care facilities.

We are pleased to bring you the remarks of Hope Metcalf, Lecturer at Yale Law School, on medical care for incarcerated individuals including mental health and hepatitis C. We’ll also hear from Lauren Weinstock, Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University.

Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn

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Law and Disorder November 6, 2023

Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide

We’re now in week four of Israel’s massive military assault against the people of Gaza and the West Bank, which began in response to Hamas’s brutal attacks in Southern Israel on Oct. 7th, which killed 1,400 people and resulted in more than 200 people being taken hostage.

Israel contends the military bombardments are justified as self-defense. But others, such as Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, insist that although the attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7 were “appalling,” Israel’s “collective punishment” of civilians cannot be justified under humanitarian laws.

Worse, according to the global charity Save the Children, in the past three weeks, more children have been killed in Gaza than in all of the world’s conflicts combined in each of the past three years. Defense for Children International-Palestine reported that 40% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are children, and that as of October 30, Israeli forces have killed at least 3,450 kids, and over 1,000 more are missing.

On October 18, 2023, the Center for Constitutional Rights (also known as CCR) published an emergency legal briefing called, Israel’s Unfolding Crime of Genocide of the Palestinian People & U.S. Failure to Prevent and Complicity in Genocide. The 44-page document provides a sobering legal and historical analysis of the current situation in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

We are so grateful to have with us two members of CCR’s legal team working on the legal analysis of genocide.

Guest – Astha Sharma Pokharel, CCR staff attorney who specializes in international humans rights and in challenging racial and environmental injustice, and has represented individuals targeted for their Palestine solidarity advocacy.

Guest – Sadaf Doost, an attorney and Bertha Justice Fellow at CCR. Sadaf focuses on human rights in the context of Afghanistan and Palestine, and challenges unlawful detentions at Guantánamo Bay and environmental racism in Cancer Alley.

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Class Action Anti-Trust Case Against Metropolitan Museum of Art

George Grosz was a German artist whose work very effectively satirized the new Nazi regime in Germany for the thugs and buffoons that they were. As a consequence, he was forced to flee to New York City, where he taught for many years at the prestigious Art Student League. Our guest today, Bob Cenedella, was his student and later a teacher at the league. Like his mentor, Bob Cenedella is a political person and a fine artist. His work has not been acquired by any museum. Nor does he have representation by a gallery.

Five years ago Cenedella brought a class action anti-trust lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and others in New York City. The basis of his lawsuit brought on behalf of himself and others, was that the museums, along with the galleries and auction houses control the art market and made it almost impossible for artists who expressed political sensibilities to be recognized or adequately compensated.

In his lawsuit, Cenedella says that “ I, firmly believe it has become my duty and responsibility to expose, what I believe to be, the corporate museum cartel for the role they play in the manipulation of the overall art market. The system today – put in place by galleries, auction houses, and art critics– has nothing to do with talent, development of skill, or maturation of the art world. I am taking extreme, legal measures – suing the museums – not just for myself, but for the innumerable other deserving artist as well.” Contemporary art has become a “Con”and “temporary .“

Guest – Robert Cenedella has been a member of the New York City contemporary art scene for more than four decades. He studied with George Grosz at the Art Students League of New York where he taught for many years. Cenedella‘s art work, as M.K. Flavell writes in her biography of Georg Grosz. “Chronicles the every day life and the change in rituals and mythologies of sex, sports, art, politics, money, making in contemporary America, with a combination of imaginative, vitality, precision, and humor.“ His lawsuit was dismissed by a federal court in New York City. Contact : artmutt (at) aol (dot) com

Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Maria Hall

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Law and Disorder October 30, 2023

Trilateral Security Alliance Meet to Request Assange Extradition

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Washington last week meeting with Joe Biden. They discussed AUKUS, the trilateral “security” alliance between the U.S., UK and Australia, which is a bulwark against the perceived threat from China. AUKUS seeks to transfer U.S. and British nuclear submarine technology to Australia. But Australia’s support for a potential U.S. war against China over Taiwan, which China considers part of China, is not a foregone conclusion.

Also reportedly on the agenda for the high-level meeting was the U.S. request for extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen. Assange has been held for four years in a high-security London prison. He is facing 175 years in prison if extradited, tried and convicted in the U.S. for charges under the Espionage Act for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes.

Albanese and a multi-party coalition of the Australian parliament, as well as 90% of the Australian population, want the prosecution of Assange dropped. Assange’s freedom is “widely seen as a test of Australia’s leverage with the Biden administration,” according to the Associated Press.

AssangeDefense.org

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 a founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, 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 and is active in the Los Angeles branch of Assange Defense. Steve is the author of an article published last week by LA Progressive titled, “Is Biden Willing to Damage Relations With a Staunch Ally Like Australia in His Headlong Prosecution of Julian Assange?”

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State Laws Governing Deep Fake Videos

Artificial intelligence-generated fake videos, known as “deepfakes,” have become increasingly prevalent and sophisticated. This technology manipulates both audio and visual elements to fabricate fictitious events. In 2019, Deeptrace, an AI firm, identified a total of 15,000 deepfake videos online. Shockingly, 96% of these were of a pornographic nature, with 99% involving the superimposition of female celebrities’ faces onto pornographic content, also known as “face-swapped pornography,” all done without the celebrities’ consent. However, it’s important to note that non-celebrities are also frequent targets of deepfake abuse. Particularly concerning is the fact that women are often singled out, with AI tools and apps readily available that enable users to digitally remove clothing from their photos or insert their faces into explicit videos. These tools are easily accessible and require no specialized technical skills. Equally troubling is the fact that most of the time the women who are deepfake targets are neither aware of nor consent to their images being used in this way.

Social media platforms have become fertile ground for deepfake scams. Deepfakes are employed for various malicious purposes, including gaining a political advantage, spreading fake news, and disseminating “revenge porn.” In the case of pornographic videos, offenders may use deepfakes to groom, harass, or extort their victims. Additionally, deepfakes can be utilized to bully individuals or steal their identities. It’s worth noting that, although AI-generated deepfakes can appear highly realistic, most of them exhibit certain inconsistencies. These may manifest as peculiar facial features, awkward placements, or unnatural postures and movements. Creating deepfakes is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, which results in most of them being relatively short in duration.

The prevalence of deepfakes has grown significantly, more than doubling between 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. In response to this trend, the FBI issued a warning in 2023 about “sextortion schemes” in which criminals collect photos and videos from social media platforms to produce “sexually themed” deepfakes, which they then use to extort money from their victims.

Guest – Criminal defense attorney Nicholas Toufexis joins us to talk about the impact off deepfake pornography on victims and the current state of the law governing these videos. Nick is a partner in the Texas law firm Saputo Toufexis Criminal Defense.

Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn

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Law and Disorder October 21, 2023

 

American Jews Redefining Judaism

Israeli war planes are bombing the northern half of the Gaza Strip, reducing everything – hospitals, mosques, schools, homes – to rubble. Those who survive the march south may be driven into the Sinai desert. More than 1 million Palestinians had lived there. They have been ordered to vacate their homes and walk south on pain of death. Food, water, electricity, and medical supplies have been cut off to these people, half of whom are children. This is being facilitated by American military, financial, diplomatic, and media support.

Guest – Rabbi Brant Rosen is the leader of the congregation Tzedek Chicago whose members are not Zionists and who oppose the historic Zionist project of dispossessing the native Palestinians forcing them out of their homeland. The attention of the world today is focused on the tiny northern half of the Gaza Strip. Tsedek Chicago’s website states that “during the course of his rabbinate, Rabbi Brant Rosen became an increasingly vocal activist for justice and human rights, particularly in Israel/Palestine. After publicly wrestling with his relationship with Israel and openly questioning his lifelong Zionism, he eventually became a prominent Jewish presence in the Palestine solidarity movement cofounding the Jewish Voice for Peace rabbinical council .“

Rabbi Brant’s writings have appeared in many journals and publications, including Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the Jewish Forward, Tikkun, and Truthout. Tikkun, magazine editor Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote that Rabbi Brant Rosen is “at once a courageous rabbi and the voice of a new generation of American Jews who are refusing to allow the right wing voice of the Jewish world to define Judaism.“

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Christian Fascism Poised To Reshape The United States

Our guest today claims that we are far down the road that leads to fascism in the United States, and he places the blame at the feet of the liberal class to halt the corporate assault on working people that has spawned an ascendant Christian fascism that is poised to seize power and radically reshape America. As he says in his article of October 8th, “the parting gift, I expect, of the bankrupt liberalism of the Democratic Party will be a Christianized fascist state.

The Liberal class, a creature of corporate power, captive to the war industry and the security state, unable or unwilling to ameliorate the prolonged economic security and misery of the working class, blinded by a self-righteous woke ideology that reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness and bereft of any political vision, is the bedrock on which the Christian fascists, who have coalesced in cult-like mobs around Donald Trump, have built their terrifying movement.”

Guest – Chris Hedges, award-winning journalist and political writer reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times’ Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001 Hedges was one of the Times’ writers on an entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Prior to his work for the Times, he worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and the Dallas Morning News. His books include Death of the Liberal Class, War on America, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty

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