CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Update:
- Hosts Remember Attorney Kevin Zeese
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President Trump And The 2020 Election
What if President Donald Trump is voted out of office on November 3, 2020 but on January 20, 2021 when he is scheduled to vacate the White House he refuses to go. His lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen predicted this in his congressional testimony before he went off to prison.
President Trump is already casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election which is less than two months away. He says there will be massive voter fraud, that absentee balloting, which will be widely prevalent because of the Covid crisis, is easily open the fraud.
Can Trump send federal troops to Washington DC, or other cities? Can he deploy the National Guard of the various states? Can he suspend habeas corpus, arbitrarily detained people, or declare martial law? Can he investigate opponents, freeze their assets, control communications, initiate a foreign crisis, or get help from attorney general William Barr? What can we do about it?
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, the past president of the National Lawyers Guild and former professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
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Detroit Will Breathe, et al, v. City of Detroit
Black Lives Matter protests have occurred in Detroit since May 29. For the first five days Detroit Police responded to the protests with excessive force. They used tear gas and rubber munitions, and freely using batons and shields to assault and beat protesters. In total, they arrested more than 400 protesters.
The local NLG chapter joined the Detroit Coordinated Legal Defense Coalition to provide legal support. The other groups are: The National Conference of Black Lawyers, Detroit Chapter; the Detroit Justice Center; the Neighborhood Defender Services; the Wayne County Criminal Defense Bar Association; and Michigan Liberation. As well, the protesters formed an organization called Detroit Will Breathe, which continues to hold daily protests.
On August 31 the Coalition filed a civil lawsuit against the Detroit Police Department to obtain injunctive relief from the use of unlawful violence against protesters. Detroit Will Breathe, et al, v. City of Detroit.
On Sept. 4 the court granted in part the plaintiffs’ motion for a Temporary Restraining Order. Police Chief Craig is continuing his public relations campaign and continuing to falsely claim that the Detroit Police have acted lawfully.
Guest – Detroit attorney Julie Hurwitz, a longtime National Lawyers Guild member based out of Detroit, Michigan.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Complaint Filed Against Judge Demanding Release of Attorney In Chevron Case
Last week dozens of legal organizations representing more than 500,000 lawyers along with more than 200 individual lawyers submitted a judicial complaint against Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in New York. The violations were directed at human rights lawyer Steven Donziger whose case we’ve been following on Law and Disorder. Donziger, listeners will recall, won a historic judgment against Chevron in Ecuador to clean up the pollution caused by decades of oil drilling with no environmental controls.
The complaint was filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). The Chief Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Robert Katzmann, has a duty to read the complaint and determine if he will appoint a committee to investigate and issue findings.
The complaint documents is a pattern of ethics violations committed by Judge Kaplan, a former tobacco industry lawyer.
Kaplan denied Donziger a jury trial, put in place a series of unusual courtroom tactics, severely restricted Donziger’s ability to mount a defense, and detained him at home for more than one year on contempt charges that were rejected by the U.S. Attorney. Kaplan allowed Donziger to be prosecuted by a private law firm that has Chevron as a client. He imposed enormous fines on Donziger that have all but bankrupted him.
The complaint alleges that the “statements and actions of Judge Kaplan over the last ten years show him to have taken on the role of counsel for Chevron … rather than that of a judge adjudicating a live controversy before him.”
Despite accepting jurisdiction in Ecuador, Chevron came back to the US and filed a civil “racketeering” case against the Donziger and all 47 named plaintiffs. They potentially sought $60 billion in damages — the highest personal liability in US history. Judge Kaplan denied Donziger a jury and let Chevron pay a witness at least $2 million while moving him and his entire family from Ecuador to the US. Chevron lawyers coached the witness, Alberto Guerra, for 53 days before Kaplan let him testify against Donziger; Guerra later admitted under oath that he had lied on the stand. Kaplan also refused to let Donziger testify on direct examination.
Twenty-nine Nobel laureates and several human rights organizations have criticized the harassment of Donziger by judicial authorities and have demanded his immediate release.
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
MakeChevronCleanUp
Guest – Lauren Regan, a member of Steven Donziger’s defense team. She is also executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center and a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
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The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman To Trump
Science came out of the enlightenment. Research then was unbiased and done in the interest of the public. This is no longer the case with the militarization of science and it’s corporatization.
In our times biased research has been conducted to show that tobacco doesn’t cause cancer, that chemicals and pesticides used in agriculture do no harm, that opioids will not kill thousands, and that there is no such thing as human caused climate change.
Science and technology has been chained to the military where trillions of dollars have been spent in the effort to more effectively kill people.
The US economy’s addiction to military spending distorts and deformed science by making it overwhelmingly subservient to military interests. This has transformed science from the classic idea of a creative force for the advancement of humankind into its destructive and anti-human opposite. That trillions of dollars in resources and scientific talent are not devoted to solving the problems of poverty, disease, and environmental destruction is one of the greatest tragedies of our times.
Guest – Dr. Clifford D Conner is a historian and he teaches the history of science at the School of Professional Studies, CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks and biographies of three revolutionaries: John Palmer Road, Arthur O’Connor, and Colonel Edward Marcus Despard.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Update:
$600M to Settle Flint Water Crisis Litigation
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Julian Assange Update August 2020
President Obama prosecuted and imprisoned more whistleblowers than any other president. But President Trump did one thing that Obama did not do. He indicted Julian Assange for conspiracy under the Espionage Act charging that in 2010 Assange and his publishing organization WikiLeaks released truthful information about American war crimes.
Obama held off making such a charge because the US government has never before gone after a publisher; not even the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon papers.
Assange sits in solitary confinement in the notorious Belmarsh prison in London. He awaits the outcome of the USA’s extradition request.
His partner, Stella Moris, the mother of their two young children said: “Julian is being targeted by the United States for the crime of journalism. He helped expose the war crimes and human rights abuses which the US would have preferred to keep hidden from public view. He revealed the killing of unarmed civilians and the torture of innocent people. No one has been held responsible for the serious crimes Julian has exposed. This extradition aims to entomb and silence him forever.”
He is in bad shape mentally and physically. Nels Melzer, The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture visited Julian and reported that he was being tortured by the months on end of solitary confinement. He hasn’t seen his lawyer in five months nor his companion and their two children. He can’t prepare his defense. He was finally given a computer but the keys were glued down. When he last appear in court he could barely pronounce his name. Defend.wikileaks.org
What is at stake is the future of free journalism. Journalists have a right to publish and we, their audience, have a right to learn. This is what the US government is attempting to take away.
Guest – Nathan Fuller, the American head of the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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Open Letter To The Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League pretends to be a civil rights organization, but the ADL is not an ally. It has a legacy of supporting racist policing, surveillance, colonialism and the silencing of social justice activism. It has branded itself as a civil rights organization in ways that conceal and legitimatize is right wing activities, undermined the rights of Black, immigrant, queer, Muslim, and Arabs.
In August 2020, 100 organizations signed an open letter exposing the ADL. Among the signatory organizations whose work Law And Disorder has covered on this radio program include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and Palestine Legal.
These 100 organizations signed an open letter announcing the publication of a pamphlet written by a working group with contributions from the American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Palestine Legal.
Guest – Lesley Williams, member of the coordinating committee for Jewish Voice for Peace in Chicago, the advisory board of speakers bureau for Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, and a founding member of the Tzedek Chicago, a non-Zionist pro social justice synagogue in Chicago. She is the author of “The Anti-Defamation League Kills the Black Jewish Alliance” and “We Can’t Fight Anti-Semitism and anti-Black Racism in Isolaton“. She works with a local coalition of teachers and activists to bring Palestinian history into school curricula.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power
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USPS, Election Integrity and the U.S. Postmaster General
Hours after Democrats asked Postal Service officials to testify on Capitol Hill about new policies posing “a grave threat to the integrity of the election,” Nancy Pelosi cut short the House summer recess. Representatives will vote on legislation to block new changes at the USPS that voting advocates assert will undermine casting mail ballots during the pandemic.
As we’ve been reporting, the new postmaster general Louis DeJoy—a staunch Trump supporter—wasted no time enacting such changes as ending overtime pay and removing some sorting machines. Not surprisingly, these changes have created great delays in service. In response, the White House chief of staff has indicated openness to provide emergency funding to help the USPS deal with a surge in mail-in ballots.
DeJoy has significant and personal financial interests in the Postal Service’s corporate rivals and contractors. The November election is expected to bring in up to 80 million ballots by Americans nervous about in person voting because of COVID 19. The Postal Service notified states in July that it might not be able to meet their deadlines for delivering last-minute mail-in ballots. As a result, state attorneys general are considering suing the administration.
President Trump has unabashedly criticized mail voting as vulnerable to fraud. At the same time he requested an absentee ballot from his now home state of Florida.
Guest – Chuck Zlatkin, legislative director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
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The Black Alliance For Peace
Politically this is a time of great opportunity and great peril. The economic, racial, and health crisis we have been put in will deepen in the coming months. As the pandemic spreads, the depression gets worse and racist police brutality does not go away. There has been a massive corporate bail out disguised as a stimulus package. It has left millions of people jobless, broke, sick, and facing homelessness.
Trump and his Republican Party, venal and incompetent, have given up trying to contain the pandemic, ameliorate the economic catastrophe, or rein in the police. The Republicans left Washington two weeks ago refusing to pass an economic package that would aid the unemployed, which now number more than 30 million. 175,000 people have already died from COVID-19 and millions face eviction.
The massive demonstrations in the streets, black led with the support of the majority of whites, has been an insurgency unprecedented in American history.
Guest – Ajamu Baraka was the 2016 vice presidential candidate of the Green Party. He is a leader of the Black Alliance for Peace, a contributor to Black Agenda Report and an activist in the Black is Back Coalition.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Gullible’s Travels: A Comical History of the Trump Era
Since Trump began his presidential campaign four years ago comedians have been complaining that because he is so preposterous it’s hard to satirize him, that he is self satirical. This has been true until recently with the publication of Marvin Kitman’s Gullible’s Travels: A Comical History of the Trump Era.
At first Kitman assumed that Trump’s candidacy was a publicity stunt. After he realized it was serious, as a satirist he felt very lucky writing that ”I have never had such a good time observing and writing about the follies of our country.“
He began keeping a comical journal modeled after A Journal of the Plague Year where author Daniel Defoe described the great plague that hit London in 1665.
Guest – humorist and author Marvin Kitman is a former columnist at New York Newsday and a finalist for the Pulitzer prize for criticism. He is the author of, among others, The Man Who Would Not Shut Up: The Rise of Bill O’Reilly and The Making of the President 1789.
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American Spring: Unfolding Crisis
The Chinese word for crisis consists of two characters. One means danger, the other means opportunity. We currently are in an historically unprecedented situation fraught with both danger and possibilities. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin once remarked that sometimes nothing happens in decades and other times decades happen in a few weeks. This is our situation now. We see an American spring unfolding.
The public lynching of George Floyd has triggered massive outpourings in several thousands of American cities, both large and small. Black Lives Matter is supported by a majority of Americans including a majority of whites. This kind of broad solidarity was absent during the time of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The demonstrations are in large part led by people of color, mostly young people. Elected officials and traditional civil rights leaders are not leading the current uprising. As the L.A. Progressive has written, “The gross underlying inequality, racially and more broadly economically, affects every aspect of life in the US. and is the root cause of the volcanic anger irruption against the veneer of obsolete institutions.“
Guest – Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report. Ford founded the Black Agenda Report and has edited it since 2006. He was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and he has delivered presentations at many colleges and universities.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance
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The Young Lords: A Radical History
Protests in the streets in the wake of police killings of Black Americans have sparked a multi-faceted societal reckoning with racism. Challenges to entrenched systems of inequality and white supremacy are taking many forms, from the tearing down of confederate statues, to calls for police reform and the defunding of certain police functions, to Merriam Webster dictionary expanding its definition of racism to include structural forms of bias.
Historically, the role of street protests is so intrinsic to reform in this nation enshrines protection for mass assemblies in the Bill of Rights. Yet one vibrant and impactful group of revolutionary activists in protest history has received virtually no attention, namely the Young Lords.
The children of poor and working class Puerto Rican migrants who had been massively displaced from the Island of Puerto the US mainland after WW II, the Young Lords grew up in neighborhoods like the South Bronx and East Harlem,. They were radicalized by the civil rights and black power movements and the Vietnam War. This generation of socialist youth make it their top priority to bring about revolution in the US and on the island of Puerto Rico.
Scholar and activist Johanna Fernandez’s new book, The Young Lords: A Radical History is the definitive history of this militant group of community organizers. In a presentation at Baltimore’s Red Emma worker cooperative bookstore in early 2020 Professor Fernandez discussed the long-lasting impact of their theatrical street initiatives. The Young Lords transformed the relationship between white people and people of color in the US, and made it acceptable to questions how the US government conducts foreign policy.
Their activism has been credited for the the passage of anti-lead poisoning legislation in the city and they drafted the first known patient bill of rights–they did no in concert with nurses, doctors, and hospital workers at Lincoln Hospital which they occupied 50 years ago on July 14, 1969, to protest healthcare for profit in America and the poor conditions in the delivery of healthcare to black American and Puerto Rican patients in that Bronx hospital.
As Professor Fernandez writes in her book, “The New York Young Lords formed part of a cohort of young working-class people–and people of color among them, in particular–whose unprecedented access to higher education sharpened their latent critique of society and afford them an infrastructure for dissent…..they challenged what many believed were old, soul-slaying social norms and standards of behavior that constrained personal freedoms in the U.S. Known collectively as the New Left, these diverse movements were built by a generation whose activism radically changed the cultural and political landscape of the United States.”
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Aerial Investigation Research Pilot Program And Persistent Tracking
As the nation erupts in protests against racially-infused police violence, the Baltimore Police Department has just launched a six-month, day-time aerial surveillance experiment. A Texas billionaire has funded the project that is being operated by an Ohio-based company, Persistent Surveillance Systems. The plane flies overhead and records the movements of everyone in the city.
Michael Harrision, Baltimore Police Commissioner, has justified the nearly $4 million experiment by saying, “There is no expectation of privacy on a public street, a sidewalk.”
The Aerial Investigation Research Pilot Program is, by contract, limited to monitoring such felony crimes as robberies, car jackings, shootings and homicides. Images recorded are, in theory, to be used solely in criminal investigations and will be stored for 45 days. A first prong of the program was conducted covertly in 2016 under a different police commissioner.
The ACLU of Maryland calls this initiative the most comprehensive surveillance of a U.S. city in history. ACLU Senior Staff attorney David Rocah said, “It’s the virtual equivalent of having a police officer follow a resident every time they walk out the door, and if that happened in real life, all of us would understand the huge privacy implications in doing that.”
Guest – ACLU Senior Staff attorney David Rocah has worked on a number of significant cases involving free speech, police misconduct, privacy, election law and more. In 2011 he was an inaugural recipient of the James Baldwin Medal for Civil Rights. David previously worked as a Senior Trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division at the US Dept of Justice, focusing on police misconduct and conditions in prisons, jails and other state institutions.
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