Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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The Fall Of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest Of A Progressive Bastion And The Future Of American Politics.
For decades Wisconsin was known as a laboratory of democracy, the birthplace of labor and environmental movements, and home to the cherished “Wisconsin idea“, which championed expertise in the service of the public good. All this has changed under Republican Governor Scott Walker and the Republican state legislature.
There are two themes central to Walker’s success. He turned public opinion against well meaning public servants through absurd caricatures and trumpeted that far and wide through the almost limitless financial backing of right wing zealots like the Koch brothers. He also divided the labor movement, conquering it by splitting some workers from others. First he broke the public sector unions, and then, over a weakened opposition, passed a Right To Work law crippling the private sector unions. Huge amounts of dark money, gerrymandering legislative districts, voter suppression, and voter ID laws made this all possible. Over time, big money wrote legislation which was enacted into law. Eventually Donald Trump won Wisconsin’s electoral votes, making him the president.
Guest – Dan Kaufman, is a Wisconsin native and the author of The Fall Of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest Of A Progressive Bastion And The Future Of American Politics. He has written for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.
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Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council
With it’s Janus versus AFSME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council) decision the Supreme Court’s activist rightist majority has overturned a 40 year old precedent that allowed public-sector unions, like private sector unions, to charge non-members – who they are required by law to represent – a fee for that representation.
A strategic campaign organized by the State Policy Network(SNP) think tanks nationwide included a multi-state effort to reach 5 million teachers, librarians and other public sector workers affected by the Janus decision.
In Texas the State Policy Network is funded by the Koch brothers, Koch industries, AT&T, Verizon, Exxon mobile, Coca-Cola, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. The Texas SPN like others across the country is leveraging the Supreme Court decision as a means of starving unions of funds and eventually disbanding them all together.
They recently sent out a mailing, claiming government unions have undue political influence and stating that “by 2020 SPN aims to empower our interstate freedom network to rescue nearly 1,000,000 people from forced government union musician. This strategy could remove one billion dollars per election cycle from union budgets.”
Guest – Attorney Dean Hubbard, has been an attorney, organizer, educator and artist for workers’ rights and environmental and racial justice for more than three decades. Dean is the longtime Chair of the National Lawyers Guild Labor and Employment Committee. He is currently a strategic consultant to unions and social justice organizations. Among other movement gigs, he was Director of the Labor and Economic Justice Program at the Sierra Club, he was Senior Counsel to the Transport Workers Union of America and its NYC Local 100, he held the Joanne Woodward Chair in Public Policy and Advocacy at Sarah Lawrence College, and he co-founded the progressive workers’ rights law firm Eisner & Hubbard, P.C. He has published widely, and has organized and led investigations, tribunals and delegations on labor and human rights issues worldwide.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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First Amendment: Separation of Church and State
On the final day of the Supreme Court term last week, Justice Elena Kagan said that conservatives are “weaponizing the First Amendment” and turning it into a sword.”
Many on the left who once held absolutist views on free speech are realizing that certain court victories may actually bring harm to women, or gay and lesbian couples and others, rather than advancing their causes. The same is true with some cases involving religious freedom.
The Washington DC-based group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State reads, in part on its website that: “Religion is often uses as an excuse to discriminate against LGBTQ people, women, religious minorities, non-believers and others. Some want to use their religious beliefs as as excuse to deny health care, refuse to provide goods and services, and disobey laws protecting Americans from discrimination.”
Guest – Attorney Richard Katskee, Legal Director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Richard has litigated First Amendment cases in appellate and trial courts throughout the country, including challenging creationism in the public schools, religiously based discrimination against same-sex couples and much more.
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Alternative 4th of July celebration in NYC commemorated Frederick Douglass
Last week an Alternative 4th of July celebration in NYC commemorated Frederick Douglass an his Independence Day Speech at the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-slavery Society in 1852.
The event was organized by poet Raymond Nat Turner, who has been a guest on Law and Disorder, and held at the NY Chapter of the National Writers Union on July 3, 2018.
The celebration included performances by UpSurge! NYC, solidarity poems, and Frederick Douglass readers Ralph Poynter of the Lynne Stewart Organization and the New Abolitionist Movement, Margaret Kimberly from the Black Agenda Report, Diane Ward form the NWU Steering Committee and our own Heidi Boghosian. We are pleased to bring you some of the music, poetry and the readings.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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U.S. Quits UN Human Rights Body
Last week the United States of America became the first country to voluntarily quit the United Nations 47 member main human rights body, primarily over Washington’s claim that the Human Rights Council is biased against Israel.
This was the Trump administration‘s latest snub of the international community. The Human Rights Council is tasked with spotlighting and approving investigations of suspected rights abuses. Never before has a member dropped out voluntarily. Diplomats and activists say that US ambassador Nikki Haley was the driving force behind the decision.
Efforts by the United Nations ambassador Haley to end or water down the routine scrutiny of Israel has failed in recent months at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The Human Rights Council addresses and array of concerns including discrimination, freedom of expression, the rights of women, LGBT people, and people with disabilities.
Haley declared that “We are withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, an organization which is not worthy of its name.“
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
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Mark Crispin Miller – Julian Assange, Voter Fraud and Fake News
WikiLeaks founder the truth telling publisher Julian Assange is in escalating danger of being sent from England to America where he would likely be tried for espionage, a crime that carries the death penalty.
Assange and WikiLeaks have revealed American war crimes in the middle east, CIA global machinations , and the work of Clinton Democrats in preventing the popular Bernie Sanders from heading up the party ticket.
Assange is presently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was granted political asylum six years ago by past leftist president Rafael Correa. But now, with the change of presidents in Ecuador, Assange has been cut off from the outside world. He has no phone, no computer, and no visitors.
The fresh offensive against him occurred the day after American General Joseph DiSalvo, the head of the US Southern Command, the Pentagon’s arm in Latin America, visited the new right wing Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno. Moreno has said that Assange is “an inherited problem” and is seeking s better relationship with the United States government, to whom he has already granted a military base.
Guest – Mark Crispin Miller who is a professor of media studies at New York University. Professor Miller has frequently spoken about media propaganda, the engineering of consent for empire, fake news, and the destruction of the independent press. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the humanities and is a vigorous defender of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Legislation Criminalizing Protests
Throughout the nation, a rash of new bills are being introduced that increase the criminal penalty for the act of protesting. They have been in part inspired by the high-profile protests at Standing Rock, and also by model legislation drafted by the conservative and influential American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC’s bills are designed to protect corporate interests. A new report from Greenpeace USA reveals how Energy Transfer Partners or ETP, the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline, with the fossil fuel industry, lobbied for legislation aimed at restricting and criminalizing protest. The report finds abuses on human rights, freedom of speech and faulty operations from the company.
ETP practices are destructive for the planet, for communities and for the health of democracy in the US. They have hired private security firms that surveil and infiltrate activist groups, advocated for laws that restrict the right to protest, or moving forward with pipeline projects against the will of Indigenous people and landowners, ETP is the poster child for unchecked corporate power. Annie Leonard, Executive Director at Greenpeace USA calls their projects lightning rods for controversy.
The report, Too Far, Too Often: Energy Transfer Partners’ Corporate Behavior On Human Rights, Free Speech, and the Environment, details how ETP lobbied for anti-protest legislation. It also shows how the company uses the courts and Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) to intimidate opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline project. In August 2017, ETP sued Greenpeace entities and others for USD $900 million, using RICO laws to claim that a collection of environmental groups and Indigenous allies constituted a criminal enterprise.
Guest – Attorney King Downing, seasoned civil liberties lawyer who has worked with activists for decades. King is the National Mass Defense Coordinator at the National Lawyers Guild.
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Big Pharma 101 and Affordable Prescriptions Made by Advancing the CREATES Act
It is estimated that the United States spends more than $500 billion dollars on prescription medicines each year. Total spending on drug therapies is about $371 billion dollars, including over-the-counter drug remedies, valued at 31 billion. A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 76% of Americans overall – and across party lines – say their top health care priority is ensuring that high-cost drugs for chronic conditions, such as HIV, hepatitis, mental illness and cancer, are affordable.
In a long overdue move, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee recently voted to advance the CREATES Act. It would prevent prescription corporations from abusing regulatory rules to deny generic medicines and biosimilar manufacturers access to product samples that allow these groups to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval and bring affordable products to market.
Corporations have long used this practice to delay the introduction of price-lowering generic and biosimilar competition. Brand-name manufacturers use it to inappropriately extend their monopolies. The Act aims to curb these abuses and promote competition. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office claims the Act will save $3.8 billion over the next 10 years.
Americans overwhelmingly support disciplining Big Pharma to help rein in pharmaceutical prices. The DC based group Public Citizen says that the CREATES Act begins to do that and cites it as a key structural reform that we can pass this year. It urges Congress should pass this legislation without delay.
Guest – Steven Knievel, Steven Knievel is a researcher and campaign organizer with Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program. He works with governments and public interest groups around the world to promote the use of flexibilities in patent and trade rules to promote access to medicines for all. He also works to mitigate the deleterious effects of corporate influence in trade negotiations on public health.
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Academic Freedom, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Mark Crispin Miller – Julian Assange, Voter Fraud and Fake News
WikiLeaks founder the truth telling publisher Julian Assange is in escalating danger of being sent from England to America where he would likely be tried for espionage, a crime that carries the death penalty.
Assange and WikiLeaks have revealed American war crimes in the middle east, CIA global machinations , and the work of Clinton Democrats in preventing the popular Bernie Sanders from heading up the party ticket.
Assange is presently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was granted political asylum six years ago by past leftist president Rafael Correa. But now, with the change of presidents in Ecuador, Assange has been cut off from the outside world. He has no phone, no computer, and no visitors.
The fresh offensive against him occurred the day after American General Joseph DiSalvo, the head of the US Southern Command, the Pentagon’s arm in Latin America, visited the new right wing Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno. Moreno has said that Assange is “an inherited problem” and is seeking s better relationship with the United States government, to whom he has already granted a military base.
Guest – Mark Crispin Miller who is a professor of media studies at New York University. Professor Miller has frequently spoken about media propaganda, the engineering of consent for empire, fake news, and the destruction of the independent press. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the humanities and is a vigorous defender of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
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CCR Delegation To Israel
Like the USA, Israel is a colonial-settler state which, beginning in 1948, 70 years ago, expelled 750,000 native Palestinians, took their land, homes and businesses, and reduced those who remained to abused second class citizens, not unlike what was done to native Americans by white settlers in the USA. Their land was stolen, their tribes uprooted, and their culture practically destroyed.
In 1967 Israel expanded further, militarily occupying Palestinian territories to their north, east, and south, including East Jerusalem.
Last month Attorney and Columbia law professor Katherine Franke, the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the CCR, along with Attorney Vince Warren, the CCR’s Executive Director, headed up a 20 person delegation of American activists who traveled to Israel to report on the human rights situation there. Franke and Warren never made it past the airport in Tel Aviv. They were stopped, questioned , detained for 14 hours, and then deported back to the USA. Franke was told she could never return.
Guest – Attorney Katherine Franke, is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Columbia University, where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and is the faculty director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project. She is a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation’s leading scholars writing on law, religion and rights, drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory. She is the author of Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality. Her next book will be coming out from Haymarket Press in the spring: Repair: Slavery’s Unfinished Business makes the case for racial reparations in the U.S.
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Surveillance
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U.S. Information Technology And Cyber Security Awareness
America’s information technology infrastructure is especially inviting to adversarial attacks, as news headlines tell us again and again. Some say that our national cyber defense is inadequate to protect against cyber incidents, defined by the Department of Homeland Security as those “likely to result in demonstrable harm to the national security interests, foreign relations, or economy of the United States or to the public confidence, civil liberties, or public health and safety of the American people.”
We read how hackers gain access to our personal information stored by huge retailers such as Target and Home Depot, gaining access to millions of credit and debit card numbers. In 2014 JP Morgan Chase announced a breach affecting 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. The Government Accountability Organization reports a nearly 800 percent increase of threats to federal agencies from 2006 to 2012 at a cost likely to exceed $400 billion.
Despite this and evidence of Russian tampering with the 2016 elections, President Trump recently announced that he was getting rid of its top cyber policy adviser role, a position designed to help streamline the government’s overall approach to cybersecurity policy across federal agencies. Compounding problems of coordination is a lack of shortage of trained cybersecurity professionals to fill the growing number of jobs.
Guest – Professor Nasir Memon, founder and chair of New York University Tandon’s School of Engineering’s cybersecurity program. The Engineering School was one of the first to implement a cybersecurity program at the undergraduate level. In 2002, Nasir founded Cyber Security Awareness Week, an annual conference where tens of thousands of students compete in events and learn skills in cyber security. He is also co-founder of Digital Assembly, a software company that develops digital forensics and data recovery and Vivic, a company that produces malware detection software. Nasir’s research and commentary is widely published in scholarly and mainstream press, and he is a frequent radio and television guest.
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Attorney Client Privilege
The attorney-client privilege has been in the news with the unfolding Trump scandals in bringing about the FBI raid on Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room where a number of documents and computer files were seized.
What is the attorney-client privilege? And to whom does it apply? Generally speaking, the privilege is owned by the client and unless the client waived her rights her lawyer is barred not only from revealing any information about the client but even revealing who the client is.
An exception in the case of the FBI raid and Donald Trump‘s attorney’s Office, Home, and hotel room was made on the grounds that there is a “fraud exception“ to the attorney-client privilege. Defenders of the attorney-client privilege, even if it has to do with protecting Donald Trump, have argued that it is illegal and unprincipled for the Justice Department to get a search warrant from a federal magistrate and violate the principle. These people argue that it is wrong to argue that “any stick will do to beat a dog” and that making an exception in the case of Trump could backfire.
Guest – Minneapolis Attorney Carla Kjellberg, has worked with victims of child sexual assault who have sued priests, litigated sensitive family law matters, and worked with unions and political activists.
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