CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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Updates:
- Co-hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith Discuss Raza v. City of New York and Handschu v. Special Services Division Settlements.
- Renaming Law School After Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
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Miko Peled: The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine – Second Edition
Miko Peled comes from a distinguished Zionist family. His grandfather signed in 1948 the Israeli declaration of independence. His father General Matti Peled, was a hero in Israel’s victorious 1967 war against 3 of it’s Arab neighbors. Miko Peled wrote the book “The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine” in 2012. It is an account of his family history and his own personal political and moral evolution. He served in the Israeli Air Force. His sister’s young daughter was killed by a Palestinian in a terrorist attack. His book is considered so important that it has been republished in a new updated second edition. Peled moved from Israel and now lives in San Diego. He believes the only just solution in Israel – Palestine is for the creation of a bi-national state with equal rights for the Palestinian people. He is in New York on tour to promote the second edition of this book.
Guest – Miko Peled is an Israeli writer and activist living in the US. He was born and raised in Jerusalem. His father was the late Israeli General Matti Peled. Driven by a personal family tragedy to explore Palestine, its people and their narrative. He has written a book about his journey from the sphere of the privileged Israeli to that of the oppressed Palestinians. Peled speaks nationally and internationally on the issue of Palestine. He supports the creation of a single democratic state in all of Palestine, and a firm supporter of BDS
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Racism Within Chicago’s Police Department
Chicago Attorney Flint Taylor is a founding partner in the People’s Law Office. He’s been engaged in police abuse litigation since the 1960s when he and his partner Jeff Haas represented the Fred Hampton family after Chairman Hampton, the head of the Black Panther Party was assassinated by the Chicago Police and the FBI. Flint then for 30 years represented the victims of the Jon Burge torture machine. Burge, through the use of torture got false confessions from more than 100 African American men, sending them to prison. Recently, under court order a video was released showing the execution by the Chicago Police of a young black man named Shaquan McDonald. In the wake of the release of the video, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was forced to fire his police chief and appoint a commission to investigate the lack of accountability and widespread racism in the Chicago Police Department.
Guest – Attorney G.Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern Law School, is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, an office which has been dedicated to litigating civil rights, police violence, government misconduct, and death penalty cases for more than 40 years.
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Speaking In Turkish: Denying the Armenian Genocide
To commemorate this, the first genocide of the 20th century, Law and Disorder co-host Heidi Boghosian presents a 60-minute documentary special titled “Speaking In Turkish: Denying the Armenian Genocide.”
Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.
The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings—beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients—render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.
Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government “their sole opportunity, one unprecedented” to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.
As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.
Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget “the senseless slaughter” of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.
Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Dallas 6 Trial: No Conviction, Ends In Mistrial
In April of 2014 we spoke with Chandre Delaney, an activist and the mother of Carrington Keys, one of the Dallas 6. The Dallas 6 are a group of inmates who in April 2010 protested the ongoing abuse from prison guards while locked in solitary confinement known as the Restrictive Housing Unit at SCI Dallas prison in Pennsylvannia. Abuse included tasering genitals, being hog tied, cutting off clothes and leaving inmates in cages for hours. The inmates protested by placing bedding over the window of their cell doors to attract attention of the prison administrators. Instead of receiving assistance, the inmates were brought up on riot charges.
The Dallas 6 are Andre Jacobs, Anthony Kelly, Anthony Locke, Dwayne Peters, Derek Stanley and Carrington Keys and were forced to stay in solitary confinement for up to 10 years.They presented testimony in December of 2013 describing the details of their abuse in solitary confinement. The trial for the remaining 3 of the Dallas 6 ended in a mistrial.
Guest – Attorney Michael Wiseman who is representing Dwayne Peters of the Dallas 6. Michael is a criminal defense litigator focusing on criminal and capital defense at trial, on appeal and in post conviction proceedings in state and federal court.
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21 States Introduce Anti-BDS Legislation
Israel advocacy groups and state law makers who support them have introduced anti-BDS legislation in New York California Florida and 19 other states across the United States of America, including the US Congress.
BDS – boycott , divestment, and sanction – is a peaceful tactic to pressure Israel to comply with international law and to influence public opinion and policy in the U.S. in favor of respecting the human rights of Palestinians.
The demands of the BDS movement are : Israels’ withdrawal from the territories of the West Bank which they have occupied since 1967 and the right of Palestinians expelled by the Israelis in 1948 and 1967 to return to their homes and equal rights for Palestinians who are citizens of Israel.
Support for BDS is now more widely rooted and impactful than ever before. Israel and its supporters in the USA are failing to slow down their gradually intensified isolation.
As a result we are seeing well-funded campaigns to silence Israel’s critics. Journalist Glenn Greenwald has called this “the greatest threat to free speech in the west.”
Guest – Attorney Rahul Saksena with Palestine legal, a group formed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild to defend the civil rights and civil liberties of critics of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
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Humanitarian and Economic Crisis in Puerto Rico
There is a humanitarian and economic crisis in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since it was invaded in 1898. Puerto Ricans are unable to vote for president or Congress, enter into trade agreements, control their own borders, issue tariffs, or, unlike any other state or city or corporation, they are unable to take advantage of a bankruptcy laws to restructure their debt. There are 3 million people living in Puerto Rico and their government owes $72 billion in bonds bought up by American citizens and corporations. For the last seven years there’s been a fire sale of Puerto Rican assets, including the sale to private interests of the largest airport on the island and the largest highway. Forty percent of the population are unemployed. Three weeks ago Puerto Rican governor Alejandro Padilla signed into law an emergency bill that would allow him to suspend the counties debt repayment. $422 million is due on May 1, 2016.
Guest – Attorney Linda Backiel – long-term National Lawyers Guild member. Linda practices law in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
Cornel West calls it the best analysis we have of the Black Lives Matter moment of the long struggle for freedom in America. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s new book, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation,” explores how a new generation of Black radicals–in challenging abusive policing practices, over-imprisonment of Black persons, deeply ingrained stereotypes of African Americans as especially dangerous and devoid of humanity, along with other forms of racist state oppression–is carrying on the fight for Black liberation through renewed activist uprisings. Combining historical accounts with insightful analysis, she demonstrates the interconnection between institutional racism and class oppression, reminding us how inequality and racialized state violence are byproducts of capitalism.
Guest – Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She writes on Black politics, social movements and racial inequality in the United States.
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Black Movement-Law Project
Several attorneys and legal activists involved in Ferguson, Baltimore and Cleveland protests have formed the Black Movement-Law Project. The Project provides legal support to local communities across the nation as they take to the streets to protest police misconduct, and systemic racism.
Their approach to community activism is itself community based: they offer legal and technical assistance based on the premise that local mass movements frequently lack legal expertise. They help arrange rapid responses to support activists on the ground by providing legal observers, know your rights trainings, and jail support. Their national network of human and civil rights attorneys offer assistance to local communities in the form of legal representation and long-term impact litigation.
Guests -Black Movement-Law Project co-founder Abi Hassen. Abi Hassen is an attorney, consultant and cofounder of the Black Movement-Law Project. He was formerly the mass defense coordinator at the National Lawyers Guild. He has a J.D. from New York University School of Law, and an undergraduate degree in computer science from The Evergreen State College. With his extensive background in labor, political and community organizing, Abi has been active at the intersection of law, technology and organizing for social justice for over a decade.
Guest – Black Movement-Law Project co-founder Nathan (Nash) Sheard, is a legal activist and organizer with the BMLP.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Urban Word: NYC
Spoken word—it’s the oral art of word play, intonation and inflection. From hip-hop, to poetry slams, to prose monologues, it came into popularity in the 1970s around the time Gil Scott-Heron recorded “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, Booker T. Washington and others in the civil rights movement incorporated elements of oration. In the 1980s, spoken word poetry competitions emerged. In New York, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on East Third Street was founded in 1973, and is one of the country’s oldest venues for spoken word poetry.
Spoken word is also engaging thousands of young people across the country in expressing themselves and developing leadership skills. One of the nation’s top rated literary arts programs is the nonprofit organization Urban Word NYC, which has ranked among the top 5 slam poetry teams in the nation for each of the past 11 years. They showcase the voices of New York City youth by providing platforms for leadership and teaching critical literacy skills through uncensored writing, college prep and performance opportunities. They’re getting ready for the 18th Annual NYC Teen Poetry Grand Slam on April 16 at the Apollo Theater.
Guests – Urban Word’s chief operating officer Adam Falkner, and Willy Luperon, a young poet and program alum who is currently serving as the organization’s media coordinator.
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Coddling Of The American Mind: Attorney Greg Lukianoff
Coddling of the American Mind is the title of an article in the recent Atlantic Magazine by attorney Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. It examines a particular movement arising that’s been described as “undirected” and driven largely by students that essentially scrubs campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Law and Disorder hosts also take a look at the legal cases being brought by students.
Guest – Greg Lukianoff, President and CEO of FIRE, The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He’s the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate and Freedom From Speech and has published articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TIME, The Boston Globe, Forbes, the New York Post, U.S. News & World Report, The Stanford Technology Law Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Reason, CNET, The Daily Caller, Congressional Quarterly, The Charleston Law Review, and numerous other publications. He is a blogger for The Huffington Post and Ricochet.com.
Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Torture, War Resister
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Seeds Of Fascism In The United States
There has been much discussion in liberal and left circles about whether Donald Trump is a fascist and whether the country is in danger of becoming fascist. It is pointed out the Trump is a demagogue, lies, is for violence, is a racist against Muslims and Mexicans, and is misogynist with respect to women. He is for bringing back torture and and increasing American aggression in Syria.
Guest – Professor Paul LeBlanc, a professor of history at the La Roche College in Pittsburgh and has written and participated in the US labor, radical, and civil rights movement. Professor LeBlanc is the author of books on the European revolutionaries Lenin, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxembourg. With respect to America, he wrote “a short history of the US working class.” And co-authored with economist Michael Yates the highly acclaimed “freedom budget for all Americans: recapturing the promise of the civil rights movement in the struggle for economic justice today.”
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United States, Cuba Relations 2016
The Cuban revolution of 1959 was not just a political revolution. It was a social revolution. The 99% took over the resources of their own country and the 1% fled to Miami. In response United States began a blockade of Cuba in 1960. A memo written by a senior State Department official laid out American policy. It advocated “a line of action that makes the greatest inroads into denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the Castro government. ”
Last year United States reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba and last week Obama said in Havana that “I affirm that Cuba’s destiny will not be decided by the United States or any other nation. We talk about the US relations with Cuba and President Obama’s recent visit with Walter Lippman.
Guest – Walter Lippmann, editor of the Cuba News Yahoo News Group.
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8th Annual Brookyn Folk Festival
Co-hosts Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian are joined by Eli Smith to talk about the upcoming Brooklyn Folk Festival. Eli is a banjo player, writer, researcher and promoter of folk music. He’s a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist and produces two folk festivals annually, the Brooklyn Folk Festival in the Spring and Washington Square Park Folk Festival in the Fall.
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