CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Michael Ratner: Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Exchange
- Five Taliban In Exchange For A U.S. Prisoner Held In Afghanistan
- 149 Detainees Left In Guantanamo Prison – 88 Cleared For Release
- Michael Smith Reports Back On Highlights At the 2014 Left Forum
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9/11 Memorial Museum Protests
There were many protests during the official opening of the 911 Memorial Museum. Muslim communities and other groups have voiced concern about the film in the musuem titled “The Rise of Al-Qaeda” and how it fails to adequately discern between Al-Qaeda and those of the Islamic faith. Meanwhile, the museum’s official response is that the film is objectively telling the story of what happened.
Donna Nevel:
- We came together because of a concern about a video they were showing called The Rise of al-Qaeda. It’s a 7 minute documentary and the concern is about the problematic language that its using. It makes it seem as if the acts of 9-11 are equated with Islam.
- Our feeling is that the film needs to be edited and could exacerbate an already anti-Muslim climate.
- Quoting criticism – The film in its current state presented risks that visitors would assign collective responsibility for September 11th to Islam and all Muslims.
- There’s a historian Todd Fine who says its an inconsistent array of terminology that gets carelessly thrown around with little concern for the harmful impact it can have on people.
- The video didn’t do enough to separate al-Qaeda from Islam and from mainstream Islam. It’s reckless.
- Despite the fact that the own museum’s own advisory board was instantly concerned when they saw the film and said it should be reviewed and edited – despite the fact that 400 scholars wrote letters saying it contains problematic and contested terminology that conflates terrorism with Islam – and despite the fact that leaders from so many different inter-faith communities have spoken out about this – that the museum continues to stand by its decision not to edit the video – is astonishing.
- I was doing a little research on her (Debra Burlingame-on 911 Memorial Museum Board of Directors) and there’s a high number of racist quotes she’s said. “Islam’s a transnational threat.”
- Millions and millions of people will be going to this museum and museums can have a big impact.
- We have to remember that this is in the context not of a society that welcomes and embraces the Muslim community but one that’s surveilling the Muslim community.
- It’s feeding into this notion that all Muslims are responsible for the acts of a few individuals.
- This video also feeds into police surveillance because what do they say? After 911 we have to be more vigilant and that means surveilling an entire community.
- Communities are coming together and speaking out, including about this video.
- We have to change the structures that enable this to happen. The Islamophobes are really problematic and have connections to some of the institutions.
- We have to make sure our institutions are fomenting Islamophobia.
- Book – Islamophobia and Israel by Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel
- We wanted to analyze the intersection of Islamophobia and Israeli politics and to look at the way the “war on terror” impacts both. Also to raise an issue that’s basically taboo in the Jewish community as well as outside the Jewish community.
- We have 4 different areas that we look at. Our lengthiest area is “follow the money” where you basically see how connected the Islamophobes are with right-wing Israel crowd, the settlement movement and others as well.
- Jews Against Islamophobia / Jews Say No / Jewish Voices For Peace / Jews For Racial and Economic Justice
- Contact Donna Nevel – denevel(at)gmail(dot).com
Guest – Donna Nevel, a community psychologist, educator, and writer whose work is rooted in Participatory Action Research (PAR) and popular education. Co-author with Elly Bulkin of Islamophobia and Israel. She has been involved with a wide range of organizing efforts to challenge segregation and inequality and further equity and racial justice in public education. She has also been a long-time organizer for Palestinian-Israeli peace and justice and works with groups to challenge Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.
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Free Flow of Information Act (Journalist Shield Law)
Current shield laws for journalists in the United States have broad exceptions for national security. This means that a prosecutor can override the law by showing how the information sought would “materially assist” the government in “preventing” or “mitigating” an act of terrorism. Initially, the shield law is set up to provide a confidentiality privilege for journalists so a police officer or FBI agent can’t get that information even with a court order unless there is an unusually strong justification for it. The latest version of the shield law as of September 2013 has a clause telling judges that it only covers legitimate news gathering. This of course makes very easy to declare any kind of news gathering you don’t like as illegitimate, and therefore the sources are not protected. Last month, the House of Representatives voted to approve an amendment to an appropriations bill barring the Justice Department from compelling reporters to testify about confidential sources.
Carey Shenkman:
- We are going to get a shield law but its going to be one that doesn’t protect any journalists or sources.
- It’s a lot easier for the FBI and the DOJ to just skip the investigation and go straight to the reporters. Why do they have to any work when they have the journalist getting all the sources for them.
- They subpoenaed records from the Associated Press last summer, they subpoenaed the source for James Risen who wrote a book and that actually appeared before the 4th Circuit of Appeals and was turned down by the Supreme Court for review.
- There’s been a push to try and pass a shield law before but Obama back in 2009 said he wouldn’t let any shield law pass that didn’t have a big national security exemption.
- What happened back in September is that there was a massive compromise with 2 Senators, Diane Feinstein from California and Dick Durbin from Illinois. They wouldn’t let this law go through unless it contained a big national security exception. Meaning any reporter covering national security would have to disclose their sources, and second it had a big exclusion for wikileaks and other organizations that published leaks.
- There’s actually a balancing test as part of this law that tells judges to consider if a journalist is engaged in legitimate news gathering. This is problematic because anyone can be a journalist, this has been the case since the founding of this country.
- They’re trying to put into law the fact that some journalists are legitimate and some are illegitimate.
- The internet has brought this country back to the time of its founding in terms of journalism because when the “press clause” in the First Amendment were passed, anyone could be a journalist.
- The “press clause” was defined as the right to publish.
- I believe we do need shield laws, but not this shield law.
- I think there is a big push by the institutional media to keep journalism as a profession, but that’s not what journalism is. Now with the internet, anyone can publish. As long as anyone as the intention to disseminate information, they should be protected as a journalist.
- When it helps the government the definition of the media is very broad.
- It’s going to be political suicide if Holder or anyone from the Obama administration pushes to send James Risen to jail.
- The DOJ argued in an affidavit that James Rosen was aiding and abetting his source.
- More and more, we’re seeing this administration trying to frame the news gatherer and the source, not as a journalist and a source but as criminals in a conspiracy.
- I was a radio journalist for 3 years. I used to work at the Center for Constitutional Rights where I met Michael Ratner and was involved with Chelsea Manning’s trial.
Guest – Carey Shenkman, has worked with several legal teams including Chelsea Manning’s defense, and legal research defining the protection of new media under the Bill of Rights and The U.S. Constitution.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Wikileaks Reveals The Other Country NSA Surveilled All Content: Media Blackout
- U.S. Government Can Destroy People: Informant Sabu (Hector Xavier Monsegur) And Jeremy Hammond
- Remembering League of Revolutionary Black Workers Founder General Gordon Baker Jr.
- Read General’s Letter To The Detroit Draft Board
- Michael Ratner Resigns From Brandeis University
- International Advisory BoardMichael Ratner’s Open Letter To Brandeis University President Published In Forward Thinking
- Coalition of Imokalee Workers Demonstrations In Columbus, Ohio
- Glenn Greenwald Nowhere To Hide Book Tour -Ticket Give Away – Listen To Answer Question
- We Have 5 Tickets In Each City To Give Away
- Dates City
June 17, 2014 Seattle, WA
June 18, 2014 San Francisco, CA
June 19, 2014 Los Angeles, CA
June 21, 2014 San Diego, CA
June 23, 2014 New York, NY
June 26, 2014 Rosemont, IL
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Remembering Dr. Vincent Harding
Last month pioneering historian, theologian and civil rights activist Dr. Vincent Harding had died at the age of 82. Harding was a close adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wrote King’s famous antiwar speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” King delivered the address at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967.
After King was assassinated, Harding became the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and of the Institute of the Black World. He later became Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. After serving in the Army for several years Harding became a pacifist and later served as co-chairperson of the social unity group the Veterans of Hope Project. He’s the author numerous books including There Is A River and Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals.
Dr. George Tinker:
- Vincent was sometimes called by black activists across the continent, the gentle giant.
- Giant, not because of his physical size but because of intellectual stature.
- Last summer we did a conference together speaking to a national conference of Quakers.
- He was an incredibly soft-spoken and gentle person, yet could be so absolutely incisive in his quiet comments.
- He was so persuasive that everyone had to pay attention to him.
- On campus he was either in the midst of a student group trying to quietly cajole them into activism themselves or once the students became activists, he was one of the few faculty that was right there with students walking them through that activism.
- Every thing in that speech (Beyond Vietnam) is a part of what Vincent lived every day.
- He was in the Army during the Korean War and became a convert to Gandhi and non-violence theory.
- His participation to bringing me to Iliff was a clear signal that he was one of those civil rights warriors who was not satisfied with interpreting the civil rights struggle as a black and white issue.
- When we engaged in protest on the streets of Denver, beginning around 1989, getting ready for the 1992 Columbian Quinscentenary, we had Iliff students who would come out with the American Indian Movement of Colorado to help us protest what we always framed as state supported hate speech.
- We were never against Italians celebrating their heritage but its the fact that Columbus Day is a federal holiday. It’s a federal celebration then, of the genocide of Indian people.
- About a year and a half ago he joined Jewish activists and African American activists on a trip to Palestine, the West Bank. He came back deeply affected.
- He immediately began to see the deep deep connection between the Palestinian struggle for freedom and American Indians on this continent.
- We’re seeing it still today, US foreign policy is characterized by violence and the threat of violence and if not military violence, economic violence.
- Vincent and Dr. King were men of conscience who once they understood the truth in Vietnam could not help but speak to it.
- 18 year old kids don’t have the clear reading of history to fall back on their decision making. (military)
- His passing is a passing of an era marked by the passing of Maya Angelou. It deeply deeply saddened me because I was hoping this next month to have lunch with him.
Guest – Dr. George Tinker, a colleague of Dr. Vincent Harding at the IIliff School of Theology. Dr. Tinker. He teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. His publications include American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty (2008); Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation (2004); and Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide (1993). He co-authored A Native American Theology (2001); and he is co-editor of Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance (2003), and Fortress Press’ Peoples’ Bible (2008).
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Please help support Law and Disorder, the show is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Law and Disorder must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- NSA Collecting MetaData And Content On Five Countries
- Julian Assange-Glenn Greenwald Twitter Storm
- Host Discussion On NSA Ubiquitous Data Collecting
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The United States vs. Private Chelsea Manning
Last year our own Michael Ratner made many trips to Fort Meade to attend the very secretive Private Chelsea Manning trials. Michael had also explained in past shows about how he heard Chelsea testify as to why he released each set of documents such as the Iraq war logs, the Afghanistan war logs, State Department cables and more. She said her decision to release the documents were done as an act of conscience. Our guest Wikileaks activist and artist Clark Stoeckley was also at this historic trial. His recent graphic novel titled The United States vs. Private Chelsea Manning is a collection of his vivid sketches from inside the court room. He joins us to talk about his work as an activist and his experiences producing the book. Welcome to Law and Disorder.
Clark Stoeckley:
- As I understand the transcripts are still under seal.
- Those sketches took a little bit longer, ones that where full court room where I drew a lot of people.
- I would work in pencil and draw as quickly as I could everything that I saw in the court room and then I would come back and fill it in with color and hard outlines.
- What she was doing was offering up 20 years of her life, accepting full responsibility and that takes a lot of courage and bravery to do that – being the smallest person in the court room and being noble about it.
- Unfortunately the media wasn’t there to catch the pre-trial. They only showed up on the first day and then the sentencing and the verdict.
- I remember how the court room fell to a complete silence when that video came on and the tears, and the blank stares on the prosecutions’ faces.
- I’m looking through the book right now, I see you, you’re in the picture there Michael Ratner, in the background sitting behind Chelsea.
- 35 years was the sentence and that’s going to be appealed. As I understand the appeal will start as early as December.
- They didn’t like that we’re holding vigils every week and holding large protests there. They shut down the road and they had to re-route traffic. It was the largest protest Ft. Meade had every seen.
- Just a heads up to anyone who wants to correspond with Chelsea, you know have to use the name Chelsea when addressing envelopes. http://www.chelseamanning.org/
- I just started putting them in libraries today.
- CHELSEA E. MANNING 89289 / 1300 NORTH WAREHOUSE ROAD / FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS 66027-2304
Guest – Clark Stoeckley, is an artist and author of the book The United States v. Private Chelsea Manning. He’s also the owner of truck with the WikiLeaks logo emblazoned on it. Stoeckley’s vivid sketches from inside the court and beyond, together with carefully selected transcripts of the proceedings, trace the arguments as they move back and forth between the defense and the prosecution.
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Net Neutrality – The Time Warner/Comcast Merger and New Rules Proposed By The FCC
In our last interview with attorney Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, we talked about the 45 billion dollar Comcast -Time Warner merger and its implications to net neutrality. This proposed merger would unite the nation’s largest cable TV and internet service provider with the second largest cable company. If combined, these companies would offer service to two thirds of U.S. households. We get an update on the merger and we also discuss the new rules proposed by the FCC about net neutrality. Net neutrality essentially means preventing unreasonable discrimination against content on the internet. The Free Press maintains that the new FCC rules would kill rather than protect net neutrality and allow rampant discrimination online.
Attorney Matt Wood:
- What the court said was that you can’t treat broadband providers as common carriers – not as some insurmountable conclusion but simply based on the way the FCC has decided to treat them up to this point.
- So the FCC up to this point has tried to deregulate and yet tried to maintain some of the protections we all need from our communications.
- Though its in the FCC’s discretion according to the majority and according to the DC circuit, what the courts have said, the FCC has made this decision in the past. They still haven’t reversed it, they still want to say that broadband is not a common carrier service and therefore the FCC can’t adopt common carrier or common carrier like obligations for broadband.
- There’s obviously a grave concern to government secrecy and censorship especially when it comes to whistle-blowers and the kind of information that Edward Snowden brought to all of us.
- If you used the phone to commit a crime whether that is wire fraud or you’re talking to your co-conspirators about how to conduct the crime. It is not the telephone company’s place and either say you can or can’t make that call.
- Net neutrality is a way of insuring that the carrier of our speech (that’s typically a private company) doesn’t have a role or not in deciding whether that speech goes through.
- If and when the government steps in and says hey we want to tap that line because we’re actually conducting an investigation or if and when there’s a punishment for the activity that you used the phone to plan that’s obviously a very important legal debate.
- Net neutrality is not a way for the government to control our speech. It is a way to insure that our cable and phone companies do not control our speech.
- The FCC in its current mode is basically saying well even if we’re required to allow these two tiers or multiple tiers of service, we can still step in and protect you and provide a basic level of service.
- This isn’t just about big internet companies on one side and big telephone and cable companies on the other side, its about that we all use the internet especially in a cloud based system. We’re using it not just to watch movies which is an important cultural activity but to back up our files, to send educational videos.
- What the cable and telephone companies want to do is charge you extra to reach their customers and they want to charge in both directions.
- If you want to reach them at all Netflix or Google, Law and Disorder, you also have to pay us now.
- Its no secret that FCC Chairman Wheeler headed not just one but two telecommunication lobbies.
- The FCC has this proceeding that it will be running over the summer. What Chairman Wheeler has proposed we think is not good enough but its not a done deal either so the FCC will take comments not only from companies and groups like ours but members of the public.
Guest – Attorney Matt Wood helps shape the policy team’s efforts to protect the open Internet, prevent media concentration, promote affordable broadband deployment and prioritize a revitalized public media. Before joining Free Press, he worked at the public interest law firm Media Access Project and in the communications practice groups of two private law firms in Washington, D.C. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, worked for PBS, and spent time at several professional and college radio and television stations. Matt earned his B.A. in film studies from Columbia University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.
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Please help support Law and Disorder, the show is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Law and Disorder must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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The Muslims Are Coming
Since the so called war on terror, thousands of innocent Muslims have been entrapped, surveilled, and their communities infiltrated while spending untold resources in search for the radicalized terrorist. In Arun Kundnani’s recent book titled the Muslims Are Coming, he carefully looks at the ideologies and strategies of law enforcement used to create the domestic war on terror. He unveils the disturbing processes of radicalization theories and racial profiling followed by law enforcement.
Arun Kundnani:
- There wasn’t any reflection of what the political causes might be of 9/11 or the political context that might give rise to Al-Qaeda.
- That discussion was basically censored at least in the United States.
- The war on terror has basically failed.
- Radicalization is the chief lens that security officials in Western government lock up Muslim populations.
- The idea of radicalization is that there’s this kind of ideology out there that turns ordinary Muslims into terrorists.
- The FBI and the police department both have the same model of radicalization which they claim tells you the process that someone goes through from being an ordinary member of the public to becoming a terrorist.
- Within that there are various indicators such as behavior or things that people might say or believe that are supposed to be signs that someone is traveling on this path to becoming a terrorist.
- This provides the basis for the very aggressive practice of surveillance that we’ve seen from both of those law enforcement agencies.
- It enables them to have a frame of reference to intervene within Muslim populations within the United States, to tackle the ideology that they see is the root driver for this.
- There are 4 stages in this model. Growing a beard, wearing Islamic clothing, changing the mosque that you attend, being active in a pro-Muslim in a social or political group.
- They often correspond to expression of political opinion.
- The FBI as of 2008 had 15,000 paid informants on its books. That’s a huge number given that half of the FBI’s budget is given to counter-terrorism. The sting operations using informants are the key method of dealing with this.
- The Stasi in Germany had one spy for every 66 East German citizens. It’s that kind of ratio that you can talk about a totalitarian system of surveillance.
- Muslims in America are probably experiencing the same level of surveillance that East Germans faced under the Stasi.
- The liberal take on the war on terror is not the same as the neoconservative take.
- As a Muslim you’re potentially bad and you need to prove that you’re not by the kind of ideology you express. That’s characterized the Obama period in the war on terror.
- The way that the word terrorism or the word extremism or radicalization works is that is serves to criminalize and demonize people who have radical political opinion, irrespective if they’re involved in any kind of violence.
- The structures of surveillance that have been set up in the war on terror, get recycled for all kinds of other purposes.
Guest – Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political violence, and surveillance. His latest book The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror was published by Verso Books in March 2014. Born and bred in London, he moved to New York in 2010 on a fellowship with the Open Society Foundations and now lives in Harlem. He is the author of The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain, which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year in 2007. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he was miseducated at Cambridge University, holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University, and teaches at New York University
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Ukraine’s Neo Nazis
We look at Ukraine’s neo-Nazis and Stepan Bandera and the legacy of World War II. Every important ministry in the Ukraine is now held by ultra-nationalists. The Ministry of Education, social policy, policing, prosecution and national defense are all headed up by people whose party is a direct descendant of the Stepan Bandera movement in the Ukraine during World War II. Bandera and his movement were responsible for the genocide of more than 500 thousand including Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. This fact is played down by the U.S. government, the mainstream media in the United States, the state of Israel and its defenders amongst the Jewish establishment including Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.
Joel Kovel:
- I think its important to recognize this utterly illegitimate US puppet government I think in large part because it doesn’t have any standing for the Ukrainian people as a whole – has to be defended by neo-Nazi elements which aren’t enormously plentiful, but plentiful enough and they will do the bidding of their masters.
- It started (Odessa, Ukraine) as a quarrel in a soccer stadium, and moved to Odessa. Odessa is an extremely important town it was one of the centers of world Jewish culture for a long time, still has 30 thousand Jews in it.
- The Ukrainian loyalists overwhelmed the other people and drove them into this building, they set fires within the building which led to a hideous massacre.
- One on one violence but also people jumping out of the windows, smoke inhalation.
- Watching it on youtube you saw the total savagery and unspeakable brutality of these thugs, they were laughing, having the time of their lives.
- There were police around, military around, they did nothing to stop this.
- Utterly mystified and denied by the mainstream media, including the main springs thereof, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times.
- My parents were both born in the Ukraine. In the early years of the last century, one third of the Jews in the world lived in the Ukraine.
- You have a blood strewn, contentious history marked by an enormous amount of hatred and vindictiveness. I think all nationalisms are pathological frankly.
- Ukrainian nationalism was particularly virulent. We’re dealing with another brand of ultra-nationalism with the state of Israel, and they’re not unconnected with all this.
- Fascism being a right wing alliance between large bourgeois and nationalist forces using some kind of mythic or racist ideology to legitimate itself.
- Ukraine: there’s never been a solid national identity there’s a tremendous complex mixture of things.
- There’s a book called Organized Antisemitism in Contemporary Ukraine: Structure, Influence and Ideology.
- Of course the US thinks they’re manipulating the puppets so they can control them. You go down that road, there’s going to be a lot of tragedies as the puppet turns on the master.
- The number of Rabbis quoted as saying we’re getting ready to evacuate, we have plans. We’re ready to go in a half an hour. We’re afraid its going to happen again. Meanwhile, this Foxman is saying, don’t worry.
- New York Times had a headline about 3 or 4 weeks ago how this was all overblown Ukraine’s Jews say that Putin not antisemitism is the problem.
- That’s the headline in the New York Times. How could they do that?
- We need a massive onslaught against the program of lies and deception that is being waged by our national media in total lockstep with the imperial interest of the United States. I’ve never in my life seen journalism sink to such an abyss as it has and in the very least this is a front that we can occupy.
- It means a lot because the American don’t want this to be happening. This is something that our power system. One front is the ruthless critique of the media and the lies that our government is putting out.
Guest- Joel Kovel, scholar and an activist. In the former capacity he has published nine books and over a hundred articles and reviews. His books include White Racism, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1972; A Complete Guide to Therapy; The Age of Desire (in which his work in the psychiatric-psychoanalytic system is detailed); Against the State of Nuclear Terror; In Nicaragua; The Radical Spirit; History and Spirit(1991) – Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism
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Please help support Law and Disorder, the show is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Law and Disorder must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
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U.S. Agency Infiltrates Cuba With Fake Twitter Account
Consistent with the NSA’s deceptive strategies in creating fake social networks, the U.S. Agency for International Development masterminded the creation of a “Cuban Twitter: The communications network was designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba. It was financed through foreign banks and constructed through shell companies. The Associated Press learned that the project lasted more than 2 years and had tens of thousands of followers. The content initially was non political such as soccer, music and weather, but it was learned that once a critical mass was reached, political content would be introduced to organize “smart mobs” that could trigger a Cuban Spring.
Jane Franklin:
- When Obama speaks about Cuba you have to read between the lines always and be very careful about what you think he’s saying.
- He said the notion that “the policies we put into place in 1961 would somehow be as effective as they are today in the age of the internet and google and world travel doesn’t make sense.
- We recognize that the aims are always going to be the same and what we have to do is continually find new mechanisms and new tools to speak out on behalf of the issues that we care so deeply about.”
- That’s what he was considering back in November and of course before that this plan to use creative and thoughtful methods to infiltrate Cuba and try to create what the Associated Press calls “smart mobs” which could lead to the downfall of the Cuban government.
- It was called ZunZuneo and was budding in 2009, then it was launched full scale in 2010 with a campaign to use a half a million cell phone numbers that U.S. aids have gotten and sent what they call blasts to those half a million receivers.
- Those people would be told that they could sign up for this program and get news and so on. News that at first would be trivial, and then gradually according to the documents that the AP has – this would increase until they could develop smart mobs – that is street protest that would help lead to the overthrow of the Cuban government.
- They used foreign countries to disguise where the messages came from. They set up a bank account in the Cayman Islands which is a tax haven to use that for money.
- When there was a concert in Havana in 2009 which is described in the report by the AP and the US Aid people blasted the cell phones with questions.
- One of the questions was do you think the two bands that were not in favor of the Cuban government should be on the stage with the band that’s there today?
- If you answered yes, you were what’s called “receptive” to their ideas.
- A few months later they launched this full scale campaign and eventually they had 60 thousand receivers using their program. That’s not many in the population of Cuba. It was a failure and they closed it down.
- They were paying tens of thousands to Cuba Cell, which regulates the cell phones.
- They get millions of dollars from Congress every year to create such programs and try to overthrow the government of Cuba which they’re supposed to do according to U.S. law The Helms-Burton Act requires that.
- It (the report) says that a researcher from Mobile Accord which was the main private contractor was building a mass database about the Cuban subscribers including gender, age, receptiveness and political tendency.
Guest – Jane Franklin is a historian, she has written two books about Cuba: Cuban Foreign Relations 1959-1982 (Center for Cuban Studies, New York, 1984) and Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History (Ocean Press, Melbourne, Australia, 1997). She is co-author of Vietnam and America: A Documented History (Grove Press: New York, 1985, enlarged edition 1995). Her chronology of the history of Panama is in The U.S. Invasion of Panama (South End Press: Boston, 1991). She has published numerous articles, poems and film reviews and has lectured extensively about Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama. She is a frequent radio commentator about Cuba.
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50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act prohibits prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation. In a speech on June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy unveiled plans to pursue a comprehensive civil rights bill in Congress, stating, ‘‘this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”
Professor of Law John Brittain:
- Yes, I do believe Lyndon Johnson deserves credit, although he had such allies like Martin Luther King. They released some of the unacknowledged tapes by President Johnson in his office in talking with Dr. King both about the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well as he went on to usher in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
- These acts were a response to a condition on the ground, and the condition was apartheid in the United States, in particularly in the South, but as Malcolm X said anything below the Canadian – US border was the South.
- We’re also celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Summer in Mississippi.
- The demonstrations in the streets no doubt had an effect upon the Congress in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act to shall we say, let some of the steam out of the kettle.
- He (LBJ) came out of the Lone Star state, the only state that came into the union as a slave state and the state that promoted the white primary, that unless you were white you couldn’t vote in the primary.
- The Missouri Compromise we’d have slave states and free states. After the civil war we’d have a great period of radical Republican reconstruction in the South to give the black former slave equal rights but that died by the 1890s and ushered in a period what we call Jim Crow.
- Coming up to that point in the 1960s and with the riots, to his credit LBJ, notwithstanding that dark cloud over his head, that war in Vietnam which Dr. King called immoral, unjust and illegal and took a lot of criticism for daring to talk about international affairs and indeed talk about a war.
- The minute lawyers went to work in representing the poor, they were cut off by restrictions. The war on poverty and neighborhood legal services was started in 1965-66 but a decade later it was cut off at the knees.
- Johnson said when he was first presented with the idea of legal services – hell I’m not going to pay lawyers to sue the government and win but he was convinced otherwise.
- By the time 65 came around and they created this compromise and started this new federal agency funding called Legal Services corporation to take the political veto out of governors but they had to agree to restriction.
- Legal Services lawyers couldn’t take criminal cases, abortion cases, agitation for labor rights cases, immigration cases, school desegregation cases.
- Just last year 2013, on the eve of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John Roberts and the right wing on the Supreme Court – Shelby County v Eric Holder
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the same Civil Rights Act of the 1860s. The only difference is they based on a different constitutional provision, not the 14th Amendment which gives Congress the right to enforce the Constitution to provide equality for the former slave, now African American, but instead in 1964, they based it on commerce clause by saying that any segregation interfered with interstate commerce. The act in essence provided for equal accommodation.
- It broke the back of Jim Crow segregation where an African American could go shop, go eat, go live and go play and go to any access in parts of America.
- It would later take the 1968 Fair Housing Act in order to provide equal housing.
- The 1964 Civil Rights Act gave Congress, gave the Justice Department, the Department of Education too, and others the tools to go in and to stop Jim Crow or “colored only” segregation in our mainly southern states.
- That was the same Justice Department that went on to enforce 1964 Civil Rights Act by bringing legal claims against hotels and restaurants, government facilities that continued to bar blacks from equal access.
- Kennedy said where are the lawyers? By current tort terms, he falsely imprisoned them in the White House and told them they couldn’t leave until they created an organization and out of that grew the Lawyers Committee and immediately they went down to Jackson, Mississippi and created the Jackson Litigation Office.
- I happen to come along in 1969 fresh out of law school to become one of the lawyers in the Jackson litigation and throughout the history of the lawyers committee. The only national legal organization dedicated to equality for African Americans and other people of color have gone on to litigate in education, in voting, in housing and employment discrimination as well as criminal justice.
Guest – Professor John Brittain, tenured professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, David A. Clarke School of Law. In the past he served as dean of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston, was a veteran law professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law for twenty-two years and was the Chief Counsel and Senior Deputy Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, DC, a public interest legal organization started by President John F. Kennedy to enlist private lawyers to take pro bono cases in civil rights.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
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The Dallas 6: Abuse In Solitary Confinement
In April of 2010, a group of inmates locked in solitary confinement at SCI Dallas prison in Pennsylvania were suffering so much abuse and brutal treatment by prison guards they had placed their 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. Last December the inmates known as the Dallas 6 defended themselves and presented testimony describing the details of their abuse in solitary confinement.
Shandre Delaney:
- This case, the Dallas 6, began in April 2010. These men were all in the RHU at SCI Dallas, in Dallas PA.
- The RHU is the restrictive housing unit, its an acronym for solitary confinement.
- All of these men had been victims of abuse and torture during their stay in solitary confinement.
- The Dallas 6 are Andre Jacobs, Anthony Kelly, Anthony Locke, Dwayne Peters, Derek Stanley and my son Carrington Keys.
- Most of these guys went into solitary for minor infractions, maybe to stay 60-90 days. My son stayed in there for 10 years, and I think all of the other guys about the same.
- These guys were jailhouse lawyers. These guys were people who spoke up and sent word to the outside about what was going on in solitary confinement.
- Once you do that – they call it misconduct, which are write ups, they’ll give you false write ups, and all types of things just to keep you in there longer.
- The cells are 6X9. In solitary, they might have a window to the outside. There is a bunk that they sleep on. There is only a slot for food to come in and out.
- You’re supposed to come out of your cell for one hour a day. They may get a shower 2 or 3 times a week.
- They lied to me for years and told me he wasn’t allowed visits. I later found out that they’re allowed one visit per month.
- The group that I work for Human Rights Coalition, some of the information that was sent from SCI Dallas, a 93 page report was written called Resistance and Retaliation.
- They sent a copy back in (to SCI Dallas) they didn’t mark out the guys’ names, so once the guards got a hold of this, and saw the guy’s names, they started one by one beating guys.
- They took one guy and put him in a restraint chair. You’re only supposed to be in the restraint chair for 2 hours, they kept there over night.
- They (the guards) told the guys (Dallas 6) we’re comin for you. In order to bring attention from a lieutenant or a superior officer, you have to cover your cell window.
- They covered their cell windows. The guards put on riot gear and one by one they beat these guys very bad.
- It’s all on video tape. They tasered a lot of the guys on their genitals.
- They have you like a hog or something, I saw it on the video.
- They cut their clothes off and left them for hours in cages.
- May 5, 2014 is supposed to be the official trial date. The official trial date has been going on for 2 years.
- I was praying every night hoping the phone didn’t ring and they tell me they killed him.
- They took out to shower and threw him down the steps and broke his nose, they busted his teeth out with a stick before.
- They put glass in his food.
- HRCoalition.org
- Dallas 6 Blog
- Petition to Indict Luzerne County Officials
- Summary in Support of Petition to Indict
Guest – Shandre Delaney, a powerful activist with HRCoalition and the mother of Carrington Keys, one of the Dallas 6.
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Rutgers University Plans to Give Condoleezza Rice Honorary Degree
Students and faculty at Rutgers University have rejected the idea to invite former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to speak at this year’s commencement ceremony and receive an honorary degree. The Board of Governors in February of this year unanimously voted to award Rice the invite for a fee of 35 thousand dollars. They also voted to give the national security adviser under former President George W. Bush an honorary degree. Resolutions signed by the university faculty and staff calls for Rice to be disinvited.
Professor Deepa Kumar:
- Historically our process at Rutgers University has involved having 20 some faculties, students, involved in the process of selecting the commencement speaker, typically by canvasing students and canvasing faculty and then making a recommendation to the president as to who to invite.
- When president Barchi came to your university in 2012 he completely violated this open and democratic process, formed a committee of 6 people including himself. Then they decided to go ahead an invite Condoleezza Rice.
- We believe that this was actually politically motivated. What suspect is that Chris Cristi who was riding high at that time in 2012, before bridge-gate, very likely wanted to have Condoleezza Rice as Vice Presidential candidate when he runs.
- So far we have taken out a petition drive, the students have their own petition drive, hundreds of people have signed up. We’ve also talked about holding a protest outside should our efforts fail.
- The last time Dr. Rice was invited to be a commencement speaker was at 2006 at Boston College, when everybody turned their back to her when she started to speak.
- Condoleezza Rice was very much a part of the systematic lying to the American public and quite frankly we at Rutgers teach our students to ethical to be responsible citizens.
- At Rutgers we have a 44 percent minority student enrollment. It’s a very diverse school and I welcome African American women as commencement speakers but I think there are better people like Anita Hill or Angela Davis.
- In 2002 we know from a Senate Committee Intelligence Report of 2009 that when Rice was chair of the National Security Council she gave a verbal approval to then CIA director George Tenet to go ahead and use enhanced interrogation techniques.
- She’s been quite steadfast in defending the use of torture. She gave a speech at Stanford University where she argued that if torture is authorized by the president then it doesn’t violate the Geneva Convention against torture.
- Commencement at Rutgers – May 18, 2014.
- Senator Feinstein called the use of torture a dark chapter in the history of this country.
- Clearly torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Convention and I think to confer a Doctor of Law degree to someone who has been intimately connected with this “dark chapter” in our history I think is a serious embarrassment for Rutgers University.
- I’m really proud to be among the hundreds of faculty members and students who are actually standing up against this to disinvite her.
- Dick Cheney comes out and defends the torture program even now.
- If I Was Allowed To Speak
Guest – Deepa Kumar, an Associate Professor of Media and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. Her latest book is Islamophobia and The Politics of Empire by Haymarket Books and is in response to the events of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a “war on terror,” ushering in an era of anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia. Her first book, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike (University of Illinois Press, 2007), is about the power of collective struggle in effectively challenging the priorities of neoliberalism.
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