Taking Back The Right To Dissent: The Case of the Bangor Six
Recently, jurors in the Case of the ‘Bangor Six’ brought back a decisive verdict of ‘not guilty.’ The six veterans for peace, anti war protesters were arrested in March of last year after refusing to leave the federal building where their senator, Republican Susan Collins has her office. The six activists were among 12 that say they were protesting Bush’s proposal to increase troops in Iraq to support a military strategy known s the surge and also urged Collins to vote against continued funding for the war. Collins did not vote against funding for the war and did not meet with activists. Six of the activists were later arrested. (Collins Watch)
Now, during this trial, the jury was allowed by the judge to decide whether the defendants believed that they were not guilty in making a conscious choice to break Maine law because they thought international law was being violated. The jurors decided unanimously that the protesters did believe they had the ‘license and privilege’ to act as they did, in rendering the ‘not guilty’ verdict.
Guest – Bar Harbor attorney Lynne Williams, also with Maine Lawyers for Democracy a group of 65 Maine lawyers, calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
List of Bangor Six – Jonathan Kreps, 57, of Appleton, Henry Braun, 77, of Wells, James Freeman, 59, of Verona, Dudley F. Hendrick, 66, of Deer Isle, Douglas Rawlings, 61, of Chesterville, and Robert Shetterly, 61, of Brooksville,
chose to go to trial. The other six pleaded guilty and paid fines.
We go now to hear two speeches from this year’s Left Forum Opening Plenary from author/ professor Adam Hochschild and writer/ filmmaker Naomi Klein author of The Shock Doctrine. The Left Forum was titled Cracks In The Edifice. The many panels at the 2008 Left Forum addressed and challenged the current economic and political catastrophes in the United States and discussed possibilities for social movements to build better world in its place.
In her speech, Naomi Klein discusses how the lack of response in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are intentional strategies she calls “disaster capitalism.†At the 2008 Left Forum Naomi suggests that many in the United States have woken up to roughshod profiteering of disaster capitalism.
Guest: Jurgen Altmann. He’s studied physics at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Less-lethal weapons and acoustic weapons have been his primary focus lately. Altmann also examines the interactions between civilian and military technologies in aviation research and development. In recent years, he has studied military uses of, first, microsystems technologies and then nanotechnology, with a view towards preventive arms control. He is a co- founder of the German Research Association Science, Disarmament and International Security FONAS, and currently is a deputy speaker of the Committee Physics and Disarmament of the German Physical Society.
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Colorado ACLU: Early Legal Preparation For August Democratic National Convention, Submits FOIA Request On Denver DNC Budget.
We’ve talked with Jurgen Altman about the types of less lethal weaponry that could be used against protestors. We look now at the context in which these weapons could be deployed. In this election year, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Denver, Colorado will be hosting the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention respectively. In New York during the 2004 Republican National Convention, police violated the rights of thousands of protestors. The violations include roundups of demonstrators spying on non-violent political activists, the use of agent provacateurs and the faking of police video evidence. Sonic weapons were also present in the streets of New York City. For this election year of 2008, lawyers in both cities are working to prevent similar tactics.
Civil liberties and privacy concerns are raised as Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff announced the activation of a new domestic satellite surveillance program. Though the department says the program will not intercept communications, these powerful, high resolution satellites can now be used to view and track individuals, homes and vehicles domestically.
Critics cite that Chertoff’s statements mark a determination to coordinate military assets with domestic law enforcement, turning new or undeveloped technologies against Americans without public debate or consent.
Guest: Melissa Ngo, Senior Counsel and Director of EPIC’s Identification and Surveillance Project. EPIC is the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Melissa has focused on federal and state surveillance programs and their costs to civil liberties. She is also the author of a chapter entitled You Are Being Watched But Not Protected: The Myth of Security Under Camera Surveillance in the book “Intersection: Sidewalks & Public Space”
Former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson was paroled March 17 after serving six years in prison related to the attempted bombings of LA police cars in the 1970s and the shooting of a customer during a bank robbery. The 61 year old Olsen was rearrested at LA International Airport shortly after her release after discovering that they had miscalculated her sentence by a year.
Olsen’s attorneys say she should be freed from prison immediately because California corrections officials had no authority to re-arrest her after she was paroled last week, her attorneys argued in a court motion filed today.The motion filed in Sacramento County Superior Court claims that Olson’s due process rights were violated when she was returned to prison Saturday to serve at least another year behind bars. According to the lawyers filing: Once an inmate is released on parole, the board can only suspend or revoke her parole. It has no legal authority to arrest her and re-incarcerate her.
“After being released from prison for five days, Olson was literally snatched by the board in the dark of night and imprisoned without notice, without a hearing and without an explanation,” her lawyers say in their motion. “Such an experience is certainly horrific and may have caused lasting psychological damage.”
Prosecutors and family members of the woman who was gunned down in the Carmichael bank robbery objected to Olson’s release from prison, prompting the corrections department to review her sentence and ultimately determine that she had been released too soon. The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation began an internal affairs investigation Monday into what officials said was a clerical error that led to Olson’s release.
Officials said Olson was supposed to serve two years for the Sacramento County murder in addition to the 12 years she was to serve for the Los Angeles County crimes. Instead, her records showed that she was to serve the sentences at the same time. The SLA, an urban guerrilla group started in 1973, was best known for kidnapping Patty Hearst, heir to the media chain. The group also carried out bombings and bank robberies, and six of its members died during a shootout with Los Angeles police in 1974.
Guest: Susan B. Jordan, criminal defense lawyer and civil litigator. Susan is well known for her work in defending women charged with violent crimes and is credited with the creation of the battered spouse defense. Susan represented Sara Jane Olson (Kathleen Soliah), Los Angeles Superior Court, 1999-2002. This case involved the defense of Sara Jane Olson, captured after 23 years, alleged to be a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), charged with conspiracy to bomb police officers. Defendant entered pleas of guilty. Check out Susan’s noted cases here.
“However narrow and restricitive American bourgeois democracy was before 9/11, it’s jridical and institutional underpinnings have been transformed by the Bush Administration (with the complicity of the Democratic Party) intor what can now most accurately be described as a police state.”
We hear from our own Michael Steven Smith he was one of the speakers on the panel. We will hear from the other speakers in later programs, they include C. Clark Kissenger and Lynne Stewart.
Law and Disorder hosts were live in the studio with Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolf is a feminist, social critic and political activist. The New York Times called her book, The Beauty Myth, one of the most important books of the 20th century. Wolf is the co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, teaching young women to become leaders and agents of change. Naomi Wolf blog in the Huffington Post
Her latest book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot is a call to return to the beliefs of our founding fathers. Wolf’s new book illustrates ten steps historically taken by leaders who are attempting to dismantle a democracy. Wolf jokingly called it the The Greatest Hits of Facism.
In The End of America, Wolf gives voice to the cause of every American patriot: the preservation of the Constitution and the liberties it embodies and protects.
“Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty,†stated Wolf.
“Freedom and democracy†are two words we’ve been hearing from the right wing in this country for 25 years. In their quest to shore up support for the politics of wealth and privilege, the Right has organized patiently and consistently by focusing on a core ideology to amass a formidable base. The Right’s commentary on world affairs, morality, the state, and the economy, though, has had an overarching focus, namely to eliminate social equality as a legitimate public policy goal. Its success has resulted in one of the most dramatic, undemocratic, and insidious transfers of wealth and power in recent American history.
Guest – John Ehrenberg, author of the book “Servants of Wealth: The Right’s Assault on Economic Justice.†A professor of political science at Long Island University, in this, his third book, critically analyzes the rise of an ideologically coherent Right. He dissects their themes of military weakness, moral decay, racial anxiety, and hostility to social welfare to reveal their central organizing objective of protecting wealth and assaulting equality.
Hosts Update on spy legislation that would give immunity to utility telecom companies in recent eavesdropping bill. Companies such as Verizon would be protected from lawsuits after handing private consumer data (emails / phone conversations) to the federal government without a warrant.
USA vs. Al-Arian is the name of the new documentary that chronicles the arrest and trial of Dr. Sami Al0Arian, a Palestinian computer engineer and former university professor, who was convicted of conspiracy to aid terrorism. Norwegian film-maker Line Halvorsen interviews law professors and reporters and most of Al-Arian’s family to assemble a disturbing picture of a paranoid post-9/11 climate. The film tells the story from the day the FBI storms into Al-Arian’s home to arrest him in February of 2003. Hosts talk with Dr. Al-Arian’s oldest daughter Laila live in studio.
In the film we see the jury found Al-Arian not guilty on all counts yet, the judge hands down a prison sentence and deportation. Dr Al-Arian is still in prison.
Guest – Laila Al-Arian, Dr. Al-Arian’s oldest daughter
Rediker has scoured through letters, diaries, memoirs, captain’s logbooks, shipping company records to piece together the intimate realities of these 18th-century sailing vessel carrying enslaved Africans. Rediker draws startling parallels to global economy structures then and now, tracing back as New England timber was used to build Slave Ships yet nails and ropes were purchased from Liverpool at discounts, ship captain stock options and more. In his book, Marcus also documents revolts among underpaid sailors and the solidarity that evolves amid slaves and servants.
One review describes Slave Ship as “ a tale of tragedy and terror, but also an epic of resilience, survival, and the creation of something entirely new. Marcus Rediker restores the slave ship to its rightful place alongside the plantation as a formative institution of slavery, a place where a profound and still haunting history of race, class, and modern economy was made.â€
A delegation from the National Lawyers Guild has released a preliminary report on its findings regarding the impacts of the Proclamation of the Emergency in Pakistan. The report found that anything short of restoring the judges deposed on last November 2007 will have long lasting negative impacts on the judiciary and rule of law in Pakistan. The delegation also noted structural problems in the pre-election climate such as lack of an independent judiciary, allowing free and fair elections nearly impossible. Here is the NLG Pakistan Delegation report.
The delegation’s findings are based on over 50 interviews with political party leaders, lawyers, members of civil society, government officials, judges, students and journalists in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad.
Guest – David Gespass, the Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild, he has led a delegation of American lawyers to Pakistan to show solidarity with the Pakistani lawyers demanding a return to the rule of law and to oversee and assist with preparations for the upcoming election in that country.
Here on Law and Disorder we’ve covered in depth the scope of surveillance bearing down on the lives of people in a post 9/11 society. From intrusive RFID technology to phone companies and airlines handing over private consumer data to the FBI. Webb constructs a clear sense of the emerging panopticon singularity. The Panopticon Singularity bears a strong resemblance to the concept of “ubiquitous law enforcement.”
Excerpt from book: “Surveillance in a world of risk preemption requires that everyone be evaluated as a potential suspect in order to eliminate risk to the furthest degree possible. In this paradigm, the criminal law and due process protections that have been developed over centuries in democratic societies – such as the presumption of innocence; habeas corpus and rights against arbitrary, indefinite detention; attorney-client privilege; public trial; the right to know the evidence against one and to respond; the right against unreasonable search and seizure; and the right to remain silent – are viewed as intolerable risks.”
Guest – Canadian human rights lawyer Maureen Webb, she is the author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World. In the book, Webb examines how governments worldwide follow the lead of the Bush administration in using quote terrorism as an excuse for public surveillance and information gathering.
  
