Guantanamo, Supreme Court, Surveillance
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Patriot Act – Expansions
The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 11 to 4 in a closed door session to approve an expansion of the USA PATRIOT Act. The new measure would make permanent eight provisions of the Act, which is set to expire at the end of this year. It would also increase government surveillance powers by granting investigators access to an individual’s business records and allowing wiretaps and searches without proving a link to terrorism or a federal judge’s permission.
Guest – David Cole, professor at Georgetown Law School and author of “Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedom in the War on Terrorism.” He has an article in The Nation magazine last month titled “The Missing Patriot Debate.”
Guest – Chip Pitts – International Attorney and chair of the US Amnesty International Board. Pitts was also at the Patriot Act Reauthorization hearing.
—-
Cuba’s Anti-Terrorist Conference
Hundreds gathered for an anti-terrorism conference in Cuba, but not to talk about al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. The Latin American personalities attending the event instead focused on the US government.
Guest – Michael Avery – President of the National Lawyers Guild and Law Professor at Suffolk University. He attended Cuba’s Anti -Terrorist Conference held earlier this month.
Guest – Jim Cockcroft – A three time Fulbright Scholar; former Ford Fellow and Peace Corps consultant; 1988 University of California Regents Lecturer; frequent guest professor/researcher in the Americas and Europe and public lecturer; participating editor of Latin American Perspectives; and State University of New York Internet Curriculum Designer and Professor.
—-
Supreme Court Ruling on Medical Marijuana
Guest – Pamela Lichty is the Vice President and Co-Founder of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, a non-profit organization established in 1993 to encourage discussion and promote public education about current and alternative drug policies and related issues.
—-
Special Registration – Americans Deported
After September 11th, the government required required men in the United States from 24 Muslim majority countries and North Korea to be fingerprinted, photographed and questioned at immigration centers. Roughly 13,000 of the men who stepped forward were placed into deportation proceedings after immigration officers discovered that they were living here without legal status. Among them are men like Kamal, Hassan and Housseine Essaheb, three brothers from Queens who fit only the profile of classic immigrant success, minus the proper paperwork.
Guest – Julie Dinnerstein, immigration lawyer with Sanctuary for Families
Guest – Kamal Essaheb, law student at Fordham University who came to the United States from Morocco 13 years ago.
Commentary – Close Guanatamo – Michael Ratner
Civil Liberties, Surveillance
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Feds Destroy Life And Career of Valued Physician-Scientists Who Protected Populations From The Plague.
Guest – Robert Jensen is a professor of media law, ethics and politics at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream, among other books. He also writes for popular media, and his opinion and analytic pieces on foreign policy, politics and race have appeared in papers and magazines throughout the United States.
—-
Silencing and Criminalizing Dissent – Animal-Environmental Activists Become Targets of Government Spying and Terrorist Watch.
Guest – Jerry Vlasak, MD, a board-certified surgeon specializing in trauma and critical care. He is a former vivisector who has seen the agony of animals in laboratories. He debates the scientific invalidity of animal experimentation around the world, speaks out about the benefits of a vegan diet and offers lectures on the right of all sentient beings to live free of pain and suffering.
—-
Amnesty International 2005 Report
Guest: Jumana Musa – a lawyer and a staff member of Amnesty International’s US section.
—-
Michael Ratner on Fox Network’s Hannity & Colmes
We play the Hannity/Ratner interview then read some hate mail from the Fox viewers.
—-
Book Review – David S. Reynolds
David Reynolds – Author of “John Brown, Abolitionist : The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights.”
Surveillance, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Targeting Muslims
The Council on American_Islamic Relations (CAIR), the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hold simultaneous news conferences in New York City and Buffalo, N.Y., to announce action against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the practice of targeting American citizens participating in religious conferences outside the United States.
Guest – Udi Ofer
—-
Luis Posada
National Lawyers Guild Calls for Immediate Extradition of Luis Posada to Venezuela
Guests – Jane Franklin and Ian Thompson
—-
New York City Law Suit Settlement?
More than 100 people arrested during the Republican National Convention have agreed to settle a lawsuit over improper detention.
Guests- Liz Fink, Eileen Clancy and Gideon Oliver
—-
Supermax Prisons
Across the country, more and more super maximum security prisons are being built to, in theory, house the worst of the worst criminals, yet the conditions in these facilities amount to cruel and unusual punishment, and the procedures for determining who is sent to a supermax facility are, according to rights advocates, haphazard and arbitrary and deprive prisoners of their rights to due process.
Guest – Jules Lobel
Civil Liberties, Surveillance
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
NYPD Edit Arrest Video?
The New York Times reported earlier this week that in some 400 cases[90%] of charges against RNC protesters were dropped because video recordings emerged showing that the arrested had not committed a crime during RNC protests in NYC. Hosts, Dalia Hashad and Heidi Boghosian interview
Guest – Eileen Clancy from Eyewitness Video. Clancy describes how she discovered that two versions of the same police tape, one used as evidence in the case of Alexander Dunlop was edited. Edited out were sequences of events removed that portrayed Dunlop behaving peacefully.
—-
Academic Freedom
Guest – Brenda Coughlin, PhD Candidate at Columbia School of Sociology.
Guest- Gil Anidjar – Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He is the author of The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy.
—-
Flag Burning Amendment
Hosts discuss issues surrounding the proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would outlawed burning the Flag of the United States.
Surveillance, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
National Security/Tort Reform/Free Trade
Tort Reform Examined
An indepth with Steve Peskin and Shoshanna Bookson with the New York Trial Lawyers Association. Peskin and Bookson discuss how corporate welfare triumphs as insurance claims and are being capped.
“The National Security State”
A term described by Guest Michael Avery, former president of the National Lawyer’s Guild, Avery describes the many ways a citizen’s privacy is easily breached on several fronts in the United States.
U.S. Global Economic Entanglements
Guest Barbara Dudley discusses the Dark Secrets of Free Trade.
Civil Liberties, Surveillance
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Last month, nearly half a million protestors took to the streets to march against the Republican National Convention , the Iraq War and various other causes, in one of the most peaceful gatherings New York City has seen. Demonstrators marched in the hot sun for nearly four hours from 14th and Seventh Avenue to Herald Square and back down to Union Square. But as the carnival-like atmosphere continued inside the RNC, an atmosphere of unpredictability gripped the streets as police used dragnet tactics to round up protestors.
Among the Guests: National Lawyers Guild Attorneys – Elizabeth Fink, Margaret Ratner Kunstler. Also, Ellen Yaroshevsky, on the Lynne Stewart defense team and a Professor of Law at the Cardozo Law School
