CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Hosts Mourn The Passing Of Friend And Colleague Lynne Stewart
Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith remember the courageous people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart.
We listen back to a past interview with Lynne Stewart February 4, 2008.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Hears Lynne Stewart’s Arguments
Law and Disorder hosts welcome back civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart. Lynne Stewart has been free on bail pending appeal since federal judge John Koeltl gave her a 28 month sentence in October 2006. As you may recall Lynne Stewart was initially facing up to 30 years after being found guilty of conspiring to aid terrorists. She was convicted of distributing press releases on behalf of her jailed client Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman who is serving a life sentence on terror-related charges.
Here on Law and Disorder we’ve followed Lynne Stewart’s case as it contains key breaches of civil liberties such as government eavesdropping into attorney/ client conversations.
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Recognizing 50 Years of The Center For Constitutional Rights And Michael Ratner
Michael Ratner co-founded Law and Disorder Radio radio 13 years ago. He died last May in New York City of complications after cancer surgery at age 73. At the time, he was the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Some years ago he helped form it’s European counterpart, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The held a commemorative conference in Berlin last December on the 50th anniversary of the CCR and honored it’s president, Michael Ratner. Michael Smith, the co-host along with Heidi Boghosian of Law and Disorder Radiospoke at the conference about Michael Ratner and the four founders of the CCR. He was joined in his presentation by attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler, a key figure in the early days of the CCR. Today we bring you excerpts from this presentation.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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- Updates: Oppressive Regimes Mask Misdeeds Under The Color Of Law
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Protection From Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry
Public backlash to Donald Trump’s executive order “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry” has been fast and furious. The order’s stated policy is to protect the country from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States. It directs the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence to determine what information is needed from any country to decide if one of its nationals seeking admission is who he claims to be and does not pose a security or public-safety threat. It gives them 30 days to report the results of that determination with a list of countries that do not hand over adequate information.
The Executive Order imposes a 90-day suspension of immigrant and non-immigrant admission of aliens from countries designated in section 217 (1) (12) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which excludes aliens who have been present in a specified country from participating in the Visa Waiver program.
Guest – Trina Realmuto, Litigation Director at the National Immigration Project. Trina’s work focuses on litigation before the federal courts on issues related to removal defense and government accountability. Previously, she wrote amicus briefs and practice advisories for the American Immigration Council. She also has worked abroad representing non-citizens applying for visas at U.S. embassies and consulates.
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Study : Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election
The 2016 presidential race was riddled with controversies, perhaps none more relentless than that of so-called “fake news.” A recent study reveals that fabricated news stories were viewed by only a small percentage of Americans and were likely not as influential in the election outcome as has been suggested.
This comes as Facebook and other social media sites have been criticized for permitting made-up stories to be shared on their platforms. Economists Hunt Allcott of New York University and Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford have released their findings in the report,”Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.”
Guest – Hunt Allcott, Associate Professor of Economics at NYU and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a Scientific Director of ideas42, a think tank that applies insights from psychology and economics to business and policy design problems, an Affiliate of Poverty Action Lab, a network of researchers who use randomized evaluations to answer critical policy questions in the fight against poverty, and a Faculty Affiliate of E2e, a group of economists, engineers, and behavioral scientists focused on evaluating and improving energy efficiency policy.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims
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National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense In Action
As confusion quickly spread last week over President Trump’s executive order to temporarily block refugees and deny entry to citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries, protesters converged on airports across the nation. Leaders from tech industries in Silicon Valley came out in opposition to the ban as did recipients at the Screen Actors Guild awards ceremony. Politicians and others called it a dark path for our country, unjust and Anti-American. Defense attorneys set up shop in airport waiting areas, as Customs and Border Protection officials detailed legal permanent residents and visa holders, while denying them access to counsel. Attorneys general from 16 states condemned the order. And National Lawyers Guild Legal Observers and defense attorneys were on full alert, rushing to monitor police activity at airports in cities across the United States.
Guest – King Downing, National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Attorney. Previously, King directed the Healing Justice Program of the American Friends Service Committee, where he worked on mass incarceration, including solitary confinement, prisoner advocacy and conflict resolution. He is also the former national coordinator of the ACLU’s Campaign Against Racial Profiling, which worked to identify and end “stop and frisk,” including the school-to-prison pipeline and other police abuse.
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Nobody Wanted to Take Us In: The Story of Jared Kushner’s Family, and Mine
Last week President Trump barred entrance to citizens from the predominantly Muslim countries of Iraq, Iran,Syria,Somalia, Yemen, and Libya, inspiring outrage and acts of solidarity. The conservative Cato Institute showed in a recent study that there were exactly 0 terrorist acts committed by people from these countries from the years 1975 to 2015. Last year alone, some 700 people died falling out of bed. Open immigration to United States was cut off in 1920 by de facto religious quotas excluding people from eastern and southern Europe, that is, Jews and Catholics. At that time Half of the world’s Jews, some 3 million persons, lived in Poland and millions more in the surrounding areas. Those who did not escape were soon to perish n facist death camps. Rae Kushner, Jared Kushner’s grandmother, lost half her family when most of the 30,000 Jews in her town in Belarus were killed. She escaped, hiding for a year in the woods, then she was kept in a displaced persons camp, finally in 1948 being allowed into the USA.
Guest – Lizzy Ratner, senior editor at the Nation Magazine. Her family escaped from Bialystok, Poland and came to Cleveland in 1920 before the quotas could exclude them. She recently wrote an article for the Nation Magazine titled Nobody Wanted to Take Us In: The Story of Jared Kushner’s Family, and Mine examingin the fate of her family and that of the Kushner’s. Jared Kushner is Donald Trump’s son-in-law and an advisor. Lizzy Ratner is Michael Ratner’s niece.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power
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Attorney Jim Lafferty, Los Angeles Protests
Last week president trump the reception of the Dakota Area Pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline, which will bring dirty tar sand oil from Canada through the USA to the Gulf of Mexico for export. According to James Hansen, the former climate expert for NASA, if this happens it will be “game over for the planet. ” We just learned that Trump is about to sign a package of executive orders threatening Muslims, Arabs, refugees, and immigrants. The women’s march last week after Trump had been in office for two days brought out some for million people across the country voted one half million in Washington DC and 750,000 in Los Angeles. We speak with Los Angeles National Lawyers Guild leader Jim Lafferty, who helped organize the demonstration.
Guest – Jim Lafferty is the former Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild and a leader of the chapter. His radio show on KPFK inspired Law and Disorder. Attorney Jim Lafferty has been active since the civil rights movement in the south in the 60s and was a leader of the movement against the war in Vietnam. In 2015, Jim Lafferty concluded 25-years as the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles, and is now that organization’s Executive Director Emeritus. For the past 26-years he has hosted a weekly public affairs radio show on Pacifica Radio, The Lawyers Guild Show. He is the Chair of the Board of the Office of the Americas; an elected fellow in the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California; was the co-founder and director of the National Peace Action Coalition during the U.S. war in Vietnam, the group that organized the largest antiwar protests during that war; was the founder and Chair of the Oakland County Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union in Oakland County, Michigan; has been featured in several documentary films, including The Corporation; was the national director of the National Lawyers Guild from 1963-1967; is the author of the afterword in Lawyers You’ll Like; and is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the National Lawyers Guild’s “Law for the People Award”, the Southern California ACLU’s “Defender of Civil Liberties Award”, and the first award from the Los Angeles Coalition to Stop LAPD Spying. As a founding partner of Lafferty, Reosti, Jabara, Papakian, James, Stickgold, Soble and Smith, Mr. Lafferty practiced civil rights, civil liberties, criminal defense, workers’ rights, and military law in Detroit, Michigan.
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Israel And The Palestinian State 2017
The colonial settler state of Israel was formed in 1948 pursuant to a declaration of the United Nations. The declaration also envisioned a Palestinian state which has so far been prevented by Israel with the support of the United States. In 1967 the Israeli Army captured the West Bank territory meant to be part of the Palestinian state and has in the last 50 years illegally ruled over a half million settlers who have been placed on the territory. Is it still possible to have a two state solution in the Middle East? Is it too late? Have the number of settlers reached a critical mass so that the two state solution is dead? Can the settlers be evacuated? If not, how can there be a Palestinian state?
Guest – Phil Weiss, founder of Mondoweiss, the well read and influential blog. In the past Weiss worked as a mainstream journalist for the Minneapolis Star and the New York Observer, the newspaper owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who when told that Phil Weiss was not a Zionist, fired him.
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U.S. Drug Policy 2017
With the election of Donald Trump and his selection of the deeply reactionary former prosecutor and Senator from Alabama Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions as the new Attorney General and chief law-enforcement officer in America the progress in drug policy reform we have had over the last several decades is likely to be reversed. 28 states have legalized some form of medical marijuana and a number states including Washington, Colorado, and most recently California and Massachusetts have legalized it’s recreational use. But an aggressive attorney general could reverse this. “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” said Sessions last year. He also said that he thought that the KKK was “OK until I found out that they smoke pot.” Federal law puts marijuana in the same schedule one category as heroin. At his Senate confirmation hearing Sessions would not promise to defer to the states the decision to prosecute people using medical marijuana sanctioned by state law. He also supports mandatory minimum sentences which fuels mass incarceration and disproportionately targets people of color.
Guest – Ethan Nadelmann the founder and Executive Director of the drug policy alliance joins us today. It is a national advocacy organization for drug law reform that is grounded in science, compassion, and health and human rights.
Ethan was described by Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.Ethan is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Update:
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Pardons, Reduction of Mass Incarceration And Judy Clark’s Clemency
The United States of America has more prisoners behind bars given it its population than any other country in the world. This policy of mass incarceration is now under challenge. On December 30 of last year New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a broad and bold commitment to grant conditional pardons, clemency, and full pardons to New York state prisoners. Judy Clark, age 67, was one of the recipients and is now being allowed to go before the parole board. Clark has been in prison for 35 years, sentenced to 75 years to life for her role as the getaway driver in the infamous Brinks robbery in RocklandCounty, New York, where two policeman and one guard were shot and killed.
Changing Minds The Impact of College In A Maximum Security Prison Film: What I Want My Words To Do To You.
Guest – University of New York Distinguished Professor Michelle Fine. For 20 years she taught and conducted research with women and men in prison, most significantly at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility where Judy Clark is behind bars. Professor Fine participated in writing the influential report “changing minds: The impact of college in a maximum security prison for women. She worked closely with Judy Clark. Judy Clark Facebook.
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Reflections from A Southern People’s Lawyer You’ll Like: David Gespass
This year Martin Luther King Day had a special resonance for many given its lead-up to the Trump inauguration. That the president-elect engaged in social media attacks on civil rights icon John Lewis prompted a flurry of reactions of Twitter, especially emotional given that the timing coincided with MLK day. As we prepare for a changing of the guard, we talk to longtime civil liberties attorney David Gespass, from Birmingham Alabama. Read articles by David Gespass
Guest – Attorney David Gespass began his law practice in Washington, DC in 1971. A past president of the National Lawyers Guild, he also served as editor-in-chief of the Guild’s scholarly journal, the NLG Review, and was a founder and steering committee member of the Military Law Task Force. His practice includes police misconduct and prisoner rights’ litigation, Social Security disability and personal injury. He has been a member of the National Police Accountability Project since its founding in 1999. David has been practicing law in Birmingham, Alabama since 1978.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, Uncategorized, War Resister
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DAPL Pipeline Dispatch # 9
The Standing Rock Sioux Indian tribe of North Dakota and their many allies won a tremendous victory on December 4 2016. They got the oil pipeline stopped, at least for now. It was being built by the Energy Transfer Partners through their sacred lands, without their consultation, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, and it was planned to be constructed beneath the Missouri River. A Department of the Army announcement stated that it would seek an alternative route for the 1100 mile $3.7 billion project. A break in the pipeline would’ve polluted the drinking water for up to 15 million people. What accounted for this historic victory? What social forces were involved? What is the legal and financial status of the project?
Water Protectors Legal Collective – NLG
Guest – National Lawyers Guild Attorney Jeff Haas, recently returned from living at the North Dakota encampment with thousands of Native Americans and climate change activists who gathered in solidarity with the Standing Rock Indian tribe in North Dakota to protest the pipeline construction. Jeff Haas was a founding partner of the Peoples Law Office in Chicago. He victoriously represented the family of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party and proved that Hampton was assassinated by the FBI and Chicago Police Department. He’s also author of the book The Assassination of Fred Hampton.
Sacred Stone Camp Legal Defense – Lawyers wanting to support the Sacred Stone Camp, contact Attorney Robin Martinez – robin.martinez@martinezlaw.net
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Professor WatchList
In the weeks following the presidential election we’ve heard rumblings in the news about a variety of watch lists. Recently a student organization called Turning Point launched a website called Professor Watchlist. It publishes the names, locations and alleged offenses of liberal academics, with the mission to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Offenses may include: using swear words or asserting that racism exists. Members of the public are invited to submit tips.
Guest – Rebecca Schuman, a columnist for Slate and author of Schadenfreude, A Love Story and Kafka and Wittgenstein. Her recent article in Slate, Oh Good, A Professor Watch List, outlines a number of concerns about this development.
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Poet Raymond Nat Turner Black Listed
We welcome back to Law and Disorder political poet . Turner is the poet in residence of the internet site and radio show Black Agenda Report. He and others have come under attack by an outfit called PropOrNot, a shabby group that created a blacklist that include more than “200 outlets, from the right-wing Drudge Report and Russian government-funded Russia Today, to Wikileaks and an array of marginal conspiracy and far-right sites. The blacklist also includes some of the flagship publications of the progressive left, including Truthdig, Counterpunch, Truthout, Naked Capitalism, and the Black Agenda Report, a leftist African-American opinion hub that is critical of the liberal black political establishment.”
Guest – Raymond Nat Turner, currently Poet-in-Residence at Black Agenda Report, Turner has been the opening act for such people as James Baldwin, Cynthia McKinney, radical sportswriter Dave Zirin and Congresswoman Barbara Lee after her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan.
