Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Lawsuits Filed Against NSA
Since its been revealed that the National Security Agency is amassing a colossal database of personal phone records have become public, there have been nearly 20 lawsuits filed against the NSA, AT&T and other telecommunication companies. Here on Law and Disorder we take a look at some recent lawsuits, one involving the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Constitutional Rights. We also discuss recent bills proposed in the Senate designed to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, read more about it here.
Guest – Shane Kadidal lead attorney at CCR on the NSA cases. Read Shane’s latest commentary here.
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Tasers – Part II
This year Amnesty International released a report on Tasers. (download PDF here) The report also looks at the systematic misuse of tasers by police and in prisons. It points out that there is a widespread policy of using tasers as a routine compliance tool on subjects who are passively resisting or “perceived” to not be complying with orders. Taser misuse is increasingly linked with unnecessary punishment, degradation and torture. In part I of the Taser series, Law and Disorder hosts spoke with Ed Jackson. (listen here) This week we go to Portland, Oregon where during Amnesty International’s General Annual Meeting, co-host Dalia Hashad caught up with Amnesty International spokeswoman and Taser expert Mona Cadena in Pioneer Square.
Guest – Mona Cadena – Amnesty International spokeswoman and Taser expert.
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Law and Disorder Hosts Visit Political Prisoners – A Discussion
Co-hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith talked about their recent visits with political prisoners Mumia Abu- Jamal and David Gilbert. Heidi talks about her visit with Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row in Waynesburg, Pennsylvannia and the the National Lawyers Guild’s plan to file an Amicus Brief in Mumia’s case.
Gilbert was a founding member of Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society and member of The Weather Underground Organization. Following eleven years underground he was arrested with members of the Black Liberation Army and other radicals following a botched armored car robbery in 1981. He is now a well-known prisoner serving time in upstate New York. Read more about David Gilbert here.
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A rare interview with Amnesty International’s former Executive Director William Schulz
Co-host Dalia Hashad interviews Bill Schulz at Pioneer Square before the anti-torture rally. We also listen to Bill Schulz deliver an inspiring outgoing speech during the rally. This is part of hours of amazing audio interviews and speeches from the Amnesty General Meeting, stay tuned for more in the weeks to come.
Civil Liberties, Supreme Court, Torture, Truth to Power
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Supreme Court Limits Protections For Government Whistleblowers.
Whistleblowers lose rights. The recent Supreme Court decision (Garcetti v. Ceballos) has removed key pieces from the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1986. The decision effectively limits First Amendment protection for government whistleblowers since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protections do not extend to government employees for comments made while performing their official duties, even when the employee is acting to expose alleged government wrongdoing.
Guest – Stephen Kohn – Chairman of National Whistleblower Center
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Chicago Torture Case Update – Chicago’s Guantanamo
A United Nations anti-torture panel has urged the United States to punish law enforcement officials who mistreated suspects in Chicago. The 10-member UN Committee Against Torture reported that the multimillion-dollar investigation into the alleged torture of 200 Black men in interrogation rooms during the 1970s and 1980s has not resulted in any prosecutions. According to a press release, nearly 200 African Americans were tortured by former Commander Jon Burge and detectives under his command at the Chicago Police Department. Among the torture techniques were electrically shocking genitals with cattle prods, suffocations with plastic bags and pistols jammed in mouths in a mock execution. Listen to Law and Disorder’s previous interview on this case.
Guest – Flint Taylor – attorney with The People’s Law Office
Tasers – Part 1
This is the first part of a three part series examining the use of Tasers by law enforcement. Lawsuit cases regarding the misuse of Tasers are numerous. Pages of these stories can be found in one Google news search using the search-term “Tasers.” Hosts Dalia Hashad and Michael Ratner interview Taser researcher and expert Ed Jackson formerly with Amnesty International. Jackson points out a critical lack of training among police officers using Tasers.
Guest – Ed Jackson – Former spokesman for Amnesty International.
Music – Sharon Jones – This Land Is Your Land / Phil Ochs – I Kill Therefore I Am / Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come
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Civil Liberties, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
Please support Law and Disorder during our fundraiser Monday, May 15th, 2006 on WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York City, 2-4pm EDT.
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Thanks very much to WBAI listeners from Staten Island, Brooklyn, New Jersey and the world wide web for supporting commercial-free, community radio and Law and Disorder!
Civil Liberties, Extraordinary Rendition, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Muhammad Salah, accused of funding Mideast terrorism, says his confession to Israeli Security Agents is false and actually the end product of 53 days in custody, during which Salah’s lawyers say he was often kept cold and awake, threatened and beaten and forced to sit in painful positions. Another example of coerced confessions through torture.
Guest – Attorney Michael Deutsch from the People’s Law Office. Read the latest story in the Chicago Tribune here
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Storming The Court
Before Guantanamo Bay, Cuba became notorious for its human rights violations against Muslims, it was the holding center for thousands of HIV-positive Haitian refugees. More than ten years ago a team of Yale law students and activists took up this cause. They worked victoriously to stop the US government from detaining these refugees indefinitely at Guant?namo, without charges or access to counsel.
Guest – Lawyer Brandt Goldstein, author of Storming the Court, a look inside the controversy surrounding this story of the US Supreme Court and Haitians who were discharged from Guantanamo.
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Google Refuses To Turn Over Internet Data – The Bush Administration’s effort to scoop up and comb through massive amounts of internet data met the “firewall” when Google refused to turn over search engine data to the NSA. However, several other companies such as Yahoo has complied. A White House subpoena is still seeking the requests made using Google’s search engine.
Guest – Sherwin Siy – Siy works as Staff Counsel through EPIC’s Internet Public Interest Opportunities Program. EPIC – Electronic Information Privacy Center. Siy tells Law and Disorder hosts that while Google refuses to turn over search engine archives, there are privacy implications that loom in the future regarding the privacy of public internet activity.
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Music To Get Tortured By
In our second part of Music To Get Tortured By we’re joined by author and filmmaker Jon Ronson. Jon is the creator of a number of films, radio features and books, but among them is the book “Men Who Stare At Goats” which uniquely explores exotic and horrific interrogation techniques by the US military. Jon Ronson explains how these techniques were collected by the US military from the New Age movement in the 1970s.
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Civil Liberties, Torture, Truth to Power
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Paul Craig Roberts – Hosts discuss with former assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration how the Neoconservative movement has dismantled legislation to create a police state.
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From New Orleans 1973.. to Guantanamo 2006, A Discussion On Torture At the Hands of the US Government.
We hear excerpts from the two and half hour event. The Center for Constitutional Rights assemble a panel that include Black Panthers, Bill Goodman, Michael Ratner and Gita Gutierrez from CCR. Black Panther, Hank Jones describes how after 30 years, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked down former Black Panthers Harold Taylor, Hank Jones and John Bowman to cooperate in a state grand jury proceeding, investigating a police shooting in 1971. Defense attorneys believe that San Francisco Police Department Inspectors Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz were on site at the New Orleans police department for the interrogation and torture of the arrested men. Download and listen to the entire event here
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Co-Host Michael Smith talks with musician Mat Calahan, author of The Trouble With Music. Eli Smith, New York musician and producer also joins the discussion. Excerpt from AK Press – “There is a crisis facing music. The signs are everywhere, from the saturation of public space by tuneful trivia to the digital downloading controversy. Quantity has replaced quality. The number of units sold is now the criteria by which music is judged, and high-gloss, mass-produced, low-content music is everywhere. You can’t shop, eat, ride a bus, or see a movie without hearing it, as each day you are inundated with enticements to buy it. Like the replacement of essential nutriment by junk food, music lovers are expected to surrender their critical faculties and consume the phony McMusic that can be more effectively controlled and profitably sold. . . “
Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Torture, Truth to Power
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The Case of the Cuban Five
Update on the oral arguments of the Cuban Five. A few weeks ago, on February 14, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Atlanta in the case of the so-called Cuban Five. Five Cuban men have been serving harsh prison sentences after they infiltrated anti-Cuban right wing (terrorist) groups in South Florida, were arrested by US authorities in 1998, and received a highly-politicized trial in Miami.
Guest – Len Weinglass – Defense attorney for the Cuban Five
Guest – Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly – Co-Host Heidi Boghosian talks
with Alarcon about recent breakthroughs regarding the trial of the Cuban Five.
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Music To Get Tortured By
Co-Hosts Michael Ratner and Michael Smith deconstruct music used for psychological torture by the US Government. Interestingly, the music was selected from bands thatstarted in the mid nineties, not the Beatles, but Christina Aguilera, Eminem, Metallica, and Barney. Music chosen for torture reveals the demographic of torturers.
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Armenian Genocide Debate Panel Cancelled On PBS
Guest – Victor Papakhian
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ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH – The Center for Constitutional Rights, set out the legal arguments for impeachment in a clear, concise, and objective discussion. In four separate articles of impeachment detailing four separate charges ? warrantless surveillance, misleading Congress on the reasons for the Iraq war, violating laws against torture, and subverting the Constitution’s separation of powers ? it is, say the CCR attorneys, a case of black letter law, with abundant evidence. Get this book!
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