Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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- Commentary from Attorney Jim Lafferty, Host of the Lawyers Guild Show
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The Aftermath And Momentous Turning Points
The year 2020 will be seen as historically momentous, as a turning point in American history. The summer saw mobilizations of tens of millions of people, white and Black, mostly young, from small towns and large cities,under Black leadership and under the banner of Black Lives Matter. This tremendous mobilization was a reaction to the systemic racism and gross inequality that exists in the United States.
The manifestations were followed by the defeat of the cruel racist billionaire demagogue Donald Trump by 6 million votes in the fall election. All the institutions of the ruling elite collaborated to bring about Trump’s defeat. The main stream media, the CIA, the FBI, renegade Republicans, and 131 billionaires all supported Joseph Biden.
Only a tiny number of people refused to support either party candidate. Most of the progressive movement was swept back into the Democratic party seeing it is the lesser of two evils and hoping that change could be wrought from the inside. Will it? Where does social change come from? Historically the Democratic Party has been the graveyard of social movements. Will this continue to be the case?
After he won, Biden posted that “I am the guy that ran against the socialist, OK. I’m the guy that’s the moderate.“
Guest – Jeff Mackler. Jeff is a longtime California bay area socialist activist, he recently authorized “A Manifesto for Our Times: The Challenge to Abolish Systematic Racism“. He is the chair of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu Jamal and active in the defense of Julian Assange.
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Complaint Filed Against Judge Demanding Release of Attorney In Chevron Case
Dozens of legal organizations representing more than 500,000 lawyers along with more than 200 individual lawyers submitted a judicial complaint against Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in New York. The violations were directed at human rights lawyer Steven Donziger whose case we’ve been following on Law and Disorder. Donziger, listeners will recall, won a historic judgment against Chevron in Ecuador to clean up the pollution caused by decades of oil drilling with no environmental controls.
The complaint was filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). The Chief Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Robert Katzmann, has a duty to read the complaint and determine if he will appoint a committee to investigate and issue findings.
The complaint documents is a pattern of ethics violations committed by Judge Kaplan, a former tobacco industry lawyer.
Kaplan denied Donziger a jury trial, put in place a series of unusual courtroom tactics, severely restricted Donziger’s ability to mount a defense, and detained him at home for more than one year on contempt charges that were rejected by the U.S. Attorney. Kaplan allowed Donziger to be prosecuted by a private law firm that has Chevron as a client. He imposed enormous fines on Donziger that have all but bankrupted him.
The complaint alleges that the “statements and actions of Judge Kaplan over the last ten years show him to have taken on the role of counsel for Chevron … rather than that of a judge adjudicating a live controversy before him.”
Despite accepting jurisdiction in Ecuador, Chevron came back to the US and filed a civil “racketeering” case against the Donziger and all 47 named plaintiffs. They potentially sought $60 billion in damages — the highest personal liability in US history. Judge Kaplan denied Donziger a jury and let Chevron pay a witness at least $2 million while moving him and his entire family from Ecuador to the US. Chevron lawyers coached the witness, Alberto Guerra, for 53 days before Kaplan let him testify against Donziger; Guerra later admitted under oath that he had lied on the stand. Kaplan also refused to let Donziger testify on direct examination.
Twenty-nine Nobel laureates and several human rights organizations have criticized the harassment of Donziger by judicial authorities and have demanded his immediate release.
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
MakeChevronCleanUp
Guest – Lauren Regan, a member of Steven Donziger’s defense team. She is also executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center and a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Julian Assange Update With Journalist Kevin Gosztola
The problem of the 2020 United States election between Biden and Trump from the standpoint of defending free national security journalism was that one of them would win. Whereas Trump was a caricatures of the system Biden is its embodiment. He has pledged “nothing will fundamentally change.“ This is the fear of Julian Assange and his defenders.
The Trump administration initiated an indictment against Julian Assange for 17 counts of espionage. Assange revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan 10 years ago. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called his organization, WikiLeaks, which published his whistleblowing articles, “a non-state hostile intelligence entity.”
Biden has called Assange “a high tech terrorist.” Hillary Clinton said “we should drone him.” One of the legal advisors to Biden was a prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia and sent whistle blowers, John Karakuo and Jeffery Sterling, to federal prison. He wanted to indict Julian Assange but left office to join a private law firm before he could get around to it
Julian Assange is now in solitary confinement in Britain’s infamous and Covid wracked Belmarsh prison in London. He is in terrible physical and mental shape. The extradition request of the United States has been litigated. We await the judges decision which is expected at January 4.
The defense has submitted their arguments in support of Julian, principally that this is a political prosecution which is illegal under an American British treaty.
Guest – Kevin Gosztola, a journalist who has covered the recent extradition hearing and writing on whistleblowers for many years. He writes for “Substack” and does the podcast “ Unauthorized Disclosure“. He has closely followed the Julian Assange case.
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Release Aging People In Prison Campaign During Covid 19 Risks
As coronavirus positivity rates have been rising nationwide two states—NY and California—have shown vastly different responses. In New York State, nearly 5% of the state’s prisoners have tested positive for Covid 19. Public health experts have warned that to reduce the spread of the virus, prison populations should be cut to 50% capacity.
While Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered the release of 3,109 New Yorkers, he hasn’t used his power of clemency, either through a pardon of commutation. In stark contrast, Governor Gavin Newsom of California has expedited the release of nearly 9,000 prisoners and issued 55 commutations and 4 medical reprieves between March and November.
In contrast, Andrew Cuomo has granted 2 commutations in January, and another 3 in June. Critics call that number outrageous. Steve Zeidman, who co-directs CUNY Law School’s Defenders Clinic Second Look Project told Gothamist that clemency is “an urgent necessity that is being ignored.” The clinic currently represents 50 people whose clemency petitions await the governor’s decision.
The governor’s office declined to comment on whether he will issue more commutations this year. For the past six holiday seasons, advocates have gathered to plead with Cuomo to commute more sentences. For the most part, he has ignored their pleas.
Guest – Jose Saldana, executive director of Release Aging People in Prison.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Human Rights Attorney Steven Donziger Faces Contempt Trial Without Jury, Before Federalist Society Judge
Since the inception of Law And Disorder Radio 15 years ago we have endeavored to chronicle the decline of democracy and the rule of law in our country. A low point has been reached with the prosecution of human rights ex-attorney Steven Donziger who goes to trial in January. He is charged with criminal contempt. He will be tried without the benefit of a jury before Federalist Society right wing pro-corporate Judge Loretta Presca in the Southern District of New York.
Three decades ago Donziger successfully brought a lawsuit against the oil giant Chevron which had contaminated in the area of Ecuador the size of Rhode Island. He won over $9 billion in an Ecuadorian court. Chevron has not paid a penny of the judgment nor has it cleaned up the area it ruined. Lives of thousands of indigenous Ecuadorians have been wrecked by the cancer causing pollution.
Donziger has been targeted by Chevron which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and used over 2000 lawyers to prevent the paying of the judgment and to victimize Donziger. It attempted to send a message to environmentalists that we will crush you if you try to protect yourself from us. When federal Judge Louis Kaplan, a former tobacco company attorney, found Donziger in contempt of court for refusing to turn over his computer and cell phone to Chevron’s attorneys on the grounds that it contained privileged information on his clients, Kaplan caused Donziger to be disbarred and put under house arrest. Kaplun assigned his friend Judge Presca to try the contempt case against Donziger without a jury. The trial starts in New York City in January.
Guest – Steven Donziger is a renowned advocate, writer, and public speaker with a focus on addressing human rights abuses and corporate malfeasance. He is part of the team working with indigenous and farmer communities in an area of the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest suffering from high cancer rates and other health ailments related to the massive oil pollution caused by Texaco, now owned by Chevron. In 2011, the affected communities won a historic $9.5 billon judgment against Chevron for the environmental cleanup of what experts consider to be one of the worst oil-related catastrophes in the world. Known for his “Herculean tenacity” (Business Week), Steven has represented the affected communities since first visiting the region in 1993. Steven also founded Project Due Process, a legal advocacy group for Cuban detainees who arrived in the United States in the Mariel boatlift.
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The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump
Two years ago a Yale School of Medicine professor and psychiatrist told Congress that President Trump is mentally unstable, could be dangerous, and could even be involuntarily committed. Bandy Lee argued in briefings that Trump should undergo a capacity evaluation to assess his fitness for duty. Lee argues that Trump may actually be a dangerous person—one who’s shown a “pattern of violent behavior and violent tendencies”—and she’s considered whether the president should be involuntarily committed to a hospital mental-health program. “We can forcibly commit somebody and could be held legally liable if we don’t when the signs are obvious,” Lee told the Atlantic Magazine.
In Trump’s case, the pattern of violent behavior” includes incendiary tweets, comments about groping women on Access Hollywood, his encouraging violence against protesters at campaign rallies, and his defense of white nationalists. Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland, one of a dozen lawmakers who have met with Lee, proposed creating an independent commission to determine presidential capacity. “The framers foresaw a time when this could become an issue,” Raskin has said, referring to the 25th Amendment. “And we simply have to have the courage and sense of responsibility to implement the procedure they set up.” Lee has noted that this is a matter of human survival, and that psychiatrists “could be held legally liable if we don’t [speak out] when the signs are obvious.”
Guest – Professor Bandy Lee, forensic psychiatrist, an expert in violence, president of the World Mental Health Coalition and editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”
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Civil Liberties, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Election Aftermath Analysis: What Is To Be Done?
How should you live your life? There’s a joke going around that you should live your life in such a way that if you lose your job millions of people don’t go out dancing in the streets. What does the future hold? Are we really free of Trump and Trumpism? What will Biden do? And for us: The perennial question: what is to be done?
The head of Biden’s transition team has already told the press that “the cupboard is bare”. That is to say, the kind of social democratic programs that cost money, healthcare for all, a $15 an hour minimum wage, old age retirement, free education through college, all programs that have been secured in Europe for their populations, have been put beyond the pale. Centrist Democrats like Biden have since the remaking of the Democratic Party beginning with neo-liberal Clinton have not vigorously defended the social gains secured in the 1930s with the Rooseveltian New Deal. Even Social Security is on the table.
About 60% of the disposable federal budget goes to the military. The heads of the weapons manufacturers, corporations like Raytheon and Northrop Gruman are pleased with Biden’s election. They were interviewed in the Washington Post and stated that they have worked with Biden for 30 years and do not anticipate cuts in their arms contracts for new ships, supersonic weapons, nuclear bombs, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Some 74 million people voted for Biden. More people than ever before voted in the election. It was Black people in major cities in Georgia and Pennsylvania, Latinx and Native Americans in Nevada and Arizona that give Biden the edge. This time Trump lost the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin and Michigan because he do not fulfill his promise of bringing jobs back. But Trump got 70 million votes. This was a record. White people in small towns and rural areas fear they’re becoming a minority and voted for Trump hoping to “make America white again.”
Guest – Attorney Jim Lafferty. He is the director emeritus of the largest National Lawyers Guild chapter in the country in Los Angeles and the former Executive Director of the organization.
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Jerome Wright Talks About His Friend David Gilbert: An Interview By KPFA Producer Ken Yale
We hear part of an interview with Jerome Wright, hosted and produced by Ken Yale at KPFA in Berkeley California. This powerful and moving interview with Jerome Wright offers harrowing insights into the trauma of long-term imprisonment during our era of global pandemics. But it is also an inspiring story of the potential for deep personal transformation. And it is an urgent demand to end the paradigm of punishment that threatens the life of every prisoner as COVID-19 rages on.
Jerome Wright spent over 30 years in New York prisons and in solitary confinement for a crime he committed as a teenager. During his incarceration, he befriended David Gilbert, one of the longest held political prisoners in the U.S. They reached across differences in race, class, and age to develop a pioneering AIDS peer education program that has since become a model throughout New York prisons.
Jerome and David’s friendship, and their organizing work together, were transformational. Jerome was paroled 12 years ago. Today he is the statewide organizer for the Campaign For Alternatives to Isolated Confinement, the chief sponsor of a pending bill to end solitary confinement in New York. Jerome is also the founder and director of the Mentoring And Nurturing (MAN) Program, which supports released prisoners and at-risk youth to live productive lives.
Meanwhile, David Gilbert is serving his 40th year of a life sentence. In 1981, he participated with a Black liberation group in a robbery that turned tragically fatal. David was unarmed and did not shoot anyone. But he was convicted for his role as a getaway driver under New York’s felony murder law. Now his only paths to freedom are a governor’s clemency or passage of the proposed Elder Parole bill.
But this interview is much more than just the story of Jerome and David. Jerome Wright is eloquent in describing the terrifying conditions faced by thousands of Jeromes and Davids of all genders who are incarcerated during this deadly pandemic. He also discusses his time in prison with revolutionary musician Gil Scott Heron, whose inspirational songs are woven throughout the interview.
This interview was conducted by Ken Yale, a radio journalist for Pacifica’s KPFA, and a producer for the national radio program, “Covid, Race, and Democracy.” He has been a K-12 and university educator for over 30 years, and is a lifetime social justice activist. To support David Gilbert’s campaign for clemency, please go to friendsofdavidgilbert.org. To reach Jerome Wright or learn more about the campaign to halt solitary confinement, go to NYCAIC.org. That’s the New York Campaign For Alternatives To Isolated Confinement. Jerome also encourages people to get involved with elder parole and other decarceration campaigns. He especially recommends Releasing Aging People In Prison, at rappcampaign.com, and Justice Roadmap at justiceroadmapny.org.
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Democrats, Republicans, Vote Counts And The Green Party
We are recording this interview with Margaret Kimberley on November 4th, the day after the election. Over 90 million people voted early. Their ballots are still being counted. Trump doesn’t want them counted and is relying on the Supreme Court to back him up just like the Supreme Court in the year 2000 stopped the counting of ballots in Dade County Florida, thus allowing George W. Bush to steal the election. Trump wants to be able to say, as former Nicaraguan dictator Somoza bragged, “It is true you won the voting. But I won the counting.” The overwhelming consensus on the left was to hold your nose, vote for Biden, and then attempt to influence him when he takes office. Biden kept a low profile during the campaign. He didn’t have much to say programmatically. His strongest appeal was that he was not Trump, whom Noam Chomsky called the most.
The eco-socialist Green Party led by Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker got very little attention from neither the main stream press nor the left of center media. His campaign was vilified with critics stating that a vote for the Greens was tantamount to a vote for Trump. The Democratic Party in Wisconsin went so far as to help successfully prevent Hawkins and Walker from staying on the ballot in that state after Walker changed her home address after her papers were filed. Regardless of how people on the left voted, the immediate question, which is always the key political question, is what are we to do next?
Guest – Green Party supporter Margaret Kimberley, senior editor at the Black Agenda Report and the author of the widely read book ”Prejudential”.
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Pre-Election Unrest and Aftermath
Days before last week’s November 3 presidential election, businesses across the nation boarded up storefronts in anticipation of violent protests. Cities prepared for election-related unrest as activists get ready for what could be weeks of sustained street actions, depending on how the vote count goes and how President Donald Trump acts after his repeated refusals to say if he will accept election results.
At the time of this recording, not surprisingly, results from several states were still pending.
We can be sure, however, that even if Joe Biden is declared the winner, Donald Trump will challenge the results as fraudulent, laying the groundwork for a series of protracted legal battles. But a larger issue remains: While mass uprisings in the streets have altered the social discourse around racism, several larger issues are still at play, determined to keep Donald Trump in office.
Guest – Mara Verheyden-Hilliard with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Mara is one of the nation’s pre-eminent authorities on the policing of First Amendment protected activities including the right to peaceably assemble and associate.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court
Despite the clear language of the constitution that Congress shall have no religious test for the office of judge last week every Republican in the Senate except one put Amy Coney Barrett on an already packed right wing Supreme Court.
Barrett is a leader of the charismatic Christian cult called “ People of Promise.” It is a group of Protestant and Catholic evangelicals who reportedly speak in tongues. They believe in the subjugation of women, oppose their right to choose, oppose gay marriage, and are authoritarian and pro corporate in the extreme.
Garrett earned her bones by first clerking for the now dead Justice Antonin Scalia. She was part of the legal team along with John Roberts who helped republican George W. Bush steal the presidency by stopping the the recount of ballots in Florida in the year 2000.
The Federalist Society, led by Leonard Leo, has been responsible for packing the federal courts with over 200 largely unqualified young ideologues who serve for life. Leo, like the 6 of 9 Supreme Court justices, is an ultra right wing Catholic. For 20 years he has guided the Federalist Society. He is a member of Opus Dei, Latin for God’s work. It was founded on 1928 by a Spanish priest who was also a lawyer and supporter of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
Ultra right wing billionaire Charles Koch and the Bradley foundation have contributed to the efforts of the Federalist Society. Dark money is behind the appointments of the over 200 judges to the federal judiciary. Organizations funded by dark money find and encourage plaintiffs to bring cases challenging laws they don’t like and write the briefs to submit to the judges they helped appoint.
Guest – Attorney Lisa Graves, created True North Research and is it executive director and editor-in-chief. Her research and analysis has been cited by every major paper in the country. Attorney Graves has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government. She has served as chief counsel for nominations for the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy. She was a career deputy assistant attorney general at the US Department of Justice. Graves has spent the past 10 years investigating the impact of dark money on judicial selection.
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The Future of Academic Freedom and Big Tech Intrusion
Big tech companies rather than leaders of academic institutions, it seems, are fast becoming an arbiter of academic speech.
Two weeks ago Zoom shut down a New York University-organized webinar; ironically it was on the issue of censorship by tech platforms. The webinar was going to take up the censorship of an earlier open classroom session at San Francisco State University, featuring Palestinian rights advocate Leila Khaled. It was part of a so-called “Day of Action Against the Criminalization and Censorship of Campus Political Speech.”
Censored Zoom Video
Canceling a campus event violates the principle of academic freedom that universities must observe. Allowing Zoom to override this bedrock principle, at the behest of organized, politically motivated groups, is a grave error for any university administration to make, and it should not escape censure from faculty
Sifting and Winnowing
Guest – Professor Henry Reichman, former vice president of the American Association of University Professors and longtime chair of its committee on academic freedom and tenure. Reichman is especially qualified to discuss the issue. Professor emeritus of history at California State University at East Bay, Professor Reichman devotes nearly 300 pages doing so in his new book by Johns Hopkins University Press.
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