CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America’s Surveillance Society
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s program “If You See Something, Say Something,” launched in 2010, urges citizens to be aware of and to report, potential threats. Examples of suspicious activity include unattended packages or baggage; circumstances that appear out of the ordinary, like an open door that is usually closed; a person asking for detailed information about a building’s layout or purpose, and changes in security protocol or shifts. Also of concern is any person seen loitering around a building, writing notes, sketches, and taking photographs or measurements.
The DHS website is careful to note that, “Factors such as race, ethnicity, and/or religious affiliation are not suspicious.” Yet as listeners know, incidents of ethnic profiling are many, including one in which a Southwest Airlines passenger was taken off a flight for speaking Arabic.
The history of citizen spying and reporting on others is not new in this country. And the “See Something” campaign isn’t the only civilian spying program around. Many jurisdictions have Neighborhood Watch programs. The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Neighborhood Watch initiative enlists community members to assist crime prevention and to prepare neighborhoods for disasters and emergency response.
Guest – Joshua Reeves author of Citizen Spies, The Long Rise of America’s Surveillance Society . He is associate professor of New Media Communications and Speech Communication at Oregon State University, where he’s also a fellow in their Center for the Humanities. An associate editor of the journal Surveillance and Society, he’s also written the just-released book, Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine.
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Former Philadelphia Mayor Calls For A Formal Apology To MOVE
The former Philadelphia mayor who led the city when police dropped a bomb on the MOVE house in 1985 has called for a formal apology from the city. The bomb and subsequent fire killed 11 people and destroyed more than 60 homes in the neighborhood. Five children were among the 11 who died.
Former mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr. said in an op-ed in the Guardian that “after 35 years it would be helpful for the healing of all involved, especially the victims of this terrible event.”
After dropping an explosive from a helicopter, the Philadelphia Fire Department let the fire burn, knowing there were men, women and children inside. Goode insists he knew nothing about police and fire department’s plan of action even though he was ultimately responsible for the actions.
Ramona Africa, one of the survivors, has described police opening fire on MOVE members trying to flee the burning home.
Janine Africa, who was one of nine MOVE members sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison and who served 41 years of that sentence in the 1978 shooting death of Officer James Ramp, maintains her innocence but said she and other MOVE members were judged on alleged actions of one day. MOVE members have said they believe that Ramp was shot by friendly fire.
Former Gov. Ed Rendell, who succeeded Goode as mayor and was the district attorney who prosecuted MOVE members, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he now regrets his handling of the prosecution of some members. He said if he had to do it over again, he would have offered those who weren’t leaders plea deals that included less severe sentences.
“I followed the law, but the prosecutor always has the discretion to use their judgment,” Rendell said. “For what they did compared to what some other people do in Philadelphia, they served far too much time.”
Guest – Mike Africa Jr. Founder of Seeds of Wisdom, Musician, Instagram Account
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Academic Freedom, Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Library Freedom, TOR And Right To Privacy
Libraries in this country have long been sanctuaries in which to read, think, dream and pursue intellectual pursuits free from judgment or outside intrusion. But historically outside forces HAVE tried to intrude on this sanctitude. During the Cold War, for example, librarians exposed the FBI’s efforts to recruit library staff to spy on certain patrons, especially Russians, through the so-called Library Awareness Program. And after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the USA Patriot Act’s Section 215 has often been dubbed the “library provision” because it allows patron’s library records to be accessed and monitored by law enforcement agencies without a warrant.
In 2015 Law & Disorder reported on a New Hampshire Library that installed the Tor relay node to allow patrons to privately browse computers. Tor is anonymizing software that lets users conduct online searches without being monitored. Soon after, the Department of Homeland Security contacted local officials who visited the library, warning that Tor could aid criminal behavior.
Alison asks to please visit your local library website and facebook pages to increase their usage metrics which in turn help when applying for funding.
Guest – Alison Macrina was one of the people responsible for the New Hampshire library’s privacy tools. Alison is a librarian, privacy rights activist, and the founder and director of the Library Freedom Project, an initiative that helps educate librarians and their local communities about surveillance threats, privacy rights and law, and privacy-protecting technology tools to help safeguard digital freedoms.
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Julian Assange Extradition Update
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing began in January but is on hiatus at least until September 2020. At the January appearance, the prosecution pleaded for the media to stop characterizing the US effort as a politicized war on journalism. In response, Julian’s defense provided a comprehensive summary of the many reasons that journalists and human rights activists have called Julian’s indictment a threat to a free press.
James Lewis argued for the Crown Prosecution Service, which acts on behalf of the United States in its extradition request. Lewis explicitly asked journalists covering the case not to report that it represents a matter of free speech or the right to publish. Lewis depicted the indictment as solely a matter of exposing informants in the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the State Department cables.
Julian’s defense lawyer Edward Fitzgerald detailed how extradition proceedings constitute an abuse of process. He asserted that they have been brought for ulterior political purposes, as an attack on freedom of speech, and fundamentally misrepresent the facts in order to extradite Julian to the US, where he faces torture, unusual and degrading treatment.
Guest – NYC attorney Nathan Fuller, Executive Director of the Courage Foundation.
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Nobody’s Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense
Public opinion surveys of knowledge, attitudes, and support for the insanity defense show that Americans dislike the insanity defense. They want insane law-breakers punished, and believe that insanity defense procedures don’t protect the public. Polls also show that most overestimate the use and success of the insanity plea.
In the book Nobody’s Child: A Tragedy, a Trial, and a History of the Insanity Defense, forensic psychologist and attorney Susan Vinocour tells the story of a three-year-old child found dead in his mentally-ill grandmother’s home. Vinocour agreed to evaluate the defendant. She explains how the legal terms”competency” don’t reflect psychiatric realities, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has to often been a luxury of the rich and white.
Nobody’s Child is an engaging portrait of injustice in the United States, and a complex examination of the troubling intersection of mental health and the law.
Guest – Susan Vinocour is a retired clinical and forensic psychologist, a former prosecutor and a former associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.
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President Donald Trump And The White House Response To Pandemic
The place to start in understanding Trump and Trumpism is to accurately define what he represents. A disease cannot be countered unless it is correctly diagnosed.
Mainstream liberal commentators refuse to associate the Trump phenomena with fascism, calling him a right wing populist or a nationalist. But it really matters what Trump is called if we are to fashion a resistance to him with the possibility of triumph. Analysts on the left like Noam Chomsky , Chris Hedges, and Cornell West understand that he and the constellation of forces that make up his movement – principally big business and white non-college educated middle-class people – are fascists.
The poet, playwright, and political thinker Berthold Brecht was asked about German fascism in 1935: “How can anyone tell the truth about fascism, he replied, unless he is willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it forth.”
It was the failure of a united socialist movement in Germany in the early 30s that allowed Hitler to gain power. We have seen with the Bernie Sanders phenomena the possibilities of building a socialist movement in the United States. This is our hope.
Guest – John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and the editor of the venerable independent socialist magazine “Monthly Review”. Professor Foster is the author of “Trump in the White House: Tragedy or Farce.“
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Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power
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Speaking In Turkish: Denying the Armenian Genocide
Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.
The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings—beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients—render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.
Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government “their sole opportunity, one unprecedented” to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.
As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.
Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget “the senseless slaughter” of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.
Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Host Updates:
- In Memoriam – Perry Rosenstein Law and Disorder warmly remembers Perry’s legacy. He passed on April 3rd, 2020 in Teaneck, New Jersey.
- Navy Secretary’s Flight To Aircraft Carrier To Bash Fired Captain Cost Taxpayers $243,000
- 10,239 Elderly Prisoners in New York State – Governor Cuomo’s Office – 518-474-8390
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Reevaluating “Normal” Once Again
We are into a new economic and political period.The economic crisis has been looming and was predicted. But the COVID-19 pandemic triggered it. There will be no going back to “normal.“
Arundhati Roy has written that “historically pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine the world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”
As Reverend William Barber recently wrote, “this virus is teaching us that from now on living wages, guaranteed healthcare for all, unemployment and labor rights are not far left issues, but issues of right versus wrong in life versus death.“
That there will be changes when this crisis has passed is a certainty. The pendulum will not swing back to what was called “normal.” What is uncertain is what kind of changes will take place and will they be done to us or by us and for us.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she is she is the director of the New Internationalism Project and works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
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A Victory In The Greensboro, North Carolina Case of Marcus Deon Smith
On March 25, 2020 North Carolina federal judge Loretta Biggs allowed a civil rights lawsuit over the hogtying death of Marcus Deon Smith to move forward.
Smith, a young black man, was killed by eight Greensboro police officers and several emergency medical technicians during the 2018 North Carolina Folk Festival.
Hogtying is when a persons’ hands and feet are tied together behind their back. Smith’s hogtying was ruled a murder by the state medical examiner.
The Smith family is being represented by North Carolina attorney Graham Holt and Ben Elson and Flint Taylor of the PLO, The People’s Law Office, based in Chicago.
“This is an outstanding and long-awaited victory for the Smith family“, said Taylor. “It recognizes that the use of brutal hogtying of defenseless persons is a clear violation of their constitutional rights and that the Greensboro police were woefully and inadequately trained in using restraints which were a direct cause of Marcus‘s death.“
Marcus‘s mother Mary Smith thanked the judge for allowing the case to go forward. His father said in tears that he will forever be haunted by seeing his son taking his last breath on the street pavement.
Guest – Attorney Flint Taylor, one of the premier police abuse lawyers in the country. Attorney Taylor is the author of the recently published book “The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago.“ Flint Taylor, welcome back to Law And Disorder.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Hosts Updates
- Chronic Underlying Conditions: Vunerability To Covid-19
- 10,239 Elderly Prisoners in New York State – Governor Cuomo’s Office – 518-474-8390
- FOIA Suspended
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Abuse Of Emergency Powers, The U.S. Constitution And Habeas Corpus
The Department of Justice is now seeking to exploit the coronavirus calamity to get Congress to give it permission to pick up and detain people indefinitely.
At this point the American people have a constitutional right, if arrested, to be brought before a judge and informed of the charges against them so that they may defend themselves. This is known as the right of habeas corpus. It is a right that has its origins in the Magna Carta, the great charter, a British law that goes back to the 13th century. The right of habeas corpus is written into the American Constitution and can only be suspended by Congress.
Historically both the American and the German fascist government led by Adolf Hitler have used crises and the fear that crises generate in the population to expand their powers.
Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. FDR put 110,000 American citizens of Japanese origin into concentration camps during World War II.
In Germany, Adolph Hitler, who was legally appointed chancellor, used the shock of the Reichstag fire, which had burned down the German parliament, to get his Enabling Law passed. This enabled Hitler, with the support of German big business, to make laws on his own, bypassing the legislature.
What dangers do we face with Donald Trump as president? What does it mean to suspend the right of habeas corpus for the American citizens who oppose Trump and his big business backers.
Defend.Wikileaks.org
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught for 25 years. The former president of the National Lawyers Guild and criminal defense attorney is a legal scholar and political analyst who writes books and articles, and lectures throughout the world about human rights, US foreign policy, and the contradiction between the two. She writes weekly articles for Truth out in the series Human Rights and Global Wrongs. She is currently taking a leading role in the defense of Julian Assange. She has testified before Congress and debated the legality of the war in Afghanistan at the prestigious Oxford Union. MarjorieCohn
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The Religious South, and Religious Exemptions to Public Health Directives
Last week sheriffs arrested Rodney Howard-Browne, the head of the River at Tampa Bay church in Florida for ignoring local orders against mass gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic and for showing “reckless disregard for human life.”
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said he had no choice but to take action against the pastor. “His reckless disregard for human life put hundreds of people from his congregation at risk and thousands of residents who may interact with them this week.” The Sheriff said his office had direct contact with the church, telling it not to pack its pews. Instead he said, the Pastor was encouraging his large congregation to meet at his church.”
Howard-Browne said his church has an absolute, constitutional right to gather for worship. He told his congregation that the church is an essential service.
But religious exemptions during the pandemic will only worsen it and claim more lives. Yet that’s precisely what government officials are doing—ignoring public health warnings and refusing to call on houses of worship to close. Establishing religious exemptions—in this case, by freeing houses of worship from public health order compliance—will only result in more cases of COVID-19 and greater numbers of death cases.
Guest – Attorney David Gespass is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. He practices law in Birmingham, Alabama.
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