Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Attorney Jim Lafferty Commentary On Rittenhouse Case
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Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2021
The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the effects of Agent Orange, the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971, poisoning both the people and the land. The defoliant was used to more effectively prosecute the war against the Vietnamese people, exposing their hideouts, destroying their crops and food.
Descendants of approximately 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans who were exposed to the toxin continue to record disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of many diseases.
U.S. veterans receive some compensation from the U.S. government, but very little assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, who were the intended victims of the defoliant Agent Orange. Thus, on May 25, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) introduced H.R. 3518, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2021, in the House of Representatives. The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign (for which I serve as co-coordinator) assisted Lee in drafting the bill.
Lee said, “The United States has a moral responsibility to compensate the victims of the Agent Orange campaign. In the same way we are focused on beginning to repair the damage of systemic racism in the form of reparations, and the war on drugs with restorative justice, it is also our responsibility to try and atone for this disgraceful campaign during the Vietnam War.”
Susan Schnall is co-coordinator of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign. She was an active duty Navy nurse during the conflict in Vietnam and in 1969, she was tried and found guilty by general court martial of conduct unbecoming an officer for dropping anti-war flyers over military bases in the San Francisco Bay area and an aircraft, and wearing her uniform in the GI and Veterans March for Peace demonstration in San Francisco.
Guest – Susan Schnall is a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the American Public Health Association. She is also President of the New York City Veterans for Peace chapter and a board member of national Veterans For Peace. Susan organized and led a delegation of Science/Public Health professionals to Vietnam in 2013 to survey the land that had been contaminated by the US use of Agent Orange/dioxin and visit the people who had been harmed by the chemicals. In 2006, Susan was awarded the medal for peace and friendship between peoples by the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations.
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The U.S. Role In Cuba Destabilization
First the Trump and now the Biden administration have accelerated their efforts to destabilize and overthrow the Cuban socialist government with the aim of reestablishing capitalism on the island.
This effort is 62 years old going back to 1959 when a popular revolution lead by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara succeeded in getting rid of the U. S. imposed dictator Batista. The still popular revolution has improved the lives of the Cuban people. Back in 1959 Cuba was a U S. colony. Its resources were owned by US corporations, its dictatorial government was a puppet of the United States.
The population, both urban and rural, was desperately poor. These were the people who made the revolution. The new government instituted land reform. They offered to pay the US corporations for the value of the land. The corporations refused so the Cuban government nationalized the land and re-distributed it to the peasantry, as was their legal right.
In retaliation, the US-owned oil refinery was shut down, crippling the Cuban economy. So the Cubans nationalized the oil refinery, the telephone company, the nickel mines and so on. This all came under control of the Cuban people. This is the essence of the Cuban revolution. The US Government immediately instituted its policy, which continues to this day, of isolation and aggression. It started in 1960, a year after revolution. President Dwight D Eisenhower, pursuant to a 1960 memo written by a senior state department official, the US Government instituted a financial, economic, and commercial blockade of Cuba which is enshrined in our law and continues to this day.
Trump introduced some 200 new measures to overthrow the Cuban revolution. Biden continued this effort with even more measures. The US government and its counter-revolutionary supporters in South Florida promoted the recent July 11 demonstrations in cities throughout the island. These demonstrations were joined by many Cubans who have valid criticisms about bureaucracy, mismanagement, and corruption in the Cuban government. For example, there are long lines people have to wait in to buy food and a lot of items are unavailable.
The situation of the Cuban people is one of hardship brought about by the 60 year old commercial and economic blockade set up at United States. Their suffering has been further exacerbated of course by the pandemic. Cubans suffer a shortage of food and medicine and a blow to the economy which was largely based on tourism. The US counter-revolutionary efforts involve a massive spending of money on social media and a direct role in organizing opponents of the Cuban government. After the July demonstrations a new one was planned for November 15. It was a total flop.
Guest – Attorney Art Heitzer, author and head of the Cuba subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Civil Liberties, Right To Dissent, Truth to Power, Uncategorized, Whistleblowers
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Highlighting PETA Cases And Inherent Animal Protections
Each year, December 10 marks International Animal Rights Day to draw attention to the prevalent use and abuse of non-human animals. That’s the same day that Human Rights Day is observed, marking the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Non-human animals are sentient. That means they have a capacity to experience feelings, and to be responsive to or conscious of sense impressions. Sentient beings experience emotions such as happiness, joy, and gratitude, as well as pain, suffering, and grief. Animal rights or animal welfare activists urge society to stop thinking of animals as human property and as companions rather than pets. They urge abstention from all animal use, including meat, leather, milk, wool and silk, while also calling for an end to experimentation on animals. Other efforts include seeking an end to using animals for laboratory experimentation and for sporting events and entertainment.
Scientists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, have written an authoritative report from dozens of studies, some funded by the National Institutes of Health, that show sentience across the animal kingdom. It compiles evidence from dozens of studies—some funded by the federal National Institutes of Health—that show sentience across the animal kingdom. The report concludes that because other animals experience emotions as humans do, it is unethical to subject them to the trauma and emotional distress of experimentation.
Guest – Asher Smith is Director of Litigation at the PETA Foundation. He has helped secure the rescue of 25 big cats from roadside zoos featured in the Netflix series Tiger King. More recently he has focused on freeing 30 barn owls from a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
Guest – Attorney Tamara Bedic, chairperson of the National Lawyers Guild Animal Rights Project. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a masters degree from Columbia University-NY University. Tamara practices employment law with a focus on women and harassment in the workplace.
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More PETA Cases, Speciesism and Long Range Animal Protection
With more than 9 million members and supporters worldwide, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world. It opposes speciesism, the human-held belief that all other animal species are inferior. PETA’s work encompasses four areas in which animals have been suffering the most intensely and over the longest periods of time. They are in research laboratories, the food industry, the clothing trade, and the entertainment business. PETA conducts public education, investigative news gathering and reporting, research, animal rescue, legislation, and protest campaigns.
Guest – Jared Goodman, PETA Foundation Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Animal Law. He describes what speciesism is and how it has informed PETA’s work since its founding in 1980.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Racist Police Violence, Right To Dissent, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer
Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith interviewed some of Michael Ratner’s closest friends and colleagues as part of a special broadcast highlighting Michael Ratner’s legal work and mentorship. The special also marked the upcoming release of Michael Ratner’s autobiography Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer published by OR Books. In this one hour taken from the two hour fundraiser broadcast, we hear from attorneys including Eleanor Stein, Richard Levy, Ray Brescia, David Cole and Baher Azmy.
Michael Ratner’s pathbreaking legal and political work is unmatched. He provided crucial support for the Cuban Revolution and won the seminal case in the Supreme Court guaranteeing the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. Michael also challenged U.S. policy in Iraq, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Israel-Palestine. This book is a testament to his unflagging efforts on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world.
– Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Michael Ratner personified lawyering that brought both radical and human values into challenges to the use of governmental power to violate the essence of the Bill of Rights. From the torture of prisoners after 911 to the massive racial profiling by the New York Police Department, Michael’s voice and vision continue to resonate. This book provides a powerful testament to the spirit of this extraordinary man.
– Attorney Bill Goodman
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Right To Dissent, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
The spectacle of President Donald Trump and the palace intrigue in the White House has served daily to distract people from the political strategy and accomplishments of the radical right, which is taking over the Republican Party.
Over time, the GOP has been transformed into operation conducting a concerted effort to curb democratic rule in favor of capitalist interests in every branch of government, whatever the consequences. It is marching ever closer to the ultimate goal of reshaping the Constitution to protect monied interests. This gradual take over of a major political party happened steadily, over several decades, and often in plain sight.
Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean exposes the architecture of this change and it’s ultimate aim. She has written that “both my research and my observations as a citizen lead me to believe American democracy is in peril”.
Guest – Professor Nancy MacLean, whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, has been described by Publishers Weekly as “a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative… [and] a feat of American intellectual and political history.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan,named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994, MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy.
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The Federalist Society: Shifting the U.S. Legal Landscape to the Right
With the recent nomination of conservative attorney Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, the United States Supreme Court will have a majority of authoritarian anti-democratic jurists who support a powerful executive. At the same time, Donald Trump has wasted no time in appointing more conservatives to federal judgeships.
More and more we’re hearing that the once little-known Federalist Society is behind these appointments. But it’s now a new development. The Society was formed at Yale University in 1981, and has steadily and quietly been placing its lawyer members in positions of power in the government and judiciary.
In their 2013 book, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, attorneys Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin track the movements of this small group of conservative law students and lawyers and their increasing influence. The Federalist Society has lawyer chapters in every major city in the United States and student chapters in every accredited law school. Members include economic conservatives, social conservatives, Christian conservatives, and libertarians. One of the things that has made the Federalist Society so very effective is their big picture agenda. While they may have differences of opinion on a range of issues, they have successfully put those aside to advance a far-reaching, long-lasting, and broad conservative agenda. Their agenda is chipping away at social gains made since the 1930s. Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are on the block. So is Roe v. Wage. Citizen United, holding that corporations are persons and money is free speech, and the union-breaking Janus decision are just the beginning. Other attacks on democracy include voter suppression, voter ID laws, and gerrymandering.
Guest – Attorney Michael Avery, the former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and is an expert in the areas of constitutional law and police misconduct.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Iraq War, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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- Editorial By Attorney Heidi Boghosian: Facebook’s Duty to Protect WhatsApp
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FBI Evidence Demonstrates Saudi Arabia’s Involvement in September 11 Attacks
The events on September 11, 2001 were a crushing blow to democracy and the rule of law in our country. The attacks paved the way for two illegal wars, first the American war against Afghanistan and then Iraq. It open the way for the national security state to develop expansively and implement a vast surveillance program on American citizens.
The attack on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon happened 20 years ago and in retrospect was a turning point in American history. Law And Disorder Radio was launched three years after that event. Our mission was to defend both democracy and the rule of law.
The attacks were a crime against humanity. But instead of treating them as a crime it was turned into an occasion to launch aggressive and illegal wars. The Nuremberg trials against the Nazis who started World War II defined aggressive war as the ultimate crime because it held within it all lesser crimes.
In our show today we examine the new evidence on who was responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001. The new evidence is a six year old FBI report released on President Biden’s order last month. Biden was told by the families of the victims of 9/11 that unless this report was released he was not welcome at any of the memorial services.
The FBI report demonstrates the complicity of the government of Saudi Arabia in the attacks. It was two Saudi Arabian government officials that helped the first two hijackers when they came to America. They were given money and help to get into flight school. They then hijacked American Airlines plane and flew it into. Senator Bob Graham was the head of the Intelligence Committee that investigated what happened on September 11th, 2001. Whistle blower Thomas Drake was a top official at the National Security Agency.
Guest – Paul Jay is the editor of the blog the theanalysis.news. We will discuss with him the kind of movement that is needed to reverse the nuclear arms race as well as to bring about a democratic organization of the economy.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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Julian Assange: October 26 Appeal
Julian Assange was a young computer genius, an Australian citizen, the publisher of Wiki leaks, an award-winning journalist, and the person responsible for embarrassing the United States by publishing material on American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He figured out a way to receive information from whistle blowers and publish the information anonymously in order to protect them.
When Mike Pompeo was Trump’s Director of the CIA he called WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange, “a hostile non-state intelligence agency.” Pompeo suggested that Julian Assange be kidnapped from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had received political asylum, rendered, and assassinated.
What has been the reaction of the major news media to this extraordinary revelation? Will this affect the US governments continued efforts to have him extradited to the United States where he would be tried for espionage?
Assange is presently being held in solitary confinement in London‘s infamous Belmarsh prison. In earlier developments, Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that he could not be extradited to United States in defiance of the American request because she feared his prison confinement in an American maximum-security prison might cause him to commit suicide.
Her decision is on appeal by the Biden U.S. Justice Department and will be heard by the British High Court on October 26th.
In response to the revelations about Pompeo, Julian’s American attorney Barry Pollack said that “the extreme nature of the type of government misconduct that Yahoo News reported would certainly be an issue and potentially grounds for dismissal.“ He believes that Assange was targeted by both Trump and Biden like Nixon had targeted Daniel Ellsberg for his release of the Pentagon during the Vietnam war. In Ellsberg’s case the presiding judge dropped all charges against him.
Assange Defense
@defenseassange – Nathan Fuller twitter
Defend.wikileaks.org
Guest – Attorney Nathan Fuller who has been attending Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London. He leads the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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Host Discussion: Challenges To Roe v. Wade And Donziger Case Updates
Last week thousands demonstrated across the country over woman’s right to choose. The demonstrations took place one month after Texas had enacted its infamous heart beat law which is nearly a total ban on abortion. It prohibits abortion after 6 weeks, when most women don’t know they’re pregnant. Currently the law established by Roe v Wade, defends women and affords them to get an abortion during the first two trimesters of their pregnancy. One in four women in the United States has had an abortion. The first thing the fascist Hitler government did in 1933 when in came to power was to lock up all the family planning clinics. Anti-abortion laws disproportionately attack black, brown and poor women. The Women’s Health Protection Act which would codify Roe v. Wade has passed the House and is now in the Senate where it will likely lose. Coming up in the Supreme Court is the Jackson Healthcare Case which originated in Mississippi. That state passed a law limiting the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
Guest – Marjorie Cohn, former criminal law defense attorney and professor emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law. She was the past president of the National Lawyer Guild and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Professor Cohn has published four books about the war on terror. Last week she had published an article in the prestigious online magazine Jurist titled Samuel Moyn’s Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner is Shameful.
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