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Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 150 stations and on Apple podcast. Law and Disorder provides timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.
Law and Disorder June 17, 2019
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Analyzing Recent Abortion Legislation
Halfway through 2019 nine states have already passed bills to limit abortion. Louisiana recently passed a ban on the medical procedure after a fetal heartbeat is detected. That makes it the 9th state in 2019 year to pass abortion restrictions that could challenge the constitutional right established in Roe v.Wade.
Alabama legislators also recently voted to ban abortions in nearly all cases. Other measures, like Louisiana’s, have limited the procedure to earlier in pregnancy, typically around six weeks.
Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio stopped short of outright bans. They’ve passed so-called heartbeat bills that effectively prohibit abortions after six to eight weeks of pregnancy. That’s when doctors usually start detecting a fetal heartbeat. Utah and Arkansas voted to limit the procedure to the middle of the second trimester.
Most other states follow the standard set by the Supreme Court’s 1972 Roe decision, which says abortion is legal until the fetus reaches viability, usually at 24 to 28 weeks.
The latest bans are not yet in effect (Kentucky’s was blocked by a judge), and all bans are expected to face protracted court battles. What does all this mean? More states are considering and will likely pass measures similar to that in Louisiana in an attempt to challenge Roe v. Wade.
Guest – Attorney Elisabeth Smith from the Center for Reproductive Rights. Elisabeth is their Chief Counsel for State Policy. Before that she was Legislative Director at the ACLU of Washington where she was the Legislative Director.
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Cuban Revolution 60th Anniversary And The 1996 Helms-Burton Act
July 26, 2019 marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. On that date revolutionary troops led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara marched into Havana. The American supported dictator Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. Other rich Cubans went to Miami. At that time the wealth of Cuba, it’s vast fertile sugarcane and tobacco fields, it’s oil refinery, its phone company, were owned by US corporations and a handful of wealthy Cubans.
To obstruct the revolution, the US owned oil refinery stopped providing oil so there was no gasoline. In response, the Cuban revolutionaries nationalized the refinery, then the phone company, the nickel mines, and the vast land holdings. This was the beginning of the Cuban revolution The Cuban government offered to pay the owners for the nationalized property in the amount that the owners had listed the properties for tax purposes. The owners refused to take the money. Since then the American government has waged economic warfare on Cuba.
In an escalation of this warfare Last week we saw the instigation of the dormant title III section of the anti-Cuba 1996 Helms-Burton Act. This law permits US citizens to sue anyone anywhere in the world in American Courts for using property legally expropriated by the Cuban government after the revolution. Expropriation of a foreign owned property is legal under international law so long as the owners are compensated.
In addition to the invocation of the Helms-Burton law the US government has ended people to people travel to Cuba and drastically reduced the amount of money Cuban Americans living in the US can remit to their families on the island.
Guest – Netfa Freeman, policy analyst with the Institute for Policy Studies and an Organizer in the International Committee for Peace Justice & Dignity.
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Law and Disorder June 10, 2017
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Daniel Ellsberg: Julian Assange’s Case And The Doomsday Machine
Two weeks ago the Trump administration announced it had indicted Julian Assange in the Eastern District of Virginia on 17 counts of violating the 1917 Espionage Act. Assange is currently in the Belmarsh prison hospital in London. If extradited, tried, and convicted he faces 175 years in prison.
The Espionage Act is a 102 year old law used initially to imprison the great socialist Eugene V Debs for an anti-World War I speech he gave in Canton, Ohio and also used to crush the industrial workers of the world, the IWW, a large antiwar union at the time.
In 1971 it was famously used against Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon papers to the New York Times and other media outlets. Lately the Espionage Act has been used against many truth telling whistleblowers during the Obama and Trump administrations.
This is the first time it is being used against a journalist.
Wikileaks Defense Funds:
Guest – Daniel Ellsberg, educated at Harvard and Cambridge and has been an activist since the 1970s. Ellsberg’s latest book, The Doomsday Machine, is an extensive study of nuclear theory and nuclear policy. In 2018 he was awarded the Olaf Palme prize for his “profound humanism and exceptional moral courage.
From 1957-59 he was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1962 with his thesis, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision. His research leading up to this dissertation—in particular his work on what has become known as the “Ellsberg Paradox,” first published in an article entitled Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms—is widely considered a landmark in decision theory and behavioral economics.
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Law and Disorder June 3, 2019
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Updates:
- Two MOVE9 Members Released From Prison
- Julian Assange Update
- Never Get Rid Of Newspapers…The Headlines Alone Make Them Worth Keeping
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Suicide Increase In The United States
Suicide ranks among the top ten leading causes of death in the United States. As rates have generally fallen in other developed nations, the number of suicides per 100,000 rose over 30 percent between 1999 and 2015.
Those in midlife had the largest uptick in suicide. Researchers find that two social factors have contributed to this trend: the weakening of the social safety net and increasing income inequality.
One study of suicide in the U.S. found that the rising rates were closely linked with reductions in social welfare spending between 1960 and 1995. Such expenditures include Medicaid, a medical assistance program for low income persons; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children; the Supplemental Security Income program for the blind, disabled and elderly; children’s services including adoption, foster care and day care; shelters; and funding of public hospitals for medical assistance other than Medicaid.
While their suicide rates are on the decline, three European nations still have rates higher than the U.S. They are Belgium, Finland and France.
Guest – Stephen Platt, Emeritus Professor of Health Policy Research at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research focuses on the social, epidemiological and cultural aspects of suicide, self-harm and mental health. He is an adviser on suicide prevention research and policy to NHS Health Scotland and the Scottish Government, the Irish National Office for Suicide Prevention and Samaritans.
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