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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 September 2, 2019

The Movie SKIN and One People’s Project

In the recently-released 2019 movie SKIN, skinhead Bryon Widner’s body is covered in racist tattoos, each marking a hate crime he committed. His parents Shareen and Fred “Hammer” Krager, run a kind of camp that recruits and trains young men—often lost and hungry–to become white supremacists.

Bryon meets and falls in love with single mother Julie Price. When he begins to realize he wants to give up his hateful habits, he faces a host of difficulties, one of which is the long and painful process of removing many of the hate tattoos that cover his body.

The film follows writer-director Guy Nattiv’s Oscar-winning short film of the same name. In the narrative version, actor Mike Colter plays the film’s true hero, Daryle Lamont Jenkins, who has devoted his life to helping people escape neo-Nazi groups.

Guest – Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of One People’s Project, is able to join us in the studio today. Since 1988 Daryle has been documenting and writing about right wing individuals and organizations even back while he was serving as a police officer in the U.S. Air Force. In 2000, he founded One People’s Project out of a counter-protest to a rally in Morristown, NJ. The organization quickly gained the reputation of publicly documenting hate groups and their activities.

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Reforming Sex Offender Laws

The U.S. legal system and sentencing practices rely too often on emotion rather than facts when it comes to defendants with developmental disabilities charged with sex offenses. Sentences for possessing child pornography are severe, and don’t take into account a defendant’s lack of awareness or inability to understand the societal values being punished. This is true for individuals on the autism spectrum whose social intelligence quotient may lag their intelligence quotient.

Two professors want to change that.

St. Francis College professor Emily Horowitz and co-editor and law professor Larry Dubin make the case for reform in their book Caught in the Web of the Criminal Justice System: Autism, Developmental Disabilities, and Sex Offenses.

Guest – Professor Emily Horowitz discusses her book and work related to sex offender laws in the United States. Dr. Horowitz is chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at St. Francis. She is the author of Protecting Our Kids? How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us and founder and co-director of the St. Francis Post-Prison program. Her research on the sex offense registry been widely cited.

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Law and Disorder August 26, 2019

Victory In New York City Wikileaks Case

Truth telling journalist and publisher Julian Assange and his organization Wiki-leaks won a significant First Amendment victory in federal court in New York City on July 29.

As reported by Oscar Grendel in the World Socialists Website, “The decision by Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected that Assange colluded with Russia. It upheld his status as a journalist and publisher and dismissed claims that WikiLeaks 2016 publication of the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee was illegal.

We speak today with WikiLeaks lawyer Josh Dratel, who represented WikiLeaks, about this victory for civil liberties and freedom of the press and the right of people to know.

Assange is in terrible and declining health in Belmarsh prison in London waiting extradition to the United States to be tried on 17 counts of espionage for publishing in 2010 troves of information leaked to him by Chelsea Manning demonstrating United States committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The July 29 victory came about when the Democratic National Committee of the Democratic Party attempted to sue Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing DNC Emails on the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. They showed that the DNC rigged the primary election against Sanders. Clinton was exposed for taking a $675,000 speakers fee, which some described as a bribe, from the investment banking house of Goldman Sachs to whom she pledged loyalty.

The case the DNC brought against The Russian federation, WikiLeaks and Assange, among others, in 2016 was thrown out of court, with prejudice, by federal judge John Koeltl, a Clinton appointee. Attorney Joshua Dratel defended WikiLeaks.

Please write Julian Assange at this address:

Mr Julian Assange
DOB: 3/07/1971
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
London SE28 0EB, UK

(Follow These Details In Preparing Letter)

Guest – Attorney Josh Dratel heads a renowned New York City law firm and has a national reputation as a trial and appellate lawyer. He graduated Harvard law school in 1981. Dratel is the past president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. His many honors include the Frederick Douglass award and the Clarence Darrow award from the ACLU of Idaho. He is the co-editor of the book The Torture Papers: the Legal Road to Abu Graib.

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The Case Of Espionage And Billionaire Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein

When he was alive, the major news media characteristically covered the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s huge pedophile sex ring for a brief news cycle. He was in a federal jail in Manhattan awaiting trial and was dropped out of public view. The salacious aspects of his story were covered briefly. Then he died under mysterious circumstances. The story was briefly revived but diverted to conditions in the jail. But there is much more to it.

In 2007 Florida federal prosecutor Alex Acosta went along with a plea deal which allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a Florida state charge involving prostitution with children and was given an extraordinary light sentence. Acosta dropped federal charges were dropped.

When questioned about this Acosta told a Senate committee inquiring about his credentials to become the secretary of labor in the Trump administration that he, Acosta , was told to back off because Epstein was part of the “intelligence community.“

Was he part of an espionage and blackmail operation? For whom did he work?

Guest – Phillip Giraldi, former CIA agent and counterterrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA. He is currently executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Geraldi has a masters degree and a PhD.

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Law and Disorder August 19, 2019

Now Available: Harriet Tubman Stamp

In 2016, the Obama administration announced plans to replace the image on the $20 bill from former President Andrew Jackson to underground railroad hero Harriet Tubman.

The change was supposed to go into effect in 2020, the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. But recently Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, told a congressional committee that the stamp’s debut would be delayed until 2026, citing the development of new security features. That leaves open the question of the redesign to a future Administration. Mnuchin claims that political considerations were not a factor, but current and former Treasury Department officials have said the bill’s postponement is to avoid the possibility that Donald Trump might cause an uproar by cancelling it all together.

Across the nation, Americans don’t have to wait to have a Tubman bill.

Now available to all is the Harriet Tubman stamp, although not from the United States Postal Service. New York designer Dano Wall has created a do-it-yourself, single-color ink stamps with Tubman’s face to replace that of Jackson, directly onto the bill. They are sold on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and other places.

Putting someone’s face on money is not considered defacing money, as the only things which constitute defacing money are cutting up a bill, putting two bills together, poking holes through the bill, or doing anything for the purpose of not being able to use the bill again.

Guest – Dano Wall, a New York City designer.

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Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.

In January 2019 New York State passed a bill to outlaw “revenge porn,” joining 41 other states that have passed similar laws. Revenge Porn is the term for the non-consensual sharing on the Internet of sexually explicit photographs or videos. Victims say it can be as damaging as any other form of abuse, but without the legal protections.

Private images can follow victims for years, turning up when employers or romantic partners search for their names on the Internet.

But in New York, victims have experienced years of helplessness in the courts. Prosecutors could not charge offenders for a practice that was not illegal, and judges turned down appeals for help on the grounds of free speech, even while other states were enacting protections. Under New York’s new law, offenders can be punished by up to one year in jail.

The law also allows victims to sue the person who shared the revenge porn, which about a dozen other states also allow. And it would be the first in the nation to allow judges to order websites or social media platforms — in addition to the original poster — to take down the photos or videos.

Most have heard about high-profile instances of sexual images as blackmail or revenge have involving the rich and famous, such as singer Rihanna and actor Jennifer Lawrence. But it affects millions of people, from middle school students to Marines. As many as 10 million Americans have been victims of revenge porn.

Guest – New York Attorney Carrie Goldberg started a law firm to focus on defending victims of the practices. She has just come out with her first book titled Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.

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