Welcome to Law and Disorder Radio
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 August 14, 2017
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U.S. Employees Agree To Be Microchipped
In 2003, 500 of the largest corporations planned to quietly replace universal product codes or barcodes with tiny Radio Frequency IDentifcation (RFID) microchips, creating the Electronic Product Code or EPC. RFID is a technology that tracks items silently and invisibly by radio waves. Over the years, we’ve reported about how RFID chips embedded in consumer products might be used to track people through the things they wear and carry since radio waves travel right through solid objects and can communicate with reading devices that can be hidden almost anywhere.
Corporations have already started embedding RFID microchips into consumer products for many reasons including shipping, inventory and marketing. Some companies have also been very interested in embedding RFID microchips into human flesh.
Years ago, Applied Digital Solutions tried to sell its “Verichip” human implant as a way to store medical information in people–and even to track senior citizens and corpses. Concerned citizens decried the privacy and security issues, forcing name changes and even the selling off of its human chipping business.
Microchip companies with new names and marketing angles are at it again. Recently, fifty employees with the snack kiosk company Three Square Market in Wisconsin agreed to have a microchip embedded into their flesh.
Guest – Liz McIntyre, a consumer privacy expert who is coauthor of a series of books about the societal implications of microchip tracking technology, including Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move. She also promotes privacy as a consultant with the search engine StartPage.com
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PTSD Therapy For Human Trafficking Survivors
Nearly all survivors of human trafficking are affected by post traumatic stress syndrome and have difficulty assimilating back into the society. Most have managed to silently cope with the emotional and physical trauma of their past. The New York-based organization Crossing Point Arts was created help survivors heal through the arts, including singing, creative art and poetry.
The group provides free art workshops supervised by Creative Arts Therapists. The strategy is based on providing learn long-term coping mechanisms and better manage their PTSD symptoms.
Crossing Point Arts has reached nearly 2,000 survivors in art workshops. The workshops are held on the premises of local anti-trafficking agencies as part of a comprehensive program for survivors, which includes housing, legal and medical assistance, traditional therapy, educational guidance and a range of emotional support.
Guest – Anne Pollack is the Crossing Point Arts founder and executive director. Anne is a musician, visual artist, writer, student of dance and an activist. YourFluteWorks
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Law and Disorder August 7, 2017
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Fair Punishment Project: Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Efforts
Controversial and antiquated civil forfeiture procedures across the nation are causing many, including the country’s poorest, to have assets seized by law enforcement agencies to fill department coffers.
In 2016 the manager of a Burmese Christian Rock Band had just completed a five-month tour across the country, raising over $50K for an orphanage in Thailand and a college in Burma, when police pulled him over for a broken tail light. A routine traffic stop soon turned into a months-long nightmare.
After a drug dog allegedly “alerted” to the car, police searched it, but found no evidence of drugs. They did, however, seize the cash donations as supposed “drug proceeds.” After interrogating the band manager for six hours, the police eventually let him go, but kept the cash. Within a month, the Muskogee County District Attorney filed a civil-forfeiture action to keep the money for good.
In light of Attorney General Session’s announcement that he plans to increase the use of civil forfeiture, we can expect many more cases like this one.
Guest – Josie Duffy Rice is a lawyer and writer in New York. Josie is research director of the Fair Punishment Project.
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Venezuela: Media Distortion And Analysis
The great Latin American historic figure Simon Bolivar, known as the liberator, famously said that “the United States seems destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of the liberty.” The current situation in Venezuela seems to be a case and point. That country’s Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada and Carlos Ron, an official at the Venezuelan embassy, have recently accused Florida Senator Marco Rubio and CIA director Mike Pompeo of secretly conspiring to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicholas Monduro.
The United States has a history of causing regime change to governments in Latin America. These include the governments of Guatemala, Brazil, the Dominican Republic , Bolivia, Grenada, Chile, Panama, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Cuba where “regime change” is written into American law. There has recently been a wave of violence in Venezuela including assassinations, violence at demonstrations, and distruction of property.
Guest – Gregory Wilpert has lived in Caracas,Venezuela, and is now based in Quito, Ecuador. He is the author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chavez Government. As a journalist, he is the founder of VenezuelaAnalysis.com. He is married to Carol Delgado Arria, who has served the Venezuelan government as ambassador to Ecuador and consul general in New York. He is currently visiting Caracas and joins us from there.
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Law and Disorder July 31, 2017
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Update:
- Rev Billy And The Stop Shopping Choir: Radical Ritual At Trump Tower
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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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Tuskegee Syphilis Study Aftermath
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a biomedical clinical study conducted by the US Public Health Service for four decades between 1932 and 1972. Its purpose was to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men in Alabama under the guise of receiving free health care from the government.
It collaborated with the historically black Tuskegee University in Alabama. Investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease. They were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study. After a cure for syphilis was discovered in penicillin, the study still continued without informing the men they would never be treated. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue.
Guest – Professor Susan Reverby is Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women’s Studies at Wellesley College. She is editor of Tuskegee’s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
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