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 July 6, 2015
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Updates:
- Michael Ratner: Julian Assange Update
- Wikileaks Continues To Release Cables
- 17 Secret Documents Revealed On Trade And Services Agreement
- Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Cables Released
- 70 Thousand Saudi Cables Released
- Espionnage Élysée
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Eli Smith: Woody Guthrie – 100th Centennial Celebration
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born on July 14, 1912, in Okemah, Oklahoma. Music festivals around the country mark his centennial. Many know Woody Guthrie by the song, “This Land Is Your Land” but he recorded much more and the bulk of those songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Woody was very productive, he was a writer, a cartoonist, and a biographer. “Roots of Woody Guthrie: Celebrating Woody at 100? Down Home Radio Show
- He was born on July 14, Bastille Day. He moved to Brooklyn in 1940. He was a radical guy, a socialist. His father was a successful business man in Oklahoma during the boom times.
- He had grown up in a stable middle class family. His mother suffered from Huntington disease which killed Woody Guthrie in 1967 at the age of 55.
- Woody Guthrie did travel with migrant workers, of course there were hundreds of thousands of migrants riding the rails.
- In California, Woody started his career also as a radio personality, he was already writing and painting, he was a multi-faceted artist.
- Woody loved Will Rogers, another Oklahoman, he was a Native American and stand up comic.
- Not only was he (Woody) a writer and performer of songs, he also wrote poetry and prose and newspaper opinion pieces.
- He was also a talented painter and visual artist.
- His autobiographical novel, Bound for Glory was published in 1943.
- Woody Guthrie had 8 children over the course of his life. He did several albums of children’s songs for the Folkways Records.
- He composed This Land Is Your Land to a response to that song (God Bless America)
- Since that time its been sanitized because they took out the more communistic verses, it’s kind of a second national anthem.
- “Roots of Woody Guthrie: Celebrating Woody at 100? Down Home Radio Show
Guest – Eli Smith (host/producer) is a banjo player, writer, researcher and promoter of folk music living in New York City. Eli is a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist. He puts together two major folk festivals annually, the Brooklyn Folk Festival in the Spring and Washington Square Park Folk Festival in the Fall. He has appeared as a guest on terrestrial radio stations such as WBAI, WNYC, WKCR and WDST in New York and KPFA, KPFK and KUCI in California.
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National Lawyers Guild Honors Co-host Michael Smith Champions Of Justice 2015
Michael Steven Smith is a New York City attorney and author. For the last 10 years he has been a co-host with Michael Ratner and Heidi Boghosian of the radio show Law and Disorder which is heard on WBAI and 71 stations across the country. Smith is the author or editor of a number of books including most recently with Michael Ratner “Who Killed Che: How the CIA Got Away With Murder” and with Frances Goldin and Debby Smith “Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA”. The Cuban publishing house Ciencias Sociales translated and published his book on Che, which was featured at the 2015 Havana International Book Fair, where it was presented at the University of Havana Lae School by Ricardo Alarcon, the former President of the Cuban National Assembly, who also contributed the introduction. The book is dedicated to his friend Len Weinglass, the main attorney for the Cuban Five, for whose release Smith worked. Smith also wrote “Notebook of a Sixties Lawyer: An Unrepentant Memoir” and a book about Guild lawyers called “Lawyers You’ll Like”.
He has been a member of the National Lawyers Guild since the 60s when he started a movement law firm in Detroit. Before going into private practice in New York City representing seriously injured persons he worked at Harlem Legal Services, Queens Legal Services, and directed Seafarers Legal Services.
Smith was educated at the University of Wisconsin. He lives in New York City with his wife Debby and talking parrot Charlie Parker.
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Law and Disorder June 29, 2015
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Updates:
- Michael Ratner: Historic Ruling: High-Level Bush Officials Including Ashcroft May Be Sued for Post-9/11 Abuse of Immigration Detainees at Metropolitan Detention Center
- Hosts Wish Happy Birthday To Karen Ranucci
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UN Human Rights Report Finds Israel Committed War Crimes and Unprecedented Devastation in 2014 Gaza War
Recently the United Nations issued a report on Israel’s attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014. The results were devastating again for Israel. The report also covered illegal Israeli settlements as well as house demolitions. Another section dealt with rockets that came from Gaza and went into Israel. What can we expect the result of this report to be? Will it be like the other ones, simply good reading or bad reading and shelved again? Will the UN act to do something with it? Will it go to the International Criminal Court? Again, we don’t know.
Guest – Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Best known for her work as a legal adviser and a participant in peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian organizations, she has since been associated with Stanford University, Harvard University, and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU).
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ICE Detention Center Standards Improve, Being Released is Now More Difficult
When women and children from Central America seek asylum and are captured at the US border, some are arrested and sent to a detention center in Artesia, New Mexico. Run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there are no legal services providers in the state funded to represent persons in detention. The Obama administration has made clear that immigrants’ cases must be processed as quickly as possible, and that most should be deported, increasing the likelihood that detainees are deprived the chance to exercise their rights.
To help ensure that women in detention get legal help in navigating a complex and difficult-to-understand process, a small group of volunteer attorneys organized by the American Immigration Lawyers Association works at the center 12 hours a day. The court process in Artesia has been described as a “s#%*show” where judges refuse to let lawyers speak during hearings, detainees clearly worthy of asylum are denied, and no one will articulate the legal basis for judges and asylum officers’ decisions. Most women in detention do not understand that they can ask for time to locate an attorney or that they cannot be deported without having an opportunity to present their case.
Guest – Attorney Laura Lichter, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. (“AILA”), the premier bar association of immigration lawyers and law professors in the U.S. She has been an elected member of AILA’s national leadership for over a decade and has served as the association’s top liaison to the key immigration enforcement bureaus of the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is responsible for immigration investigations, prosecution, detention and removal operations, and the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the nation’s immigration court system. Ms. Lichter is AILA’s liaison to the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration and serves on the Federal Bar Association’s Immigration Law Section Advisory Board. Ms. Lichter recently served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) Task Force on ICE’s Secure Communities program, reporting to findings on the ICE enforcement initiative to DHS Secretary Napolitano. Based in Denver, she is the former Chair of AILA’s Colorado Chapter. Ms. Lichter’s practice focuses on the representation of foreign nationals in removal proceedings, contested family and naturalization applications, administrative appeals, and related federal district and appellate court litigation.
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Law and Disorder June 22, 2015
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Updates:
- Michael Smith: Supreme Court Justice Scalia Calls Justice Ginsberg, “Goldberg”
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Law and Disorder Hosts Remember Ellen Ray, Co-Publisher of Covert Action Information Bulletin
Law and Disorder hosts remember Ellen Ray. She was a documentary filmmaker, publisher, journalist and activist. Ellen Ray was co-publisher of the magazine Covert Action Information Bulletin, which exposed CIA covert actions around the world, publishing the names of hundreds of CIA agents. As a result, the law changed (The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982) making it illegal. As head of Sheridan Square Press, Ellen Ray published the memoir of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, which became the basis of Oliver Stone’s film, “JFK.” Ray is survived by her husband, attorney Bill Schaap, she was 75.
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Magna Carta and Charter of the Forest 800 Year Anniversary
Law and Disorder Co-host Michael Ratner describes the meaning behind “Freedom Under Law” inscribed on a plinth that’s erected at the site commemorating the Magna Carta in England. Michael references past guest Peter Linebaugh and his books including The London Hanged when discussing the sister document The Charter of the Forest. The Charter of the Forest formed the protection of subsistence rights for people to the woodlands. The woods was the form that hydrocarbon energy took. There’s a parallel with the protection of woodlands for all, back then, and our own oil economy. Common Rights for oil, share in the wealth of commons.
Law and Disorder Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. Ratner and CCR are currently the attorneys in the United States for publishers Julian Assange and Wikileaks. He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court. Ratner is also a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights.
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Academic Freedom Case Update: Professor Steven Salaita
Today we want to bring you important updates on the case of Professor Steven Salaita. Steven Salaita was about to take his tenured job at the University of Illinois-Urbana when he got fired. He got fired because of his impassioned defense of Palestinians and his criticism of the massive Gaza war that was killing thousands of Palestinians. He brought a lawsuit and is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and a firm in Chicago Loevy and Loevy. As part of the whole process of fighting back against the University of Illinois, lawyers filed a FOIA request for all the letters sent to the University of Illinois regarding Steven Salaita. A lot of these most likely came from donors who were objecting to the hiring of Steven Salaita. We don’t know yet but last the court gave an order that 9000 emails to Steven Salaita and his lawyers. We’ll talk about that victory. In addition there was a meeting last week of the AAUP, the American Association of University Professors and they censured the University of Illinois Urbana for firing Steven Salaita.
Guest – Maria LaHood, Deputy Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights with expertise in constitutional rights and international human rights. She works to defend the constitutional rights of Palestinian human rights advocates in the United States in cases such as Davis v. Cox, defending Olympia Food Co-op board members for boycotting Israeli goods; Salaita v. Kennedy,representing Steven Salaita, who was terminated from a tenured position for tweets critical of Israel; and CCR v. DOD, seeking U.S. government records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding Israel’s 2010 attack on the flotilla to Gaza. She works closely with Palestine Legal to support students and others whose speech is being suppressed for their Palestine advocacy around the country. She also works on the Right to Heal initiative with Iraqi civil society and Iraq Veterans seeking accountability for the lasting health effects of the Iraq war.
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