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 December 31, 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- Khaled El-Masri and the European Court of Human Rights Decision
- European Court of Human Rights Labels CIA Interrogation Procedures as “Torture”
—–
Tariq Ali: Turning Points in the History of Imperialism
Today we’re joined by internationally renowned writer and activist Tariq Ali. Tariq is visiting from London where he is editor of the New Left Review.
A writer and filmmaker, Tariq has written more than 2 dozen books on world history and politics, including The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power, The Obama Syndrome and On History. We talk specifically about several turning points in global history, the Occupy movement and US elections. .
- The think the first World War was crucial but it wasn’t the war itself it was the consequences of that war. Here you had huge empires.
- The Russian revolution challenged capitalism frontally and its leaders said we want Europe to be with us, on our own we can’t do it. We need the Germans, we need a German revolution. That frightened the capitalist class globally.
- Woodrow Wilson, decided that the time had come to intervene. 22 countries came to intervene.
- This intervention made it impossible for the early infant Soviet Union to achieve what it wanted to achieve.
- The Second World War was an effort by the German ruling class to get its share of the world market in countries.
- The US helped rebuild Japan and Germany. They helped build France and Britain by the Marshal Plan and that has never been done by a big imperial power before.
- They managed to get the Soviet Union to implode by having an arms race. The Russians fell into their trap and decided to go for the arms race, had they not history might have been different.
- I hope the Chinese do not fall into the same trap, threatened by Obama’s puny little bases in Australia.
- People, early settlers in the United States got land totally free and they took it and that created the belief in the American psyche of private property.
- The Soviet Union imploded because the people lost faith in the system.
- The entire elite in the United States and Western Europe is wedded to the Washington consensus that emerged after the collapse of communism. The center piece of this consensus was a system which believed in market forces. I refer to it as market fundamentalism.
- We are confronting the extremism of the center and the result of this is no alternatives exist within mainstream politics. The effect that this is having is hollowing out democracy itself.
- Occupy: What we need is for these movements to call an assembly nationally and discuss a charter of demands for progressive America which need only be ten demands but something around which people can rally. I think its a movement that should be created bearing what the needs of ordinary people are.
- In order to understand the laws of motion of capital, you have to read Marx. It’s true capitalism has become much much more complex. Zombie capitalism, or fictitious capitalism, where money is used to make more money.
- It’s not money that’s creating productive goods.
- I had written a book on South American because I got very engaged in the Venezuela-Boliverian struggle and got to know Chavez very well.
- If Americans had access to Cuban medicine, the pharmaceutical companies would collapse, they would never let it happen.
Guest – Tariq Ali, writer, journalist and film-maker, born in Lahore and educated at Oxford University. He writes regularly for a range of publications including The Guardian and The London Review of Books. He has written more than a dozen books including non-fiction as well as scripts for both stage and screen.
—–
National Lawyers Guild 75 Years
Hundreds of National Lawyers Guild members and allies gathered to celebrate the organization’s 75th anniversary at the Law for the People convention in Pasadena, California. We hear excerpts from speeches from the National Lawyers Guild Convention by Attorney Jim Lafferty The 2012 Law for the People Award was given to Jim Lafferty.
Scholar and activist Angela Davis delivered the keynote address and among the convention honorees will be Margaret Burnham, a professor of civil rights law who, as a young lawyer, helped secure Davis’s 1972 acquittal on high-profile charges.
Founded in 1937, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar association in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has members in every state.
Jim Lafferty, Executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and host of The Lawyers Guild Show on Pacifica’s KPFK 90. 7 FM.
——————————————————————-
Law and Disorder December 24, 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- Hosts Discuss War Culture and the Newtown Connecticut School Massacre
- Letter to University of California President Advising Him of Need to Protect Protect Pro-Palestinian Speech on Campus
- Michael Ratner Remembers Former Federal Judge and Conservative Legal Scholar Robert Bork
- Six Month Anniversary Julian Assange at Ecuadoran Embassy: Free Press Foundation
——
Political Prisoner Lynne Stewart – December 2012 Update
Criminal defense attorney, political prisoner and good friend, Lynne Stewart continues to inspire people around her while serving a 10 year sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth Texas. As many listeners know, Lynne was convicted on charges related to materially aiding terrorism, related to her representation of Omar Abdel Rahman. Her original 2 year sentence was increased to 10 years after the government pressured the trial judge to reconsider his sentencing decision.
Co-host Michael Smith reads a few paragraphs from a recent letter by Lynne. Lynne Stewart turned 73 this past October, she’s a breast cancer survivor and has recently come out of surgery. She says she’s feeling better and ready to take on the next step in her case.
“I am now beginning my fourth (4th) year of imprisonment. It does not get better and I have to gut check myself regularly to be certain that I am resisting the pervasive institutionalization that takes place. A certain degree of reclusiveness with the help of good books, interesting people to correspond with, writing on topics of public interest, seems to work for me. Of course I still am working with any woman who needs help but I know that my sometimes truth-telling self is not what folks here want to hear. I do try to give folks whatever comfort I can. An old timer here, 18 years in, has begun an initiative to mobilize for prison reform by getting people on the outside to sign off on her well written petition to the White House. She is straight out of the courage and style of the old southern civil rights struggle but has now dedicated herself to this. The demands are modest. I have placed her petition on this, my website. Please sign on.”
Guest – Ralph Poynter, activist and Lynne’s partner. Please write to Lynne Stewart: #53504-054 / Federal Medical Center, Carswell / PO Box 27137 / Ft. Worth, TX 76127
——
Michael Ratner Speech On Bradley Manning in Washington DC.
We hear a speech by our own Michael Ratner delivered at the Bradley Manning support event. Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Attorney David Coombs also speaks about the case of his client, Bradley Manning. He is preceded by Emma Cape of the Bradley Manning Support Network. The event was held at All Souls Church Unitarian in Washington DC, December 2012.
—————————————————–
Law and Disorder December 17, 2012
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- Heidi Boghosian: EyeSee Mannequins and Surveillance State: “In-Person Community” Destroyed
- Michael Ratner: Bradley Manning Case Update
- New York Times Fails To Cover Manning Testimony
- Michael Ratner: Julian Assange Ecuador Embassy Update
——
Marijuana Laws: State Votes v. Federal Government
Washington State and Colorado are the first political jurisdictions to legally approved marijuana to be regulated like alcohol. However, federal laws explicitly criminalize marijuana transactions and the federal government can continue to enforce those laws by blocking the progress of state initiatives. For example, it’s likely that the federal authorities will step in when large transactions and large scale production begin in Washington or Colorado. Meanwhile, the Colorado provision allows personal possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and the growing up to six plants at home.
- Colorado and Washington are the first 2 political jurisdictions in the world to do this.
- The United States of America is emerging as the global leader of marijuana law reform.
- As of now it’s legal under state law to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and in Colorado legal to have up to six plants in the privacy of your own home.
- Parts of the initiative that authorize the state to set up a legal regulatory system like with alcohol that doesn’t kick in in Colorado until July, and in Washington state until next December.
- Not in public, let’s be clear.
- My colleagues at Drug Policy Alliance led a broad coalition effort and pushed back the mayor and police chief, rallied the DA’s to say this policy (stop and frisk) made no sense.
- The opportunity here for the federal government to say, let’s get Washington and Colorado a chance to figure this out; a way to effectively regulate this stuff.
- From the public health perspective if you have something that’s being consumed by millions of Americans you want authorities regulating quality and potency.
- The Federal Controlled Substance Act of 1970 is in conflict with this.
- There are now 18 states that have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Colorado already has a model of regulation on marijuana in respect to medicinal use.
- The fact is you hundreds if not thousands of dispensaries in many states, some are very open ended such as California.
- If the Feds prevent the state governments in Washington and Colorado from responsibly regulating this stuff, you’re essentially going to have a defacto alliance between the federal government on one side and an irresponsible elements of the marijuana community on the other.
- The worst possible thing in Mexico is the legalize drugs in the US. They would lose out just like Al Capone after the alcohol prohibition.
- Latin American leaders: They know that what Washington and Colorado did is the beginning of the ending of the global drug prohibition system which has wreaked havoc in that region for decades.
- People are realizing that among the other ingredients in marijuana, CBD which is the anti-anxiety and anti-inflammatory property of marijuana.
- It’s all about reducing the harms of drugs and the harms of failed prohibitionist policy.
Guest – Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organization in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs.
—–
Egypt and Syria Update: Glen Ford
Protests and violence continue in Egypt as Islamist President Mohamed Morsi pushes toward ratifying a draft constitution. Egyptians who oppose the controversial new constitution argue it weakens human rights doesn’t guarantee women’s rights and that it was written by an Islamist dominated assembly. The opposition National Salvation Front says it will not recognize the draft constitution. We talk about that and the disturbing events unfolding within the ongoing conflict in Syria with Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report. We welcome him back to Law and Disorder. Glen Ford is also a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
- In the Muslim world, the Left has been decimated not once, not twice, but over and over again in the last 50 years. That’s occurred in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq.
- It would be expected that in Egypt, the part of secular Egypt that is Left, secularized would represent 15-20 percent of the people.
- The language of politics in that world is spoken in an Islamic dialect.It’s difficult for Left folks here to understand it.
- Leftists here get confused by the corporate media which inflates business secularists in contests all over the world.
- How many people realize that the opposition party, party number two, in Russia is the Communist Party?
- Everybody is at work in Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, and freelance millionaires from all over the region are sponsoring their own brigades and fighting forces.
- Before the CIA and the Pakistanis got together to create a force to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan no such thing existed as a national Jihadi network.
- Syrian situation really heated up after the fall of the “Libyan regime”. 600 to 900 of the Libyan Jihadis were then sent directly to Syria.
- It’s really not in U.S. hands.
Guest – Glen Ford, founder of the Black Agenda Report and many other media forums. Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities.
————————————————————–