Welcome to Law and Disorder Radio
Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 100 stations across the United States and podcasting on the web. 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 25, 2023
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Assange: Journalism Is Not A Crime
Julian Assange is the greatest journalist of our time. By publishing the truth about secret government surveillance of American citizens and American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places the American government and the CIA have plotted to kidnap and kill him.
They initially smeared his name falsely, accusing him of being a rapist, forced him to get political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where they videotaped conversations with his lawyers and stole the contents of their phones and computers. At his extradition hearing in London, where the British government did the bidding of the US, they kept him incommunicado in a glass box and the judge made her decisions before she heard the evidence.
They have had him imprisoned in torturous solitary in the notorious Belmarsh prison in London for four years. He could be extradited to the United States any minute from now to stand trial on the false accusation of espionage to which he answers “journalism is not a crime.“ He will certainly be convicted and entombed in what amounts to a death sentence.
The rule of law is crashing in our country. What is being done to Julian Assange is being done in the name of the law.
Guest – Craig Murray has written the most penetrating and eloquent accounts of Julian Assange’s predicament. Murray was the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was fired for blowing the whistle on his country’s practice of torture. He himself has recently served four months of solitary confinement in prison, where he was put, he believes, to prevent him from testifying at the trial of David Morales – whose company contracted with the CIA to spy on Julian and his attorneys. This alone should’ve caused the case against Julian to be dismissed.
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UAW Organized Labor Strike 2023
It’s no secret that the size and strength of the union movement is not, today, what it has been in the past. Where once more than 30% of the U.S. private workforce was unionized, today it’s only about 5 or 6 percent, with another 33% of workers in unionized government jobs. Harsh, pro-employer labor laws are a big reason for the decline in unionized jobs, as is the change in the percentage of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
But in the last few years, despite the harsh laws governing union organizing, we’ve witnessed a surge in militant and successful strikes by workers. Nurses, schoolteachers, more recently the UPS workers, and now the strike by the United Auto Workers. Today we examine the UAW strike, the new way it is being conducted, and to learn what it can tell us about this increased union militancy, why it’s happening now, and what it portends for the future.
And our guest for this topic could not be a better person to help us understand the UAW strike, and the increased militancy of workers and union actions across the United States, in general.
Guest – Dianne Feeley, a 60’s radical who started off working with the Catholic Worker movement in New York City. Ms. Feeley is, herself, a retired auto worker, and former member of the UAW Local 22 in Detroit, Michigan. She is currently a leader in the socialist, feminist organization Solidarity, and writes regularly for both the Jacobin Magazine and the magazine, Against the Current.
Hosted by attorney Jim Lafferty
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Law and Disorder September 18, 2023
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Editorial By Attorney Heidi Boghosian: Facebook’s Duty to Protect WhatsApp
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FBI Evidence Demonstrates Saudi Arabia’s Involvement in September 11 Attacks
The events on September 11, 2001 were a crushing blow to democracy and the rule of law in our country. The attacks paved the way for two illegal wars, first the American war against Afghanistan and then Iraq. It open the way for the national security state to develop expansively and implement a vast surveillance program on American citizens.
The attack on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon happened 20 years ago and in retrospect was a turning point in American history. Law And Disorder Radio was launched three years after that event. Our mission was to defend both democracy and the rule of law.
The attacks were a crime against humanity. But instead of treating them as a crime it was turned into an occasion to launch aggressive and illegal wars. The Nuremberg trials against the Nazis who started World War II defined aggressive war as the ultimate crime because it held within it all lesser crimes.
In our show today we examine the new evidence on who was responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001. The new evidence is a six year old FBI report released on President Biden’s order last month. Biden was told by the families of the victims of 9/11 that unless this report was released he was not welcome at any of the memorial services.
The FBI report demonstrates the complicity of the government of Saudi Arabia in the attacks. It was two Saudi Arabian government officials that helped the first two hijackers when they came to America. They were given money and help to get into flight school. They then hijacked American Airlines plane and flew it into. Senator Bob Graham was the head of the Intelligence Committee that investigated what happened on September 11th, 2001. Whistle blower Thomas Drake was a top official at the National Security Agency.
Guest – Paul Jay is the editor of the blog the theanalysis.news. We will discuss with him the kind of movement that is needed to reverse the nuclear arms race as well as to bring about a democratic organization of the economy.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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Law and Disorder September 11, 2023
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Can President Donald Trump Be President Again?
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court became the most conservative it has been in 90 years, with conservative justices controlling decisions with a comfortable 6-3 majority. We can no longer take any Constitutional “rights” or “liberties” we thought we had for granted. Prior Supreme Court rulings that aimed at ensuring fairness, equal opportunity, reproductive freedom, and a participatory government—including for those who were not born into the favored, elite classes—are now at great risk.
Today, with the help of Stephen Rohde, our favorite constitutional scholar as our guest, we examine two very important constitutional issues: first, the question of: “How safe is freedom of the press in our country today?” We do this by looking at the new challenges being leveled at the landmark 1964 case, New York Times v. Sullivan, a case granting protection to a newspaper when it prints a libelous story about a public official or public figure but does so without actual malice. Is that press protection about to disappear? Then, we change gears a bit and ask our guest about the currently much-discussed question flowing from the fact that former President Donald Trump, now faces criminal charges for seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The question stemming from this is: “Does Sec. Three of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution stating that any American official who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution is disqualified from holding any future office if they, and I quote, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or provided “aid and comfort to our enemies” mean that Trump is now disqualified from becoming president again? The Constitution does not spell out how to enforce this ban, It was applied twice in the late 1800’s, when it was used against former members of the Confederacy. Today, a number of State Attorneys Generals, and others, are contemplating this question and, in a few cases, preparing to take the matter to court, given their belief that Trump should now, because of his actions on and around the January 6th insurrection, be disqualified from holding any future federal office.
Guest – Stephen Rohde recently published a fabulous review of a new book by Samantha Barbas, titled Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York v. Sullivan. Steve Rohde is a writer, lecturer, and political activist who practiced civil rights, civil liberties, and intellectual property law for almost 50 years. He is past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and a co-founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, while also playing a leadership role in many other organizations. He writes book reviews for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ms. Magazine, and Truthdig.org. And his articles appear regularly in many online publications.
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A Sleeping Giant In American Politics
We are in the midst of a labor upsurge. One with the promise of delivering not only better wages, and working conditions, but the prospects of wider positive social change. There is a new fighting spirit in the land, expressed by this rise in labor militancy.
We can look back five years ago to the beginning of the upsurge in teacher militancy in red states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, and Arizona, where teachers struck, often illegally, to better not only their situation, but that of the communities they lived in. This upsurge has continued.
Recently, we have seen the great success of the Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, coming together to form a union and Starbucks workers across the country have also unionized. Meanwhile, the writers and actors in the Hollywood movie and television industry have been on strike for several months. The Democratic party, which get a lot of money from the entertainment industry, has not lifted a finger to help them.
The unemployment rates for actors is 90% and only 2% of them can make a living out of acting.“Euphoria“ star Sydney Sweeney said “They no longer pay actors what they used to and with streamers you no longer get substantial residuals.” Eighty percent of the union makes less than $26,000 a year, not enough to qualify for union health insurance.
The captains of finance and industry run and control the Democratic Party. They made sure that Bernie Sanders did not get the nomination in 2016 and 2020. The leadership of the labor movement most often supports the Democratic party, explaining that they are the lesser of two evils. The late great journalist, Glen Ford called the Democratic Party, “the more effective of two evils“. He would have cited as proof of this the Biden administration’s recent intervention which prevented the powerful railroad workers union from going on strike this summer.
Guest – Al Bradbury is the editor of Labor Notes and an advocate and practitioner of labor militancy. Labor Notes is a media and organizational project since 1978 that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back into the labor movement. Editor, Al Bradbury join the staff of Labor Notes in 2012 after working with hospital workers as a researcher and organizer for the Service Employees local 49 in Oregon.
Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith, Jim Lafferty and Maria Hall
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