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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.

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Law and Disorder September 13, 2010

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People’s Council on Climate Justice

From climate change to man made disasters such as the BP oil catastrophe, the People’s Council on Climate Justice are pushing for a structure of accountability. In April, the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia brought hundreds of activists and indigenous people together. Our guests today attended that conference, we’re joined by activist Jeff Jones, Mychal Johnson and Monique Harden. Mychal, a Bronx activist led the US delegation in Bolivia and delivered reports to Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez. Monique Hardin joins us by phone, she is the Co-Director & Attorney for Advocates for Environmental Human Rights in New Orleans. She began defending the rights of those most impacted by the Gulf disaster and now the BP disaster.  Monique co-founded Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, headquartered in New Orleans in 2003.

Jeff Jones:

  • The developed world did not agree to any definitive cuts to carbon emissions. People from the global south that are being impacted by climate change, led by President Evo Morales, called us together in April to talk about what we could do.
  • Cochabamba is at an altitude of 8200 feet. Where does Cochabamba get its water, mainly from melting glaciers, there wasn’t a melting glacier in sight, they were all gone.  There is going to be a water crisis, and the Bolivians know that. They’re reaching out for some solidarity and help before these intractable problems overwhelm the people of Bolivia.
  • How do we build a movement that will force our government in the US to take meaningful action, in terms of addressing the problems of climate. What kinds of policy and investments can we make that result in transforming the way we live our lives and the way we do business?
  • We take the subways for granted, one third of all public transit trips daily in the country take place in New York City. The cut backs in the public transit will lead to climate pollution.
  • The philosophy of living in harmony with the Earth, respecting the Earth, that the purpose of our lives is not to use up every resource we can.
  • We would like to live our lives in such a way, that we have what we need be happy. We can breathe our air and drink our water, that’s something we have a right to, but we don’t need more than that.
  • The People’s World Conference on Climate Change

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Mychal Johnson :

  • We just recently fought to stop a major highway, Highway 87 from being expanded, the Major Deagan which would probably increased poor air quality and asthma rates. We have to inform the public about what we’re headed for and what it means to go up 1 degree Celsius.
  • I went to Cochabamba to learn and was nominated and became president of the Harmony With Nature Working Group. There were 17 working groups.
  • We put together a document of conscious thought of how we could move forward in harmony with nature.
  • I was asked by the ambassador of Bolivia to present with the Harmony With Nature Working Group and 4 other working groups our conclusive documents to President Morales, President Chavez and 17 other heads of state. We don’t own our planet, our planet sustains our life.
  • It’s takes a steady outcry for change to do anything differently in the community.

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Monique Hardin :

  • I live in New Orleans Louisiana. We were part of a US delegation to the Worlds People’s Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba.  I heard about the BP oil drilling disaster in Bolivia, when I got to New Orleans I found out 11 people were killed. The rest has been this real odyssey around the treatment of folks who have been put out of work, the posturing and positions taken by some of our elected officials who want to syphon money and not restore and recover.
  • This need for documentation in the relief effort is blocking people’s ability to fully recover. It’s an ongoing problem even though it’s no longer on national TV.
  • Galvanizing around the point of what we can do as people to change this. What is it that we can do to insure that our dependence on fossil fuels is changed and our ideas and habits around consumption is changed because it’s killing us.
  • It’s killing people, it’s killing our environment. It’s creating a bleak future for us if we continue down this path. So, looking at crystal clear steps in holding governments accountable but also holding ourselves accountable.
  • One of things we at Advocates for Environmental Human Rights would like to do is build connections with New Yorkers around the advocacy of rights based recovery, whether its environmental injustice or racism or a BP disaster. There has to be an obligation to remedy the damage caused.
  • With climate change it means that children can get separated from parents, that families can no longer take care of themselves like they used to.  Whatever your sense of normalcy was is ripped from under you.
  • What we have here is five years with five major disasters, hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Icke and the BP oil drilling disaster. So, people get the point there is no plan. There is no process for you. You get the runaround, you get tied up on bureaucracy that’s poorly funded.
  • We can’t continue to live like this. This is dangerous.

Guest – Monique Hardin,  Co-Director & Attorney for Advocates for Environmental Human Rights in New Orleans. She began defending the rights of those most impacted by the Gulf disaster and now the BP disaster.  Monique co-founded Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, headquartered in New Orleans in 2003.

Guest – Mychal Johnson, member of US delegation to the People’s Council on Climate Justice. Bronx activist and member of the Bronx Community Board 1. Mychal is also a Bronx Real Estate Broker.

Guest – Jeff Jones – He was a communications director for ten years at Environmental Advocates of New York. He now heads up his own consulting firm called Jeff Jones Strategies that specializes in media expertise, writing and campaign strategies that help grassroots and progressive groups to achieve their goals.

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Law and Disorder September 6, 2010

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Community and Resistance on the Gulf Coast: Five Years After Hurricane Katrina, Four Months After the BP Drilling Disaster. Speakers: Rosa Clemente, Jordan Flaherty, Damon Hewitt, and Shantrelle Lewis. Moderated by attorney Eric Poulos. This week we hear from Jordan Flaherty and Rosa Clemente.

Jordan Flaherty. Jordan is the author of the book Floodlines. He’s a journalist and community organizer based in New Orleans.  He was the first journalist with a national audience to write about the Jena Six case, and played an important role in bringing the story to worldwide attention. His post-Katrina writing in ColorLines Magazine shared a journalism award from New America Media for best Katrina-related coverage in the Ethnic press, his reporting has been featured in the New York Times, and audiences around the world have seen the news segments he’s produced for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, GritTV, and Democracy Now.  Safe Streets

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Rosa Clemente, community organizer, independent journalist and hip-hop activist. She was the vice presidential running mate of 2008 Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Clemente was born and raised in South Bronx, New York. She is a graduate of the University of Albany and Cornell University.  Clemente has been delivering workshops, presentations and commentary for over ten years.

Clemente’s academic work has focused on research of national liberation struggles within the United States, with a specific focus on the Young Lords Party and the Black Liberation Army. While a student at SUNY Albany, she was President of the Albany State University Black Alliance (ASUBA) and Director of Multicultural Affairs for the Student Association. At Cornell she was a founding member of La Voz Boriken, a social/political organization dedicated to supporting Puerto Rican political prisoners and the independence of Puerto Rico.

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Author, professor Jack Rasmus joins hosts during fund raising in an interview about his recent book, Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression. Rasmus says another bank failure in the world could plunge economies into a depression. Who are the banks lending to?  Rasmus says banks  haven’t lent to small, medium businesses in the US, they lending collapse has gone on for 15 months. The banks have lent to hedge funds, private equity firms and speculators who have invested in foreign markets, Chinese commodities, oil and gold. Meanwhile, private investors and non-bank businesses continue to invest trillions into derivatives and speculative markets away from solid investments and production.  Review

Jack Rasmus:

  • I think its necessary to explain what’s really going on. How we got here, how it’s different. Why is it so difficult to extracate from it?  The first 3 chapters are theoretical, the next few are historical.
  • 1907-1914 – You bail out the banks, and there’s no fiscal stimulus and what you get is an extended period of stagnation. It didn’t end until the massive fiscal spending of WWI.
  • A type II Epic Recession, the banks aren’t bailed out, and there isn’t sufficient fiscal stimulus. We had two banking crisis, then followed by another one in 1932 and 1933.
  • Jump forward, there’s a possibility of another banking crisis somewhere in the world, if so, then a global depression. Banks have been engaged in this speculative shift, where they built up this huge level of debt.
  • There are about 25 million without jobs. The government number is 14 million, the U3 unemployment.
  • 7 million homes foreclosed. 3 million over 90 days delinquent.
  • The first thing you got to do is create a massive 10 million job program. You got to finance 10 million jobs and that will cost a trillion dollars.
  • The banks are sitting on a trillion dollar cash horde. Private businesses, non bank businesses are sitting on a 1.84 trillion dollar cash horde.
  • That’s not counting the 750 billion. The money is there, it’s not being spent after they’ve been bailed out.
  • Obama was only trying to put a floor on the consumption collapse. Unemployment benefits, give some states money, retirees, but that’s played out.
  • What we need in this country is what I call utility banking.  Create a 401K pool that the government matches by individual contributions and invest in alternative energies.
  • The Global Money Parade: There is 10 to 20 trillion dollars of speculative banking sloshing around the world now causing all these bubbles. In the hands of shadow banking institutions, wealthy investors who are tied into the major commercial banks. They’re creating financial fragility as more and more non bank businesses participate in derivatives trading.

Guest – Author and Professor, Jack Rasmus teaches in the Department of Economics and Politics at St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California.

Solutions list from our March 2009 interview with Professor Jack Rasmus.

Solutions:

  • No way out of housing crisis without nationalizing housing market.
  • Create a new government agency and properly fund it, – 900 billion dollars – it would create a small residential and business loan agency.  Go in there and reduce long term principle and interest to long term averages that existed before 2002’s run up of huge speculation.
  • That would be for all loans, not just the ones in foreclosure. Which would stimulate consumption not just shore up housing industry.  Similar to the Homeowners Loan Corporation of the 1930s.
  • Auto Companies – You can’t just have 3 US Auto Companies surviving. They have to be nationalized if they’re going to put that much government money into them.  We don’t give them a penny unless they stop their investment and expansions overseas.
  • Ford is building big plants in Petersburg Russia. GM is building big plants in Shang Hai, China. Immediately they should be required to build cars with proper mileage.  Bring back 2 trillion of the 6 trillion that’s been stuff away in offshore tax havens in the last 20 years.

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Law and Disorder August 30, 2010

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Climate Ground Zero – Update with Jimmy Tobias

We get an update from Mountaintop Removal activist Jimmy Tobias. Jimmy was arrested this summer with others for using direct action to shut down a coal mining mountaintop removal effort in Virginia. He was held on a 3500.00 bail and later released. A New York Times editorial states that movement to slow down and stop the mountaintop removal mining in that area is gaining traction and the Obama Administration is restricting permits for mountaintop removal mining.  Recent Action.

Jimmy Tobias:

Guest – Jimmy Tobias, activist and direct action protester against Mountaintop Removal.

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Blackwater Reaches Deal on U.S. Export Violations

The private security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide has reached an agreement with the State Department for hundreds of violations of US export control regulations. The company now called US Training Services will pay the US government 42 million dollars in fines to avoid criminal charges on export violations. Violations include shipping weapons to Iraq hidden inside containers of dog food. There are other legal troubles facing Blackwater officials, but the company continues to obtain government contracts. Last June, Blackwater was awarded a 120 million dollar contract to provide security at a State Department regional office in Afghanistan and the CIA renewed the firm’s 100 million dollar security contract in Kabul.

Jeremy Scahill:

  • This is a company that has been repeatedly involved with criminal activity, with murder and has gotten off scott-free.  It has been shielded by its handlers at the State Department or at the DOD.
  • The idea that this company can pay what amounts to 146 thousand dollars per violation is outrageous.
  • The real meat of it is the murder they’re involved with, the human rights violations.
  • What would it take for this company to be completely knocked off the US Government payroll?
  • US operations in Afghanistan now, have become so dependent on Blackwater, both in the CIA and State Department.  Eric Prince, the owner of Blackwater who has since fled to the United Arabs Emirates, which has no extradition with the United States. He moved there after five of his top deputies were indicted on conspiracy and weapons charges. This is a man who knows where the bodies are buried, he was working for the CIA, for the Joint Special Operations Command. They (Blackwater) could reveal details of action that would horrify the average American if they knew this was being done in their name.
  • After 9/11, Eric Prince cut a deal with the number 3 man at the CIA, Alvin Buzzy Krongard. Find Fix and Finish Operation.
  • There are also cases of I’ve heard of Blackwater working inside of Syria.
  • Two former Blackwater employees, a man and a woman, the man worked in war zones, the woman worked on the financial side. They have filed a whistleblower case against Blackwater, alleging extrajudicial killings and bilking US taxpayers.  Susan Burke recently deposed Eric Prince.
  • Blackwater is involved with secret assassination programs in countries around the world, where we aren’t at war, where we aren’t informing those countries.
  • The only serious challenges to Blackwater, aka Xe, aka US Training Services are people like Michael Ratner and Susan Burke. Bill: Stop Outsourcing Security Act.

Guest – Jeremy Scahill is the author of the international best-seller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine and a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill has won numerous awards for his reporting, including the prestigious George Polk Award, which he won twice. While a correspondent for Democracy Now!, Scahill reported extensively from Iraq through both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
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Cuba Travel Ban

Will the Obama Administration come to a decision on how much to enable travel to Cuba.  The Administration could simply reinstate President Clinton’s policy which is a costly case by case application or grant general licenses to the remaining 11 categories of travel to Cuba. General license would include schools, cultural institutions, Chambers of Commerce, religious bodies, World Affairs Councils, humanitarian organizations and more.
Sandra Levinson:

  • The travel regs are not really travel regs. They are regulations set up by the US Treasury Department at the instigation of the US State Department. You can’t spend money in Cuba.
  • President Carter lifted the travel ban, there were direct flights to Cuba during the brief time he was president.
  • During the Clinton Administration, we were able to take a number of trips. Ban in effect for a number of rationales, we don’t wanna give money to Castro. It always surprised me that William F. Buckley was in support of ending the travel ban to Cuba.
  • We can always do professional trips. I’m leading a trip for professional artists.
  • Lawyers traveling to Cuba fall under the general license, it’s by assertion. You simply say as legal professionals you’re doing legal research.
  • We’ve been to Cuba so much, our travel is not formal, it’s intimate.
  • Although the food and medicine embargo was lifted several years ago, the regulations about payment are so tough on the Cubans, everyone else can buy on credit. The Cubans can’t, they have to buy up front, before a ship leaves US territory with the food, with the medicine.
  • I fell in love with Cuba, I arrived on July 4, 1969. I was there for six weeks. Socialism with salsa.
  • On the fifth day of my first trip, Fidel Castro taught me how to cut sugar cane. I think he is the one of the smartest leaders we’ve had in this hemisphere.  I think he’s been in power that long, because we have not had relations with Cuba.

Guest –  Sandra Levinson,  Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City and Director of the Center’s Cuban Art Space. Facebook link

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