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 June 9, 2008
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- U.S. Politicians and Scholars Are Helping Turkey Cover up WWI Armenian Genocide
- Cluster bomb ban treaty approved: US, China and Russia Oppose
- CCR Report: U.S. Government Allows Security Forces from Brutal Human Rights Abusing Regimes to Threaten Prisoners at Guantánamo
The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction
It was April 13, 1873 in Louisiana when a small army of white ex-Confederate soldiers enraged by freedmen asserting their new rights killed more than 60 African Americans who had occupied a courthouse. Today we talk with author and journalist Charles Lane. His recent book is titled The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. In the book, Lane uncovers a nearly forgotten historic post civil war massacre of African American men in Colfax, Louisiana and a white lawyer’s epic battle to bring the perpetrators to justice. Reviews call Lane’s book an electrifying piece of historical detective work that captures a gallery of characters from presidents to townspeople and re-creates the bloody days of Reconstruction. Lane discovered the Colfax Massacre case while covering the Supreme Court for The Washington Post.
Guest – Charles Lane, member of the editorial page staff, is the author of “The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction.”
—
Ann Ginger : Meiklejohn Civil Liberties
Today we’re delighted to have Ann Ginger on the program, she’s a lawyer, teacher, writer, and political activist. She is the founder and the executive director of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties, a think tank for human rights in Berkeley California. Here on Law and Disorder we’ve examine the practices and laws that have crippled civil and human rights in this country and now we take a look at ways law students and legal workers can bring them back.
Ann Ginger at Meiklejohn Civil Liberties has published Four Little Orange Books. The first is titled: Landmark Cases left Out of your Textbooks, the second is The Living Constitution, the third, Undoing The Bush/Cheney Legacy – Restoring Lost Liberties: A Tool Kit For Congress and fourth, Making the Universal Declaration the Supreme Law of the Land. Ann writes – the roles of successful lawyers and legal workers in the future will not be the same as the roles of successful lawyers before the Bush-Cheney “war on terrorism. “
Guest – Ann Ginger. Ann is Executive Director of Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, a center for peace law and human rights, with archives of historic cases. Founded in 1965, the Institute answers queries of clients and lawyers and trains interns to prepare reports on U.S. compliance with human rights treaties for submission to U.N. committees.
Ann learned early to use the law and history to work for peace and human rights, coming from an Irish Catholic, English Quaker, Russian Jewish, Midwestern newspaper family. As a lawyer, she won a civil liberties case in the U.S. Supreme Court. After her testimony as an expert witness on international law that applies in the U.S., a jury acquitted nuclear weapons protesters in Utah. She is now teaching Peace Law and Human Rights at San Francisco State University and long served on the Peace and Justice Commission that administers the Nuclear Free Zone Ordinance in Berkeley.
Law and Disorder June 2, 2008
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Host Updates:
- Military Commissions Trials For Guantanamo Prisoners
- FBI War Crimes File On Guantanamo
- Supreme Court Weighs Third Gitmo Case
- Abu Omar Kidnap Trial: 25 CIA Agents Indicted
- Related: Army Judge Is Replaced for Trial of Detainee
A radical new satire on U.S war profiteering in Iraq debuted last month. The movie is called War Inc., written by John Cusack and Jeremy Pikser. War Inc. is described as bringing to the screen what Naomi Klein has done in print. In Jeremy Scahill’s review, he writes quote “With 630 corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton on the US government payroll in Iraq getting 40 percent of the more than $2 billion Washington spends every week on the occupation, Cusack’s “futuristic†film is not far from the way things really are. The film stars John Cusack as Brand Hauser, a hit man for hire who is deployed to Turaqistan to a kill a Middle Eastern oil baron.
Guest – Jeremy Pikser, co-writer of the film War Inc., he’s also the co-writer of Bulworth and just finished a screenplay about the CIA coup that overthrew the government of Guatemala in 1954.
—
National Lawyers Guild Urges Israel To Permit Richard Falk To Enter Israel
Professor Richard Falk is the recently appointed Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who has been barred entry to Israel. He’s Professor of International Law at Princeton, will be the Council’s special investigator of Israeli behavior in the territories and this has incited furious objections from Yitzhak Levanon, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva.Falk replaced South African John Dugard, a veteran anti-apartheid activist. Falk is also a member of the Editorial Boards of The Nation and The Progressive. He’s the author of many books including Crimes of War: Iraq
Guest – Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books include Religion and Humane Global Governance; Human Rights Horizons; On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics; Explorations at the Edge of Time; Revolutionaries and Functionaries; The Promise of World Order; Indefensible Weapons; Human Rights and State Sovereignty; A Study of Future Worlds; This Endangered Planet; coeditor of Crimes of War.
Law and Disorder May 26, 2008
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Deepening Economic Crisis: What Laws Are In Place To Protect Against Economic Fleecing of the United States?
Law and Disorder Encore Interview: Two million families are on the brink of foreclosure, tent cities pop up along US city outskirts, and as UK press declare “depression†in the United States, we talk with Max Fraad Wolff , instructor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, New School University. The media has reported that millions of US families took out loans to big for their incomes and were foreclosed, but hosts look at The Glass Steagall Act, mortgage sharking and banking predators.
Max is a freelance researcher, strategist, and writer in the areas of international finance and macroeconomics. His work can be seen at the Huffington Post, The AsiaTimes, Prudent Bear, and many other outlets.
Related: People Sleep In Cars In Rich U.S. City
—
New York City Law Review Symposium: Preventing Torture
We hear a speech by Margaret Satterwaite on secret detention and extraordinary rendition at the New York City Law Review Symposium titled Preventing Torture. Margaret is the assistant professor of Clinical Law and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law. Her current research focuses on human rights in the “war on terror.†She directs the “Black Sites†Litigation Project at NYU and her recent publications include Rendered Meaningless: Extraordinary Rendition and the Rule of Law. Margaret is also co-chair of the Human Rights Interest Group and the American Society of International Law.
Margaret’s speech was part of a panel titled Protected Contexts a look at how states acting through private entities to rendition and also what obligations exist to prevent violence and torture. She was among several speakers we will be presenting in the coming weeks.
More about the Symposium: Preventing Torture
This Symposium brings together leading international and U.S. experts, including former military officials, academics, practitioners, human rights advocates, politicians, journalists, and students to explore recent developments in the international law of torture.
The General Comment addresses key fault lines in the absolute prohibition against torture and ill-treatment that have been opened in the name of counter-terrorism. It also underscores the applicability of the Convention to sexualized and gender violence, where perpetrated by state officials as well as where state officials acquiesce to private violence, including domestic violence.
Speakers will address the authority, adequacy, and policy implications of the General Comment. Since the U.S. is a State party to the CAT, speakers will also address the relevance of the Comment to current laws and practices of the Bush administration and to positive reforms and initiatives needed to bring U.S. law and practice into compliance with its international commitments to eliminate torture and ill-treatment in every sphere.