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 March 10, 2008
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- Update: Co-host Heidi Boghosian delivers latest information on Dr. Sami Al-Arian’s hunger strike and information about NYC screenings of the documentary USA vs. Al-Arian
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
In Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, author Saidiya Hartman returns to Ghana and takes the reader with her to gain another perspective on one of the oldest and deepest divides in America: Slavery.
Saidiya Hartman is an expert on the African slave trade. She chose Ghana because it was the center for the slave trade with several key ports. Every man, woman, and child is measured against quantities of tobacco, sugar, coffee, copper pots, or brass bracelets. Reviews have described Lose Your Mother as a travel memoir on the surface but deeper in the thought-provoking chapters are angry meditations on slavery and its legacy.
Guest-Saidiya Hartman.
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Combatants for Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Fighters-Turned-Peace-Activists Speak Out
Here on Law and Disorder we’ve discussed the deepening crisis between Israel and Palestine. We spoke with Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine.
Today we’re joined by Israeli and Palestinian peace activists Yonathan Shapira and Bassam Aramin, both members of a group called Combatants for Peace. It’s made up of former fighters from both Israel and the Occupied Territories. Shapira is a former elite commando with the Israeli military. Aramin was an armed member of Fatah and spent seven years in an Israeli prison. His ten-year-old daughter Abir was shot dead by an Israeli soldier last year. We’re also joined by Donna Baranski-Walker – executive director of Rebuilding Alliance, that is partnering with Combatants For Peace. Below are images of Abir and funeral procession.
Law and Disorder hosts also discuss with Bassam Aramin updates on the Israeli court case to re-open the investigation of the death of Abir Aramin, Bassam’s daughter. The investigation was previously closed for lack of evidence.
Law and Disorder March 3, 2008
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Civil Rights Attorney Lynne Stewart Describes Larry Davis Case
Today we welcome back civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart to discuss the recent stabbing death of Larry Davis in an upstate New York prison. Davis became known in the 80s when he was suspected of murdering drug dealers in the city. When police raided his apartment, Davis fired a pistol and shotgun from a darkened room and fled.
After more than a two week NYPD manhunt, Davis was captured. Davis’ legal defense included Lynne Stewart and prominent civil rights attorney Bill Kunstler who provided evidence of a frame up. In a recent New York Times article chronicling Davis’ story, it was written that Davis’ defense was quote made up of assertions without evidence.
Guest – Lynne Stewart
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Film Documentary: Taxi To The Dark Side
Alex Gibney’s Taxi To The Dark Side examines the use of torture by the United States. The horrors of Abu Ghraib , Guantanamo and Bagram prisons are revealed in this movie with disturbing and ugly clarity. Law and Disorder hosts talk about the film with Al McCoy, author of A Question of Torture “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror†Professor McCoy tells listeners about how medieval water torture exploits the Mammalian diving reflex a “death” experience hard wired into human biology. U.S. Army and CIA interrogation manuals
Guest – Al McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror†and also “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.â€
Law and Disorder February 25, 2008
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- Hosts Update: Fidel Castro and Cuba in the news.
Encore Segment: Naomi Wolf – The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
Law and Disorder hosts were live in the studio with Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolf is a feminist, social critic and political activist. The New York Times called her book, The Beauty Myth, one of the most important books of the 20th century. Wolf is the co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, teaching young women to become leaders and agents of change. Naomi Wolf blog in the Huffington Post
Her latest book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot is a call to return to the beliefs of our founding fathers. Wolf’s new book illustrates ten steps historically taken by leaders who are attempting to dismantle a democracy. Wolf jokingly called it the The Greatest Hits of Facism.
In The End of America, Wolf gives voice to the cause of every American patriot: the preservation of the Constitution and the liberties it embodies and protects.
“Recent history has profound lessons for us in the U.S. today about how fascist, totalitarian, and other repressive leaders seize and maintain power, especially in what were once democracies. The secret is that these leaders all tend to take very similar, parallel steps. The Founders of this nation were so deeply familiar with tyranny and the habits and practices of tyrants that they set up our checks and balances precisely out of fear of what is unfolding today. We are seeing these same kinds of tactics now closing down freedoms in America, turning our nation into something that in the near future could be quite other than the open society in which we grew up and learned to love liberty,†stated Wolf.
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Servants of Wealth: The Right’s Assault on Economic Justice
“Freedom and democracy†are two words we’ve been hearing from the right wing in this country for 25 years. In their quest to shore up support for the politics of wealth and privilege, the Right has organized patiently and consistently by focusing on a core ideology to amass a formidable base. The Right’s commentary on world affairs, morality, the state, and the economy, though, has had an overarching focus, namely to eliminate social equality as a legitimate public policy goal. Its success has resulted in one of the most dramatic, undemocratic, and insidious transfers of wealth and power in recent American history.
Guest – John Ehrenberg, author of the book “Servants of Wealth: The Right’s Assault on Economic Justice.†A professor of political science at Long Island University, in this, his third book, critically analyzes the rise of an ideologically coherent Right. He dissects their themes of military weakness, moral decay, racial anxiety, and hostility to social welfare to reveal their central organizing objective of protecting wealth and assaulting equality.