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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.
Law and Disorder January 1, 2024
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What Kind Of Nation?
What kind of nation cuts off of food, water, medicine, electricity, and fuel to 2 1/3 million Palestinians and then bombs them as they sit trapped in the open air prison which is the Gaza Strip? What kind of national leader in his capacity as Israeli Minister of Defense, says “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.“ Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu promised that “We will turn Gaza into a deserted island.”
What kind of a nation vetoes a cease-fire as the US did in a 13 to 1 vote when it was proposed at the United Nations Security Council? The Israeli and American nations finds themselves morally isolated on the world stage.
The American government supplies the weapons of war to a nation that has so far annihilated at least 20,000 people, including 8000 children. The Israelis use weapons made in the US and paid for by our tax dollars.
American foreign policy is driven by the military industrial complex. It’s a country whose weapons industry is closely allied with the weapons industry of Israel and a country whose government is heavily influenced by the Israeli lobby, a lobby that should be forced to register as an agent of a foreign country.
Guest – Aaron Maté about the continuing genocide in Gaza, which is now approaching 100 days. He is a journalist with The Gray Zone where he hosts “Pushback“. He is the co-host of Useful Idiots. In 2019 Aaron Maté won the Izzy award for outstanding achievement in independent media for his Russiagate coverage in The Nation.
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Unilateral Sanity Could Save The World: Nothing Can Be Changed Until Its Faced
As we begin 2024, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists just reset its nuclear doomsday clock for the 24th time in its 76-year history. They created the doomsday clock just after WW2 to visually represent the threat of global nuclear annihilation. Although the precise time won’t be announced until later this month, the most recent change was just one year ago: in January 2023, when the clock was moved forward to 90 seconds til midnight – the closest to midnight ever.
What will 2024 bring? Will we get swept up in momentum and fervor toward global catastrophe? Or can we muster the will and courage to act … and try to save one another – other animals, the earth, and ourselves?
In his article, Unilateral Sanity Could Save the World, our guest: author and political analyst Norman Solomon, invokes Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy of keeping a “pessimism of the intellect,” but “an optimism of the will.”
Guest – Norman Solomon is a long-time associate of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the national director of RootsAction.org, and the Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death; and his latest book, War Made Invisible: How American Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine which was published by the New Press in June 2023.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Maria Hall
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Law and Disorder December 25, 2023
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Enforcing Insurrection Clause Against Former President Donald Trump
On December 19, Colorado’s top court became the first in the nation to rule that Donald Trump is disqualified from holding office because he engaged in insurrection against the Constitution on January 6, 2021. With this ruling, the Colorado secretary of state will exclude Trump’s name from the state’s Republican primary ballot.
Voters in three other states are also challenging Trump’s eligibility to appear on primary ballots based on the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification clause. It disqualifies from office any individual who has taken an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”
In last week’s Colorado decision, a four-justice majority wrote that they were “mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.” As the other three cases are being decide, some are concerned that enforcing the constitutional accountability clause could escalate political violence.
In a recent Newsweek editorial, Praveen Fernandes emphasized the importance of judges heeding the warning of legal scholar Sherrilyn Ifill. She notes that when judges have hesitated in the past to apply the provisions of the 14th Amendment, it has had the effect of undermining our democracy’s promise.
Guest – Praveen Fernandes serves as the vice president at the Constitutional Accountability Center in Washington, DC. The center is a public interest law firm and think tank committed to realizing the progressive ideals embedded in the Constitution’s text and history. Praveen brings to the table nearly two decades of experience working on issues related to law, democracy, and civil rights, both within and outside the government.
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Legacy of Peace and the Treaty of Ghent
On February 17, 1815, the United States and Great Britain both ratified the Ghent Treaty in Washington, officially ending the War of 1812. That year, David Low Dodge founded New York Peace Society, the nation’s first formal peace movement. It was followed by the Massachusetts Peace Society. England founded a peace movement around the same time, with Switzerland and France following suit in 1821 and 1830, respectively. Most other European countries established peace movements after 1850.
Successful nonviolent protest strategies in the U.S. are most often associated with the Civil Rights Movement in the South during the 1950s and ‘60s. Leaders such as Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Jr., A.J. Muste, Bayard Rustin and John Lewis dedicated their lives to th philosophy of non-violence and studied its successful use by Mohandas Gandhi to free India from Britain’s colonial grip.
But as war and carnage wages in the Middle East and in Ukraine, and as political violence is on the uptick in the U.S., peaceful protests don’t seem to be as impactful as in earlier decades. Law & Disorder takes a look at the state of peace studies and peace actions in the United States and abroad.
Guest – Matt Meyer, historian and organizer, serves as Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association. It is the world’s leading consortium of university-based professors, scholars, students and community leaders. Matt is also the Senior Research Scholar of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst’s Resistance Studies Initiative and has been active with the War Resisters’ International and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and he serves on the A.J. Muste Institute board. The author/editor of more than a dozen books, Matt’s work focuses on 21st Century Decolonization, African Peace Studies, the Strategies and Tactics of Movement-building, the significance of support for political prisoners, and the Abolition of White Supremacy. SpiritofMandela
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Law and Disorder December 18, 2023
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Unwavering U.S. Support Of Israeli War Atrocity
Israel, with indispensable American support, is destroying the people of Gaza. They are being bombed by American planes dropping American bombs and shot at by Israeli soldiers, using American weapons and ammunition. Israel has prevented them from getting food and water, medical supplies and fuel. They are sick and starving. 85% of the population of 2.3 million have had their homes destroyed and are living outside in the cold without food, fuel medicine or clean water
Already some 20,000 Palestinians have been murdered, the majority, women and children. At least 800 children have had their limbs amputated. It is a one-sided war. The American equipped Israeli Air Force and Army is the fourth largest military force in the world. The Palestinians are essentially defenseless against this. They have been herded to the south tip of tiny Gaza, their homes, schools, hospitals pulverized. They are living in the streets, in the cold, with no sanitation, awaiting their certain destruction by starvation, dehydration, and cholera.
The American government has fully supported this genocidal operation with military supplies, diplomatic, cover, and propaganda. Last week, the United States voted to block a cease-fire resolution at the UN Security council – 13 to 1. The US and Israel are looked upon as moral outlaws by the rest of the world.
Why has the American government supported Israel? What is the history of this support for the Israeli colony which was set up in 1948 in the heart of the Arab world and has been expanding and displacing Palestinians ever since?
Professor Khalidi OpEd LA Times
Guest – Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and Director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. He was educated at Yale and Oxford universities and is the author of many books on the Middle East. He is also the author of Under Siege: PLO Decision Making During the 1982 War, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East and recently The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017.
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Anti-Semitic or Pro Palestine, Quick Silencing Of Student Protests
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past week or so, you know about the firings and attempted firing of university heads at M.I.T, Harvard, and Penn in the wake of the new Israeli-Palestinian war. At M.I.T. and Penn, their top bosses were, in fact, fired. So far, Claudine Gay at Harvard has held on to her job, but many still think her days there are numbered. The moves to get rid of these university bosses flowed from the claim that they were not strong enough in their condemnation of the October 7th Hamas attack, and of the way their students sloganized in the course of their boisterous on-campus protests against Israel, because of the humanitarian crisis resulting from what Israel is doing in Gaza.
In short, they were deemed to be, if not out and out anti-Semantic themselves, clearly insufficiently pro-Israel in their over-all statements and actions since this latest Israeli/Palestinian war began. Of course, there have been conflicts at many, many other U.S. colleges and university arising from the war, often resulting in the outlawing on campus of campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Put simply, despite the fact that a very significant pro-Palestine bias may exist among students on our nation’s campuses of higher learning, these students’ grownups know what’s best…and that means unwavering support for Israel and the supportive role played by the U.S. in that war. And it means trying to silence criticism of Israel and bold support for Palestine. Shout our certain slogans, such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, or “down with Zionism, down with Israeli apartheid”, or “Israel, Israel you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide”, and the censors won’t be long in attacking you, or simply silencing you.
Aside for my grief and anger over what is happening to the Palestinian people in this war, there are a couple of other aspects of all of this that have me particularly disturbed, have me angry and greatly worried. One is the simplistic, quick to condemn, efforts to shut down the actions and slogans of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The other is how reminiscent this is of how the ruling elite in this country went after the leadership, and rank-and-filers, in the anti-Vietnam war movement of the 60’s and early 70’s. Then, the charges were that the slogans and the demonstrations were “anti-American” and, in fact, down right “communistic.” I, along with a handful of other anti-Vietnam War leaders, was then called before the new House Un-American Activities Committee, to testify about the supposed, and I quote, “Soviet money and leadership that was supporting U.S. antiwar groups and coalitions.”
Are today’s pro-Palestinian leaders now to be called to account and asked by the authorities, “are you now or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist”? “Are you getting money from the Islamists?” Yes, the growing danger to free speech in our country, and the right to defend those who the government may disfavor, or claim to be the enemies of our people, is to be greatly feared. It often grows slowly, at first, like some cancerous viruses, but once it gathers strength…well, remember our history.
Guest – Stephen Rohde is a noted constitutional scholar, retired civil rights lawyer and activist. He is the past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the founder and current chair of Interfaith communities United for Justice and Peace; the author of Freedom of Assembly and American Words of Freedom. Steve Rohde is also a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Review of Books, TruthDig, and a leader in the national campaign to free imprisoned investigative reporter, Julian Assange.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith, Maria Hall and Jim Lafferty
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