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 21, 2022
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Ukraine, Russia, NATO and United States Conflict Analysis
As attacks escalate in Ukraine, the push for a no-fly zone over the country grows stronger. However last week there were indicators that top Ukrainian negotiators are moving toward a cease-fire deal. This comes as we’ve reported last week that the United States has baited the Russian bear repeatedly, starting in 1990 with the breakup of the Soviet Union. At that time, US Secretary of State James Baker promised the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the US-led NATO organization would not move “one inch” east towards Russia. This promise was broken.
The Russians were betrayed.Since then, NATO has recruited 11 former Soviet bloc and Warsaw Pact countries into its military organization. Led by the United States, NATO is an organization has played an aggressive role, having carried out the bombings of Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Libya.
NATO has placed missiles in Poland within 100 miles of the Russian border. Missiles on the long border between Ukraine and Russia could hit Moscow in 10 minutes making it impossible for Russia to defend itself. Russia’s attempts to make United States understand that they have crossed a red line has been consistently rejected.
This is not to defend Russia’s actions but to place them in historical context. The world now has come to the edge of an abyss. A nuclear war could easily be started, annihilating all of humanity. The rule of law must be restored.
Russia must honor a cease-fire and withdraw. The United States must forswear arming Ukraine and recruiting the Ukraine into NATO. Ukraine must go forward as a neutral country like Austria or Finland.
Guest – Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign correspondent, 15 of them with The New York Times, covering conflicts in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the former Yugoslavia. He learned overseas that the evils of empire are the external expression of white supremacy, just as mass incarceration, which he describes as the civil rights issue of our age, is the most brutal internal expression of white supremacy. Prisons , he writes, are the modern iteration of slave plantations. Hedges is the author of 14 books, The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, a graduate of Harvard Divinity school, and an ordained Presbyterian minister. chrishedges.substack.com
—-
Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives
Assata Shakur is an inspiration to many young Black and brown activists today. She was a Black Panther Party member in New York in 1968 when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said that the Panthers were the single “greatest threat to the internal security of the country.“ Hoover launched the Cointelpro program to eliminate the Black Panthers.
When the Panthers broke up, Assata became a member of the Black Liberation Army. She was seriously wounded and apprehended in 1973 by state troopers in a shoot-out on a New Jersey highway. She was tried and convicted of murdering a state trooper even though the medical evidence showed that she was badly injured and could not have fired a gun.
Assata escaped from prison in 1979 and five years later, she was given political asylum in revolutionary Cuba where she lives today. The FBI has put a $2 million bounty on her head. She has a target on her back inasmuch as she is wanted dead or alive.
Guest – Donna Murch, associate professor of history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Professor Murch, who specializes in African-American and US History, Black Radicalism, and History of Mass Incarceration, is known as the historian of the Black Panther Party. She has recently written the book “Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives” published by Haymarket Books. In it, she analyzes the forces giving rise to Black Power and Black radicalism, mass incarceration, the militarization of the police who target people of color, and the genesis of Black Lives Matter.
————————————–
Law and Disorder March 14, 2022
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Russia, Deescalation And War Crimes
The Nuremberg tribunal called aggression “the supreme international crime” because it contains within it all other crimes. German Nazi leaders were tried, convicted, and hung at Nuremberg for the German war of aggression they began in September of 1939 when they invaded Poland and started World War II.
The guilty verdicts at Nuremberg were not merely “victors’ justice.” Its precepts were incorporated into the UN Charter. The Charter, which is a treaty ratified by the countries of the world, established a process for keeping the peace and “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” War is outlawed with the only exception being self-defense after an armed attack or with the permission of the Security Council.
Russia is guilty of aggression against Ukraine. But that being said, the United States has baited the Russian bear repeatedly, starting in 1990 with the breakup of the Soviet Union. At that time, US Secretary of State James Baker promised the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the US-led NATO organization would not move “one inch” east towards Russia. This promise was broken.
The Russians were betrayed.
Since then, NATO has recruited 11 former Soviet bloc and Warsaw Pact countries into its military organization. Led by the United States, NATO is an organization has played an aggressive role, having carried out the bombings of Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Libya.
NATO has placed missiles in Poland within 100 miles of the Russian border. Missiles on the long border between Ukraine and Russia could hit Moscow in 10 minutes making it impossible for Russia to defend itself. Russia’s attempts to make United States understand that they have crossed a red line has been consistently rejected.
This is not to defend Russia’s actions but to place them in historical context. The world now has come to the edge of an abyss. A nuclear war could easily be started, annihilating all of humanity. The rule of law must be restored.
Russia must honor a cease-fire and withdraw. The United States must forswear arming Ukraine and recruiting the Ukraine into NATO. Ukraine must go forward as a neutral country like Austria or Finland.
Guest – Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University and directs the Nuclear Studies Program. at that institution. Peter and Oliver Stone wrote The Untold History of the United States and also produced a showtime documentary series based on the book.
—-
Ukraine Invasion Economic Analysis
Horrific images of the war in Ukraine and the now more than 2 million displaced persons streaming over Ukraine’s border continue to emerge. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is calling for a no-fly-zone over Ukraine and the corporate media is hyping more punishing sanctions against Russia.
So far, Joe Biden has resisted calls for a no-fly-zone, apparently mindful that enforcing a no-fly-zone would mean the US Air Force shooting down Russian planes and bombing Russian ground installations that provide Russian forces with anti-aircraft support. That could well devolve into a nuclear confrontation.
The United States and other Western countries have imposed sanctions against Russia, including expelling some Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system, essentially barring them from international transactions and effectively blocking Russian exports and imports, as well as banning imports of Russian oil and gas. But these sanctions harm not the Russian oligarchs, but the Russian people while raising gas prices for people in the United States.
The prospect of cyberwarfare lurks in the background, which could redound to the detriment of people around the world, including those of us in the United States. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies continue to send massive armaments to Ukraine, to the delight of the huge military contractors.
While Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine constitutes illegal aggression prohibited by the UN Charter, it is necessary to analyze the history and geopolitics as well as the role NATO has played in the region, in order to understand both the context for the conflict and how it could have been prevented.
Guest – Corinna Mullin, an organizer and professor of political science and political economy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Brooklyn College-CUNY in New York. Corinna is also a member of the steering committee of the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures.
——————————
Law and Disorder March 7, 2022
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Russian Invasion of Ukraine Analysis
We turn to the on-going war between Russia and Ukraine. Let me introduce this topic by sharing, briefly, a few of my own thoughts on the matter. I believe the Russian invasion and its on-going deadly and destructive military assault in Ukraine is, of course, just plain wrong. I believe it mirrors, albeit to a much lesser extent, America’s deadly and destructive military assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan, to say nothing of Vietnam, Central America and too many other places to recount here. I believe Russia should end its war before its impact spreads far beyond the current conflict; before it provides an even greater opportunity than it already has to the capitalist war profiteers in America, and further emboldens the imperial designs of America, thereby radically changing the future in ways too dire to contemplate.
I believe the severe sanctions imposed on Russia will have little impact on Putin and the Russian oligarchs but will have a devastating impact on the working-class people of Russia, and of the entire world. I believe that the United States bears at least as much blame for the war as does Russia, and probably more. That may, at first blush, seem an odd thing to believe. But if you stay tuned, today’s guest on the war will explain why he and I believe this to be true. Lastly, I am personally saddened, beyond adequate description, over the fact of this new war. It, like America’s illegal and devastating wars in other countries, tells me that since the days of the cave man wielding his club, while the weapons used by warring sides to resolve their differences have advanced and become far more deadly and sophisticated, we humans have not, ourselves, found the way we resolve our disputes beyond that of the cave man with his hand-wielding club.
Guest – Richard Becker is the Western Region Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition; that is Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. Richard Becker is a regular contributor to The Liberation newspaper, a publication of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, of which he is a member. And Mr. Becker is the author of Palestine, Israel and the US Empire, as well as of the book, The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks.
—-
A New Wave Of Book Banning
Book banning is the most widespread form of censorship in the United States. It’s when government officials, private individuals, or organizations remove books from libraries, school reading lists, or bookstores because they object to the content or themes contained therein. Children’s books are the main targets.
Often, complaints are that the book contains is sexually explicit, contains graphic violence, has offensive language, or shows disrespect for parents and family. Censors claim they’re afraid the contents are dangerous for kids, or that they’ll cause young people to raise questions, and incite critical inquiry among children that parents, political groups, or religious organizations deem inappropriate or aren’t ready to address.
Before the 1970s book bans typically focused on obscenity. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and Ulysses by James Joyce were often banned. From the late 1970s on, attacks focused on ideologies. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Catcher in the Rye, and Harry Potter are among the 50 of the top banned books in this country.
A new wave of book banning in public and school libraries is sweeping the nation in 2022. It’s been under way since debates have percolated over critical race theory and what students should learn in the classroom. Several states are cutting funding for books written by authors in specific communities.
Guest – Christopher Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. He previously served as president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the bookseller’s voice in the fight against censorship. Before that, he was executive director of Media Coalition, a trade association that defends the First Amendment rights of producers and distributors of media. Christopher is the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America by Beacon Press, which won the 2008 Eli Oboler Award of the American Library Association. His forthcoming book is How Free Speech Saved Democracy.
———————————