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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 August 16, 2021
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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
The spectacle of President Donald Trump and the palace intrigue in the White House has served daily to distract people from the political strategy and accomplishments of the radical right, which is taking over the Republican Party.
Over time, the GOP has been transformed into operation conducting a concerted effort to curb democratic rule in favor of capitalist interests in every branch of government, whatever the consequences. It is marching ever closer to the ultimate goal of reshaping the Constitution to protect monied interests. This gradual take over of a major political party happened steadily, over several decades, and often in plain sight.
Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean exposes the architecture of this change and it’s ultimate aim. She has written that “both my research and my observations as a citizen lead me to believe American democracy is in peril”.
Guest – Professor Nancy MacLean, whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, has been described by Publishers Weekly as “a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative… [and] a feat of American intellectual and political history.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan,named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994, MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy.
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The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World
In 1947 Congress passed the National Security Act which led to formation of the National Security Council and, under its direction, the CIA. Its original mandate was to collect and analyze strategic information for use in war. Though shrouded in secrecy, some CIA activities—such as covert military and cybersecurity operations—have drawn public scrutiny and criticism.
In 1948 the Security Council approved a secret directive, NSC 10/2, authorizing the CIA to carry out an array of covert operations. This essentially allowed the CIA to become a paramilitary organization. Before he died, George F. Kennan, the diplomat and Cold War strategist who sponsored the directive said that “in light of latter history, it was the greatest mistake I ever made.”
Since NSC 10/2 authorized violation of international law it also established an official policy of lying so as to cover up the lawbreaking.
Guest – Douglas Valentine, author of The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. Mr. Valentine’s rare access to CIA officials has resulted in portions of his research materials being archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center and John Jay College. He has written three books on CIA operations, including The Phoenix Program which documented the CIA’s elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture and assassination in Vietnam. His new book describes how many of these practices remain operational today.
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Law and Disorder August 9, 2021
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50th Anniversary Of The Attica Prison Uprising
September 9th marks the 50th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising and the subsequent massacre by New York State police and prison guards. The rebellion at Attica prison, a medieval looking place near Buffalo New York, began on September 9, 1971 and ended four days later with governor Nelson Rockefeller, and aspiring presidential candidate, ordering the massacre. It resulted in the most people ever killed in a civil setting in the history of the USA.
The rebellion was inspiring to many around the country and around the world in that it represented a growing movement fighting for prisoners and human rights.
Civil rights attorneys, many from the National Lawyers Guild, came from around the country to immediately respond to the massacre. They provided legal representation to inmates who were charged with crimes due to their involvement in the rebellion.
Many of the participants, particularly key organizers, were subject to abuse and torture by the prison guards after the rebellion was suppressed.
Guest – attorney Michael Deutsch from the Peoples Law Office in Chicago. He along with the late attorney Elizabeth Fink were the main lawyers for the Attica brothers. He represented several Attica brothers in criminal lawsuits and the brothers in a class action civil rights lawsuit which lasted over 20 years and settled in 1999 for $12 million.
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Cuban Uprising: Analysis
The Cuban revolution of 1959 was a blow to the American empire from which it has never recovered. The Cuban revolution was basically a nationalist one. Before the revolution most of the land was owned by American corporations and the country was run by an American puppet dictator. Cuba nationalized American owned property, which was their right under international law. Cuba offered to reimburse the American owners. They refused and responded by refusing to refine oil for Cuba to purchase. So the Cubans nationalized the American oil refinery. Then the American owned telephone company and the American owned nickel mines and so on. The Cubans took control of their own resources. This was the beginning of the Cuban revolution.
It has been the 61 year policy of USA to destroy and reverse the revolution by setting up a economic financial and commercial blockade of the island. The American policy was cruel and intentionally set out to cause suffering and misery. In this thing have succeeded.
The Cuban people are hungry. Covid19 is spreading on the island. The blockade,which was accelerated under Trump and continued under Biden, is preventing them from even getting adequate number of syringes to vaccinate the population.
Protests broke out on July 11. The protesters were Cuban workers fed up with their terrible conditions, intellectuals protesting restrictions, and American paid for counterrevolutionaries seeking to destabilize the government.
Guest – Arnold August is a Canadian journalist who has traveled often to Cuba and has written three books on the subject including his latest, Cuba – US relations: Obama and Beyond. In recognition of his unending efforts to publicize the realities in Cuba, Arnold August was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the Cuban Institute for Friendship. In March of 2019 August was banned from entering United States on account of his support for Venezuela.
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Law and Disorder August 2, 2021
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Project YANO, JROTC, and Textbook Project
The Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or JROTC, is a federal program sponsored by the US Armed Forces in high schools and some middle schools across the nation and at US military bases globally. It currently teaches its lessons to more than half a million students in approximately 3,400 high schools nationwide.
In recent years, the military and its supporters have been promoting the idea of a significant increase in the number of high schools with JROTC—one proposal calls for expanding up to 6,000. Because of this, one nonprofit decided it was time to examine the textbooks used in JROTC classes to see what they are teaching.
The Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, or Project YANO, is a counter-recruitment organization founded in 1984 and based in San Diego country. It released its findings in early July. Their reviewers have backgrounds in classroom teaching or education activists, or special knowledge of subjects JROTC claims to address, such as civil rights, violence prevention, leadership methods, and world history. Team members included current and retired high school teachers, military veterans, and a documentary film producer.
Guest – Rick Jahnkow, a co-founder and board member of Project YANO. Rick worked for 34 years as the organization’s full-time program coordinator. He has researched and organized around the issues of military recruiting, high school Jr. ROTC, and the general militarization of K-12 schools.
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Freedom House 2021 Report: Democracy Under Siege
What if you could assign a grade to countries based on how free they are? Freedom House, a nonprofit organization founded in 1941, does just that. In 1973, it began using social science analysis methods to assess the level of freedom by nation, attaching a numerical score and ranking them as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free.
The report, known generally as Freedom in the World, has been called the “Michelin Guide to democracy’s development” and “essential reading for policymakers and political leaders.”
The 2021 report, “Democracy Under Seige was written by Amy Slipowitz and Sarah Repucci. They noted that the pandemic, combined with economic and physical insecurity along with violent conflict, struck a heavy blow to defenders of democracy. It shifted the international balance in favor of tyranny.
Incumbent leaders, according to the report, increasingly resorted to force when dealing with opponents while “beleaguered activists—lacking effective international support—faced heavy jail sentences, torture, or murder in many settings.”
Guest – Sarah Repucci, Vice President of Research & Analysis at Freedom House. Sarah oversees Freedom House’s flagship publications Freedom in the World, Freedom on the Net, and Nations in Transit. She advises policymakers and business leaders on democracy and human rights around the world, and her commentary has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the BBC, National Public Radio, Foreign Policy, and the Journal of Democracy. She previously worked for Transparency International and the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights, and as an independent consultant for several NGOs, and private businesses.
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