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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 October 12, 2020
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Pen Pal: Prison Letters From a Free Spirit on Slow Death Row
Tiyo Attalla Salah-El died in 2018 on “ Slow Death Row” while serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison. He was a man with a dizzying array of talents and vocations: author, scholar, teacher, musician, and activist: he was the founder of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons. He was also an extraordinarily eloquent correspondent.
Today we are going to talk with his friend Paul Alan Smith about the letters that Smith exchanged with Tiyo which were written over a decade and a half. We will also speak with Paul’s friend the actor Carl Weathers who read the letters for the audiobook. The book is called Pen Pal: Prison Letters From a Free Spirit on Slow Death Row. It has a preface by Mike Africa, Jr.
Guest – Carl Weathers, multi-talented director, actor and former professional football athlete. Carl Weathers learned about the life and letters of Tiyo and read the letters for the audio book version of Pen Pal.
Guest – Paul Alan Smith, an agent and manager representing directors working in both film and TV. He’s most recently known as the founder of New Deal Mfg. Co., which seeks to shift representation to a more client-centric approach, rather than focusing on the needs of corporations.
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Chris Hedges Analysis Of Pre-Election Society In The United States
We are living in extraordinary times. At the same time we face both tremendous danger and extraordinary opportunity. The danger comes from a failed state, a failed racist capitalist state they cannot afford safety let alone opportunity to its citizens. Our opportunity comes from the massive social mobilizations that we have not seen in 75 years. A young generation has risen up. White people are involved with black people who are providing leadership. Perhaps 20 million have taken to the streets.
Trump is desperate and resorts to stoking fear of violence, race baiting, lying, explaining to his followers that all the unrest is due to agitators, antifa, Marxist and socialists.
The Democratic Party has chosen to oppose Trump with Joe Biden. The best you can say about him is that he’s not Trump. He has vowed to veto a medicare for all bill if it comes across his desk and has suggested that police violence could be curbed if they shot people in the legs, not the chest. He is for giving police departments more money. The worst you can say about Biden and the Democratic Party is that they are not a bulwark against fascism.
The big financial backers of the Democratic Party crushed the Sanders campaign indicating they would rather have Trump than a social democrat who would cost them money and raise expectations. Sanders for his part missed his historic moment, twice, when he refused to break from the Democratic Party in both 2016 and 2020.
Instead he performs the function of a sheepdog herding people back into a moribund capitalist party that has nothing to offer as a way out of the combined climate, economic, race, the health crisis, and nuclear annihilation and nuclear annihilation
Guest – Chris Hedges about where we are at, how we got here, and what to do next. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He was the foreign correspondent for the New York Times for 15 years and served as middle eastern bureau chief. He is the host of Emmy award nominated RT America show On Contact and the author of numerous books Including America: The Fairwell Tour, Empire of Illusion, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
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Law and Disorder October 5, 2020
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The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself
COVID-19 did not cause the current economic devastation to billions of people around the world. It triggered the crisis. It illuminated the inherent instability in the capitalist system itself. Capitalism exacerbates unemployment, inequality, racism, and patriarchy and threatens the health and safety of workers and our communities.
We are in the worst economic crisis since the great depression of 90 years ago. Half of the American population is poor or near poor. Twenty million people are unemployed. It is estimated that 400,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by the end of the year. Most of these people will be Black, Latino, the poor and the elderly.
The large corporations have bought out both the Republican and Democratic parties. Neither one of these parties has put forward an effective plan on what to do to get us out of this catastrophic situation.
Guest – Professor Richard Wolff, author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. His previous books are Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism.
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Julian Assange Extradition Case Update
The decline of democracy and the rule of law, already advanced under Obama , has accelerated under Trump. By his own admission it is widely known that President Trump will not consent to leaving office if he loses the election. What is not so widely known is the case that he caused to be prosecuted against journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange.
Assange is being railroaded in the Old Bailey courthouse in London in an effort by US government, in collaboration with its British ally, to extradite Assange and send him to the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Assange told the truth about American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2010. He is 49 years old and in terrible mental and physical health. If he loses and is sent to the Eastern District of Virginia for trial and successfully prosecuted, which is a given, it will be the death of free journalism and a blow to the first amendment which is a keystone of our democracy because it involves the right to learn.
@defenseassange – Nathan Fuller twitter
Guest – Attorney Nathan Fuller who has been attending Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London. He leads the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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Law and Disorder September 28, 2020
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Socialist Perspective of Pre-Election Society In The United States
The word “chaos” best describes the current American public health, economic, race, and political situation. America leads the world in the number of COVID-19 cases and in the number of deaths which are now approaching 200,000. President Trump lies when he promises the quick development of a vaccine. He attacks the head of the Center for Disease Control and advises not to wear masks and leads huge rallies of maskless supporters.
The economy is a disaster. Perhaps 20 million people are unemployed. Small businesses are shuttered. The economic stimulus package has run out. Millions face eviction. Hunger is rampant especially among children. Democracy and rule of law are being trashed.
President Trump has cast doubt on the efficacy of the upcoming election first suggesting that it be postponed, then advising his supporters to vote twice, and assuring people that unless he won the election would be fraudulent. He has indicated that if he loses the election he will not vacate the White House in January 20, 2021.
Despite the unprecedented mass demonstrations of perhaps 20 million people in the streets since June, cops continue to murder people, especially black people, with impunity. The Republican convention put forward no platform to address the catastrophe. President Trump spoke at all for nights presenting himself as the solution for all of America’s problems.
The best that could be said about Joe Biden is that he’s not Trump. He has run a lackluster campaign and now finds himself neck and neck with Trump who got 60 million votes in the last election and whose popularity seems undiminished.
Guest – Doug Henwood, an economic, finance, and political analyst. He is host of the radio show Behind the News. He is a contributor to Jacobin magazine and a contributing editor to the Nation magazine. His latest book on Hillary Clinton is called My Turn.
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President Trump And The 2020 Election
What if President Donald Trump is voted out of office on November 3, 2020 but on January 20, 2021 when he is scheduled to vacate the White House he refuses to go. His lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen predicted this in his congressional testimony before he went off to prison.
President Trump is already casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election which is less than two months away. He says there will be massive voter fraud, that absentee balloting, which will be widely prevalent because of the Covid crisis, is easily open the fraud.
Can Trump send federal troops to Washington DC, or other cities? Can he deploy the National Guard of the various states? Can he suspend habeas corpus, arbitrarily detained people, or declare martial law? Can he investigate opponents, freeze their assets, control communications, initiate a foreign crisis, or get help from attorney general William Barr? What can we do about it?
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, the past president of the National Lawyers Guild and former professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.
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