Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
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The 2 Year Anniversary of Wikileaks Julian Assange At The Ecuadorian Embassy
We mark the two year anniversary of Julian Assange being in custody at the Ecuadorian embassy. Our own Michael Ratner, cohost of this show is Julian Assange’s attorney. Michael describes the conditions Julian Assange is living in at the embassy, he explains the legal reasons why Julian is still there and lists the recent significant accomplishments of Wikileaks.
Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner:
- He’s sitting in the embassy with political asylum. It’s an apartment on the ground floor with about 6 or 8 rooms. He has one of those rooms. It’s small. There’s no outside space.
- He has a sun lamp.
- There are police outside, there are police out front when you walk in. They’re at every window. There’s a couple big police vans outside picking up every one of your conversations. That’s where Julian has been for two years.
- Julian has been in pretty good shape in there. He’s been functioning. Wikileaks has been functioning. A key thing that people have to understand is Wikileaks, Sarah Harrison, Julian and others saved Edward Snowden from going to prison in the United States.
- Remember he was in Hong Kong (Snowden). The U.S. issued a criminal complaint against him. Two counts of espionage, one count of theft of documents. There was an extradition request by the U.S. Hong Kong being part of China. The likelihood is at 90, 95 or 100 percent that Edward Snowden would have wound up in a U.S. jail.
- Instead of that, Wikileaks helped him gain asylum where he eventually did in Russia. Sarah Harrison accompanying him on the plane to Moscow.
- Another story we’ve covered, the Trans Pacific Partnership, that’s the trade agreement they’re trying to impose on countries particularly in the far East.
- What the U.S. just admitted, filed a brief in April 2014 in federal court. It was a brief in which they refuse to give up documents on a FOIA case. The claim was they couldn’t give them up because there’s a continuing investigation going. It was documents EPIC sought around Wikileaks.
- The Department of Justice said (in that brief) there’s an ongoing criminal national security investigation into Wikileaks and Julian Assange, its multi-subject and its ongoing.
- It’s been 4 years since the allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against Julian Assange by two women, but by particular, the prosecutor who seems to have vengeance to carry this out.
- Remember, they’re allegations, not charges. They’ve asked to extradite Julian Assange based on those allegations.
- Allegations from a prosecutor from another country are not sufficient to get someone extradited. We have the UK having changed the law so he can no longer be extradited.
- Ecuador has been extremely supportive of Julian.
- There’s a letter that will be sent in the next two days to our Attorney General Eric Holder by at least 30 human rights groups around the world.
- That letter wants to hold him to his words (Holder) that journalists and editors will not be subject to prosecution.
- It starts off with a demand to close all criminal investigations of Wikileaks and its Editor in Chief Julian Assange. It says they have to stop harassing and persecuting Julian and Wikileaks for publishing. FreeAssangeNow.org
Guest – Law and Disorder Co-host Attorney Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York City and president of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) based in Berlin. Ratner and CCR are currently the attorneys in the United States for publishers Julian Assange and Wikileaks. He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, where, in June 2004, the court decided his clients have the right to test the legality of their detentions in court. Ratner is also a past president of the National Lawyers Guild and the author of numerous books and articles, including the books The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book, Against War with Iraq and Guantanamo: What the World Should Know, as well as a textbook on international human rights.
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Shocking: California Court Rules Teacher Tenure Violates Student’s Right To Quality Education
David Welch, a Silicon Valley tech millionaire has been funding the movement and legal suit that led to the Vergara decision two weeks ago when a California court struck down a series of laws that grant tenure and other protections to public school teachers. Students Matter, an education reform group had sued on behalf of nine students arguing protections for substandard teachers have a disproportionate impact on children of color and low-income families. The decision that has identified teacher tenure as the cause of underachievement within inner city schools could have a larger influence in other states. Many see this decision as part of a strategy to transform the public education system into a major profit center. Examples include No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core Curriculum, Charter Schools.
Brian Jones:
- The court ruled in California that teacher tenure is a violation of students’ right to a quality education.
- The ramifications are . . if we find students who are not doing well in school that the remedy is to remove that teacher and get a new teacher and anything that stands in the way of removing that teacher is therefore a violation of that student’s rights.
- Its actually going to have very negative consequences.
- We already have a problem holding on to great teachers. We have a problem holding on to teachers.
- Half of the teachers in this country leave the profession within five years. We’re literally bleeding teachers.
- A lot of wealthy people have taken an interest in transforming public schools in this country.
- Their idea that schooling should be run more like a business with more authority, power and decision making concentrated at the top with the workers, parents and students having little or no say on what goes on. Their job is to accomplish the task laid out before them by the millionaires and billionaires.
- One of the worst examples of course is Bill Gates who has been effectively setting education policy for the nation for several years now.
- You have this Silicon Valley millionaire who created a “parent group” and bringing this lawsuit you have a bunch of parents whose children are in charter schools and private schools arguing that their rights are being violated.
- They use their wealth to effect the changes that they want.
- They bypass any democratic process or debate or discussion about what our schools should be like.
- This is a famous ploy by the corporatizers is to wrap themselves in the robes of the civil rights movement and claim they’re getting justice on behalf of children.
- We have to remember that the civil rights movement was pro-union was very involved in unions.
- The corporate reformers want us to believe that we can get justice for kids by beating up on adults.
- If we can attack the union we can then get justice for the young people.
- That’s the tenure attack is eliminating an obstacle for anyone to speak back, to talk back.
- Without tenure, without unions, without those kinds of protections the people working in a school can never speak back, can never express themselves, can never protest or try to assert some other idea.
- Let’s talk about what its going to take to improve the teaching profession. Let’s talk about what its going to take to improve the conditions of teaching and learning.
- Teachers feel under attack. The things we’re putting on teacher’s shoulders right now are insane.
- We (teachers) were already suffering under Bush’s No Child Left Behind, then Obama doubled down on it and made it even worse. He raised the stakes of those high stakes tests even higher. Our whole platform is available at HowieHawkins.org
Guest – Brian Jones, taught elementary grades for nine years in New York City’s public schools, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Education at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is Green Party’s 2014 candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York. Brian co-narrated the film, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, and has contributed to the book Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation. He is a member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators: the social justice caucus of the United Federation of Teachers. Brian has also lent his voice to several audiobooks, including The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World and Howard Zinn’s one-man play, Marx in Soho. Brian is the recipient of a 2012 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Michael Ratner: Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Exchange
- Five Taliban In Exchange For A U.S. Prisoner Held In Afghanistan
- 149 Detainees Left In Guantanamo Prison – 88 Cleared For Release
- Michael Smith Reports Back On Highlights At the 2014 Left Forum
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9/11 Memorial Museum Protests
There were many protests during the official opening of the 911 Memorial Museum. Muslim communities and other groups have voiced concern about the film in the musuem titled “The Rise of Al-Qaeda” and how it fails to adequately discern between Al-Qaeda and those of the Islamic faith. Meanwhile, the museum’s official response is that the film is objectively telling the story of what happened.
Donna Nevel:
- We came together because of a concern about a video they were showing called The Rise of al-Qaeda. It’s a 7 minute documentary and the concern is about the problematic language that its using. It makes it seem as if the acts of 9-11 are equated with Islam.
- Our feeling is that the film needs to be edited and could exacerbate an already anti-Muslim climate.
- Quoting criticism – The film in its current state presented risks that visitors would assign collective responsibility for September 11th to Islam and all Muslims.
- There’s a historian Todd Fine who says its an inconsistent array of terminology that gets carelessly thrown around with little concern for the harmful impact it can have on people.
- The video didn’t do enough to separate al-Qaeda from Islam and from mainstream Islam. It’s reckless.
- Despite the fact that the own museum’s own advisory board was instantly concerned when they saw the film and said it should be reviewed and edited – despite the fact that 400 scholars wrote letters saying it contains problematic and contested terminology that conflates terrorism with Islam – and despite the fact that leaders from so many different inter-faith communities have spoken out about this – that the museum continues to stand by its decision not to edit the video – is astonishing.
- I was doing a little research on her (Debra Burlingame-on 911 Memorial Museum Board of Directors) and there’s a high number of racist quotes she’s said. “Islam’s a transnational threat.”
- Millions and millions of people will be going to this museum and museums can have a big impact.
- We have to remember that this is in the context not of a society that welcomes and embraces the Muslim community but one that’s surveilling the Muslim community.
- It’s feeding into this notion that all Muslims are responsible for the acts of a few individuals.
- This video also feeds into police surveillance because what do they say? After 911 we have to be more vigilant and that means surveilling an entire community.
- Communities are coming together and speaking out, including about this video.
- We have to change the structures that enable this to happen. The Islamophobes are really problematic and have connections to some of the institutions.
- We have to make sure our institutions are fomenting Islamophobia.
- Book – Islamophobia and Israel by Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel
- We wanted to analyze the intersection of Islamophobia and Israeli politics and to look at the way the “war on terror” impacts both. Also to raise an issue that’s basically taboo in the Jewish community as well as outside the Jewish community.
- We have 4 different areas that we look at. Our lengthiest area is “follow the money” where you basically see how connected the Islamophobes are with right-wing Israel crowd, the settlement movement and others as well.
- Jews Against Islamophobia / Jews Say No / Jewish Voices For Peace / Jews For Racial and Economic Justice
- Contact Donna Nevel – denevel(at)gmail(dot).com
Guest – Donna Nevel, a community psychologist, educator, and writer whose work is rooted in Participatory Action Research (PAR) and popular education. Co-author with Elly Bulkin of Islamophobia and Israel. She has been involved with a wide range of organizing efforts to challenge segregation and inequality and further equity and racial justice in public education. She has also been a long-time organizer for Palestinian-Israeli peace and justice and works with groups to challenge Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.
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Free Flow of Information Act (Journalist Shield Law)
Current shield laws for journalists in the United States have broad exceptions for national security. This means that a prosecutor can override the law by showing how the information sought would “materially assist” the government in “preventing” or “mitigating” an act of terrorism. Initially, the shield law is set up to provide a confidentiality privilege for journalists so a police officer or FBI agent can’t get that information even with a court order unless there is an unusually strong justification for it. The latest version of the shield law as of September 2013 has a clause telling judges that it only covers legitimate news gathering. This of course makes very easy to declare any kind of news gathering you don’t like as illegitimate, and therefore the sources are not protected. Last month, the House of Representatives voted to approve an amendment to an appropriations bill barring the Justice Department from compelling reporters to testify about confidential sources.
Carey Shenkman:
- We are going to get a shield law but its going to be one that doesn’t protect any journalists or sources.
- It’s a lot easier for the FBI and the DOJ to just skip the investigation and go straight to the reporters. Why do they have to any work when they have the journalist getting all the sources for them.
- They subpoenaed records from the Associated Press last summer, they subpoenaed the source for James Risen who wrote a book and that actually appeared before the 4th Circuit of Appeals and was turned down by the Supreme Court for review.
- There’s been a push to try and pass a shield law before but Obama back in 2009 said he wouldn’t let any shield law pass that didn’t have a big national security exemption.
- What happened back in September is that there was a massive compromise with 2 Senators, Diane Feinstein from California and Dick Durbin from Illinois. They wouldn’t let this law go through unless it contained a big national security exception. Meaning any reporter covering national security would have to disclose their sources, and second it had a big exclusion for wikileaks and other organizations that published leaks.
- There’s actually a balancing test as part of this law that tells judges to consider if a journalist is engaged in legitimate news gathering. This is problematic because anyone can be a journalist, this has been the case since the founding of this country.
- They’re trying to put into law the fact that some journalists are legitimate and some are illegitimate.
- The internet has brought this country back to the time of its founding in terms of journalism because when the “press clause” in the First Amendment were passed, anyone could be a journalist.
- The “press clause” was defined as the right to publish.
- I believe we do need shield laws, but not this shield law.
- I think there is a big push by the institutional media to keep journalism as a profession, but that’s not what journalism is. Now with the internet, anyone can publish. As long as anyone as the intention to disseminate information, they should be protected as a journalist.
- When it helps the government the definition of the media is very broad.
- It’s going to be political suicide if Holder or anyone from the Obama administration pushes to send James Risen to jail.
- The DOJ argued in an affidavit that James Rosen was aiding and abetting his source.
- More and more, we’re seeing this administration trying to frame the news gatherer and the source, not as a journalist and a source but as criminals in a conspiracy.
- I was a radio journalist for 3 years. I used to work at the Center for Constitutional Rights where I met Michael Ratner and was involved with Chelsea Manning’s trial.
Guest – Carey Shenkman, has worked with several legal teams including Chelsea Manning’s defense, and legal research defining the protection of new media under the Bill of Rights and The U.S. Constitution.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Updates:
- Wikileaks Reveals The Other Country NSA Surveilled All Content: Media Blackout
- U.S. Government Can Destroy People: Informant Sabu (Hector Xavier Monsegur) And Jeremy Hammond
- Remembering League of Revolutionary Black Workers Founder General Gordon Baker Jr.
- Read General’s Letter To The Detroit Draft Board
- Michael Ratner Resigns From Brandeis University
- International Advisory BoardMichael Ratner’s Open Letter To Brandeis University President Published In Forward Thinking
- Coalition of Imokalee Workers Demonstrations In Columbus, Ohio
- Glenn Greenwald Nowhere To Hide Book Tour -Ticket Give Away – Listen To Answer Question
- We Have 5 Tickets In Each City To Give Away
- Dates City
June 17, 2014 Seattle, WA
June 18, 2014 San Francisco, CA
June 19, 2014 Los Angeles, CA
June 21, 2014 San Diego, CA
June 23, 2014 New York, NY
June 26, 2014 Rosemont, IL
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Remembering Dr. Vincent Harding
Last month pioneering historian, theologian and civil rights activist Dr. Vincent Harding had died at the age of 82. Harding was a close adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and wrote King’s famous antiwar speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.” King delivered the address at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967.
After King was assassinated, Harding became the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and of the Institute of the Black World. He later became Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. After serving in the Army for several years Harding became a pacifist and later served as co-chairperson of the social unity group the Veterans of Hope Project. He’s the author numerous books including There Is A River and Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals.
Dr. George Tinker:
- Vincent was sometimes called by black activists across the continent, the gentle giant.
- Giant, not because of his physical size but because of intellectual stature.
- Last summer we did a conference together speaking to a national conference of Quakers.
- He was an incredibly soft-spoken and gentle person, yet could be so absolutely incisive in his quiet comments.
- He was so persuasive that everyone had to pay attention to him.
- On campus he was either in the midst of a student group trying to quietly cajole them into activism themselves or once the students became activists, he was one of the few faculty that was right there with students walking them through that activism.
- Every thing in that speech (Beyond Vietnam) is a part of what Vincent lived every day.
- He was in the Army during the Korean War and became a convert to Gandhi and non-violence theory.
- His participation to bringing me to Iliff was a clear signal that he was one of those civil rights warriors who was not satisfied with interpreting the civil rights struggle as a black and white issue.
- When we engaged in protest on the streets of Denver, beginning around 1989, getting ready for the 1992 Columbian Quinscentenary, we had Iliff students who would come out with the American Indian Movement of Colorado to help us protest what we always framed as state supported hate speech.
- We were never against Italians celebrating their heritage but its the fact that Columbus Day is a federal holiday. It’s a federal celebration then, of the genocide of Indian people.
- About a year and a half ago he joined Jewish activists and African American activists on a trip to Palestine, the West Bank. He came back deeply affected.
- He immediately began to see the deep deep connection between the Palestinian struggle for freedom and American Indians on this continent.
- We’re seeing it still today, US foreign policy is characterized by violence and the threat of violence and if not military violence, economic violence.
- Vincent and Dr. King were men of conscience who once they understood the truth in Vietnam could not help but speak to it.
- 18 year old kids don’t have the clear reading of history to fall back on their decision making. (military)
- His passing is a passing of an era marked by the passing of Maya Angelou. It deeply deeply saddened me because I was hoping this next month to have lunch with him.
Guest – Dr. George Tinker, a colleague of Dr. Vincent Harding at the IIliff School of Theology. Dr. Tinker. He teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. teaches courses in American Indian cultures, history, and religious traditions; cross-cultural and Third-World theologies; and justice and peace studies and is a frequent speaker on these topics both in the U.S. and internationally. His publications include American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty (2008); Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation (2004); and Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide (1993). He co-authored A Native American Theology (2001); and he is co-editor of Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance (2003), and Fortress Press’ Peoples’ Bible (2008).
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Please help support Law and Disorder, the show is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Law and Disorder must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Chicago Torture Update And Another Chicago Cover Up
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We follow up on the Chicago torture cases and the aftermath. Listeners may recall the sentencing of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge in 2011 which helped created a model within Chicago criminal courts in seeking justice for crimes of torture. The Civil Rights Act was used to litigate the Chicago torture cases, specifically the Anti Klu Klux Klan Act and now, the People’s Law Office is working to get a statute passed making torture a federal crime. In our last interview with attorney Flint Taylor he questioned how the Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel will handle the hundreds of ongoing torture cases of African American men. The type of torture that was involved include electric shock, bagging, beating and burning to get confession. The city continues to fund Burge’s defense paying private lawyers millions to date. Meanwhile, a recent unraveling of a murder cover up involving former Mayor Daley’s nephew makes headlines.
Attorney G. Flint Taylor:
- This is a scandal that’s gone on for 20 years now. Burge came back from Vietnam and he was quickly made a detective on the South side of Chicago in the early 70s. He started to use electric shock, bagging people to suffocate them, mock executions – all the torture techniques you hear about in third world and that kind of thing.
- He tortured over the next 20 years, we now document more than 120 African American men.
- Those men, many were sent to the penitentiary, some to death row. Many of them gave false confessions, all of them confessed under the torture techniques and during this 20 year period, Burge was promoted from detective, to sergeant, to lieutenant, to commander.
- During this period of the time the prosecutor was Richard M Daley who went on to be mayor of course. This evidence was presented to him early on by the superintendent of police and they decided to cover it all up rather than pursue Burge.
- Because of that, the torture went on for another 10-15 years.
- Burge was fired in the 90s but was never prosecuted until the critical mass of evidence reached a peak in the mid-2000s. Burge was convicted and sent to a penitentiary where he’s now serving a four and half year sentence with Bernie Madoff down in Butner.
- The city of Chicago has paid over 20 million dollars to defend Burge and his co-horts.
- Another 20 million has gone out to pensions. Burge now still gets his pension down in the penitentiary. There’s another 65 million that paid out to the men who were fortunate enough to have lawsuits who were wrongfully convicted by Burge and his associates.
- You add it all up and you get 125 million dollars in taxpayer money that’s been spent in this scandal.
- There are still men behind bars after all these years, based on tortured confessions.
- We were appointed recently a special master to find men in the penitentiary who haven’t had the ability to have a hearing to have their case re-litigated based on the torture evidence.
- There’s an ongoing battle to try and take Burge’s pension away.
- David Koschman was a 21 year old college student from the suburbs who had the misfortune of being on Rush street in Chicago late at night, and getting into a verbal altercation with a group of thugs that included the mayor’s nephew.
- A man by the name of Venecko. Venecko was 6″3′, 230lbs and he punched David square in the face. Koschman went down, hit his head against the curb, went into a coma and died 12 days later.
- The mayor’s nephew ran from the scene so they didn’t know who it was. Somehow through back channels they let the highest officials in the police department know that it was the mayor’s nephew was involved and so a massive cover up went on in the police department and at the state’s attorneys office – to make Koschman 5″5′ 120lbs into the aggressor.
Guest – G. Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern Law School, is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, an office which has been dedicated to litigating civil rights, police violence, government misconduct, and death penalty cases for more than 40 years.
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Goliath: Life and Loathing In Greater Israel: Max Blumenthal Speech In Brooklyn
We hear part of speech by award winning journalist and author Max Blumenthal delivered at a Brooklyn For Peace meeting. Operation Cast Lead in 2008, is a starting point in the book Goliath: Life and Loathing In Greater Israel where award winning journalist and author Max Blumenthal shows the reader how a right wing government in Israel rose to power. His book takes hard look at Israeli authoritarian politics through a cross section of interviews from the homes of Palestinian activists to the political leaders behind the organized assault against civil liberties.
Speaker – Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Guardian, The Independent Film Channel, The Huffington Post, Salon, Al Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a former Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for The Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
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The Kiev Putsch: Rebel Workers Take Power in the East
In his recent article The Kiev Putsch: Rebel Workers Take Power In the East, returning guest Professor Jim Petras describes the immense complexity and shifting outcomes within the NATO, US and European violent seizure of the Ukraine. He asserts that the US-EU power grab in the Ukraine is part of a strategic goal to place neo-liberal political proxies in power in Moscow. In order to do this, one objective is to undermine Russia’s military capability. However, things have not gone according to plan. There’s growing opposition to the Ukraine power grab in the EU, and Russia. Professor Jim Petras asserts that the real struggle is not between the US and Russia, it’s between the NATO-imposed junta composed of neo-liberal oligarchs and fascists – that’s on one side, and on the other side is the industrial workers, their local militias plus democratic councils.
Professor James Petras:
- Ukraine had kind of an oligarchical electoral system where competing oligarchs competed in the electoral arena. One set of oligarchs was closer to the NATO powers and one set was closer to Russia, more or less pursuing a non-alignment policy.
- This came to a head recently. I believe in February.
- The opposition backed by NATO overthrew the government and a coup seized power and the U.S. under the Secretary of Foreign Affairs Victoria Newland appointed the president and the prime minister who then formed a coalition government with neo-fascists openly embracing the heritage of the Nazi collaborators.
- These people then tried to impose a different kind of policy, and different kind of orientation to the country essentially aligning it to NATO and trying to undercut any pluralism or diversity that existed up til then.
- They moved ahead and outlawed the pro-Russian speaking minority and that provoked people in the east who were long time critics of centralism and the imposition of policies from the west (Kiev).
- The Kiev junta sent military groups out there to repress them, culminating with the neo-fascists going to Odessa and incinerating 40 people who were taking refuge in a trade union center.
- You have to realize the dynamic of the sectors in the east. There’s the steel, coal. The most productive sector of the country. They pay a disproportionate amount of taxes and get very little in return.
- So there is a regional hostility here, and the issue has nothing to do with being pro-Russia. It’s a question of people in the east opposing a military take over, a junta. They oppose a government appointed by foreign powers.
- They oppose the outlawing of bilingualism.
- The authoritarians in the east want to break with Russia. It has nothing to do with the so called transition government. The west’s account is absolutely bizarre.
- The cover up (in western press) of the massive incineration is comparable to Nazi press when Hitler was incinerating Jews, telling people they were just taking showers.
- The western press has lined up in the most . . I would compare it to the worst part of McCarthyism in Cold War. I would say 1950-51.
- The Kiev dictatorship can’t even count on its own troops. They send troops over there and they fraternize with their own people. So they have to send special forces and they recently got a big inflow of mercenaries from what used to be called Blackwater. They call themselves the Academi now.
- There were over 400 of them that were shipped in to the eastern part of the country to do the dirty work.
- I think this is an indication of how isolated this government is and how much the demands for democracy, maintaining industry and resisting the IMF, how much fear they have of the contagion, the democratic self determination agenda of the east resonates with the west.
- There’s no great wall of China separating the east and west when it comes to economic improvement and democratic representation.
- Essentially their idea is to turn Russia into a vassal state.
- The same thing with China, they’re encircling China with bases all over the Pacific, provoking conflict.
- They don’t want a powerful competitive economy that’s displacing them in Latin America and Asia.
- What happened to the peace movement that went into the Democratic Party to support Obama?
Guest – Professor James Petras, author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet.
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Please help support Law and Disorder, the show is now a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Law and Disorder must be made payable to Fractured Atlas only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Hydraulic Fracturing, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- John Kerry Middle East Peace Talks And NY Times Propaganda
- There is no ‘Palestine Exception’ to free speech rights’: Northeastern overturns Students for Justice in Palestine suspension
- CCR: Palestine Solidarity Legal Support Project
- Host Attorney Micheal Smith Retraction On Abe Foxman Update
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Torturous For-Profit Medical Care in Prisons
The medical care in private prisons is often provided by a sub contracted for profit entity. Today we look at a specific case involving Corizon, a prison health management corporation serving 530 prisons in 28 states. Corizon has been sued for malpractice 660 times in the past five years. We talk today about “Bradley’s” case. He’s 67, and was out on parole after serving 34 years in California’s state prisons. Bradley was on 100mg of morphine 3 times a day for surgical complications from knee injury. While on parole, THC was detected in his system, and officers brought him back to prison. However, under the care of Corizon, he was not given his medication and forced to painfully withdraw from the morphine.
Dr. Robin Andersen:
- My brother who we call Brad is at Santa Rita jail who Corizon is under contract with.
- He went in on April 17, and after a week of being in there, my lawyer and my sister said he was on death’s door.
- The reason was he was being forced to withdraw from medications. His medications are morphine and high blood pressure medication.
- He was given no medications for pain, and he basically did cold turkey inside that jail and is still being mistreated there.
- This is a parole violation where its alleged he might have smoked some pot.
- He was in San Quentin and some other California prisons. He served 34 years. When he was finally paroled one of the parole board members said – well we assess that the crime that you did to be about 11 years.
- Just the thought of him in that jail without medication for that time, it was agony.
- What the jail has told me is they don’t give out controlled substances.
- What my lawyer said is their policy to save money, they don’t have proper medication.
- They’re putting him through a forced cold turkey withdrawal and laughing at him.
- They keep using the word protocol, and it rings in my ear. Oh, he’s on a withdrawal protocol. One wonders what that protocol might be.
- I’ve been asking people to call the jail. It’s very interesting, they thrive in secrecy and brutality within these places.
- Call the Santa Rita County Jail – 925-551-6500. Lawrence (Bradley) Benetto – Prisoner # BKB172
Guest – Dr. Robin Andersen, is the brother of “Bradley” and Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Director of the M.A. Program in Public Communication. She is also Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Fordham University.
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Lawsuits Against Prison Health Management Corporations
Class action lawsuits against prison health management corporations are becoming very common. There are many cases and stories of mistreatment and negligence which critics say stem from profit making and cost cutting protocols. We take a deeper look at the recent litigation involving lawsuits against private, for profit prison health care companies.
Attorney Sarah Grady:
- Corizon, they’re a multi-billion dollar company. They’ve operated under many names throughout the years.
- They’re whole model is to provide as little health care as possible in order to continue to drive a profit. They take into account in their profit, how often they’re going to be sued.
- They gamble in effect on how much money they’re going to lose in lawsuits and whether that can keep them profitable by continuing to deny care to prisoners.
- When Corizon contracted with Arizona to provide care (in prisons) in the first 8 months there were 50 deaths in Arizona Department of Corrections in their custody, that’s in a single state.
- There are multiple stories of substandard care being provided by nurses and doctors who have not been trained, who have been trained at a suboptimal level.
- The states, county or municipality cannot contract away the 8th Amendment.
- The individual doctors get bonuses based on their ability to stay under budget.
Guest – Attorney Sarah Grady leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project. Ms. Grady graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. At Northwestern, she worked on civil rights cases with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in the Bluhm Legal Clinic.
Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.
Ms. Grady graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. At Northwestern, she worked on civil rights cases with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in the Bluhm Legal Clinic, served on the board of the Public Interest Law Group and the American Constitution Society, and received Northwestern’s annual Public Service Award for her commitment to serving the public interest in her legal work.
– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf
Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.
Ms. Grady graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. At Northwestern, she worked on civil rights cases with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in the Bluhm Legal Clinic, served on the board of the Public Interest Law Group and the American Constitution Society, and received Northwestern’s annual Public Service Award for her commitment to serving the public interest in her legal work.
– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf
Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.
Ms. Grady graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. At Northwestern, she worked on civil rights cases with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in the Bluhm Legal Clinic, served on the board of the Public Interest Law Group and the American Constitution Society, and received Northwestern’s annual Public Service Award for her commitment to serving the public interest in her legal work.
– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf
Sarah Grady joined Loevy & Loevy in 2013. She leads Loevy & Loevy’s Prisoners’ Rights Project.
Ms. Grady graduated cum laude from Northwestern University School of Law in 2012. At Northwestern, she worked on civil rights cases with the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center in the Bluhm Legal Clinic, served on the board of the Public Interest Law Group and the American Constitution Society, and received Northwestern’s annual Public Service Award for her commitment to serving the public interest in her legal work.
– See more at: http://www.loevy.com/attorneys/sarah-grady/#sthash.M7ruq9uH.dpuf
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Attorney Anand Swaminathan:
- We a broad spectrum of issues both in terms of types of facilities where these things are occurring and the actual kinds of medical problems that are not being dealt with or ignored.
- There are states, counties and municipalities all engaged in this form of privatization which are outsourcing medical care to these private companies.
- It includes, large prisons people who are convicted of crimes, it includes people who are being held in custody, that includes county jails which are a hybrid facility that holding people long term and people in short term custody.
- It’s everything down to the local police station.
- We’re seeing a lack of adequate medical care across that entire spectrum.
- There’s a complete failure to treat chronic conditions, some of the chronic conditions that are so prevalent in our society now.
- These people (prisoners) are not consumers and cannot choose and say I find your product subpar, I’m not interested, I’m going to choose the other guys’ product.
- We’re starting to see a push back. Courts are starting to attack specific protections that companies are invoking.
- Here you have courts identifying market forces as a reason to deny the protections that some of these companies are trying to invoke.
Guest – Attorney Anand Swaminathan, has worked on a broad range of constitutional and civil rights cases, and has worked extensively on False Claims Act litigation, where he has represented whistleblowers alleging defense military and other government contractor fraud, bid-rigging, Medicare and Medicaid fraud, construction/contractor (MBE/DBE) fraud, and tax fraud.
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Rubin “Hurricane” Carter 1937-2014
In April of this year, celebrated boxer and prisoner-rights activist Rubin “Hurricane” Carter died at the age of 76. He had become an international symbol of racial injustice after his wrongful murder conviction forced him to spend 19 years in prison. Carter was arrested for a triple murder in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey. He said he was innocent, was convicted by an all white jury, and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. In 1976, the New Jersey State Supreme Court overturned his conviction on grounds the authorities withheld material evidence from the defense. But Carter was convicted again in a second trial in 1976. In 1985, that conviction was overturned by a U.S. district court judge, who concluded the state made an unconstitutional appeal to racial prejudice. In 1988, the Passaic, New Jersey, Prosecutor’s Office dropped all charges against Carter.
Attorney Myron Beldock:
- He was a defendant in a criminal case in New Jersey involved the triple shooting and three murders of 3 people in the Lafayette bar in Patterson, New Jersey.
- He and his co-defendant John Artis were represented at the first trial and they lost, (convicted) and Rubin started his campaign to get out of jail and wrote his book the 16th Round.
- He was charismatic and powerful, a great thinker, very very intellectually strong person as well as being spiritually strong.
- Almost a typical case, high profile case, where you get people who are vulnerable and easily manipulated because of their need for their own benefits to falsely testify.
- We set aside the convictions when we learned about the benefits that were given to the witnesses.
- We went again to trial in 1975. At that time the atmosphere had changed. There was a new prosecutor, they came up with a theory that it was actually a racial revenge killing.
- Earlier that night, a white former bar owner had shot and killed the black purchaser of the bar from him.
- That was always known and there was no motives attributed to the killings in the first trial but the second trial really based on speculation and bias, they argued persuasively to the jury that this was a racial revenge killing.
- Mr. Bellow who was the supposed eye witness who testified, there were two of them in the first trial, was being questioned by me on the stand as to why he recanted his recantation. The prosecutor persuaded him to again tell the story he told at the first trial, identifying Rubin and John and I was trying to establish that they had falsely manipulated him when I was pulled into the chambers along with my co-counsel Louis Steele who represented John Artis and told that if I question him further, the jury would learn that he passed the lie detector test, supporting what he said at the first trial. Supporting his identification (of Rubin Carter)
- We did have that test. It seemed like that was the result because that’s the way it was written. In fact that was a fraud.
- The polygraph results were completely opposite of what they were purported to be.
- The prosecutors in that case, two of them became judges, rewarded for what they did.
- Rubin was not a popular person, he had been an outspoken civil rights person. It was a cesspool of rumors without any evidentiary basis.
- The entire community there almost in Passaic New Jersey treated us like we were the devil.
- It was the coldest community reception I ever encountered in any place.
- Rubin would call every year (from Canada) on the anniversary of his release. He got a group of Canadian do-gooders and free thinkers to join him in fighting to set aside convictions for people who were wrongly convicted in Canada.
- He would vet the briefs that we sent. He was a very unusual client.
- Rubin refused to act as a prisoner because he wasn’t anyone who was guilty he said.
- So, he didn’t eat prison food, he didn’t take prisoner assignments, he didn’t wear prison clothes and somehow or other he was able to pull that off.
- People think of it as being another time, I’ve been practicing law long enough and I don’t think anything changes.
- The same kind of bias runs deep throughout the community its just masked somewhat differently.
- You make your luck in these cases, you have to forge ahead.
- His insistence on being an innocent person and will not compromise with the system is the kind of inspiration that pushes us on as lawyers.
Guest – Attorney Myron Beldock, graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in 1946, Hamilton College in 1950 and Harvard Law School in 1958. He served in the U.S. Army from 1951 to 1954 and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York from 1958 to 1960. After several years as an associate with a small New York City firm and as a single practitioner, he brought together two friends and former Assistant U.S. Attorneys, Elliot Hoffman and Larry Levine, to form Beldock Levine & Hoffman in 1964. He is best described, by his own definition, as an old-time general practitioner. He concentrates on trial and appellate litigation, in state and federal courts, in defense of criminal charges and in pursuing plaintiffs’ civil rights actions based on police and prosecutorial misconduct and employer and governmental discrimination. He regularly consults and defends charges of professional discipline. He represents plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of personal and business related matters, working with others in the firm’s various practice areas.
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