Books Unbanned; and Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Bill Schaap

Books Unbanned

Authoritarian institutions and regimes ban books. They tell people what they can and cannot read. The Catholic Church once banned the book by mathematician Johannes Kepler which demonstrated that the earth travels around the sun and not vice versa.

Many of us know about the bonfires of banned books by the degenerate Jews Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx that the Fascist Hitler regime lit with a frenzy.

Can this happen in America? It has already started. Many state legislatures have moved to ban books. Some 250 titles have been put on a list of books that cannot be assigned to grade schoolers and high schoolers including such classics in the American canon as To Kill a Mockingbird and even Catcher in the Rye

The censors don’t want to encourage free spirits. They don’t like criticism. For them the ideal citizen does not think for himself or herself, keeps her mouth shut, and goes along.

The Brooklyn public library is fighting for the rights of teenagers and young adults to read what they like, discover themselves, and form their own opinions. The library launched a campaign called Books Unbanned in response to the increasingly coordinated and effective effort to remove books from shelves which tackle a wide range of topics.

There were 1597 individual book challenges last year, the highest of 20 years since the American Library Association has been keeping track.

The Brooklyn public library is the sixth largest in the country. It started defending the right to read last April by giving free library cards to young people in every state in the union. So far 5100 cards have been given out. 52,000 e-books or audiobooks have been checked out. The books that are most frequently challenged are those on sexuality and those on racism.

Guest – Nick Higgins, Chief Librarian at Brooklyn Public Library, leading the development of transformative library services and spaces for the borough’s residents at 61 sites. Along with providing traditional programs and experiences for Brooklynites, Nick and his team have expanded the Library’s reach by creating unique programs for older adults, individuals and families impacted by the justice system, immigrants, and people experiencing homelessness. Nick holds a BA in Literature from Hunter College and a MLS from the Pratt Institute. [email protected]

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Law and Disorder hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith remember New York City Attorney and publisher Bill Schaap.

Bill Schaap died in his home on February 25th, 2016 after a long illness. He was 75. After graduating from the University of Chicago Law school in 1964 Schaap worked for the Center for Constitutional Rights on its project in Japan representing antiwar GIs during the Vietnam war. For 20 years he and his companion the late Ellen Ray lived in Washington DC and published and wrote for the magazine Covert Action Quarterly which exposed the crimes of the CIA. In its early years they named CIA agents, until a naming names act was passed by Congress making the exposure of agents a crime. In the early 80s they moved to New York City and founded Sheridan Square Press. They published books about the CIA by former CIA agents. Most prominently they published New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrisons book On the Trail of the Assassins showing CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was the basis for the Oliver Stone movie JFK. In the early 90s they founded the Institute For Media Analysis and began publishing the magazine Lies of Our Times, a magazine of media criticism. Bill Schaap was a recognized expert in government propaganda and wrote and spoke widely and frequently on the topic.

Lawyers Youll Like: Attorney Bill Schaap

Attorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70s and 80s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.

Attorney William Schaap:

One of first cases at this big Wall Street firm, they had some outside counsel working on it, one of whom was David Lubel, and Dave Lubel who had I think been a recruiter for the Communist Party in his youth, was always good at spotting somebody who was always worth recruiting and he started to tell me there was this convention of this lawyers group.

Guest ” Attorney William Schaap graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1964 and has been a practicing lawyer since. Bill specialized in military law and practiced in Asia and Europe. He later became the editor in chief of the Military Law Reporter in Washington for a number of years. In the 70s and 80s he was a staff counsel of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City. In the late 80s, he was an adjunct professor at John J. College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York where he taught courses on propaganda and disinformation.

In addition to being a practicing lawyer, Bill was a journalist, publisher and a writer specializing in intelligence as it relates to media. He was the co-publisher of a magazine called the Covert Action Quarterly for more than 20 years. He also published a magazine on propaganda and disinformation titled Lies Of Our Times. Attorney Bill Schapp has written numerous articles and edited many books on the topic of media and intelligence.

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