Law and Disorder

November 23, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison

Chris Hedges' new book, Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison, is the story of a class he taught in East Jersey State Prison. His 28 students, who collectively had spent 515 years in prison, wrote a play about their lives called “Caged.” The process of writing the play, which was eventually performed at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey to sold out audiences and was published by Haymarket Books, ripped down the emotional walls most erect in prison and allowed his students to express in heartbreaking detail the trauma, grief, loss and violence that marked their, as well as the institutionally racist structures, often unseen by those on the outside, which keep the poor poor. And yet, the play they wrote was, at its core, about radical love, the solidarity and bonds that keep them human outside and inside prison walls.
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.

November 16, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Public Hostage, Public Ransom:, Ending Institutionalization in America; and The Movement To Ban Killer Drones

The mistreatment of disabled people and elderly persons mistreatment is facilitated because the institutions that has them get Medicaid funding. It is a national scandal. Willowbrook is seen as a turning point in the beginning of the disability rights movement in the United States. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said life in the community is a necessary condition for a person's complete flourishing as a human being. This Is what needs to be done. Re-integrating these people into the community is the goal today across the USA. Guest - Dr. William Bronston, author of Public Hostage, Public Ransom:, Ending Institutionalization in America. Dr. Bronston is an advocate for deinstitutionalization. He was a physician at Willowbrook State School in New York.

On October 29, as Joe Biden pulled U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, his administration launched a hellfire missile from an MQ-9 Reaper drone in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, and then lied about it. Nearly three weeks later, an extensive investigation by The New York Times revealed that the target of the drone strike, Zemari Ahmadi, was a U.S. aid worker, not an ISIS operative, and the explosives in the Toyota that the drone targeted were most likely water bottles. The Pentagon's assertion that no one did anything illegal to cause the drone deaths of the Ahmadi family members is a shameful side-stepping and a further cover-up of who made what decisions and why in this horrible slaughter. Guest - Nick Mottern. Nick has been an tireless organizer of the movement to ban armed drones.

November 9, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Highlighting PETA Cases And Inherent Animal Protections; and More PETA Cases, Speciesism and Long Range Animal Protection

Scientists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, have written an authoritative report from dozens of studies, some funded by the National Institutes of Health, that show sentience across the animal kingdom. It compiles evidence from dozens of studies "some funded by the federal National Institutes of Health "that show sentience across the animal kingdom. The report concludes that because other animals experience emotions as humans do, it is unethical to subject them to the trauma and emotional distress of experimentation. Guest - Asher Smith is Director of Litigation at the PETA Foundation. He has helped secure the rescue of 25 big cats from roadside zoos featured in the Netflix series Tiger King. More recently he has focused on freeing 30 barn owls from a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.

With more than 9 million members and supporters worldwide, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world. It opposes speciesism, the human-held belief that all other animal species are inferior. PETAs work encompasses four areas in which animals have been suffering the most intensely and over the longest periods of time. They are in research laboratories, the food industry, the clothing trade, and the entertainment business. PETA conducts public education, investigative news gathering and reporting, research, animal rescue, legislation, and protest campaigns. Guest - Jared Goodman, PETA Foundation Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Animal Law. He describes what speciesism is and how it has informed PETAs work since its founding in 1980.

November 2, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

The Bar – My life as a Radical Lawyer, A Tribute to Michael Ratner

Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith interviewed some of Michael Ratner's closest friends and colleagues as part of a special broadcast highlighting Michael Ratner's legal work and mentorship. The special also marked the upcoming release of Michael Ratner's autobiography Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer published by OR Books. In this one hour taken from the two hour fundraiser broadcast, we hear from attorneys including Eleanor Stein, Richard Levy, Ray Brescia, David Cole and Baher Azmy.

October 26, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights Stealth Plan for America; and The Federalist Society: Shifting the U.S. Legal Landscape to the Right

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. Guest " Professor Nancy MacLean, whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights 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.

In their 2013 book, The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals, attorneys Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin track the movements of this small group of conservative law students and lawyers and their increasing influence. The Federalist Society has lawyer chapters in every major city in the United States and student chapters in every accredited law school. Members include economic conservatives, social conservatives, Christian conservatives, and libertarians. Guest " Attorney Michael Avery, the former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and is an expert in the areas of constitutional law and police misconduct.

October 19, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

FBI Evidence Demonstrates Saudi Arabia’s Involvement in September 11 Attacks

In our show today we examine the new evidence on who was responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001. The new evidence is a six year old FBI report released on President Bidens order last month. Biden was told by the families of the victims of 9/11 that unless this report was released he was not welcome at any of the memorial services. The FBI report demonstrates the complicity of the government of Saudi Arabia in the attacks. It was two Saudi Arabian government officials that helped the first two hijackers when they came to America. They were given money and help to get into flight school. Senator Bob Graham was the head of the Intelligence Committee that investigated what happened on September 11th, 2001. Whistle blower Thomas Drake was a top official at the National Security Agency. Guest " Paul Jay is the editor of the blog the theanalysis.news. We will discuss with him the kind of movement that is needed to reverse the nuclear arms race as well as to bring about a democratic organization of the economy.

October 12, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Julian Assange: October 26 Appeal; and Host Discussion: Challenges To Roe v. Wade And Donziger Case Updates

When Mike Pompeo was Trumps Director of the CIA he called WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange, a hostile non-state intelligence agency. Pompeo suggested that Julian Assange be kidnapped from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had received political asylum, rendered, and assassinated. What has been the reaction of the major news media to this extraordinary revelation? Will this affect the US governments continued efforts to have him extradited to the United States where he would be tried for espionage? Assange is presently being held in solitary confinement in London's infamous Belmarsh prison. In earlier developments, Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that he could not be extradited to United States in defiance of the American request because she feared his prison confinement in an American maximum-security prison might cause him to commit suicide. Guest " Attorney Nathan Fuller who has been attending Julian Assanges 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.

Last week thousands demonstrated across the country over woman's right to choose. The demonstrations took place one month after Texas had enacted its infamous heart beat law which is nearly a total ban on abortion. Currently the law established by Roe v Wade, defends women and affords them to get an abortion during the first two trimesters of their pregnancy. One in four women in the United States has had an abortion. Anti-abortion laws disproportionately attack black, brown and poor women. The Women's Health Protection Act which would codify Roe v. Wade has passed the House and is now in the Senate where it will likely lose. Coming up in the Supreme Court is the Jackson Healthcare Case which originated in Mississippi. That state passed a law limiting the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. Guest " Marjorie Cohn, former criminal law defense attorney and professor emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law. She was the past president of the National Lawyer Guild and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

October 5, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Post Occupation Afghanistan 2021

The US government was not really interested in bringing democracy to or preserving women's rights in Afghanistan. The United States allied with the warlords of the Northern Alliance, showering them with money. Afghanistan became a tremendous supplier of heroin to the world market. Thousands of US soldiers died, tens of thousands were wounded, trillions of dollars were spent. The war was unwinnable. First Donald Trump announced he would withdraw US forces, then Joe Biden took US troops out of that country. What does the future hold for Afghanistan? Guest " Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she is she is the director of theNew Internationalism Project and works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues.

September 28, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Judge Rules Attorney Donziger Guilty of Six Contempt Charges; Faces Jail Time; and Samuel Moyns Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner is Shameful

Steven Donziger, who listeners will recall has been embroiled in a decades long fight against Chevron over their pollution in the Amazon rainforest the size of Rhode Island, was found guilty this July of criminal contempt by US district judge Loretta Preska. She ruled that Steven was guilty of six contempt charges for refusing to turn over evidence in a complex legal case that has pitted the lawyer directly against Chevron. In a 245-page judgement, Judge Preska said Steven had repeatedly and willfully defied court orders adding that its time to pay the piper, with Steven facing six months in jail. Guest - Attorney Martin Garbus, one of three pro bono lawyers representing Donziger in an attempt to get his law license restored.

A controversy was ignited two weeks ago when the New York Review of Books published an article by Yale Law Professor Samuel Moyn. The article singled out human rights attorney Michael Ratner, the cofounder of Law Disorder Radio. Ratner was the longtime president of the Center for Constitution Rights. He died five years ago. Professor Moyn uses him as a whipping boy to support his bizarre theory that punishing war crimes prolonged the wars in the Middle East by making them more palatable. Professor Moyn disingenuously claims that enforcing the conventions against torture and opposing illegal war are mutually exclusive. Guest - Marjorie Cohn, former criminal law defense attorney and professor emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law. She is a past president of the National Lawyer Guild.

September 21, 2021 National, News & Public Affairs

Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of Americas War on Terror; and I Have Nothing to Hide and 20 Other Myths About Surveillance and Privacy

Retired Florida U. S. Senator Bob Graham was the head of the US Senate intelligence committee and also the chairman of the 9/11 commission of inquiry. He was the leading person trying to get President Obama to release to the public the suppressed 28 pages of the 911 report which have been hidden. Senator Graham contends that the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom who were Saudi Arabians, could not have pulled off the operation alone and that in fact they were part of a support network involving the Saudi Arabian monarchy and government. Guest " Senator Bob Graham, is the former two"term governor of Florida and served for 18 years in the United States Senate.

Should we give up our privacy all together because we think we have nothing to hide? This is the perhaps the most pervasive of the myths about surveillance and privacy that Heidi Boghosian explores in her new book titled I Have Nothing to Hide and 20 Other Myths About Surveillance and Privacy.

Other popular misconceptions detailed in the book include the notion that surveillance makes the nation safer, no one wants to spy on kids, police don't monitor social media, metadata doesn't reveal much about me, Congress and the courts protect us from surveillance, and there's nothing I can do to stop surveillance. Guest " Attorney Heidi Boghosian is a New York City attorney, activist, and nonprofit director.