Law and Disorder

September 19, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Facebook’s Duty to Protect WhatsApp and FBI Evidence Demonstrates Saudi Arabia’s Involvement in September 11 Attacks

Editorial By Attorney Heidi Boghosian: Facebook's Duty to Protect WhatsApp

FBI Evidence Demonstrates Saudi Arabia's Involvement in September 11 Attacks
The attack on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon happened 20 years ago and in retrospect was a turning point in American history. Law And Disorder Radio was launched three years after that event. Our mission was to defend both democracy and the rule of law. The attacks were a crime against humanity. But instead of treating them as a crime it was turned into an occasion to launch aggressive and illegal wars. The Nuremberg trials against the Nazis who started World War II defined aggressive war as the ultimate crime because it held within it all lesser crimes. 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 Biden's 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. 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.

September 12, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Can President Donald Trump Be President Again? and A Sleeping Giant In American Politics

Can President Donald Trump Be President Again?
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court became the most conservative it has been in 90 years, with conservative justices controlling decisions with a comfortable 6-3 majority. We can no longer take any Constitutional rights or liberties we thought we had for granted. Prior Supreme Court rulings that aimed at ensuring fairness, equal opportunity, reproductive freedom, and a participatory government "including for those who were not born into the favored, elite classes "are now at great risk. Today, with the help of Stephen Rohde, we examine two very important constitutional issues: first, the question of: How safe is freedom of the press in our country today? We do this by looking at the new challenges being leveled at the landmark 1964 case, New York Times v. Sullivan, a case granting protection to a newspaper when it prints a libelous story about a public official or public figure but does so without actual malice. Is that press protection about to disappear? Then, we change gears a bit and ask our guest about the currently much-discussed question flowing from the fact that former President Donald Trump, now faces criminal charges for seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Guest - Stephen Rohde recently published a fabulous review of a new book by Samantha Barbas, titled Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York v. Sullivan. Steve Rohde is a writer, lecturer, and political activist who practiced civil rights, civil liberties, and intellectual property law for almost 50 years. He is past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and a co-founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace
A Sleeping Giant In American Politics
We can look back five years ago to the beginning of the upsurge in teacher militancy in red states such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, and Arizona, where teachers struck, often illegally, to better not only their situation, but that of the communities they lived in. This upsurge has continued. Recently, we have seen the great success of the Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, coming together to form a union and Starbucks workers across the country have also unionized. Meanwhile, the writers and actors in the Hollywood movie and television industry have been on strike for several months. The Democratic party, which get a lot of money from the entertainment industry, has not lifted a finger to help them. The unemployment rates for actors is 90% and only 2% of them can make a living out of acting. Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney said They no longer pay actors what they used to and with streamers you no longer get substantial residuals." Eighty percent of the union makes less than $26,000 a year, not enough to qualify for union health insurance. The captains of finance and industry run and control the Democratic Party. They made sure that Bernie Sanders did not get the nomination in 2016 and 2020. The leadership of the labor movement most often supports the Democratic party, explaining that they are the lesser of two evils. Guest - Al Bradbury is the editor of Labor Notes and an advocate and practitioner of labor militancy. Labor Notes is a media and organizational project since 1978 that has been the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back into the labor movement.

September 5, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Tompkins Square Park Police Riot 35th Anniversary Special

Tompkins Square Park Police Riot 35th Anniversary Special
Thirty five years ago, a singular event occurred in Manhattans East Village that would prove transformative to many lives for years to come. Today on Law and Disorder we bring you a special program on the August 1988 Tompkins Square Park Police Riot as recounted by several individuals who were there for the entire event. We share firsthand observations of unbridled police violence, talk about how we came to be there, and discuss how the riot marked the linchpin to transform an entire neighborhood from a mecca of creativity and political activism, to the new home of TARGET, Starbucks and other hallmarks of American gentrification. Tompkins Square Park is bounded on the West and East by Avenues A and B, and on the North and South by 10th Street and 7th Streets. It falls in the part of that neighborhood often referred to as Alphabet City, named for its 4 Alphabet numbered avenues, that in the 1960s and 1970s were a haven for drug sellers and squatters and a large Puerto Rican community. The park had a history of activism as it was the site of a riot in 1874 on behalf of the city's labor movement.
In 1988, a homeless encampment was erected in the park, attracting a wide range of activists, squatters, and homeless persons. Several local residents complained and in a controversial move, the local governing body, Community Board 3, on June 28, approved a 1 AM curfew from what had long been a 24-hour open park. The Avenue A Block Association supported the curfew as it represented the few local businesses that existed then. Many residents opposed the curfew, including those who would have to take a longer walk around the park to get home. The New York City City Parks Department agreed to enforce the curfew, and on July 31, 1998 protesters gathered at a rally there. Police, responding to alleged noise complaints, entered the park. A skirmish ensued, and several civilians and six officers were treated for injuries. Four men were arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and inciting to riot.

August 29, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

A Few Things Oppenheimer Leaves Out and Peace Movement Attacks And A Renewed War With Korea?

A Few Things Oppenheimer Leaves Out
The atomic bomb was developed by physicist, J, Robert Oppenheimer and his team in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was dropped unnecessarily on the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 8, 1945. It was a war crime. Historians have established that it was not necessary to stop the war because the Japanese were ready to surrender. Therefore the justification that it saved American lives because troops would not have to fight on the Japanese homeland is false. These two premises, that the bomb was necessary, and that it save lives is a lie obscured then, and carried forward till today. The Cold War against Russia started on August 6 and August 8, 1945 when the US dropped two nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities to scare the Russians. The movie does not show the effects of the nuclear bomb. Between 200 and 300,000 old people, children, and women were instantly incinerated. Hundreds of thousands got sick and died from radiation poisoning. Guest - Andrew Cockburn, Washington DC-based journalist and author of Spoils of War: Power, Profit, and the American War Machine. Verso Books 2021. Washington Editor at Harper's Magazine

Peace Movement Attacks And A Renewed War With Korea?
Many political commentators believe the driving force behind growing U.S. actions and hostility towards China are being carried out in preparation for war with China; war with China if China cannot otherwise be contained as it more and more challenges the might and global reach of the United States. Indeed, China already now has the second largest economy in the world and is on track to soon surpass that of the United States. A McCarthyite redbaiting hit piece on the front page of the New York Times on August 6th, against the peace group CODEPINK, and others who are organizing against the growing demonization of China, is a particularly troubling sign. So, we will ask our guest: is a war with China inevitable? Does not the fact that China, as well as the U.S., are nuclear weaponized nations make such a war unthinkable? Korea, with its claimed right to possess nuclear weapons, has also been the target of administrations from both parties. The Korean War ended in 1953. And yet thousands of U.S. troops are still stationed in South Korea and, of course, there is still no peace treaty, no true formal ending of the war, and so the country still remains divided. And those who advocate for peace in Korea are also sharply criticized and redbaited by the U.S. government, and in the press. Guest " Ann Wright is a 29-year US Army/Army Reserves veteran, a retired United States Army colonel and retired U.S. State Department official, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She is most noted for having been one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

August 22, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Judge Rejects CACI’s Attempt To Dismiss Torture Case and Three of Newburgh Four Released

Judge Rejects CACI's Attempt To Dismiss Torture Case
In Iraq, unlike Guantanamo (and the CIA blacksites), there was never any question that the Geneva Conventions applied - and torture was illegal. CACI, a U.S. corporation, contracted with the United States military to provide interrogation services to the U.S. Army at Iraqs notorious Abu Ghraib prison. In 2008, Iraqi civilians Suhal Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili, and Asa'ad Al-Zubae filed a lawsuit against CACI under the Alien Tort Statute seeking damages for the torture and abuse they suffered while detained at Abu Ghraib. The three plaintiffs allege that CACI employees conspired with and aided and abetted U.S. military personnel in subjecting them to torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and war crimes, in violation of international law. A U.S. Army General called their treatment sadistic, blatant, and wanton. On July 31, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia rejected CACIs attempts to have the case dismissed. Guest - Katherine Gallagher is a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she specializes in the enforcement of human rights, including the prohibition against torture. She is one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit against CACI.

Three of Newburgh Four Released
On July 25, a judge ordered the compassionate release of three of the so-called Newburgh Four -- Onta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen. The men, who are Black Muslims from Newburgh, New York, were convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges in 2011. In the July release order, US District Court Judge Colleen McMahon suggested that the FBI had invented a conspiracy. She said that FBI agents had used an unscrupulous operative to persuade the four to join in a plan to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx and fire Stinger missiles at military planes at Stewart Airport near Newburgh, New York. While bombs were, in fact, left outside a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, they were fakes built by the FBI. Guest - Kathy Manley, New York appellate attorney joins us to talk about this late-in-coming victory. Among her many victories was the 2015 case of People v. Diack, which struck down county and local sex offender residence restrictions throughout New York State. Kathy works with several civil rights groups, including the Coalition Of Civil Freedoms.

August 15, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

The Coming War On China and Greenwashing Climate Change

The Coming War On China
Today we re-broadcast a recent interview we did with the great Australian journalist John Pilger about his film titled The Coming War On China. With the exception of a short break at the conclusion in 1975 of the Vietnamese war, the United States has been at war continually. The momentum of what President Eisenhower warned us against and described as being led by, the military industrial complex has been going on with successive wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now the American proxy war in Ukraine. The military industrial complex has been augmented by support from the CIA, Congress, and the corporate media. Guest " John Pilger covered the Vietnam war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Another 1 million people died in the Iraq war That war was based on the now well known lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was going to use against us and that he was responsible for 911. A similar campaign of fear mongering is going on now about China.

Greenwashing Climate Change
As the US presidential election season heats up, so too does the planet. July 2023 was the Earths hottest month on record, and as climate scientist Friederike Otto told the Associated Press, We should not care about July because its a record, but because it wont be a record for long. Its an indicator of how much we have changed the climate. We are living in a very different world, one that our societies are not adapted to live in very well. Well, on the GOP side, the presidential hopefuls have mostly ignored the climate crisis, and some even dismiss it outright as a left-wing hoax. On the Democrats side, we have Joe Biden who does not shy away from admitting we have a problem. He appeared for an exclusive interview on the Weather Channel last week, calling climate change the number one issue facing humanity, and that combating climate change is a core tenet of his presidency. Guest " Andrew Perez is an investigative reporter and senior editor for The Lever, which was just awarded the 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement by Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College for its relentless work exposing the corrupting influence of corporate power on government and both major parties.

August 8, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Julian Assange and Press Freedom and 63rd Anniversary Agent Orange Day

Julian Assange and Press Freedom
Facing the possibility of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assanges imminent extradition to the United States, Reporters Without Borders recently launched a week of advocacy meetings and a mobile truck through the streets of Washington DC to urgently call for his release. The actions were organized after UK High Court Judge Jonathan Swift in June rejected Assanges appeal against the UKs order of extradition to the United States. Assange, who is being targeted for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes, is the first publisher prosecuted under the Espionage Act for disclosing government secrets. He faces a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Guest - Clayton Weimers, executive director of the US office of Reporters Without Borders. Clayton was previously the organizations Washington-Based Deputy Director for Advocacy.

63rd Anniversary Agent Orange Day
Although the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the debilitating effects of Agent Orange. Thats the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. military sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971. Agent Orange poisoned both the people and the land of Vietnam. On August 10, Agent Orange Day, we mark the 63rd anniversary of the first spraying of the toxic chemical on Vietnam. Descendants of the roughly 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans exposed to Agent Orange and other toxins still suffer. They register disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of several diseases. U.S. veterans receive some limited compensation from the U.S. government, but very little if any assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, the intended victims targets of the defoliant Agent Orange. Guest - Paul Cox served in the U.S. Marines during the Vietnam War. He now serves on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, a project of Veterans for Peace

August 1, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

Lawyers You’ll Like ” Attorney Mel Wulf and Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Bill Schaap

Lawyers You'll Like " Attorney Mel Wulf
Mel Wulf died at age 95 on July 1, 2023. He was one of the great constitutional litigators of his time. Attorney Mel Wulf was former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years. He was a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more. Wulf was part of some of the greatest contributions to the civil rights movement. He's now retired after practicing law for 54 years. As part of our Lawyers You'll Like series, we talk with Wulf about his work with the ACLU during the early 60s, and also about the forming of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee. Guest " Attorney Mel Wulf, former legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union for 15 years and a law partner with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark during the Kennedy Administration and much more.

Lawyers You'll Like: Attorney Bill Schaap
Attorney Bill Schaap, who died in 2016, was a friend and colleague of Mel Wulfs. Bill and his wife, Ellen Ray published the historic whistleblowing magazine Covert Action Quarterly that exposed to CIA. Then they started Sheridan Square Press. They published a number of memoirs of former CIA agents who revealed the truth about the activities of the CIA. Ex-CIA agent Phil Agee was one of Sheridan Square Press authors. He wrote Inside The Company which exposed the names of some 200 CIA agents involved in nefarious activities in South America. Mel Wulf represented Agee for 30 years and unsuccessfully tried to get his passport back when the government had it taken away. Guest Bill Schaap was a journalist, publisher and a writer specializing in intelligence as it relates to media.

July 25, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast and Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.

The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast
In 2012, journalist Michael Scott Moore went to Somalia to research a book on piracy. He was abducted by a gang of Somali pirates, who demanded $20 million from the US government. After protracted negotiations, and a payment of $1.6 million dollars, Moore was released" two and a half years later. His international bestseller, The Desert and the Sea, chronicles his 977 days in captivity. This past February, two men were convicted in federal court for helping to carry out his kidnapping. Guest " Michael Scott Moore, in addition to The Desert and the Sea, he has written the highly acclaimed book, Sweetness and Blood, about the history of surfing. He serves on the board of Hostage US, an organization that supports American hostages and their families.

Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.
In January 2019 New York State passed a bill to outlaw revenge porn, joining 41 other states that have passed similar laws. Revenge Porn is the term for the non-consensual sharing on the Internet of sexually explicit photographs or videos. Private images can follow victims for years, turning up when employers or romantic partners search for their names on the Internet. But in New York, victims have experienced years of helplessness in the courts. Prosecutors could not charge offenders for a practice that was not illegal, and judges turned down appeals for help on the grounds of free speech, even while other states were enacting protections. Under New York's new law, offenders can be punished by up to one year in jail. Guest " New York Attorney Carrie Goldberg started a law firm to focus on defending victims of the practices. She has just come out with her first book titled Nobody's Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs and Trolls.

July 18, 2023 National, News & Public Affairs

War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine and Israel Attacks West Bank City of Jenin

War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine
From Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria and on to little known deployments in a range of countries worldwide, the United States has been at perpetual war for at least the past two decades. Yet many of these foreign wars remain off the radar of average Americans. Solomon writes that since the attacks on 9/11, more than 20 years ago, first in the war in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, a hugely consequential shift in (United States) American foreign-policy was set in motion: a perpetual state of war that is almost entirely invisible to the public. Solomon exposes how this happened and what the consequences are, for military and civilian casualties, and the draining of resources at home. Guest - Norman Solomon is cofounder of RootsAction.org executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He's written many books, but War Made Invisible, is his first one in 15 years.

Israel Attacks West Bank City of Jenin
On fourth of July, as we in the US heard fireworks, people in the Palestinian city of Jenin heard real gunfire and fled from real explosions. On July 3, a thousand Israeli Defense Force soldiers descended on the city, with helicopters, drones and bulldozers, to execute a two day bombardment that leveled the city, reduced its buildings to rubble, damaged hospitals, knocked out utilities, and left at least 13 people dead: 12 Palestinians and 1 Israeli soldier. At least 100 were wounded, and now thousands " about 80% of those living in the camp " are without shelter, water or electricity. Guest " Sandra Tamari is a Palestinian organizer and the Executive Director of Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian advocacy organization that builds toward collective liberation through labor, cultural, and legislative campaigns.She holds a Masters degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University.