Law and Disorder

November 29, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Can A Lawsuit Against The CIA Affect U.S. Extradition Attempt of Julian Assange?

In August 2022, a group of U.S. citizen attorneys and journalists sued the CIA and its former director Mike Pompeo. They alleged that the CIA, during Pompeos tenure, spied on them during meetings with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The WikiLeaks founder sheltered there for 7 years in an effort to avoid extradition to the United States.. Assange is charged with 17 counts under the Espionage Act for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes. If convicted, he faces 175 years in prison. Journalists and lawyers visiting Assange were required to surrender their electronic devices to Undercover Global before each visit. U.C. Global is a private security company which was providing security to the embassy. The lawsuit alleged that the company copied that information and handed it over to the CIA. In early November, Deborah Hrbek and our own Marjorie Cohn discussed the lawsuit and the case against Assange, in a program sponsored by the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee.

November 22, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissene Habre; and Fairness and Accuracy In Election Coverage

Human rights attorney Reed Brody's page turning book To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissene Habre is being released in November 2022. Habre was the dictator of Chad, a landlocked country in central Africa from 1982 to 1990. Habre was found guilty in a courtroom in Dakar, Senegal in May 2016 of rape, sexual slavery, torture, and the killing of over 40,000 citizens of Chad. He was the first former head of state to be convicted of crimes against humanity in the courts of another country. Guest - Reed Brody has helped pursue dictators Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Jean Claude baby doc Duvalier of Haiti, and Yahya Jamaeh of Ghana. He also uncovered atrocities of US backed contras in Nicaragua, led UN missions in El Salvador, in the Congo, and exposed Bush " administration torture.

Virtually everyone agrees that the mainstream corporate media in the United States plays a major role in who wins elections. But on the right, a great many are convinced that what they characterize as the liberal media is not to be believed, thanks to Trump and his cries of the lying media, while on the left, most argue that since the mainstream media is corporate, it operates for the benefit of those candidates most likely to advance the interests of corporate America. So today we examine the role played by the mainstream media in our elections. How truthful is its election reporting? What role does social media play in the electoral process? Guest - Norman Solomon is a longtime associate of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (F.A.I.R.), which has proved to be a powerful watchdog of the American media. Norman Solomon is the co-founder of the online activist organization RootsAction.org, and he is also the Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

November 15, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Israel Authorizes Military to Kill Palestinians With Drones and State Of The Free Press: The News That Didn’t Make the News And Why 2023

In October, the Israeli government announced that commanders of the Israeli Occupying Forces have been authorized to use armed drones to kill Palestinians in several parts of the occupied West Bank, with the approval of Chief of Staff-Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi. Since 2008,the Israeli Air Force has been killing Palestinians in Gaza with drones, especially during protests against the Annexation Wall and colonies. Drones have also been used to fire gas bombs and live rounds at residents in cities, towns, and refugee camps of occupied Jerusalem. Drones are employed for surveillance, but this is the first time that weaponized drones will be used in the occupied West Bank. Guest - Attorney Marjorie Cohn is a legal and political analyst who provides commentary on local, national and international media.

The United States has a disinformation problem so endemic that the government says it threatens our national security. When the Department of Homeland Security created a disinformation board in April, critics from all sides denounced it as a potential tool of censorship. Since 1976, one group has been working to raise awareness about censorship in our society, and the urgent need for media literacy. Founded as a media research program, Project Censored focused on student media literacy and critical thinking skills. The Project began publishing an annual book with a list of what it considered the most significant but most under-reported news stories of the year. Guest - Andy Lee Roth joins us to talk about the 2023 edition of State Of The Free Press: The News That Didnt Make the News and Why, that will hit bookstores in December.

November 8, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change; and The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court

We speak with University of Wisconsin history professor Alfred McCoy about his new book To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change. The United States of America has been governing the globe now for 80 years, since World War II. This is about to end. By 2030, China will have the worlds largest economy and hold more riches than the U.S., which is deeply in debt. Climate change will upend the world. It has already started. The effects of climate change on the population of the world, especially China, will be catastrophic. Guest " Alfred W McCoy holds the Fred Harvey Harrington chair of history at the University of Wisconsin.

The nation is still reeling from the Trump administrations assaults to the rule of law, and their ripple effects on democratic institutions. But these attacks were the result of strategic planning over decades, and the handiwork of networks of well-funded think tanks and lobbyists. Some of the countrys richest and most conservative individuals are, with so-called Dark Money, anonymously supporting these efforts. Chief among these forces is the Federalist Society. Not well known until recently, the Society has worked quietly since the Reagan administration to overhaul the Supreme Court into a bastion of conservatism. Guest " Attorney Lisa Graves, is the founder, director, and editor-in-chief of True North Research. Her analysis of such research has been cited by every major newspaper in the country. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government.

November 1, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Project Blueprint: Haiti; and A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press

Haiti is a nation in crisis, spiraling out of control since last year's assassination of its president, Jovenet Moise. The government has cratered, and 200 violent gangs have seized control. There's no fuel, and food and water are hard to come by. Last week, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti. It calls for sanctions on groups and individuals threatening peace and stability in the impoverished nation. Guest - Human rights attorney Brian Concannon, Executive Director of Project Blueprint, and the founder and former Executive Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

For more than a century, the 1917 Espionage Act has been used by the United States government to target critics of its foreign and military policy. From suppressing criticism of U.S. participation in World War I to present-day attempts to silence whistleblowers, political dissidents and journalists. In their new book, A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press, Ralph Engelman and Carey Shenkman trace the use of the Espionage Act against Eugene Debs, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, among others. Guest - Carey Shenkman, a constitutional lawyer and litigator focusing on freedom of expression, transparency and technology. He serves on the panel of experts at Columbia University's Global Freedom of Expression Program, and consults on media rights issues before the United Nations and around the world.

October 25, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution; and Impending Threats To American Democracy

Time is running out for humanity to avoid a catastrophic planetary tipping point. The globalized system of capital accumulation has induced humanity to foul its on nest. The result is a planetary emergency that threatens all present and future generations and thrown into question the continuation of civilization and ultimately the very survival of humanity itself. Only by addressing the social aspects of the current planetary environment is it possible to develop the ecological and social resources for a new journey of hope. Guest - John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review magazine and a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon. He has written many books including The Robbery of Nature and The Return of Nature. His most recent book is Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution.

In a recent New York Times article, by David Leonhardt, titled A Crisis Coming: The Two Twin Threats to American Democracy, Leonhardt, after first identifying the first threat being that things are now in place where for the first time in U.S. history, a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office, he identifies the second threat, as follows: The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: the power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion. The run of Supreme Court decisions "both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular "highlight this disconnect. Guest - Steve Rohde is the past chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He is a widely recognized expert on the U.S. Constitution, as well as a political activist.

October 18, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Supreme Court May Outlaw Affirmative Action; and Up Against the Law: Radical Lawyers and Social Movements, 1960s-1970s

In 2003, the Supreme Court held in the case of Grutter v. Bollinger that the 14th Amendment allows public universities to consider race as a factor to assemble a diverse student body. The Court reaffirmed that holding in 2016. There are now two cases pending on the Courts docket that it may well use to overrule Grutter and gut affirmative action. The Court will hear oral argument in these two cases on October 31. The Students for Fair Admissions is suing Harvard and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, asking the Court to overturn Grutter. The group says its mission is helping to restore colorblind principles to our nations schools, colleges and universities. Colorblind is a euphemism for allowing the conditions that created the racial inequality and unequal opportunity to continue. Guest - Jason Williamson is Executive Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at New York University School of Law. He teaches a course in Social Justice Lawyering and runs the Racial Justice Clinic.

The 1960s and 1970s weren't just the time when protesters took to the streets to fight for civil rights, and against the Vietnam War. It was also a period when radical lawyers defended dissidents and worked closely with them to bring their messages into the nations courtrooms and into the public sphere. Luca Falciola has just published a book about the militant attorneys who fought for social change arm-in-arm with activists. Breaking from the traditional role of attorneys, they identified with their clients and their causes, and challenged the conservative rules and trappings of the legal profession. The book is titled Up Against the Law: Radical Lawyers and Social Movements, 1960s-1970s, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Guest - Luca Falciola is a lecturer at Columbia University. His publications include the award-winning book about the Movement of 1977 in Italy, and several articles on various aspects of contentious politics between the 1960s and the 1980s.

October 11, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

A Unified Movement of Peace; and Doctors Lose Licenses For Properly Prescribing Opioids

The world today is threatened with war, poverty, displacement and hunger like no other time since 1937 when World War II began with the Japanese invasion of China. Within four years the war had spread leading to the death of tens of millions of people. This included 50 million Russians, 400,000 Americans and finally hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in 1945 when the US initiated the nuclear age with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrating American power to the Russians. This initiated the Cold War which is now in a second stage. It must be stopped. Guest " Ray McGovern former CIA intelligence analyst, Ray briefed President George H. W. Bush every morning on intelligence matters, particularly with respect to Russia. He is a founder of VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a contributor to the blog Common Dreams.

The CDC wrongly thought pain management doctors were over prescribing opioids. The CDC issued guidelines in 2016 put limits on the amount of opioids doctors could prescribe thinking that high doses of Oxycontin lead to addiction and death. These guidelines were disastrous for chronic pain patients. Many were driven to buy illegal drugs on the street which were laced with poisonous fentanyl. In 2021 this led to 100,000 deaths in the United States. Several insurance companies encouraged the CDC to impose limits on doctors prescribing Oxycontin and to taper their patients. When the CDC guidelines were exceeded, the Department of Justice threatened to indict doctors and got them to stop practicing medicine. The doctors gave up their medical licenses and licenses to prescribe narcotics. Some were prosecuted. Some went to prison. Guest - Kelly Dineen Gillespie is a professor of law and the Director of the health law program at Creighton University School of Law. She teaches health law and bioethics. Dr. Gillespie holds a PhD in health care ethics as well as a law degree.

October 4, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Analysis: States Respond To Overruling Of Roe v. Wade; and Attorney Deborah LaBelle: Planned Parenthood v. State of Michigan

Since June, when the right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and retracted the constitutional right to abortion, many states have enacted onerous restrictions or outright bans on abortion. On November 8, voters in three states " California, Michigan and Vermont - will decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitutions. People in Kentucky will vote on an amendment that specifically excludes the right to abortion from constitutional protection. In August, Kansas voters rejected a similar amendment that would have explicitly said that its constitution does not provide the right to abortion. Guest - Law and Disorder co-host and legal scholar Marjorie Cohn discusses why its crucial that states amend their constitutions to protect the right to abortion.

Deborah LaBelle is a Michigan attorney and writer whose work centers on constitutional and civil rights in class actions and community representation utilizing a human rights framework. Ms. LaBelle has been lead counsel in over a dozen class action lawsuits that have successfully expanded the civil and constitutional rights of her clients in both federal and state courts, including before the U.S. Supreme Court and in international fora. What brings her here today, is Ms. LaBelle's most recent involvement in the historic case of Planned Parenthood v. State of Michigan. This case was triggered by the nation-wide crisis created by the U.S. Supreme Court in its reversal of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson. Dobbs awoke a long-dormant 1931 felony statute in Michigan which criminalizes all medical and legal actions taken to support a person who seeks or needs an abortion. Our guest Ms. LaBelle has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Lawyers Guilds Law for the People Award, the National Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from Public Justice Foundation, and the Federal Bar Associations Wade McCree Jr. Award; Michigan ACLU Civil Libertarian of the Year Award; as well as several others too long to list here.

September 27, 2022 National, News & Public Affairs

Chris Hedges: Social Change And Democracy 2022; and The State of Labor Unions And Recent Worker Strikes

You can't have organized activity for social change without democracy. Social change and democracy are bound up with one another. But America is not a democracy. This is by design. It was never intended to be. The founding fathers " there were no founding mothers - wrote a document 245 years ago in Philadelphia that excluded more Americans than it included. The Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that corporations are people entitled to free speech rights. So they can give as much money as they want to political campaigns. Last month an industrialist gave $1.6 billion to the Republicans. Like Bob Dylan wrote, money doesn't talk it screams. It is impossible to have a democracy in a country like ours with such vast income and wealth disparity. Guest - Chris Hedges, the most penetrating journalist we have. He once worked for the New York Times and even won a Pulitzer Prize. But he was forced out. He had a show on our RT which was closed down by our government and some 600 of his show On Contact were taken off of YouTube.

For decades now only about 11% of workers in America have been members of unions, whereas previously more than 35% were union members. Various pieces of pro-management legislation and court opinions caused this diminution in union membership and, as a consequence, a weakening of the rights of American workers. But in recent years, as a result of militant fight back efforts by exploited workers in many industries, unions have once again been having some success in organizing. But federal and state laws still create an up-hill fight for those seeking to organize workers into unions, and to win good labor contracts. So today we ask: do these few but growing number of recent labor union victories truly represent a new day for American workers and the unions that serve them? Do these localized labor victories suggest that more and bigger victories for workers are now within reach? Or, have these recent victories been simply exceptions to the still dismal overall state of union organizing in America? Guest - Alan Benjamin, long-time union organizer and workers advocate. A leader in his own union, he has served on the Executive Council of the San Francisco AFL-CIO Labor Council. He is also one of the principal organizers of the organization known as Labor and Community for an Independent Party, or LCIP.