CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Ray McGovern: Clinton Email Wikileaks Valid
The prevailing Russia-gate narrative is that Russia colluded with Donald Trump to swing the 2016 election his way.
Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has led a nearly 2 year investigation in search of proving this. Under American law when a crime is committed prosecutors search for the culprit . In this case, critics say, the search is for the crime.
The investigation seems to be winding down with the expectation that he will soon issue his report. The major news media, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the intelligence community have conducted a drum beat with a nearly fact free assertion that the Russians helped steal the 2016 election.
Is this story true? Is there more to it? Donald Trump after all ran his campaign on a position of easing tensions with Russia.
Is it really in our interest to perpetuate a cold war with a nuclear armed power?
Did Russia use Wikileaks and it’s editor Julian Assange to reveal secrets about the Democratic party? What were the secrets? What danger to free journalism and to truth tellers and whistle blowers does the acceptance of the allegation of Russian interference in the US elections are we facing?
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.
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Defund Islamophobia Campaign
Fear and hatred of Arabs and Muslims existed in the United States especially after the first Gulf war, started by President George H. W. Bush a decade before the attacks on September 11, 2001.
This fear and hatred increased tremendously in the aftermath of those terrorist attacks. How could it be otherwise? It was used to stir up the American public in the ensuing devastating war against Iraq whose government was falsely linked to the attacks but wars were also fought simultaneously in six other predominately Muslim countries.
Anti-Muslim fear and hatred has been promoted in the United States by several groups and people including Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, and David Horowitz.
It turned out that these people and the groups through which they operate were massively funded to the tune of millions of dollars by the United Jewish Appeal in New York City and other Jewish charities in Chicago and San Francisco.
Guest – Donna Nevel is a community psychologist, educator, and co-director of PARCO. She is a long time organizer for justice and is a founding member of Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, Jews Say No!, and the Nakba Project.
Guest – Asaf Calderon is an Israel-American organizer and member of Jewish Voice for peace – New York City. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1991 and moved to New York in 2016. Asaf has a degree in history of the Middle East and Africa from the University of Tel Aviv, and he currently studies for his Masters of Social Work at Hunter College.
Islamophobia Report
BDSmovement.net / Endtheoccupation.org / JewishVoiceForPeace.org
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Guantanamo Diary: Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The American offshore prison camp in Guantánamo, Cuba is still operating. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, it was set up as a place where neither American or international law would apply and where prisoners could be brought, tortured, detained forever, and never charged with a crime. Ten years ago, former President Obama promised to close the offshore prison when he ran for office. It remains up and running to this day. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 18 years of his life there. He was an electrical engineer from Mauritania in Africa and educated in Germany. He was 32 years old when he was apprehended in his home, taken to Jordan where he was tortured, then to Afghanistan, then to Guantanamo and 16 years later at age 48, he was released. He walked out of Guantanamo Bay Prison in October 2016 without being charged with a crime and returned to his native Mauritania.
While in prison in 2005 he wrote a memoir, in English, one of his four languages. His attorney Nancy Hollander had asked him to do it and she finally got it declassified in 2012 but with heavy redactions. It was made into a book, titled Guantánamo Diary, and published in 2015 and became an international bestseller.
In it, he describes how he was tortured in ways personally approved by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Torture is a criminal act under both US and international law. As many know, Rumsfeld has yet to be prosecuted.
Guest – Mohamedou Ould Slahi joins hosts from his native country of Mauritania where he is a writer. He is the author of Guantanamo Diary.
Guest – Attorney Nancy Hollander has been a member of the firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, P.A. since 1980 and a partner since 1983. Her practice is largely devoted to criminal cases, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Hollander also served as a consultant to the defense in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland, has assisted counsel in other international cases and represents two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Nancy is co-author of WestGroup’s Everytrial Criminal Defense Resource Book, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence, 15th Edition, and Wharton’s Criminal Procedure, 14th Edition. She has appeared on national television programs as PBS Now, Burden of Proof, the Today Show, Oprah Winfrey, CourtTV, and the MacNeill/Lehrer News Hour.
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Manhattan Neighborhood Network Supreme Court Case
Is a public-access TV channel run by private nonprofit corporation subject to the First Amendment? The Supreme Court will consider that question in a case involving the Manhattan Neighborhood Network or MNN. In 1991 MNN was designated to operate as a public-access channel in New York City. The Manhattan Borough President has no control over MNN but does pick two of its thirteen board members.
In 2012 Jesus Melendez, an occasional contributor to MNN, was suspended for trying to attend a board meeting. His associate Deedee Halleck then videoed him outside talking about the situation. MNN banned the video from airing. Melendez and Deedee brought a First Amendment claim against MNN asking if the network is a state actor for purposes of their First Amendment rights. The district court said no, noting that, while it was a close call, other circuits had concluded that privately run public-access networks were not state actors.
The Supreme Court hasn’t directly weighed in on this question although Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a 1996 concurrence in a case dealing with laws regulating content on public-access channels, wrote they should be considered state actors who run public fora and thus be subject to the First Amendment. Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed in his concurrence, writing that “franchising authorities require cable operators to create public access channels, but nothing in the record suggests that local franchising authorities take any formal easement or other property interest in those channels that would permit the government to designate that property as a public forum.”
Defenders of MNN claim, that while it’s possible that some public-access channels could be rightly called state actors, the Court should take the case to clarify the state-actor test and to review the Second Circuit’s unnecessarily broad opinion.
Guest – Deedee Halleck one of the plaintiffs in this case and among the top media activists. She’s co-founder of Paper Tiger Television and also the Deep Dish Satellite Network, the first grass roots community television network. She is Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication at the University of California at San Diego.
Guest – Attorney Paul W. Hughes, a partner in the law firm Mayer Brown’s appellate and Supreme Court practice. Paul has handled more than 200 appellate matters, more than 125 of which were in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2017The American Lawyer named Hughes “Litigator of the Week” in connection with his immigration work.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Crash Course : From the Good War to the Forever War
US Army Ranger turned conscientious objector Rory Fanning recently wrote in this in The Guardian newspaper: “Last week Sunday ,November 11, we celebrated Veterans Day. It used to be called Armistice Day and was a celebration of peace after the slaughter of World War One. Now it is called Veterans Day. The United States has 668 military bases around the globe. The United States has conducted military operations in 2/3 of the world’s countries since September 11, 2001. It has spent 3/4 of $1 trillion each year on it’s military – more than the next 13 countries combined. The US has taken hundreds of thousands of lives around the world these past 14 years and shows no signs of slowing down.“
Guest – H. Bruce Franklin, is one of America’s leading cultural historians, H. Bruce Franklin is the author or editor of nineteen books and more than 300 articles on culture and history published in more than a hundred major magazines and newspapers, academic journals, and reference works. He has given over five hundred addresses on college campuses, on radio and TV shows, and at academic conferences, museums, and libraries, and he has participated in making four films. He has taught at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, and Yale and currently is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark. Before becoming an academic, Franklin worked in factories, was a tugboat mate and deckhand, and flew for three years in the United States Air Force as a Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer. Professor Franklin is touring the country to speak about his just publish book Crash Course : From the Good War to the Forever War.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Guantanamo, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture
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Mumia Abu-Jamal Update October 2018
Last week, attorneys for Mumia Abu Jamal argued in court that conflicts of interest led to unfair rulings against him in his longstanding case. As many know, Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The case was riddled with constitutional violations, and his sentence was later commuted to life in prison without parole.
Recently, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Williams v. Pennsylvania, Mumia’s attorneys argued that his rights were violated after former district attorney Ron Castille failed to recuse himself in an appeals decision. At the time Castille was a state Supreme Court judge.
Judge Leon Tucker had asked the Philadelphia district attorney’s office to produce an internal memo that might show Castille— back when he was city district attorney — had direct involvement in pursuing Abu-Jamal’s death sentence. If he did, his later denial as Supreme Court justice of Abu-Jamal’s appeal, could be deemed biased.
Defense attorney Judy Ritter said: “Justice Castille has shown himself to be involved in this case, to be biased against a certain class of cases that our client falls into.” The Commonwealth argued that as district attorney, Castille was simply doing his job.
“It’s nothing remarkable that a DA would send a letter to the governor asking him to sign death warrants which the governor was required to do,” said attorney Tracey Kavanaugh. Emotions ran high, both inside and outside of the courtroom. Maureen Faulkner, the widow of Daniel Faulkner, stood up and cried in the middle of court proceedings when the judge announced that both sides would need to wait until December for any possible closure in the case. Presiding Judge Leon Tucker has indicated that he will make a ruling in the case some time after December 3, 2018.
Guest – Professor Johanna Fernandez, is a native New Yorker. She received a PhD in History from Columbia University and a BA in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University. Professor Fernández teaches 20th Century U.S. History, the history of social movements, the political economy of American cities, and African-American history. She has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, PA and Trinity College in Hartford, CT and is, most recently, the recipient of a Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa that will take her to Jordan in spring 2011, where she will teach graduate courses in American History. She is with the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.
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In Response to Pittsburgh, We Must Come Together as One
Last week, acts of hatred claimed the lives of 13 innocent persons in the United States. A white supremacist killed two African American persons in Kentucky. An anti-semite killed 11 Jewish persons in a synagogue in Pittsburgh where even more were wounded, including first responders and police officers.
Not surprisingly, the slaughter of the 11 Jews brought forth calls of the need for a strong Israel; the same response that followed anti-Semitic killings in France and Brussels.
It also inflamed political and theological differences between Israelis and American Jews. Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi avoided saying “synagogue” because it is not Orthodox, but Conservative, a liberal branch of Judaism — because it is not Orthodox, but Conservative, one of the liberal branches of Judaism rejected by religious authorities who define the state’s Jewishness.
The attacker’s anti-refugee, anti-Muslim rants prompted some on the Israeli left — like many American Jewish liberals — compare the views of nationalistic leaders who influence their governments.
In Israel, longstanding animosity between left and right has escalated. Orthodox parties are hoping to increase their influence and Jewish law on day to day life; disputes about who cdan serve in the military and what stores can open on the Sabbath are rampant.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
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VICTORY: How Pennsylvania Beat Gerrymandering and How Other States Can Do the Same
An important victory against gerrymandering was recently won in the State of Pennsylvania in the case of League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The first paragraph of the complaint lays it out. “This case is about one of the greatest threats to American democracy today: partisan gerrymandering. A partisan gerrymandering occurs when the political party in control of redistricting redraws congressional or state legislative districts to entrench that party in power and prevent voters affiliated with the minority party from electing candidates of their choice. The result is that general election outcomes are rigged – they are predetermined by partisan actors sitting behind a computer, and not by the voters.“
In Pennsylvania although the Democrats have more supporters than the Republicans Republicans had 13 seats in the US Congress and the Democrats had only five.
The U. S. Supreme Court has not been willing to rule on gerrymandering taking the position that there is no clear way to determine if there has been gerrymandering and therefore it is a non-judicable issue.
To get around this in 2018 Pennsylvania activists engineered a brilliant legal effort in the the state courts of Pennsylvania to attack the lopsided redistricting, and won after fighting pitched battles all the way up to the state Supreme Court. Now activists around the country can do the same. The next congressional redistricting occurs after the 2020 census: progressive need to be ready well before then.
We speak today with constitutional litigator James R. Lieber who has provided a real time report on effective trial lawyers, working to facilitate the will of the people. He explains the strategies of counsel and the evidence presented and has provided a roadmap to social justice litigants for pursuing constitutionally protected claims in state court based on the state constitution and avoiding federal review.
Guest – Attorney James B. Lieber is the author of 3 previous books, and a lawyer who focuses on constitutional, civil rights, and discrimination cases. He has won two cases before the U. S. Supreme Court and is widely published in magazines of national stature.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Criminalizing Dissent, Green Scare, Human Rights, Iran, War Resister
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What Happened To Journalist Jamal Khashoggi?
This much has become clear: 33-year-old Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman knew of or directed the gruesome torture, murder, and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
The US has had an alliance with the Saudi theocratic monarchy since it was forged by President Roosevelt in 1945 at the end of World War II.
The United States needs Saudi Arabia to help rule the Middle East. It needs their cooperation in keeping oil prices low, their petro-dollars, their arms purchases, and it needs Saudi Arabian support for both its planned war against Iran and it’s support for a joint Israeli/American planned effort to permanently repress the Palestinian people, an effort which Trump has put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of. But with the murder of Khashoggi the US/ Saudi alliance is beginning to fray.
Guest – Attorney Abdeen Jabara, the former president of the Arab American Anti-discrimination Committee, a leader of Palestine solidarity work in the National Lawyers Guild. He’s also a former board member at the Center for Constitutional
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Necessity Defense: Climate Defense Project
Earlier this month a judge dismissed the case against three environmental activists who were charged with damaging a northern Minnesota pipeline in 2016. The defendants call themselves as “valve turners.” They shut off the valves of two Enbridge Energy Company pipelines near Leonard in Clearwater County to protest the oil industry’s contribution to climate change. The action was part of a coordinated effort across several states.
Like the defendants, their 3-person legal team traveled thousands of miles to present their case in the small northwoods town. The team consisted of Kelsey Skaggs from the Climate Defense Project in San Francisco and Twin-Cities based attorney Timothy Phillips along with Oregon-based Lauren Regan.
State representative Pat Garofalo, said: “Today’s decision is irresponsible, and sends the message that protesters are free to engage in reckless, illegal, and dangerous behavior that puts Minnesotans’ safety at risk.” He said this dangerous action needs to be corrected in the next legislative session.” Judge Robert Tiffany dismissed the case at the defense attorneys’ request midway through the second day of trial after County Attorney Alan Rogalla rested his case.
Tiffany granted the dismissal based on arguments from the defense attorneys, one of which was that the prosecution failed to prove the defendants had damaged the actual pipeline rather than merely the chains and locks bound to the pipeline valve. Enbridge supervisor Bill Palmer testified that simply shutting off the valve would not have caused any damage to the pipeline.
Guest – Kelsey Skaggs, Executive Director of the Climate Defense Project.
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Torture, War Resister
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The Power of Public Outrage: Laquan McDonald’s Place in History
Jason van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who four years ago shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in the back, was found guilty on October 5th of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery by Chicago jury.
This was the first time in 50 years that a Chicago police officer has been found guilty of murdering somebody while he was on duty.
The McDonald murder was massively covered up beginning with the cops who were on the job with van Dyke, the commanding officers of the Chicago police department, up to the office of the Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Key to the conviction was video footage taken by a police car dash camera. This video was suppressed by the police, and the mayor for three years and only revealed after a massive campaign by a number of Chicago grassroots organizations. Nationally, there have been no convictions in the murders of Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, or Trayvon Martin.
Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the USA. Recently 50 Chicago schools have been closed as well as many mental health clinics. Even the parking meters have been sold in a wave of divestment from the inner-city.
Guest – Attorney 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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Neo-Colonial Regime Kill Peaceful Ambazonian Protesters in Africa
Ambazonia is an English-speaking territory located between Cameroon and Nigeria in West Africa. Also known as the Southern Cameroons, for most of its recent history it has been under military occupation by the French neo-colonial regime in Cameroon. A majority of Ambazonians reject the legitimacy of this regime and its military control.
In violation of an agreement to create an equal confederacy between the two autonomous states, French Cameroon has been dismantling and defunding Ambazonian systems, and pillaging its resources since the country was created in 1961.
Since December 2016, French Cameroon military has responded to peaceful protests with force, killing over 400 civilians. 200 more have been disappeared and are feared dead. More than 90 villages burnt down, resulting in 60,000 people fleeing to neighboring Nigeria.
More than 2,500 activist and peaceful protesters imprisoned, some tried in military courts, a violation of international law, and some sentenced for terrorism and other unjustifiable charges. Prisoners include prominent nonviolence advocate Julius AyukTabe and 11 of his senior aides, arrested in January 2018, and unlawfully repatriated. Julius’s appeal hearing just happened last Thursday.
On January 26, 2018—with no extradition treaty between Cameroon and Nigeria, and without a presiding judge—Nigeria forcibly handed 10 of the prisoners and 37 other refugees to Cameroon. That was in violation of international law forbidding a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country where they likely face persecution. This action drew condemnation from Amnesty International, the UNHCR, the U.S. Department of State, and other leading human rights advocates. The Ambazonia Prisoners of Conscience Support Network, or APOCS, was recently formed to address this crisis.
Guest – Sphynx Eben, a founding member of APOCS and also a longtime media organizer with the Indymedia Africa Working Group. https://www.facebook.com/apocsnetwork/
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