Academic Freedom, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Anthropomorphic Climate Disruption
Devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma have provided ample opportunity for Democrats to press Republicans on climate change — with the catastrophic storms and wild fire giving tens of millions of Americans an up-front glimpse of the types of devastation we are facing.
Oddly, there’s been little talk in the nation’s capital. Aside from a handful of outliers like Hawaiian Sen. Brian Schatz, leading Democratic politicians have been slow to use the tropical storms to denounce President Donald Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a “hoax.”
That’s a contrast from past storms like 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, when Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the disaster a sign that “climate change is a reality.” Even then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, cited the storm and climate change at the time among his reasons for endorsing Barack Obama’s reelection as president.
Democrats appear to be heeding the warnings of Trump appointees like EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who said last week that it’s “very, very insensitive to the people in Florida” to talk about climate change now.
Guest – Eleanor Stein, teaches a course called the Law of Climate Change: Domestic and Transnational at Albany Law School and SUNY Albany, in conjunction with the Environmental and Atmospheric Sciences Department at SUNY. Eleanor Stein is teaching transnational environmental law with a focus on catastrophic climate change. For ten years she served as an Administrative Law Judge at the New York State Public Service Commission in Albany, New York, where she presided over and mediated New York’s Renewable Portfolio Standard proceeding, a collaboration and litigation of over 150 parties, authoring in June 2004 a comprehensive decision recommending a landmark state environmental initiative to combat global warming with incentives for renewable resource-fueled power generation.
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John Brennan Named Distinguished Fellow for Global Security At Fordham Univerity’s Law School
Labor Day brought an unwelcome surprise to students and alumni of what the Jesuits proudly call The Jesuit University in the City of New York. Fordham University’s Law School announced that it had named former CIA Director John Brennan Distinguished Fellow for Global Security.
Brennan was a senior official in the CIA during the Bush -Cheney administration. The official record shows he was knee-deep into their programs of secret offshore prisons, torture, and kidnapping.
In fact, in late November 2008, when President-elect Obama was about to appoint Brennan director of the CIA, a category-five hurricane of protest made that politically impossible. For example, the American Psychological Association publicly appealed to Obama not to appoint Brennan because of his role in torture.
So, instead, Brennan played the role of national security adviser – a role in which Obama and he worked together, meeting every Tuesday to draw up lists of who would be killed the following week by missiles from drones.
By 2008, Congress had become so inured to such things that Brennan sailed through confirmation and became CIA director for Obama’s second term.
That Fordham has succumbed to what Jesuits like Dan Berrigan call the “celebrity virus” is abundantly clear in Brennan’s appointment. Fordham is proud to claim him as a college alumnus. And without a hint of shame, its law school is also proud to give him a prestigious appointment.
Guest – Ray McGovern, an alumnus of Fordham and was a high-ranking CIA analyst for 27 years. His expertise was Russia and he had one on one briefings daily with President George Bush. He broke with the government under George W. Bush over the cooked intelligence used to rationalize America’s illegal war of aggression against Iraq and helped form the organization Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His group issued a memorandum to President Obama which demonstrated that the Russians did not hack into the computers of the Democratic Party or Hillary Clinton and did not therefore influence the American election. http://raymcgovern.com/
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
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Illegal Preventive War
Sixteen years ago today two hijacked planes flew into the twin towers and another one into the Pentagon. Fifteen of the 19 attackers were Saudi Arabians. They were funded by elements of the Saudi Arabian government. Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian fundamentalist from a wealthy Saudi family took responsibility for the attack. He said he did it for three reasons: The American support of Israel against the Palestinians; the presence of US bases near the Saudi Arabian holy cities of Mecca and Medina; and the US economic and trade sanctions against Iraq which killed 600,000 children.
When the attack occurred, the feckless and unpopular George W. Bush had been in office less than a year. He told his national security advisor to figure out a way to blame the attacks on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. A lie was propounded by Bush , his vice president Dick Cheney, and his secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld that Iraq had contact with Osama bin Laden and that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction. First, Afghanistan was bombed, even though it’s leaders offered to turn over Osama bin Laden. Then an illegal war was launched against Iraq initiated with horrific bombings called “shock and awe.” In the following years 1 million people were killed in that country. Half of the population are refugees or internally displaced.
In the wake of the 911 attacks, the Patriot Act was hastily pushed through Congress bringing an American police state closer into being. The war on terror was declared even though terror is a tactic and war is traditionally had been fought against other countries. This has given it a permanent character. A campaign of fear was whipped up. Torture and kidnapping by the CIA was instituted. Eventually the United States under President Obama was fighting six were simultaneously in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. Trump continues this aggression.
Guest – Ajamu Baraka, a member of board of directors of Cooperation Jackson, in Jackson Mississippi, editor and contributing columnist for Black Agenda Report, and National Organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace. He recently ran for vice president on the Green party ticket. He is a former board member at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a leader of the United National Anti-war Coalition.
U.S. Antiwar Leaders Call for Actions to Oppose the Escalation of the Afghanistan War During the Week of the 16th Anniversary of the Invasion, October 2 – 8.
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The Bronx 120 and Secor 19
A year ago we reported on the largest gang raid in NY history. It took place, pre-dawn, in the Williamsbridge section of the North Bronx, with 700 law enforcement officers arresting 120 young men indicted on conspiracy charges using the 1970 RICO Act. In one apartment, more than a dozen police threw flash-bang grenades and broke down the front door with assault weapons aimed at a mother and her two daughters, then forced them to crawl down their hall on all fours toward the officers.
At that time, police held a press conference and characterized the young men as “the epitome of organized crime today.” Cooperating federal agencies included the DEA, the ATF, the US attorney general, and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations. Community members question this portrayal, saying the young men were not highly organized gangsters terrorizing a community; they lacked money and weapons and were living at home with their parents.
Critics claim that applying RICO to street gangs has racist implications. Under RICO, individuals can be found guilty by association. Despite gang-related crime accounting for less than 2 percent of city crime, two weeks after the raid, James O’Neill, now NYPD Commissioner, promised more raids.
He came through with that promise this past April. Multiple arrests were made at the Boston Secor Houses in the Bronx, and federal charges were brought against 19 young persons. They have been charged with racketeering conspiracy, narcotics conspiracy, robbery conspiracy, extortion, and firearms offenses. We’re joined today by a FAMILY MEMBER of one of the young men arrested.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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U.S. Antiwar Leaders Call for Actions to Oppose the Escalation of the Afghanistan War During the Week of the 16th Anniversary of the Invasion, October 2 – 8.
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Confederate Monuments and The Meaning of the Civil War
The American Civil War fought from 1861 to 1865 killed more Americans than all other wars combined. 600,000 Americans died in a war that was fought over whether slavery was to be abolished in the United States. The Confederate General, Robert E Lee, had only an 1100 acre plantation in Virginia and 60 slaves. The value of a slave was about $30,000 in today’s dollar. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, owned a 1400 acre cotton plantation in Mississippi.
The institution of slavery was enormously profitable and led to the establishment of America as a leading capitalist power in the world. Slavery was supported in the south not just by the slave owners themselves but by many white persons who by virtue of their skin color saw themselves as superior to blacks. It was widely believed that black people were inferior to white people, both intellectually and morally. Lincoln issued the revolutionary Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing southern slaves. They began taking up arms and fighting against the slaveowners. In the wake of the Civil War biracial democratic institutions were established in the south. This was overthrown shortly thereafter when the Northern capitalists and politician made a deal with the ex-slave owners in the south. Union troops which were supporting the black population were withdrawn.
Thereafter a system of Jim Crowe segregation was instituted and blacks were nearly reenslaved and used as landless sharecroppers or prison laborers. Segregation was reestablished and enforced by massive terror by whites against blacks. The Ku Klux Klan was founded and thousands of lynchings were undertaken, carried out before the white public who assembled in crowds for the event.
Statues of southern generals like Robert E Lee and monuments to the confederacy were erected, not after the Civil War, but many years later to reinforce Jim Crowe and combat the civil rights movement.
Guest – Bruce Carlin Levine – Civil War historian and University of Illinois Professor Emeritus. His latest book titled “Fall of the House of Dixie” is widely appreciated as one of the best books on the Civil war. “Bruce Levine has taught history at the University of California and the University of Illinois. He has written four books on the Civil War, including The Fall of the House of Dixie (Random House, 2005). He’s now writing a book for Simon & Schuster about the radical Republican leader during the Civil War era, Thaddeus Stevens.”
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Joe Aripao, Sheriff of Maricopa County Pardoned By President Trump
Last week President Trump pardoned, without him even requesting it, the infamous Joe Aripao, Sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes the heavily Latino community of Phoenix. Arizona. Sheriff Joe was in office for 26 years. Observers have called it a “reign of terror.”
He himself called his jail a “concentration camp.” He kept prisoners outside in tents with temperatures ranging from 40° to over 100°. Prisoners died at an alarming rate, often without explanation. He paraded hundreds of Hispanic prisoners in chains dressed in black and white stripes through the streets of Phoenix. Another time he force them to wear pink underwear.
He was pardoned by President Trump, who praised him lavishly, after a federal judge found him in contempt of court for ordering his department to arrest people soley because they looked Latino and ignoring a court order to stop. Arpaio was about to be sentenced when Trump stepped in and overrode the judge.
Guest – Professor Ellen Yaroshefsky, she teaches ethics at the law school at Hofstra University. She is a former staff attorney and later board member at the Center for Constitution Rights and a leader of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
The spectacle of President Donald Trump and the palace intrigue in the White House has served daily to distract people from the political strategy and accomplishments of the radical right, which is taking over the Republican Party.
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.
Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean exposes the architecture of this change and it’s ultimate aim. She has written that “both my research and my observations as a citizen lead me to believe American democracy is in peril”.
Guest – Professor Nancy MacLean, whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s 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.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994, MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy.
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Senate Intelligence Committee Torture Report: Attorney Scott Horton
Guantanamo suicides, CIA interrogation techniques, CIA ordered physicians who violate the Hippocratic oath, are topics of some recent articles by returning guest attorney Scott Horton. Last month, he was on Democracy Now to debate former CIA General Counsel John Rizzo on the question of declassifying a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report about the agency’s secret detention and interrogation programs. His book Lords of Secrecy The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy will be published January 2015.
Attorney Scott Horton:
- I think the results flow directly from the media coverage (ABC poll on Torture report)
- Now major publications and broadcasters that hedged using the word torture have stopped doing that. There are only a handful of media sources that won’t do it. NPR being one of them.
- The media also presents roughly twice as much time devoted to people justifying the use of torture techniques to those criticizing it.
- Barack Obama who should lead the push back has gone completely silent. It’s beyond silent he talked about “tortured some folks” making it very casual, and then he said the torturers were patriots.
- I thought it was electrifying reading. 90 percent of it I’ve heard about before and still when you read them in this clinical, plain, highly factual style and things were developed with a continuous flow with lots of background in decision making in Washington at the top and how all this effected what happened on the ground.
- As a consumer of Congressional reports this probably the single most impressive Congressional oversight report I’ve ever seen.
- It’s an excellent example of what the oversight committee should be doing all the time.
- They’re doing this with respect to a program which was essentially or very largely wrapped up by October 2006.
- We’re talking about 8 1/2 years ago.
- They’re only able to do this kind of review in any depth when its historical, not when its real time oversight, that’s disappointing.
- One thing that emerges from looking at these reports and the military reports is that there is a huge black hole which has never been fully developed and explored and that’s JSOC, its the military intelligence side.
- That escaped review within the DOD process and it escaped review in CIA process and its clear that there’s a huge amount there.
- I certainly don’t expect prosecutions to emerge for the next couple of years in the United States, but I see a process setting in that may eventually lead to prosecutions.
- On the one hand we’re seeing a dangerous deterioration in relations with Russia, is an aggressor, which has seized territory in the heart of Europe, is waging a thinly veiled war on one of its neighbors. That is very unnerving to the major NATO powers.
- On the other hand there’s never been a period in the history of the alliance when there is so much upset at the United States.
- That’s come largely from the rise of the surveillance state and the role of the NSA.
- I was looking at this report, and we know that in 2006, there was an internal review that led the CIA to conclude that these interrogation techniques were ineffective and the CIA internally decided to seek a large part of the authority for EIT’s and operation of black sites rescinded.
- Another thing that’s very important here from this report, it tells us that Michael Hayden, George Tenant, Porter Goss and other very senior people at the CIA repeatedly intervened to block any form of punishment of people who are involved with torture and running the black sites.
- That’s important because of the legal document Command Responsibility. The law says when command authority makes a decision not to prosecute and immunize people involved with torture and abuse, that results in the culpability of these crimes migrating up the chain of command.
- I interviewed CIA agents who were involved in this program, and they told me they’ve all been brought out by legal counsels office and told – they may not leave the country.
- That means you’ve got roughly 150 CIA agents, including many people near the top of the agency who can’t travel right now.
- Lords of Secrecy The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy
Guest – Scott Horton, human rights lawyer and contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine. Scott’s column – No Comment. He graduated Texas Law School in Austin with a JD and was a partner in a large New York law firm, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. His new book Lords of Secrecy The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, War Resister
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Charlottesville, VA Protests Clash: Analysis
Donald Trump and extreme right supporters, outright fascists, white nationalists – suffered a huge defeat Saturday, August 12 in Charlotteville Virginia at a rally called Unite The Right. Anti-fascist demonstrator 32-year-old Charlottesville paralegal Heather Heyerdahl was murdered when a car driven by a Nazi sympathizer from Ohio ran into her. Nineteen other counter-demonstrators were injured, some of them seriously.
As a consequence of the murder and injuries the fascists and white nationalists were socially isolated even as the United Left welcomed support from a large swath of Americans. Demonstrations were held in many cities and towns across the country.
People jeered Trump at his first New York City homecoming. Hundreds gathered at Trump Tower which was protected by police and twelve garbage trucks. During his campaign Trump clearly refused to disavow ultra-right wing support. After the murder he condemned the violence in Charlottesville laying blame on many sides.
Some 500 fascist and white nationalist forces came together in Charlottesville with the intention on violently suppressing their opponents. They unified around their support of keeping a statue of Confederate General and slave owner Robert E Lee who led the Southern Army from 1861 until 1865 when he finally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Maryland. The South had lost its fight to preserve slavery. More than 600,000 Americans died in this war, more than the combined total of all deaths in all subsequent wars. The ultra-right still embraces this lost cause.
Guest – Jeffrey Fogel, a Charlottesville attorney who has practiced criminal law for many years. He served as Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights before moving to Charlottesville, VA where he recently ran for District Attorney. He was on the scene as a National Lawyers Guild attorney on August 12, 2017.
Guest – Jon Kurinsky is a Chicago activist, he recently gave a speech on the topic of fighting the right at the Socialism 2017 conference in Chicago which had a record attendance of more than 2000 people.
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North Korea, the United States, China and Nuclear Weapons
President Donald Trump scared the hell out of us last week with his threat to nuclear bomb North Korea. He promised fire and fury like the world has never seen. He said this at the time of the 72nd anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima and then, six days later, the Japanese city of Nagasaki. This was done, not to stop the war, which was coming to an end, but to scare the Russians.
These two bombings killed some 160,000 persons instantaneously and tens of thousands died later of nuclear poisoning. So far, this has been the only time nuclear bombs have ever been used.
That United States had previously been at war with North Korea from 1950 to 1953. More than 3 million North Koreans were killed and the country laid to waste. The war never ended, but an armistice was signed in 1953.
North Korea begin its nuclear program in self-defense after George W. Bush in 2004 named it along with Iraq and Iran as part of “the axis of evil.” Then Bush started the war against Iraq, captured and executed it’s leader Saddam Hussein, and destroyed a viable country killing over 1 million people and scattering refugees across the world.
Guest – Richard Becker is the Western Regional Coordinator of the A.N.S.W.E.R.-Act Now to Stop War and End Racism-Coalition. Becker has been a key organizer of many marches, rallies and public forums sponsored by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition opposing U.S., wars, occupations and sanctions against Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Libya and other countries. Becker is the author of Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire, published in 2009. He has visited the Middle East on numerous delegations since 1986, including trips to Palestine, Iraq and Syria. Becker represented the ANSWER Coalition in conferences on Palestinian political prisoners in Lebanon in 2014 and Tunisia in 2016. Recent article in the Liberation.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Update:
- Rev Billy And The Stop Shopping Choir: Radical Ritual At Trump Tower
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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
The spectacle of President Donald Trump and the palace intrigue in the White House has served daily to distract people from the political strategy and accomplishments of the radical right, which is taking over the Republican Party.
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.
Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean exposes the architecture of this change and it’s ultimate aim. She has written that “both my research and my observations as a citizen lead me to believe American democracy is in peril”.
Guest – Professor Nancy MacLean, whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s 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.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994, MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy.
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Tuskegee Syphilis Study Aftermath
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a biomedical clinical study conducted by the US Public Health Service for four decades between 1932 and 1972. Its purpose was to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men in Alabama under the guise of receiving free health care from the government.
It collaborated with the historically black Tuskegee University in Alabama. Investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease. They were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study. After a cure for syphilis was discovered in penicillin, the study still continued without informing the men they would never be treated. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue.
Guest – Professor Susan Reverby is Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women’s Studies at Wellesley College. She is editor of Tuskegee’s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
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