CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Rights, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Special Report: Global Threats To Freedom Of Expression Arising From Gaza Conflict
On top of the devastating humanitarian crisis and the issues of genocide and violations of human rights in Gaza and the West Bank, there has been an unprecedented attack on freedom of the press and freedom of expression globally prompted by that war.
In August, Irene Khan the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression issued an alarming report examining the impact of the conflict in Gaza on freedom of expression throughout the world. The report highlighted “attacks on journalists and media restrictions, endangering access to information about the conflict globally; suppression of protests and dissent and undermining of academic and artistic freedoms in polarized political environment; and restrictions on legitimate political expression in the name of fighting terrorism and antisemitism.”
The Special Rapporteur assessed the compliance of States, social media companies and other private actors with international human rights standards, online and offline, and she found “an extensive pattern of unlawful, discriminatory and disproportionate restrictions on advocacy for the rights of Palestinian people.”
The report emphasized “the importance of freedom of opinion and expression – enjoyed on an equal basis by all sides – as an invaluable tool for fighting hate and encouraging mutual respect and dialogue.” Based on her detailed findings, the Special Rapporteur called on States, social media companies and other private actors to reject double standards on human rights and made concrete recommendations for them to uphold the right to freedom of opinion and expression equally for all.
Guest – Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Appointed on August 1, 2020, Ms Khan is the first woman to hold this position since the establishment of the mandate in 1993. UN Special Rapporteurs are independent human rights experts with a mandate to report and advise on human rights from a thematic perspective. As part of her role, Ms Khan conducts country visits, acts on individual cases and sends official communications to governments, and presents thematic reports to the UN General Assembly.
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A History Of Anti-Black Racism
National chauvinism and racism are essential features of fascism. The practice of white racism in the United States during the Jim Crow era was something that Hitler’s party in Germany studied and emulated. This kind of anti-black racism went on in the United States from shortly after the Civil War up until the 1960s. It has never really gone away as the mass mobilizations of the Black Lives Matter movement has recently demonstrated. This Black resistance, this fight back, will be a central aspect of anti-fascist activity in the future.
Guest – Bill Mullen is professor emeritus of American studies at Purdue University and the co-founder of The Campus Anti-fascist Network. He’s also co-author of The Black Antifascist Tradition and his new book published last month We Charge Genocide: American Ashes and the Rule of Law.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, worker's rights
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USPS: Concerns With Louis Dejoy And Election Integrity
Free elections can too easily turn into hollow formalities when coercion, manipulation, or biased governance replace voter choice and participation. The United States Postal Service has historically been one of the most trusted government institutions in the United States, with a strong reputation for reliability and nonpartisanship. Until now.
Louis DeJoy, a prominent Trump donor and former logistics executive, was appointed as Postmaster General in May 2020, just months before the 2020 presidential election. His tenure has been marked by a series of controversial reforms, including slowing mail delivery, removing mail sorting machines, reducing post office operating hours, and limiting overtime for postal workers. These changes have triggered widespread alarm, given the heightened dependence on mail-in voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite public outcry and congressional investigations, DeJoy continues to oversee an agency crucial to the functioning of our democracy. With the 2024 election on the horizon and the ongoing reliance on mail-in ballots—particularly in swing states—the stakes are high. Voters in rural areas, the elderly, and people with disabilities, often rely on it to cast their ballots. Any disruptions could disproportionately impact these communities and undermine public confidence in the electoral process.
We examine the potential impacts of delayed ballots, changes in USPS service standards, and the wider implications for voter turnout and trust in the system.
Guest – Chuck Zlatkin, legislative director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
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Sending a big thank you to station KKFI for their generous donation bringing us closer to our fundraiser goal. Please consider helping us reach our fundraiser goal. We’re getting close.
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Abolition Labor: The Fight To End Prison Slavery
Operating in the secrecy of the nation’s more than 1,800 prisons, a kind of shadow slave culture is being fostered. Few Americans are aware of the exploitative and pervasive practice of forced prison labor. The 13th amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery, but it made one exception: prison labor.
Prisoners are forced to work with minimal or non-existent wages, and often with no labor protections. Understanding the scope and implications of forced prison labor is crucial for anyone concerned with social justice and equity. It calls for a re-examination of our treatment of incarcerated persons and for alternatives that promote fairness for everyone, regardless of their legal status. By shining a light on this issue, we can advocate for reforms that prioritize rehabilitation over punishment and strive towards a more just and humane criminal justice system. A new book, Abolition Labor: The Fight To End Prison Slavery, provides an eye-opening overview of the extent of this problem.
Guest – Andrew Ross is a renowned social activist, author, and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, where he also directs the Prison Research Lab. Andrew has contributed to prominent publications like The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Nation. He has authored or edited over twenty-five books, with the recent work, Abolition Labor, co-authored with Aiyuba Thomas and Tommaso Bardelli.
Guest – Aiyuba Thomas recently earned his M.A. from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and is an affiliate of the NYU Prison Research Lab. He currently serves as project manager for the Movements Against Mass Incarceration’s archival oral history project at Columbia University. There, he documents the experiences and challenges faced by those affected by the criminal justice system. His firsthand perspective and his extensive knowledge on the subject makes him a powerful voice in the conversation of abolishing forced prison labor.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Climate Change, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Supreme Court, Surveillance
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The Center for Climate Integrity
Today, we’re delving into a legacy of deception and destruction. For more than 50 years, Big Oil companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP have known that burning fossil fuels would raise global temperatures. Yet, instead of taking responsibility or warning the public, they have orchestrated campaigns of denial, disinformation, and delay.
As a result, we are living with unprecedented climate disasters. Following the hottest year on record in 2023, extreme weather events have intensified, from record-breaking wildfires scorching California and Canada, to catastrophic hurricanes pounding the Gulf Coast. During this past June, nearly 5 billion people globally faced intense heat over nine days, with more than 60% of the world’s population encountering temperatures made at least three times more likely by climate change. These events not only devastate ecosystems and communities, but they also cost taxpayers billions of dollars in damage and recovery.
Guest – Corey Riday-White, Managing Attorney at the Center for Climate Integrity, an organization that is fighting to hold Big Oil accountable for its deceit. The Center is supporting litigation efforts in several states, aiming to force fossil fuel companies to pay for the damage they’ve caused. Let’s hear more about their approach, and how the legal system might be used to confront this ongoing climate crisis.
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Surveillance Dragnet: Geofence Warrants
Recently, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a landmark decision in U.S. v. Jamarr Smith, holding that geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.” What is a Geofence Warrant? They compel companies such as Google to hand over data on every device in a particular geographical area over a set period of time. Not surprisingly they are a controversial tool in law enforcement’s investigative arsenal.
Privacy experts argue they amount to a dragnet search that violates the privacy of countless innocent individuals. Proponents, on the other hand, see them as necessary for solving crimes in our digital world. The Fifth Circuit ruling is a major development in the ongoing debate over privacy and mass surveillance.
Guest – Alan Butler, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center or EPIC, in Washington, DC. EPIC has been at the forefront of legal battles to improve data protection standards to protect individual rights in the rapidly advancing surveillance state. Alan Butler is Chair of the Privacy and Information Protection Committee of the American Bar Association Section on civil Rights and Social Justice. He has authored briefs on behalf of EPIC in significant privacy cases, including an amicus brief in Riley v. California that was cited in the Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark ruling that the warrantless search and content seizure of cell phones during an arrest is unconstitutional.
Music out: The Down Hill Strugglers – Abandoned Orchards That Grow
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Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, worker's rights
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Understanding Capitalism
The great German playwright, and political figure, Berthold Brecht, observed that to understand fascism you have to understand capitalism, from whence it springs. Today, it is also helpful for us to understand that the rise of fascism in Germany 100 years ago, has parallels we can see now with the rise of fascism in the United States.
Prior to World War I, which began in 1914, the German working class and middle class were relatively prosperous. The German unions were strong and influential. Prior to World War I, Germany also had the largest and strongest socialist party in the world, and it was the second largest political party in the German Parliament. The German economy was booming. And German culture was the jewel of Europe.
This all came to a crashing end in 1917, when Germany was defeated in what was an inter-imperial war against the United States, France, Great Britain and Russia. The consequences of that defeat brought us fascism and World War II, 20 years later. In the 1920’s, inflation wiped out the savings of the German people. When the depression hit in 1929, the German working class was desperate. The ground was fertile for the rise of Adolf Hitler, a ruthless, cunning and violent demagogue.
Here in the United States, our economy boomed for 100 years, from the end of the Civil War until the 1970s. But since then, American workers have not made any progress. Their wages, in real terms, have not risen in 50 years! “Neo- liberalism”, which is just another word for aggressive capitalism, has wiped out 30 million industrial jobs in the US, starting in the 1980s. Women were driven back into the workforce. People had to work two jobs just to keep up.
In Germany, it was the Jews who were blamed. Here in the US, it is immigrants and people of color who are scapegoated. The demagogue Trump, like Hitler before him, is a captivating speaker and a very effective cult leader, who is now poised to take the power of the government and turn it against “we the people.”
Guest – Richard Wolff is Professor Emeritus from the University of Massachusetts, and the author of the forthcoming book, “Understanding Capitalism”. According to New York Times, Richard Wolff is, probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their national syndicated show Economic Update. Professor Wolff has authorized numerous books on capitalism and socialism, including most recently “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself“, “Understanding Socialism“; and “Understanding Marxism”, which can be found at democracyatwork.info.
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Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism
Instead of the socialist ideal of universal human emancipation, that many European Jews supported, Zionist Israel is the outcome of a very different political ideology…an ideology that a relatively small number of middle and upper class European Jews advanced unsuccessfully until after World War II.
The founders of Zionism promoted it as a Jewish solution to the “Jewish problem.” Communists and socialists rejected this self-segregating reliance on Western colonial powers. And the current increasingly pariah status of Israel and its imperial backer, the United States, has proven the fallacy of the Zionist solution.
Israel is the product of a colonial settler ideology that has its roots in the racist and imperialist practices of the European powers of the 19th century. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, an Austrian /Hungarian journalist, was a great admirer of Cecil Rhodes, the British imperial figure who founded the mineral settler colony of Rhodesia in what became apartheid South Africa.
From its inception, the goal of the Zionists was to overwhelm and displace the indigenous native Arabs in Palestine. As a result, despite its own self-promotion, Israel is not the moral legatee of the victims of the holocaust, much less of the prophets of the Hebrew people who propounded the 10 Commandments.
The horrific slaughter since last October 7th of the Palestinians in Gaza, has been live streamed for people all over the world to see.
Guest – Emmaia Gelman is a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and the founder of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. Her book on the powerful Zionist organization the Anti-Defamation League is about to be published by the University of California press.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Extraordinary Rendition, Freedom Of Speech, Human Rights, Iraq War, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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September 11, 2001: Lessons Learned And Overlooked
It has been 23 years ago this week since the attacks on September 11, 2001 in New York City, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, PA, killing nearly 3,000 people and injuring more than 6,000. On that day, the United States had a choice: The George W Bush administration could have treated the attacks as a violation of US and international law, launched a criminal investigation, and brought the perpetrators to justice in accordance with the rule of law. Instead, President Bush waged endless wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, pushed through Congress the USA Patriot Act, opened the notorious detention center at Guantanamo Bay which remain to this day, rounded up Muslims and South Asians for indefinite detention, initiated a wave of civil liberties and human rights violations, and committed wholesale torture against detainees and others.
To assess the legacy of 9/11 and the lessons learned and the lessons overlooked, we’ve invited someone who was at the center of Bush’s War on Terror. John Kiriakou is a journalist, former CIA counterterrorism officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News.
In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, telling ABC News that the CIA tortured prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by President George W. Bush. He knew what he was talking about. In 2002, he was responsible for the capture in Pakistan of Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be the third-ranking official in al-Qaeda.
He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act of 1917 — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his revelations.
In 2012, the Ralph Nader family honored Kiriakou with the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, an award given to individuals who “advance truth and justice despite the personal risk it creates.” He won the PEN Center USA’s prestigious First Amendment Award in 2015, the first Blueprint International Whistleblowing Prize for Bravery and Integrity in the Public Interest in 2016, and also in 2016 the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, given by retired CIA, FBI, and NSA officers.
Guest – John Kiriakou is the author of eight books, including The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror; and The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis. I met John in 2017 and we collaborated on companion reviews or the Los Angeles Review of Books of the book with the euphemisitic title Enhanced Interrogation written by James E. Mitchell and Bill Harlow, the architects of the American torture system.
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COP 29 Held In Azerbaijan Dictatorship
This year the UN Climate Conference — known as COP29 — will be hosted by the petrol-dictatorship of Azerbaijan. As COP29 delegates prepare to attend talks in Baku, the international community has a chance to shine a spotlight on Azerbaijan’s abysmal human rights record, notably the blockade and ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh’s (Artsakh’s) Armenian population last year, and amid the government’s escalating domestic crackdown on freedom of speech, assembly and the press.
Ironically, Azerbaijan’s dictator Ilham Aliyev allocated $1 million to the UN Human Settlements Program, one day before a UN mission visited the Artsakh region who reported ‘no irregularities’ despite the territory being depopulated by Azerbaijan’s military invasion.
As one of the world’s top environmental and fossil fuel polluters, during its invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan used the outlawed, lethal and environmentally hazardous White Phosphorus as a chemical weapon on the native Armenian population and their highly forested environment. In that fatal siege, which liquidated all native Armenians, the Azeri government-sponsored blockaders posed as climate activists, while punishing true protesters of lethal pollution, in Azerbaijan, especially journalists and activists in advance of COP29.
Guest – Karnig Kerkonian, one of 23 legal advisors representing the Republic of Armenia at the ICJ (International Court of Justice) in 2021. Karnig’s team presented their case against Azerbaijan, calling on the Tribunal to take provisional measures “as a matter of extreme urgency” to “protect and preserve Armenia’s rights and the rights of Armenians from further harm.” Azerbaijan has ignored the ICJ’s November 2023 ruling to “take all necessary measures to prevent and punish acts of vandalism and desecration affecting Armenian cultural heritage, including but not limited to churches and other places of worship, monuments, landmarks, cemeteries and artifacts.” Attorney Kerkonian has also represented the Armenian community of Old Jerusalem in recent Israeli settler incursions upon the Armenian Quarter.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Human Rights
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Book Banning, Censorship And Freedom Of Speech
Americans have a love-hate relationship with freedom of speech: They love to protect their own free speech and they hate to protect the free speech of those they disagree with. The First Amendment to the US Constitution was intended to protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press, yet throughout American history, governments at all levels have censored speech and tried to muzzle the press.
The anti-censorship group PEN America, in a survey of the 2022-23 school year, found that “freedom to read is under assault in the United States — particularly in public schools — curtailing students’ freedom to explore words, ideas, and books.” Authors whose books are targeted are most frequently female, people of color, and/or LGBTQ+ individuals.
According to the American Library Association, the number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels it has ever documented. According to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, “Each demand to ban a book is a demand to deny each person’s constitutionally protected right to choose and read books that raise important issues and lift up the voices of those who are often silenced.”
Guest – Robert Corn-Revere is Chief Counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, known as “FIRE.” He has practiced First Amendment law for 40 years. From 1989 to 1994, Corn-Revere served as legal advisor and later chief counsel to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Corn-Revere is a prominent writer, thinker, and advocate on free expression issues and is regularly listed as a leading First Amendment and media lawyer by various national publications. He co-authored the three-volume treatise, “Modern Communication Law.” In 2021, Cambridge University Press published his book, “The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder: The First Amendment and the Censor’s Dilemma,” which explores how free expression became a part of America’s identity. I reviewed “The Mind of the Censor” for Los Angeles Review of Books and called it an “entertaining, enlightening, and timely book.”
Another form of censorship – Report: Record Number of Journalists Killed in Gaza by Stephen Rohde
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Disappeared: Criminalizing The Unhoused
Late this June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities can punish people for sleeping in public places. In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the Court overturned lower court rulings that held it is cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to penalize people for sleeping outside if they had nowhere else to go. This ruling now allows localities the right to dismantle encampments of tents and cardboard coverings, even when there is no locally available housing or shelter.
Human Rights Watch has condemned this ruling and released a comprehensive report titled, You Have to Move! The Cruel and Ineffective Criminalization of Unhoused People in Los Angeles. The report documents the experiences of persons living on the streets, in vehicles, in temporary shelters, and in parks as they struggle to survive. In Los Angeles alone, tens-of-thousands of people are living in the streets, with death rates among the unhoused population reaching alarming levels. Governor Gavin Newsom, a supporter of the Court’s decision, has urged all local jurisdictions in California to destroy unhoused encampments. Several cities in the state have already begun doing so.
Western Regional Advocacy Project
The lack of housing is a national crisis, and this ruling raises the risk of increased use of such punitive tactics not only in Los Angeles but across the entire country.
Guest – John Raphling, Senior Researcher in the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch and author of the report we’ve mentioned. Before joining Human Rights Watch, John spent years as a Deputy Public Defender in Los Angeles. He has represented political and community activists targeted for their activism, and homeless people prosecuted for crimes related to their status. John is also a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
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