Censorship, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Uncategorized, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Russian Invasion of Ukraine Analysis
We turn to the on-going war between Russia and Ukraine. Let me introduce this topic by sharing, briefly, a few of my own thoughts on the matter. I believe the Russian invasion and its on-going deadly and destructive military assault in Ukraine is, of course, just plain wrong. I believe it mirrors, albeit to a much lesser extent, America’s deadly and destructive military assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan, to say nothing of Vietnam, Central America and too many other places to recount here. I believe Russia should end its war before its impact spreads far beyond the current conflict; before it provides an even greater opportunity than it already has to the capitalist war profiteers in America, and further emboldens the imperial designs of America, thereby radically changing the future in ways too dire to contemplate.
I believe the severe sanctions imposed on Russia will have little impact on Putin and the Russian oligarchs but will have a devastating impact on the working-class people of Russia, and of the entire world. I believe that the United States bears at least as much blame for the war as does Russia, and probably more. That may, at first blush, seem an odd thing to believe. But if you stay tuned, today’s guest on the war will explain why he and I believe this to be true. Lastly, I am personally saddened, beyond adequate description, over the fact of this new war. It, like America’s illegal and devastating wars in other countries, tells me that since the days of the cave man wielding his club, while the weapons used by warring sides to resolve their differences have advanced and become far more deadly and sophisticated, we humans have not, ourselves, found the way we resolve our disputes beyond that of the cave man with his hand-wielding club.
Guest – Richard Becker is the Western Region Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition; that is Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. Richard Becker is a regular contributor to The Liberation newspaper, a publication of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, of which he is a member. And Mr. Becker is the author of Palestine, Israel and the US Empire, as well as of the book, The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks.
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A New Wave Of Book Banning
Book banning is the most widespread form of censorship in the United States. It’s when government officials, private individuals, or organizations remove books from libraries, school reading lists, or bookstores because they object to the content or themes contained therein. Children’s books are the main targets.
Often, complaints are that the book contains is sexually explicit, contains graphic violence, has offensive language, or shows disrespect for parents and family. Censors claim they’re afraid the contents are dangerous for kids, or that they’ll cause young people to raise questions, and incite critical inquiry among children that parents, political groups, or religious organizations deem inappropriate or aren’t ready to address.
Before the 1970s book bans typically focused on obscenity. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and Ulysses by James Joyce were often banned. From the late 1970s on, attacks focused on ideologies. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Catcher in the Rye, and Harry Potter are among the 50 of the top banned books in this country.
A new wave of book banning in public and school libraries is sweeping the nation in 2022. It’s been under way since debates have percolated over critical race theory and what students should learn in the classroom. Several states are cutting funding for books written by authors in specific communities.
Guest – Christopher Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. He previously served as president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the bookseller’s voice in the fight against censorship. Before that, he was executive director of Media Coalition, a trade association that defends the First Amendment rights of producers and distributors of media. Christopher is the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America by Beacon Press, which won the 2008 Eli Oboler Award of the American Library Association. His forthcoming book is How Free Speech Saved Democracy.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change
Today 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 world’s largest economy and hold more riches than the U.S., which is deeply in debt.
The America we know will change drastically as a world power just as the previous world powers, the British, and before them the Dutch, and before them the Spanish and the Portuguese, all saw their empires end.
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. The great coastal city of Shanghai, where 18 million people reside, will sink, uprooting millions of the 400 million Chinese people in the North China Plain.
What can we learn from the demise of the great world powers in the past? Where is the United States headed and how soon? What might be done to ameliorate this dire future? Only a prodigious historian could undertake to answer these questions.
Guest – Alfred W McCoy holds the Fred Harvey Harrington chair of history at the University of Wisconsin. He has written 20 books, including “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia,” for which he became well-known, and recently, “In the Shadows of the American Century.”
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Encroaching Fascism In The United States
An American form of fascism is unfolding in our country. What exactly is it and what can we do to fight it?
We see a massive political effort to legitimatize and normalize white minority rule. Things are happening rapidly. A year ago our capital was attacked pursuant to a plan to reverse the results of the election. Soon the Supreme Court will likely overrule the almost 50 year precedent set by Roe v Wade on the question of a woman’s right to control her own body. Voting rights have been and will continue to be extremely restricted particularly in communities of color. Irrational and magical thinking has been legitimatized. More than 900 thousand people have unnecessarily died of Covid. There has developed in our country a culture of cruelty manifested by Trump, but initiated in CIA torture and detention camps for Muslim men and boys in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.
It didn’t start after 9/11 with the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. It goes back further than that. America has been prosecuting wars abroad during our entire lifetimes. The provocations against Russia regarding NATO military encroachment on its borders are the latest chapter in almost continual and seemingly endless wars. A lesson of history since Greek and Roman times is that you can’t have imperialism abroad and democracy at home.
Guest – Professor Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University chair for a Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department. He has written many books, most recently The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism and American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Facism.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Right To Dissent, U.S. Militarism, War Resister
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Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
The United States of America was the first, and has since been the only, country to use nuclear weapons. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the US bombed Hiroshima and days later bombed Nagasaki, exterminating several hundred thousand people. The bomb was used twice to intimidate the Russians even as the United States knew that Japan wanted peace.
The United States has embarked on a one and a half trillion-dollar project to upgrade its nuclear arsenal. It has developed the capacity to fire these weapons so that they are delivered across oceans in a matter of minutes with all of the frightening implications. The prestigious Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has a “Doomsday Clock.” The minute hand on the clock has been steadily advancing and is now only 100 seconds to midnight.
Because of their devastating civilian killing capacity, the use of or threat to use these weapons is unlawful.
Unlike the Paris climate agreement, which set goals for the reduction of fossil fuels, there are no targets for the express reduction of nuclear weapons. Nor have countries’ efforts to reach such targets been assessed. We have no global process for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Guest – Attorney John Burroughs, is the former Executive Director, now Senior Analyst, of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy. LCNP was founded in 1981 as an association of lawyers and legal scholars who engage in research and advocacy in support of the elimination of nuclear weapons. The Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy serves as the United Nations office of the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms. John has represented LCNP in Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review proceedings and in negotiations on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.
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Ukraine Crisis and Parallels To The Cuban Missile Crisis
As tensions between Russia, Ukraine, the United States and other NATO countries escalate, the corporate media is portraying the conflict as aggression by Russia and US-NATO’s position as purely defensive. But even though the Biden administration is rattling its economic, political and military sabers at Russia, Ukrainian President Zelensky says a Russian invasion of Ukraine is not imminent and warns that “panic” by U.S. and other NATO leaders is causing economic destabilization in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the U.S. is sending massive amounts of weapons to Ukraine, boosting the profits of military contractors.
In 1990, as the Soviet Union was disbanding, then US Secretary of State James Baker assured the Soviets that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East.” Nevertheless, since the late 1990s, NATO has expanded to include many countries including some that border Russia, which Russia sees as a real threat. If Ukraine joins NATO, Russia considers that an “existential threat.”
Since the US-supported 2014 coup in Ukraine that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovich, the US has delivered $2 billion in military aid to Ukraine.
Although Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists signed a 12-point ceasefire deal in 2014, known as the Minsk agreements, Ukraine has not implemented the constitutional changes required by the Minsk agreements. The unconditional US military assistance to Ukraine has encouraged the Ukrainian government to ignore the Minsk agreements and reassert sovereignty over Russian Crimea.
In October, Ukraine launched attacks in Donbass, Russia, and Russia responded with troop movements and military exercises. The US is framing Russia’s troop movements as a threat to invade Ukraine without provocation.
Professor H. Bruce Franklin, author of the 2018 book, Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War, has drawn parallels between today’s standoff at Ukraine’s border and the Cuban missile crisis, although the great power roles were reversed.
Guest – Bruce Franklin is a former Air Force navigator and intelligence officer, a progressive activist, and the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies, emeritus at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. He has authored or edited 19 books and has received lifetime achievement awards from the American Studies Association and other major academic organizations.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Right To Dissent, Supreme Court, U.S. Militarism
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Encroaching Fascism In The United States
An American form of fascism is unfolding in our country. What exactly is it and what can we do to fight it?
We see a massive political effort to legitimatize and normalize white minority rule. Things are happening rapidly. A year ago our capital was attacked pursuant to a plan to reverse the results of the election. Soon the Supreme Court will likely overrule the almost 50 year precedent set by Roe v Wade on the question of a woman’s right to control her own body. Voting rights have been and will continue to be extremely restricted particularly in communities of color. Irrational and magical thinking has been legitimatized. More than 900 thousand people have unnecessarily died of Covid. There has developed in our country a culture of cruelty manifested by Trump, but initiated in CIA torture and detention camps for Muslim men and boys in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.
It didn’t start after 9/11 with the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. It goes back further than that. America has been prosecuting wars abroad during our entire lifetimes. The provocations against Russia regarding NATO military encroachment on its borders are the latest chapter in almost continual and seemingly endless wars. A lesson of history since Greek and Roman times is that you can’t have imperialism abroad and democracy at home.
Guest – Professor Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University chair for a Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department. He has written many books, most recently The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism and American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Facism.
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The Inauthentic Opposition Within The Empire
The January 6th event last year was a peculiar kind of coup, not one that would install an authoritarian figure, but one that was designed to keep him in his job. It almost worked, but not quite. Trump had support but not enough in the right places. There wasn’t enough support for him in the military, the national security establishment, nor in the corporate elite, nor in the media. That doesn’t mean that we are out of danger.
We are seeing the success of a creeping homegrown Christianized form of fascism in our country. A particular American form. 150 million people live in red states. The far right has seized local politics. The majority of legislatures and the governorships in 22 states as compared to 15 by the Democrats. Thirteen are divided.
Nineteen states have passed voter suppression and voter nullification laws as documented by the Brennen Center at NYU School of Law. In the face of this the Democratic Party has been supine. They will not mobilize the American people. The late political philosopher Sheldon Wolin has called the Democratic Party “the Inauthentic Opposition.“ The Democrats function as a junior partner of the Republicans.
As Noam Chomsky has stated, the January 6 events show that the “limited political democracy that still exists is hanging by a delicate thread.“ The Republicans have rejected democratic, with a small “D”, politics. What are the reasons for The growth of Christian fascism? What might be in store for us? What is to be done?
Guest – Roger D. Harris is closely affiliated with the Task Force on the Americas and The US Peace Council. He is a leader of the California Peace and Freedom Party, the only socialist party in the state to hold ballot status.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Repairers Of The Breach: Reverend Dr. William Barber
As political scientist Barbara Walter has recently warned, violent extremism is on the rise globally, and there’s even an increasing likelihood of a second civil war in the United States. At the same time, a Harvard University poll of 18- to 29-year olds revealed that nearly two-thirds are more fearful than hopeful about democracy’s future. Respondents blamed politicians and money in politics as key factors, along with structural racism, and lack of access to higher education. Both polls came as President Joe Biden addressed international leaders at a Democracy Summit, and said the survival of democracy depended on their decisions. For his part, Biden has promised to rebuild the backbone of the country – the middle class – and has claimed that his Build Back Better Act will do just that. He promises to set the United States on course to meet its climate goals, create millions of good-paying jobs, enable more Americans to join and remain in the labor force, and grow the national economy. The most profitable corporations, and the wealthiest Americans, will pay their fair share of taxes.
Guest – Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is a member of the National NAACP Board and a pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, NC since 1993. He has been called “one of the most gifted organizers and orators in the country today,” and “the closest person we have to Martin Luther King Jr. in our midst.” The Reverend is the president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
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In Memory Of Glen Ford
Glen Ford died of lung cancer last summer in July at the age of 71. Cornell West wrote that “He was the most brilliant, courageous, and consistent writer and journalist in the Black radical and independent tradition of his generation.“ Of himself Glen said “I am a Black nationalist and a socialist.“ He had been executive editor of the Black Agenda Report, which she helped found in 2006. Today on Law And Disorder we speak with three people closest to Glen Ford. We talk with his daughter Tonya Rutherford, Margaret Kimberley and Ajamu Baraka. Just before he died Glen was able to complete the manuscript for The Black Agenda. The book is available from OR Books.
Margaret Kimberly worked with Glen. She wrote the introduction to his book and is now the Managing Editor of Black Agenda Report. Glen was her mentor and teacher. Ajamu Baraka is an editor and frequent contributor to BAR. He is the Executive Director of the Black Alliance for Peace He ran as the Green Party candidate for vice president in 2016. Raymond Nat Turner is the poet in residence at BAR.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Twenty Years Later Guantanamo Is Everywhere
The George W. Bush administration used the terrorist attacks on 9/11 to launch his so-called “Global War on Terror.” Under the guise of fighting terrorism, Bush illegally invaded two countries, instituted an unlawful dragnet of Arab men and boys in the United States, and opened a sinister prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in January 2002.
Nearly 800 men and boys were sent to Guantanamo, where many of them were subjected to torture and cruel treatment, and held indefinitely – many without charges, in violation of US and international law. Much of this mistreatment was documented in the “Guantanamo Files,” 779 secret files published in 2011 by WikiLeaks. It was documented as well in the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The 6,700-page report remains secret but the 499-page executive summary was published in 2014.
By locating the prison in Cuba, Bush sought to preclude any judicial review of the detention of the detainees. Most of them had no connection to terrorism. Locked away in Guantanamo for years, detainees lost hope. The only power they had was to refuse food. Many of them engaged in a hunger strike but were violently force-fed, a practice that amounts to torture.
The widely esteemed lawyer and co-founder of Law and Disorder, Michael Ratner, was Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights when the center filed the landmark case of Rasul v. Bush. It went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Bush could not prevent detainees from challenging the legality of their detention in US courts. But 20 years later, Guantanamo remains open and 39 men are still there.
We are fortunate to have Baher Azmy with us today to discuss Guantanamo and the “war on terror” which continues today, with very little pushback from the American public.
Guest – Baher Azmy is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he directs all litigation around issues related to the promotion of civil and human rights. He is also professor of law at Seton Hall University.
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Dangerous Influence of Right Wing Propaganda
Hosts examine the over-all current role of the corporate, mainstream media in America today, in particular the increasing power and danger of the right-wing media. And to do so we are very fortunate to have as our guest today, Jeff Cohen.
Guest – Jeff Cohen is a highly regarded progressive critic of the media. Indeed, he was recently quoted in an important article in the Washington Post about the disclosure that FOX News hosts were advising the White House during the January 6th insurrection. Jeff Cohen, along with Martin Lee, were the co-founders of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or “F.A.I.R.,” which is the anti-corporate media group that monitors and reports on the mainstream media’s bias, spin and misinformation. Jeff Cohen is also a lecturer on these matters and the author of the book, Cable News Confidential.
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