CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Iraq War, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Mass Support Needed For Julian Assange
Two weeks ago, WikiLeaks founder and internet publisher Julian Assange , who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, had his Internet access cut off due to pressure by the British and American governments on Ecuador. Ecuador had granted him political asylum in their embassy where he has been living in two small sunless rooms for five years. Ecuador gave him political asylum after he sought refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, which would have sent him to the US. Assange was under protracted investigation for a rape claim, made up by the Swedish police and Swedish prosecutor and denied by the purported women victim. Sweden finally dropped the case, but Assange remains subject to arrest in Britain jumping bail.
Assange and WikiLeaks had been steadily revealing the war crimes and illegalities of the American government since it first published the Iraq war logs eight years ago. The war logs included video footage of American soldiers assassinating Iraqi civilians and a Reuters journalist. Chelsea Manning, who was recently released after seven years in prison, furnished WikiLeaks with the war logs.
The United States government is seeking to capture Assange and bring him back to the United States to stand trial for espionage, a crime which carries the death penalty.
Guest – John Pilger, an Australian-British journalist based in London. John has worked in many facets of journalism, including a correspondent in the Vietnam War, the Middle East Desk for Reuters in London, a documentary film maker, and a producer for the Independent Television Network in London. Pilger is known for his conscience, bravery and acute historical insight. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times.
—-
You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice: Intellectual Property
Laws protecting artwork and intellectual property are increasingly being put to the test amid claims from rising artists marketing their work online whose work is being copied by others.
Art piracy can include music posters, clothing design, book cover art, signage, record sleeve art, and typography. Under copyright law, one artist using another artist’s idea is generally legal, while one artist using another’s expression of that idea is generally illegal. Only a fact-intensive analysis can provide a bit of clarity, and even that is subject to a judge’s or jury’s review.
Sometimes copyright cases expand into major litigation. A New York judge recently ruled that graffiti, or aerosol artists, were entitled to a $6.7 million verdict after New York developer Gerald Wolkoff destroyed their well-known public work. The claim in the so-called FivePointz case arose under the Visual Artists’ Rights Act, or VARA. It’s the kind of case that attorney Scott Burroughs says rarely goes to trial. Several artists created aerosol art pieces on the walls of an abandoned development in the once downtrodden and now gentrified neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens. Wolkoff destroyed their art as part of a development plan. Read Scott’s Column Above The Law.
Guest – Attorney Scott Burroughs, an advocate for artists’ rights who curates the art law blog You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice and has a weekly copyright law column on legal website Above the Law.
———————————————-
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Pipeline Resistance Groups and the film On A Knife Edge
It’s now more than one year since law enforcement evicted the last Dakota Access Pipeline resistance camps. The pipeline was near completion and was supposed to cross sacred Indian land in South Dakota in order to bring Canadian tar sand oil from north to south through the United States.
Then the project was stalled by a tremendous solidarity movement lead by indigenous peoples along with their allies only to be green lighted by the newly elected Trump administration which has proven to be a handmaiden of the fossil fuel industry.
Guest – Eli Kane, a Brooklyn-based producer who has worked in film and music for 15 years. He has made two other documentaries for PBS about land rights and food sovereignty, including Land Rush, which won a Peabody Award in 2013.
Guest – Attorney Pamela Spees is an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and represents environmental justice groups opposing the efforts of Tigerswan, a private military company which worked with corporate and governmental entities at Standing Rock in an attempt to suppress the movement against the pipeline, to operate in Louisiana.
—-
Perpetual War and the Anti-War Movement
The United States of America has been in a perpetual state of war since September 11, 2001 and before that almost continuously since 1918. The United States has overthrown democratically elected governments it could not control since the invasion of Mexico in 1848. It has overturned elected government and assassinated or attempted to assassinate many heads of foreign states.
World War I was a massive slaughter between imperial powers with the United States, France, Britain and Russia on one side against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the other. In one week alone, Great Britain lost 250,000 young men. The war wiped out almost an entire generation. It had been billed as “the war to end all wars.“
November 11th is known as the armistice between the hostile countries and was made a national holiday to venerate peace. It was called Armistice Day. But by 1953 Armistice Day was turned into “Veterans’ Day” and fighting was glorified.
Donald Trump plans to spend $30 million on a massive military parade in Washington DC this coming November 11, Veterans’ Day. Tanks, missiles and troops will be paraded through the streets of our nations’ capital in a show of military force and adulation of Trump. A coalition of antiwar organizations are planning mass actions against this military parade and the normalization of war, violence and authoritarianism
Guest – Ajamu Baraka, an initiator and leader of the Black Alliance for Peace, an organization which is part of the coalition. He has also just returned from a meeting of international leaders because the USA’s involvement of a possible overthrow of the government of Venezuela. Ajamu Baraka helped organize a conference in Baltimore Last month concerning USA’s 800 bases abroad particularly the new ones in Africa.
—-
———————————————-
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Attorney Prevails Against CFAA Charges In Click Fraud Trial
In a trial that was closely watched by cybersecurity experts, Italian citizen Fabio Gasperini was charged for allegedly violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA. Computer experts claimed it was the first so-called “click fraud” trial and would test the U.S. government’s ability to link individuals to complex cybercrimes.
As covered before on Law and Disorder, the CFAA is an antiquated law passed in 1986 before personal computers and smart devices were omnipresent in all aspects of our lives. It affords law enforcement extremely wide latitude to prosecute virtually any computer-related activity, including violations of Terms of Service agreements. Each offense can bring up to 20 years in prison, and when multiple counts are charged individuals can face decades behind bars.
In 2017 Simone Bertollini became the first known attorney to prevail against CFAA charges. His 34-year-old client, Mr. Gasperini, was found not guilty on several felony counts of wire fraud, computer intrusion and money laundering for which he faced 70 years in prison; he was convicted on only one count of computer intrusion, a misdemeanor, which is current being appealed. Mr. Bertollini disputed prosecutors’ version of events and noted that none of the expert witnesses had ever seen the botnet that Gasperini allegedly used. He also questioned how he could be charged with conspiracy when no conspirators were named or charged. Cross Examination Transcript
Guest – Attorney Simone Bertollini – After graduating from law school in Rome, Italy, Simone moved to the United States where he graduated with a Juris Doctor degree, becoming one of the very few Italian lawyers in New York with full academic qualifications in both Italy and the United States. Simone first came to the United States with an F-1 student Visa to attend law school. After, he started his own legal practice, and obtained E-2 Treaty Investor Visa status. Later, Simone became a Lawful Permanent Resident, and now he is a proud American citizen. In the course of his career, Simone handled hundreds of immigration cases, including removal proceedings and federal appellate matters. Simone has also substantial criminal jury trial experience.
—-
Electronic Frontier Foundation on NSA Spying Extension
A few weeks ago the U.S. Congress voted to pass a bill extending, for another six years, the NSA’s practice of Internet surveillance. Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called this “a significant blow against the basic human right to read, write, learn, and associate free of government’s prying eyes.” The vote happened without public debate on a matter of great public concern.
The legislation in question allowing warrantless surveillance is Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. The Act is intended to target foreigners abroad. In practice it puts a great deal of our internet activities to government scrutiny, as they pass through key internet checkpoints, and as they are stored by providers like Google and Facebook. The NSA is thus able to gather and store private communications of countless non-suspect Americans.
Guest – Cindy Cohn, Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From 2000-2015 she served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel. Ms. Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993, when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography.
——————————-
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Death Penalty, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st-Century Revolutions
The Black Panther Party was formed by community college students in Oakland California in 1966, the year after Malcolm X was murdered in New York City. It’s original name was the Black Panther Party For Self Defense.
The Black Panther Party set an example by its community programs and courage in declaring that it would defend itself against police brutality. The Black Panther Party spread westward from California to New York where chapters were organized in Brooklyn and Harlem, where Malcolm X was from. The Panthers frightened America’s elite. J Edgar Hoover and the FBI set out to destroy them and eventually succeeded. A great courtroom battle took place place in New York City shortly after the establishment of the chapters. Twenty one Black Panthers were framed up on baseless conspiracy charges.
They spent two years in prison including one year on trial. The jury was out for only one hour and acquitted them totally of all the baseless charges. The collective story of the New York City black panthers and their trial is told in the newly re-issued book Look For Me In The Whirlwind. The book is edited by Dequi Kioni-sadiki and Matt Meyer. It has a forward by Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown), the former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee now in prison for life in Georgia and it contains an afterword by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Guest – Matt Meyer is a New York City–based educator, organizer, and author who serves as War Resisters International Africa Support Network Coordinator, and who represents the International Peace Research Association at the United Nations Economic and Social Council. A former draft registration resister, Meyer’s extensive human rights work has included support for all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, solidarity with Puerto Rico and the Black Liberation Movement, and board membership on the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute.
Guest – déqui kioni-sadiki is the chair of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee and was a leader of the Sekou Odinga Defense Committee, which waged a successful campaign for the release of her husband. A tireless coalition-builder and organizer, déqui is a radio producer of the weekly show “Where We Live” on WBAI-Radio, Pacifica; an educator with the NYC Department of Education; and a member of the Jericho Movement to Free All Political Prisoners.
Guest – Sekou Odinga was a member of Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity, a founding member of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party as well as the Black Panther International Section, and was a member of the NY Panther 21. A citizen of the Republic of New Afrika and combatant of the Black Liberation Army, Sekou was captured in October 1981, mercilessly tortured, and spent the following thirty-three years behind bars—a prisoner of war and political prisoner of the U.S. empire. Since his release in November 2014, he has remained a stalwart fighter for justice and for the release of all political prisoners.
—-
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.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Death Penalty, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Chris Hedges – Unspeakable
The year 2017 has seen a qualitative acceleration and consolidation of power by the forces on the right which have been accurately described as a form of fascism. Three significant books were published this year addressing this phenomena, where it came from, and how to fight it. We have interviewed Nancy MacLean on her book Democracy in Chains about the origins and organization of the billionaire forces like the Koch brothers who have orchestrated the takeover of 25 state legislatures and who are attacking every institution of what is left of American democracy. We interviewed John Bellamy Foster on his book Trump in the White House about who supports the Trump agenda and why.
Guest – Chris Hedges, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist. He was also a war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. His most recent book is ‘Death of the Liberal Class (2010). Hedges is also known as the best-selling author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. The recent book Unspeakable consists of talks with David Talbot about the most forbidden topics in America. Chris Hedges teachers at two prisons in New Jersey. He was active in the Occupy movement, writes a weekly column for Truthdig and is also the author of American Facism: The Christian Right and the War on America.
—-
Absolute Madness by Catherine Pelonero
The new book Absolute Madness details the true story of a serial killer in New York whose targets were African American males. A young, white Joseph Christopher struck fear into the residents of Buffalo and New York City in the 1980s. This former Army private, who was dubbed both the .22-Caliber Killer and the Midtown Slasher, murdered at least 17 men in a four-month spree across the state.
Christopher, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, had tried to admit himself to the Buffalo Psychiatric Center in September 1980, but was told he was not a danger to himself or others so could not be admitted. Two weeks later, the killings began.
Noted FBI profiler John Douglas assisted in the investigation that drew national attention and criticism from Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders. When the killer was finally found, he seemed on the surface to be an unlikely person to have held New York in such a grip of terror.
But Douglas’s capture would not be the end of the story. Racial discontent heightened during a series of prosecutions and judicial rulings that prompted cries of a double standard within the criminal justice system. Absolute Madness also chronicles one vulnerable man’s descent into madness and how the United States mental health system ignored his many pleas for help.
Guest – Catherine Pelonero, true crime author and commentator. Her book Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences was a New York Times bestseller. She is a contributing writer for Investigation Discovery’s CrimeFeed and has appeared on episodes of A Crime to Remember and Fox Files, among others. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
———————————–
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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.
——
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.
