CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Torture
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
FBI Director James Comey Termination Fall Out
President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey has many concerned about a possible impending threat to the independence of United States intelligence institutions. Trump’s action represents his most serious violation of political norms to-date. While the president does have the legal authority to fire the FBI director, who serves a 10-year term, it is usually only done under extraordinary circumstances. The administration has said publicly that Comey was fired because he mishandled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. But that stands in stark contrast with the fact that in January Trump asked Comey to remain in his post. Perhaps more germane is that the dismissal comes less than two months after Comey announced in March that he has been overseeing an investigation into whether the Trump campaign and Trump’s associates coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
A few days before Comey’s dismissal, Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo of the NY Times reported that Comey: “asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in resources for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.” Trump will now be able to appoint a new FBI director who will run the Russia investigation — an investigation that the president has repeatedly complained about. This has drawn comparisons to Richard Nixon’s efforts to cut off Watergate investigations.
Guest – Attorney Mike German a former FBI agent and a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. His work focuses on law enforcement and intelligence oversight and reform. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Mike served as the policy counsel for national security and privacy for the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office. A sixteen-year veteran of federal law enforcement, Mr. German served as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations.
—-
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by Jim Douglass
JFK and the Unspeakable is the first book of 3 on the assassinations of the 1960s. Orbis Books has commissioned author James W. Douglass to write about the murders of JFK, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and his the third will be on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. The heart of JFK the Unthinkable, is not how Kennedy was killed or how Kennedy became a threat to the systemic war machine, but why DID Kennedy die? Author James Douglass says Kennedy knew that he would die and had the guts to stand up to the system and take the hit. This narrative was lost for decades, obscured by disinformation about Kennedy’s character and the conspiracy of his assassination. One review summarizes Douglass’s book in this way : JFK’s belated effort to turn America from an armed culture of victory to a member of an international peaceful world was shot down in Texas for a reason.
Jim Douglass:
- John F. Kennedy’s experience in WWII: He was in the South Pacific, he volunteered. He was on that PT boat.
- What happened on that PT boat, is that it got split into two by a Japanese destroyer. He lost brothers and friends at that time. An extraordinary experience being adrift on the ocean warning other PT boats. The experience create a distrust in military authority.
- He said that he wanted to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter to the winds.
- As Kennedy said to his friends, “they figured me all wrong.”
- The Unspeakable: the kind of evil and deceit that seems to go beyond the capacity of words to describe. The midst of war and nuclear arms race, the assassinations of Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcom X that the term was used.
- JFK’s vision is articulated in the address June 10, 1963, arising from the turnaround of the missile crisis and Bay of Pigs. He wanted to move step by step into a disarmed world.
- Nikita Khrushchev put that speech all over the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a deeply misunderstood part of our history, because it’s usually portrayed as Kennedy going to war with Nikita Khrushchev and beating him.
- The truth was that Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were in over their heads, the US generals wanted nuclear war, because they had more warheads than the Soviets.
- Nikita Khrushchev: We now have a common enemy from those pushing us toward war.
- At that point the Cold War turned upside down because Kennedy and Khrushchev became closer to each other than either was toward their own military power system.
- Vietnam: Kennedy’s military people would not give him an exit policy. He signed the withdrawal order from Vietnam before he was assassinated.
- His friends said that he had an obsession with death. It was not an obsession but a real assessment that he was going to die. If you try to turn around a national security state that is dominating the world,
- and you do so as president of the United States, of course you’re going to die. Kennedy knew that.
- The book is a story on the deliberate destruction of hope, the vision of change, a turning of this country all of which was happening and had to be stopped. US Agencies killed Dr. Martin Luther King – 1999 Verdict
- We’re in the same scene right now with Petraeus and McChrystal setting up Obama. They were dictating terms to Obama, unlike Kennedy, he did not face them down.
- We need to get out ahead of Obama so that he can do something.
Guest – James W. Douglass, author and a longtime peace activist and writer. James and his wife Shelley are co-founders of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington, and Mary’s House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Birmingham, Alabama.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Reginald Dwayne Betts: Bastards of the Reagan Era
Toni Morrison said, “All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS. Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.” “That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story.”
Guest – Reginald Dwayne Betts, an award-winning poet. An honors student and class treasurer in high school, at age 16 he and a friend carjacked a man who had fallen asleep in his car. Betts was charged as an adult and spent more than eight years in prison, where he completed high school and began reading and writing poetry. Betts’s first collection of poems, Shahid Reads His Own Palm won the Beatrice Hawley Award, and his memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison, received the 2010 NAACP Image Award. He’s had a Soros Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship. In addition to attending Yale Law school, Betts was appointed by President Obama to the Coordinating Council of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
—
Jewish Voice For Peace: Deadly Exchange: Ending US–Israel Police Partnerships, Reclaiming Safety
Like the United States, where it’s colonists settled upon, displaced, and controlled the Native American population Israel is also a settler colonialism state. It drove 750,000 Palestinians out when it was just established in 1948 and seized control of the land on the West Bank of the Jordan River and Gaza in 1967 and has militarily occupied and controlled the Palestinian population of nearly 2,000,000 there since. Israel’s settler colonialism experience has provided it with valuable lessons and skills ripe for export to other state powers confronted with challenges of control. Despite the United Nations Security Council condemning Israel it has continued it’s illegal defiant and hostile commitment to expansion.
How does it get away with this? Jeff Halpern in his book “War Against the People” has written that “of the 157 countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations virtually all the agreements and protocols Israel has signed with them contain military and security components.” The government of the United States and Israel have exchange programs that bring together American police, including the New York City police, ICE, the Border Patrol, and the FBI on the US side and soldiers, police and border agents from Israel. We talk with Ari Wohlfeiler one of the leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace. JVP has recently launched a campaign called “Deadly Exchange: Ending US – Israel Police Partnerships, Reclaiming Safety.” JVP has over 200 online supporters and over 60 chapters.
Guest – Ari Wohlfeiler, Deputy Director of JVP. He’s from Oakland, CA and before coming to JVP, he was the Development Director at Critical Resistance, and has worked extensively with grassroots organizations fighting the prison industrial complex.
—————————————
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
President Donald Trump, Foreign Investment And Russian Oligarchs
There has been a huge clamor about Donald Trump’s election campaign getting help from Russia. But so far, no concrete evidence of this has been unearthed and the claim is as yet unsubstantiated. Last week, former FBI director Mueller, was named to head an investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. If this goes wide enough it will probably look into Donald Trump’s economic connections with billionaire Russians. In 2008, Donald Trump Jr said wealthy Russians were the most important investors in his fathers’ businesses. Our guest today, attorney James Henry, and economic investigative reporter, has written that after Donald Trump’s many bankruptcies, he was able to finance his businesses with funds from billionaire Russian oligarchs who had amassed great wealth by stealing Russian natural resources including gold, oil, natural gas and aluminum. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, publicly owned resources were granted by private owners. Some $ 1.3 trillion was taken out of the country and used by these oligarchs in foreign investments, including Trump’s properties. It is there for a possible that an investigation of Donald Trump will show that he violated US laws against racketeering, money laundering, and associated with organized crime figures?
Guest – Attorney James S. Henry, is a leading economist, attorney, consultant, and investigative journalist, who has written and spoken widely on the problems of tax justice and development finance. He can be found on Twitter at @submergingmkt. In the not-for-profit sector, Mr Henry has served as Senior Fellow, Columbia University Center for Sustainable Investment, where he has taught a graduate level workshop on Haiti and Banking for the Poor in the School for International and Public Affairs; Senior Advisor and global board member, Tax Justice Network; founder and steering committee member, TJN-USA; and Interim Chairman, Global Alliance for Tax Justice, a coalition of 81 NGOs in 37 countries.
—-
Ray McGovern: Leaked Not Hacked; US Deep State v.Trump
Former FBI director Robert Mueller has been appointed to investigate the allegation that Russia colluded with Donald trumps campaign in order to get him elected. While there is no concrete evidence of this, allegation is taken for good coin in the major media. Powerful elements within the state apparatus – the FBI, CIA, NSA, – have been pursuing what has been called a “soft coup” against Trump using tactics from former FBI director J Edgar Hoover’s playbook. These include links that put the White House on the defensive; providing the imagery of criminality (without proof) ; and getting the rest of the political establishment and the media to turn on the administration. Donald Trump ran for office putting forward his position that United States should reach a better understanding with Russia. This has been challenged by what has been referred to as the deep state, that is, the intelligence organizations in the military industrial complex. New York state Senator Charles Schumer said last month that if you mess with them, “the intelligence agencies have six ways from Sunday to get you.” Our guest, Ray McGovern, has written that “President Trump has entered into a high-stakes gamble in confronting the deep state and it’s media allies over the allegation of his colluding with Russia.”
Guest – Ray McGovern 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, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Chicago Gang Intervention Programs: BUILD
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently vowed that the Justice Department has zero tolerance for gang violence. “If you are a gang member, he said, “we will find you,” “We will devastate your networks. We will starve your revenue sources, deplete your ranks, and seize your profits. We will not concede a single block or a street corner to your vicious tactics.” President Trump tweeted his approval of Sessions comments, saying “I promised to get tough and we are!” The administration’s efforts to crack down on gangs will mean more arrests and lengthy incarceration for young persons with little attention being paid to alternatives to detention and programs that will offer productive and meaningful choices.
In Chicago, where gang violence has received a great deal of media attention, one community-based organization has been working in some of the city’s toughest neighborhoods to stem violence before it interferes with young peoples’ potential. In 1969 BUILD began working with gang-affiliated teenagers and now serves nearly 3,000 youth each year offering targeted services designed to prevent kids from joining gangs and also working with gang-involved youth to develop alternatives to this lifestyle. BUILD also works with young persons who are in contact with the justice system to provide alternatives to detention and assist with successful re-entry.
Guest – Martin Anguiano, BUILD’s Manager of Intervention Services . Martin has worked at BUILD since 1994. He oversees BUILD services to young people involved in, or at risk for involvement in, gangs and the juvenile justice system. He is trained in trauma-informed practices and certified in peace circle keeping. Martin holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
—-
Attorney Jim Lafferty On Trump Administration
Donald Trump has been in office now for over 100 days. His cabinet and closest advisers constitute a group of generals, multimillionaires, and billionaires. It is the richest cabinet in American history. His closest advisers and members of his family, an organizational set up that more resembles the mafia than past executive office inhabitants. His predecessor, Barack Obama, was a disappointment to many people who supported him eight years ago. He presided over US wars in the Middle East. His government overthrew the government of Libya, the Ukraine, and Honduras. Domestically he failed to prosecute those guilty of torture, which is illegal under American and International law. He failed to close the offshore prison in Guantánamo, Cuba. He failed to prosecute the bankers who crashed the American economy in 2008. He deported more people than any other president in American history. Now, with Donald Trump in office, people are asking the question, is he qualitatively different than Obama. What is the continuity and what is the discontinuity between the Obama and Trump administrations?
Guest – Los Angeles National Lawyers Guild attorney Jim Lafferty. Jim participated as a lawyer during the civil rights movement in Mississippi. He is a former executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. He was a central leader in the movement against the war in Vietnam. For the last 30 years he was the head of theLos Angeles National Lawyers Guild, growing it into one of the most active an influential chapters in the United States.
—-
Lawyers You’ll Like: Paul Gattone
Arizona has long been Ground Zero for immigration controversies. It’s a state with one of the harshest immigration laws in the country, Senate Bill 1070. In the state capitol of Phoenix, immigrant rights groups have dedicated the past two decades to fighting the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for racial profiling, late-night raids and a “tent city” outdoor prison. Arpaio was voted out of office in 2016. But the state still has its share of threats to civil rights.
Guest – Attorney Paul Gattone of Tucson, Arizona. A Chicago native, Paul has spent over two decades in Ariona as a criminal defense attorney at the People’s Law Center and now in private practice. A longtime member of the National Lawyers Guild, Paul’s focus is in advancing and defending civil rights. He and his wife Joy also run a radical bookstore called Revolutionary Grounds.
——————————————————-
Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Silk Road, Kingpin Charge and Ross Ulbricht
In 2015 a jury found that then 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht had created and run an anonymous digital black market for drugs called Silk Road. The case was a high profile one, and Ulbricht had come to be known by some as the face of the Dark Web. He was convicted on seven charges—including a “kingpin” charge—and Judge Katherine Forrest imposed two life sentences and 40 years without possibility of parole. Prosecutors had not even sought such a long sentence.
In a 2016 appeal, defense attorneys outlined a litany of improprieties and abuses in the investigation and trial. Perhaps most serious was that the court procluded information about two corrupt federal agents investigating Silk Road who are now both serving prison sentences for corruption.
The defense team maintains that the convictions for Ulbricht should be vacated and that a new trial should be ordered or that he receive re-sentencing before a different judge.
A new book by Nick Bilton called “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind Silk Road” has received glowing reviews but presents what the Ulbricht family, his legal team, and supporters describe as a fictionalized version of the government’s narrative of the case, It is said that in many instances the author relied on claims that were not charged in trial.
Guest – Ross’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht. Lyn is working to help her son and directs those who want to learn more about her son’s case to the site Free Ross Ulbricht.
—-
Williams v. Pennsylvania: Mumia Abu-Jamal
In 2016 the Supreme Court in Williams v. Pennsylvania held that a prosecutor involved in seeking the death penalty should recuse himself if asked to judge an appeal in the capital case. Two months later, Mumia Abu-Jamal filed an appeal based on that decision, calling into direct question the validity of his criminal conviction, and the denial of his appeals. Ronald Castille, the same prosecutor in the Williams case, was a senior district attorney while Mumia’s case was being tried. He was also the District Attorney of Philadelphia during Mumia’s direct appeals. While serving on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Castille rejected a recusal motion filed by Mumia’s defense.
On April 24, Mumia’s 63rd birthday, his lawyers were back in court arguing that a Motion for Discovery should be granted to determine the particulars of Castille’s personal involvement in Mumia’s prosecution and appeals.
Judge Leon Tucker ruled in favor of Mumia’s demand for discover and for the DA’s files. The records must be turned over to Mumia’s attorneys by May 30, 2017.
Guest – Attorney Judy Ritter, Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Widener’s Delaware campus. She argued in 2011 before the Third Circuit that the instructions given to the sentencing jurors were unconstitutional. The so-called Mills claim argument succeeded and Mumia, as our listeners know, no longer faces a sentence of death.
—-
Anatomy of Innocence: Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted
Capital punishment has made news headlines over the past few months, as the state of Arkansas rushed to execute six men in a span of several days. For many years, the issue of state sanctioned killings has not received much attention. News of exonerations of innocent men and women are rare.
A new book, Anatomy of Innocence: Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted, presents the true stories of 15 exonerees who were wrongfully convicted and thrown into the complex criminal justice system before being among the few to be exonerated.
Edited by Leslie Klinger and Laura Caldwell, the book is unusual in that each exoneree is paired with a high-profile mystery and thriller writer (including Lee Child, Sara Paretsky, Laurie King, Brad Parks and others) to present their narratives. Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project and author Scott Turow also provide commentary.
The book also includes a letter from playwright Arthur Miller, believed to be the first and only unpublished piece since his death. Kirkus Reviews called the compilation “a unique collection of 15 wrongful conviction sagas bound to shake faith in the American criminal justice system.”
Guest – Attorney and author Leslie Klinger, co-editor of Anatomy of Innocence and widely considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, H. P. Lovecraft, and 19th-century genre fiction.
——————————————
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Aging Prisoners and the Law Of Parole
The United States of America imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other country in the world. Today America holds 2.3 million people behind bars. This has been called “mass incarceration.” Part of the reason for mass incarceration is the system of parole, which many consider to be broken, especially in New York State. The purpose of incarceration is punishment. It is also rehabilitation. And third, it is an opportunity for a person to come to terms with what she did, and gain skills. This is why prisons are called “correctional facilities.” When a person has repaid society for her crime, has been rehabilitated, and does not pose a threat to the community they are supposed to be paroled. But it actuality, this is not the way it works. In many cases, especially when the applicant for parole had committed a violent crime the sole criteria that the parole board examines is the nature of the crime that was committed. Something that convict cannot change. The latest example is the denial last month of parole to 67 year-old New York Prisoner Judy Clark who has been behind bars for 35 years for her role and driving the getaway car in the bungled 1961 Brinks armored car robbery which left to Nyack New York police officers and then I’m a truck driver dead. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in granting Judy Clark clemency so she would be eligible for parole, said “It was a hard political decision.”
I could hear Jimmy Breslin’s voice saying “she made a mistake – we all do. She learned, she paid the price, she spent her life in a cage, and she is now different. Jesus would pardon her. Who the hell made you better than Jesus? ” A prominent local police chief Joseph Sinagara commented that “I don’t care what kind of model prisoner she was.” Ms. Clark’s daughter, Harriet, said she understood the seriousness of the crime but believed the decision by the board was an injustice. “My mother did not kill anyone, and it’s hard for me to understand who is served by making her die in prison, which is what decisions like this eventually amount to.”
Guest – Professor Steven Zeidman is the Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at CUNY School of Law. A graduate of Duke University School of Law, he is a former staff attorney and supervisor at the Legal Aid Society. Professor Zeidman is a member of American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section Council, and serves on the Board of Directors of Prisoners’ Legal Services and an Advisory Council created to help implement the remedial order in the Floyd v. City of New York stop-and-frisk litigation. He has served on several statewide commissions, including the Commission on the Future of Indigent Defense Services.
Guest – Laura Whitehorn , a former political prisoner who served 14 years for the distruction of government property in connection with a 1983 bombing at the US Capitol where no one was injured. She was released in 1999. Laura Whitehorn is a leader in the Release Aging People in Prison Organization and has been active in challenging the New York state parole board’s intransigence.
Check the RAPP Events Page
—-
Lynne Stewart’s Memorial
Many attended Lynne Stewart’s memorial including Glen Ford, Hon. Charles Barron, Jeff Mackler, Pam Africa, Father Lawrence Lucas, Ralph Schoenman, Jess Sundin, Rev. Allison, Lamis Deek, Sara Flounders, Bob Lederer, Janine Otis Ensemble, Nat Turner – Poet, Atiba Wilson – Drummer, Dr. Patrice Turner and many more. We hear an impassioned speech by Chris Hedges.
Lynne Stewart: A Revolutionary Life Well-Lived – A Biographical Glimpse
————————————————————————————-
