Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner
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Labor Party’s Jeremy Corbyn For British Prime Minister: Analysis
Next month and December 12 Great Britain will hold national elections. Jeremy Corbyn, a social Democrat similar in some respects to Bernie Sanders heads the British Labor Party. He has said “I will be a very different kind of Prime Minister, not the kind of Prime Minister who believes he was born to rule.“
Working people in Great Britain are struggling like they are in the United States. The Labor Party has addressed what to do about their situation. It has grown qualitatively in recent years and has a chance of winning the election. What the Labor Party stand for and what has their leader Jeremy Corbyn done to prepare for taking power is what will be discussed.
Guest – Colin Robinson, longtime member of the Labor Party. Originally from Liverpool, he was educated in London where he was an active socialist. He moved to New York 30 years ago to work as a publisher. He splits his time between New York City and London. Robinson has written for The Guardian newspaper and the London review of books. He is the co-owner of OR Books with offices in New York City, London, and Calcutta.
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Harriet Tubman And The History Of Women Slavery
In the recently-released film “Harriet,” an active and young gun-toting Harriet Tubman jumps off bridges and faces down slaver owners. Directed by Kasi Lemmons, who calls Tubman a “completely bad ass woman,” the new film shows sides of the legendary Tubman that contrast with how she is remembered. This is the first feature film focusing on the legendary Underground Railroad leader.
The filmmakers made an effort to ensure accuracy given that many myths about Tubman have circulated over the years. The first biography about her, “Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman,” by Sarah Hopkins Bradford included many inaccuracies such as the number and nature of her rescues. That set the stage for inaccurate accounts to come.
One myth was that there was a $40,000 bounty on her head, an extremely high figure amount. As well, the number of enslaved persons she rescued through the Underground Railroad was more likely around 70 in contrast to the 300 reported in the Bradford biography.
Guest – Professor Jessica Millward, Associate Professor in the Department of History at UC Irvine. Her research focuses on slavery in early America, African American history as well as women and gender. Her first book, Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women In Maryland was published in 2015 by the University of Georgia Press.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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- Updates: Host Reunion: Epstein Update
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CCR Update With Legal Director Baher Azmy
Three years ago Donald Trump ran on a racist nativist platform scapegoating Muslims and Mexicans. He lost the popular vote but won the election through the electoral college and began implementing his scapegoating. First he banned Muslims because the Supreme Court ignored his campaign statements and ruling that he had a right to do it under national security.
The Trump policy has been deliberately cruel, separating children from families, caging immigrants in cold cement floored cells, rightly called concentration camps, and now attempting to deny non-citizens who are here illegally, medical care and other benefits.
Guest – Attorney Baher Azmy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The CCR is involved in a number of cases seeking to protect immigrants. We will also speak with Attorney Azmy about the current status of the offshore prison island in Guantánamo Bay Cuba and the men who are trapped there in limbo, who have yet to receive trials. Last, we will speak with him about the Al Shamari v. CACI case where the US government farmed out torture to a private corporation.
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Update: Venezuela Under Economic Embargo
In the midst of escalating U.S. aggression toward Venezuela, antiwar activist Gloria LaRiva recently spent a month in that country to observe firsthand the impact on its people.
Gloria joins us today to discuss the crucial issues facing Venezuelans: the U.S. economic sanctions, the U.S. media blockade, and the people’s organizing efforts to overcome the aggression. She’ll talk about the Bolivarian revolution, and how Venezuela is holding up under an economic embargo. https://www.answercoalition.org/
Guest – Gloria LaRiva is an American socialist activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Peace and Freedom Party. She ran for president in 2008 and again in 2016 with Eugene Puryear and Dennis Banks as her running mates. She has been a driving force in the campaign to Free the Cuban Five and a longtime friend of Law and Disorder. Liberationnews.org
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power
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Victory In New York City Wikileaks Case
Truth telling journalist and publisher Julian Assange and his organization Wiki-leaks won a significant First Amendment victory in federal court in New York City on July 29.
As reported by Oscar Grendel in the World Socialists Website, “The decision by Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected that Assange colluded with Russia. It upheld his status as a journalist and publisher and dismissed claims that WikiLeaks 2016 publication of the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee was illegal.
We speak today with WikiLeaks lawyer Josh Dratel, who represented WikiLeaks, about this victory for civil liberties and freedom of the press and the right of people to know.
Assange is in terrible and declining health in Belmarsh prison in London waiting extradition to the United States to be tried on 17 counts of espionage for publishing in 2010 troves of information leaked to him by Chelsea Manning demonstrating United States committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The July 29 victory came about when the Democratic National Committee of the Democratic Party attempted to sue Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing DNC Emails on the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. They showed that the DNC rigged the primary election against Sanders. Clinton was exposed for taking a $675,000 speakers fee, which some described as a bribe, from the investment banking house of Goldman Sachs to whom she pledged loyalty.
The case the DNC brought against The Russian federation, WikiLeaks and Assange, among others, in 2016 was thrown out of court, with prejudice, by federal judge John Koeltl, a Clinton appointee. Attorney Joshua Dratel defended WikiLeaks.
Please write Julian Assange at this address:
Mr Julian Assange
DOB: 3/07/1971
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
London SE28 0EB, UK
(Follow These Details In Preparing Letter)
Guest – Attorney Josh Dratel heads a renowned New York City law firm and has a national reputation as a trial and appellate lawyer. He graduated Harvard law school in 1981. Dratel is the past president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. His many honors include the Frederick Douglass award and the Clarence Darrow award from the ACLU of Idaho. He is the co-editor of the book The Torture Papers: the Legal Road to Abu Graib.
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The Case Of Espionage And Billionaire Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein
When he was alive, the major news media characteristically covered the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s huge pedophile sex ring for a brief news cycle. He was in a federal jail in Manhattan awaiting trial and was dropped out of public view. The salacious aspects of his story were covered briefly. Then he died under mysterious circumstances. The story was briefly revived but diverted to conditions in the jail. But there is much more to it.
In 2007 Florida federal prosecutor Alex Acosta went along with a plea deal which allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a Florida state charge involving prostitution with children and was given an extraordinary light sentence. Acosta dropped federal charges were dropped.
When questioned about this Acosta told a Senate committee inquiring about his credentials to become the secretary of labor in the Trump administration that he, Acosta , was told to back off because Epstein was part of the “intelligence community.“
Was he part of an espionage and blackmail operation? For whom did he work?
Guest – Phillip Giraldi, former CIA agent and counterterrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA. He is currently executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Geraldi has a masters degree and a PhD.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner, War Resister
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Speaking In Turkish: Denying the Armenian Genocide
Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.
The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings—beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients—render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.
Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government “their sole opportunity, one unprecedented” to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.
As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.
Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget “the senseless slaughter” of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.
Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Attorney James Goodale On Julian Assange Arrest
Last week, at the behest of the U.S. government, police entered the Ecuadorian Embassy and arrested Julian Assange on charges of espionage. This case promises to threaten the First Amendment rights of all journalists. We’re honored to have one of the nation’s foremost authorities on First Amendment law, Attorney James Goodale. In the April edition of the Atlantic, he wrote an article titled, Why Julian Assange deserves First Amendment Protection.
Listeners may recall that last fall, a court filing inadvertently suggested that the Justice Department had indicted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other outlets reported soon after that Assange had likely been secretly indicted for conspiring with his sources to publish classified government material and hacked documents belonging to the Democratic National Committee, among other things.
Assange started WikiLeaks in 2006 to provide a place for newsworthy information to be confidentially released. The site came gained prominence when Assange obtained thousands of classified documents relating to the Iraq War from US Army soldier Chelsea (born Bradley) Manning.
Guest – Attorney James C. Goodale has represented The New York Times in four of its cases to go to the Supreme Court: the Pentagon Papers case (The New York Times Co. v. The U.S.), The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (libel), Branzburg v. Hayes (see below) and The New York Times Co. v. Tasini, (digital rights). He developed the argument that the Espionage Act does not apply to publishers or the press.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the U.S. Government could not stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, holding that prior restraints were barred by the First Amendment unless the publication “will surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation or its people.” He became known as the “father of the reporter’s privilege.” A prolific writer, he has written two books on the First Amendment, The New York Times v. The U.S. and All About Cable, and approximately 200 articles, particularly on the role of the press in the Information Revolution.
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Al Otro Lado and the Border Crisis
United States President Donald Trump said that we have a “crisis” on the border. He called it an “infestation” and said that “These aren’t people. These are animals.” Last week he fired Kirstjen Nielsen who as the head of the Department for Homeland Security pursued the most aggressive enforcement strategy of any secretary in the history of the organization. Nielsen and the Trump administration has separated children from their parents and instituted an illegal turn back policy using tactics to restrict the numbers of asylum-seekers who want to access the asylum process at points of entry like Tijuana and El Paso.
Tactics used by the administration include lies, intimidating coercion, verbal abuse, physical force, out right denial of access, unreasonable delay, threats, and family separation. The Center for Constitution Rights is currently representing Al Otro Lado, a legal and human rights organization that helps migrants at the border. They are challenging the U S. Customs and Border Patrol on its turnaround policy in a pending lawsuit.
Last month CCR’s chairwoman of the board and Columbia Law Professor Katherine Franke met six students in Tijuana Mexico, across the border from San Diego, California, to advise migrants on what they will face in the hands of US legal authorities.
- Al Otro Lado provides essential legal support to migrants to prepare them for the asylum process in the U.S. You can support here.
- Santa Fe Dreamers also provides free legal support to immigrants, with a particular focus on transgender immigrants.
- Please visit this site if you are interested in contributing to the parole/bail fund for detainees.
- If you are interested in serving as a sponsor for an asylum seeker.
- This video offers a very good portrait of the situation at Chaparral where La Lista is maintained and asylum seekers wait for their number to be called.
Guest – Attorney Katherine Franke, is the Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Columbia University, where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and is the faculty director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project (Formerly the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project). She is a member of the Executive Committee for the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation’s leading scholars writing on law, religion and rights, drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Torture, Truth to Power
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Beyond Apology: Child Torture and Cover Ups In the Catholic Church
“How does the Catholic Church evaluate cases of pedophilia committed by priests?” This is the first question posed in the pamphlet titled “Pedophilia and the Priesthood,” written by Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli. The answer reads in part: These crimes of pedophilia have been labeled as “a crime against the most weak,” “a horrendous sin in the eyes of God,” a crime “that damages the Church’s credibility.”
The most severe condemnation, a source of clear and unequivocal blame, is found in the words of Jesus when, identifying himself with the little ones, affirms in the synoptic Gospels: And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea (Matthew 18:5-6, Mark 9:42, Luke 17:1-2).
In August 2018 it came to light that for over 70 years, Roman Catholic Bishops and other Church officials in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests. They dissuaded victims from reporting the abuse and they convinced police not to investigate it. This is all according to a grand jury report issued last month.
The report, initiate by Attorney General Josh Shapiro, is the widest inquiry by a US government agency into Catholic Church sexual abuse of children. It covers six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses. It found more than 1,000 identifiable victims but says there are likely thousands more whose records have been lost or who were too afraid to come forward. Shapiro said in a press conference that the cover up by senior officials in the church reached at times up to the Vatican.
At the same time, allegations have been raised that Pope Frances knew Cardinal Theorore McCarrick had abused seminarians, but that he lifted penalties imposed on him by Pope Benedict the 16th.
With these news reports, the Catholic Church has been thrown into turmoil. On the one side are traditional members who argue that sexual abuse can be stopped with stricter adherence to church doctrine. On the other side are reformists urging that the church stop condemning homosexuality and permit gay priests to be open about their sexual preferences.
Today on Law and Disorder we bring you a special examination of the continuing revelations into the extent of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, and cover-ups of abuse by Church officials.
After PA Grand Jury Report, Survivors Renew Demand For Federal Investigation Into Church Sexual Violence And Cover-Up
Guest – Attorney Pam Spees from the Center for Constitutional Rights. She has worked closely with SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, since 2011 with the filing of a complaint at the International Criminal Court. The complaint called for an investigation and prosecution of high-level Vatican officials, including then-Pope Benedict, for the widespread and systematic rape and sexual violence within the Catholic Church.
Guest – Peter Isely founding member of End Clergy Abuse, a new global organization, launched in Geneva in June, of survivor leaders and human rights activists from five continents and 28 countries. Peter wrote a 2003 SNAP white paper to the Department of Justice calling for federal intervention into the matter of clergy sexual abuse. He is a survivor of childhood sexual assault by a Wisconsin priest, one of the founding members of SNAP and previous Midwest Director. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a psychotherapist in private practice, Peter established and directed the nation’s only inpatient program for victims of clergy sexual trauma at Rogers Memorial Hospital located outside Milwaukee.
New York Attorney General Underwood Announces Clergy Abuse Hotline: 1-800-771-7755 or File Complaint Online
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