Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s License To Practice Law Suspended
Two weeks ago former president Donald Trump‘s attorney Rudy Giuliani’s license to practice law was suspended. The disciplinary committee of the New York City appellate division court where Giuliani had been licensed to practice law ruled that “he communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers, and the public at large in his capacity as a lawyer for Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020. In addition, on January 6, the committee took notice of Giuliani‘s urging the crowd in Washington DC make law by “engaging in combat.”
The disciplinary committee found that Giuliani’s conduct “immediately threatened the public interest in warranted interim suspension for the practice of law.” Giuliani became the first attorney to experience professional consequences for perpetuating lies about fraud in the 2020 election.
He had been the main prosecutor in the Southern District of New York before becoming mayor. After 911 he was widely viewed as a hero and denominated “Americas mayor“. He went on to practice law representing a number of corporations and becoming rich before becoming Trump’s attorney.
Guest – Professor and attorney Ellen Yaroshefsky, is one of the signatories to one of the complaints against Giuliani. Professor Yaroshefsky is the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development, Howard Lichtenstein Distinguished Professor of Legal Ethics, and Executive Director of the Monroe H. Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics.
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The Capital Riot Aftermath Evaluation: Attorney Margaret Ratner-Kunstler
At the same time we have a radicalization of the left we also have one on the right. The one on the right has been building for 40 years. A right wing racist nationalist demagogue, Donald Trump, got 74 million votes in the last election. People and organizations supporting Trump and egged on by him ransacked the Capital on January 6.
“The military was an active participant by refusing cars to intervene to stop the invasion of the building, “Barry Shepard wrote in Green Left Weekly. “They stood by for some four hours. Eventually it was the Washington DC police who finally ended it.“
Caroline Or, writing in Byline Times wrote that “the Capital riot was not a spontaneous outburst of violence, but rather a carefully orchestrated, well-funded attempt to violently overthrow the election and bring an end to democracy in America.“ Further, she wrote that “there is a close alliance between violent extremist and mainstream factions of the Republican Party, including wealthy donors and elected officials.“
The Republicans in Congress succeeded in blocking a proposal to convene a bipartisan committee to investigate the interaction. For his part, Biden has avoided talking about it in an evident attempt to assure his allies overseas that America is still a democracy.
Who did it, what did they hope to accomplish, love and what has been done by way of an investigation and criminal prosecution?
Guest – human rights attorney Margaret Ratner Kunstler who has worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights and is the editor of the recent book In Defense of Julian Assange.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Torture
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Building Support To Free Wikileaks’ Julian Assange
Whistle blowing Australian journalist and the publisher of WikiLeaks Julian Assange sits in a jail cell in solitary confinement in London’s infamous Belmarsh prison. There he awaits the decision of the British High Court as to whether at the behest of the Trump and now Biden administrations he will be extradited to the Eastern District of Virginia to stand trial on 17 counts of espionage under the recently resurrected 1917 Espionage Act which was originally enacted to be used against spies. He will certainly be sentenced to imprisonment for the rest of his life at a super maximum-security prison where communications with the outside world will be cut off.
His case is on appeal to the British High Court. At the recent extradition hearing British magistrate Vanessa Baraitser ruled in favor of the United States on all 17 counts of espionage lodged against him by the Trump administration. She did however rule that Julian Assange would be subjected to terrible conditions in American maximum-security prison and therefore should not be extradite. The Biden administration has appealed this ruling.
The charges Assange faces are a major threat to press freedom. James Goodale, who represented the New York Times in the Pentagon papers case, commented, “The charge against Assange for “conspiracy” with a source is the most dangerous I can think of with respect to the first amendment in all my years representing media organizations.”
It is crucial to build support for Assange and preventive his delivery into the hands of the Biden administration and its prosecutors.
Julian Assange’s crime was to expose the war crimes, murder, and the inner workings of the American empire to the world press. He might pay for this embarrassment with his life.
Homerun4Julian.com
Guest – John Shipton, Julian’s father who is visiting the United States from his native Australia touring to raise support for his victimized son.
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Take Me To Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class
We need to know our enemy because the task of changing society begins with understanding who holds power. In 1915 the great Irish socialist James Connolly said, “O, yes! The ruling class are worthy of study. The natural history of the ruling class is a fascinating interest. You begin with interest, you proceed with awe and admiration, you deepen into hatred, and you wind up with contempt for the nature of the beast. You realize that – the capitalist class is the meanest class that ever grasped the reins of power”. Jacobin magazine’s Spring 2021 issue is devoted entirely to an examination of the ruling class.
Guest – Doug Henwood who has an article in Jacobin titled Take Me To Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class. Doug Henwood is the editor of Left Business Review and the host of the radio program Behind the News.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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NSA Whistleblower Released From Texas Prison
Former NSA contractor Reality Leigh Winner was released on good behavior from a Texas prison on June 2. In 2017 Winner became the first person prosecuted during the Trump administration on charges of leaking classified information. She was sentenced to 5 years and 3 months in prison and served four years. The 29-year-old will ultimately be transferred to home confinement prior to her full release from custody in November.
Winner, a former Air Force linguist, leaked a top-secret report detailing hacks by Russian intelligence operatives against local election officials and a company that sold voter registration software. She sent it by mail to the online publication The Intercept. Given the document’s significance, Intercept staff sought to authenticate it before reporting on it. Their process of authentication, however, turned out to be deeply flawed because the Intercept sent a pdf scan of the hard copy report to the NSA’s public affairs office which contained clues that then led the government to discover Ms Winner’s identity.
A former Air Force linguist, Reality Winner entered a guilty plea to a single felony count of unauthorized transmission of national defense information in 2018, after being prosecuted for leaking classified information.
Guest – Alison Grinter Allen, who is Reality’s attorney. Alison’s Twitter account
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Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America
There is no shortage of aphorisms about history repeating itself when leaders fail to learn from prior mistakes. While a thorough grasp of history is no guarantee that things will go smoothly in the future, it can help gain insight about current conditions, and can inform future actions.
But history is vulnerable to manipulation. Never stagnant, and always subjective, history is constantly being reshaped especially by those with the resources to do so. According to Professor Erik Christiansen, as new channels of mass communication emerged on the heels of World War II, elite communities in the media, commerce, and government mined examples from history to create their own propaganda. Through a range of techniques, aided greatly by television, they advanced their respective agendas, from commerce to politics.
In his book, Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America, by the University of Wisconsin Press, Professor Christiansen presents a history of what he calls the usable past in postwar America. He examines several sources of purposely politicized history that put themselves forth as credible citizens history, adapted for the new age.
Guest – Erik Christiansen, professor of history and public history coordinator at Rhode Island College.
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Poetry By Raymond Nat Turner – Justice Served / Essential Work
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power
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Attorney Ron Kuby Updates On Donziger Trial
Three weeks ago, environmental attorney Steven Donziger’s Chevron-funded trial for misdemeanor contempt trial drew to a close. Steven and his defense team are now waiting for what they claim is an inevitable verdict of “guilty” by Chevron-linked Judge Loretta Preska. As Steven has written to his supporters, Preska denied him a jury of unbiased fact finders by ordering a bench trial. She also ruled against Steven and his attorneys on 99% of all their courtroom objections. Steven also notes that Preska—a conservative judge and a former member of the Federalist Society’s advisory board—actually read the newspaper during witness testimony.
The defense team is preparing for its expected appeal after Preska delivers her ruling. They are following up on, and researching, additional revelations of corruption by Chevron and the high-paid lawyers challenging the original multi-billion-dollar fines for Chevron’s toxic pollution in Ecuador.
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
Guest – Attorney Ron Kuby, who along with his law partner Rhiya Trevedi and noted First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus, comprise the Donziger defense team. Ron is the former law partner of William Kunstler, and his body of work continues to uphold their tradition of representing the poor, downtrodden, and wrongfully accused.
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Building Support To Free Wikileaks’ Julian Assange
Whistle blowing Australian journalist and the publisher of WikiLeaks Julian Assange sits in a jail cell in solitary confinement in London’s infamous Belmarsh prison. There he awaits the decision of the British High Court as to whether at the behest of the Trump and now Biden administrations he will be extradited to the Eastern District of Virginia to stand trial on 17 counts of espionage under the recently resurrected 1917 Espionage Act which was originally enacted to be used against spies. He will certainly be sentenced to imprisonment for the rest of his life at a super maximum-security prison where communications with the outside world will be cut off.
His case is on appeal to the British High Court. At the recent extradition hearing British magistrate Vanessa Baraitser ruled in favor of the United States on all 17 counts of espionage lodged against him by the Trump administration. She did however rule that Julian Assange would be subjected to terrible conditions in American maximum-security prison and therefore should not be extradite. The Biden administration has appealed this ruling.
The charges Assange faces are a major threat to press freedom. James Goodale, who represented the New York Times in the Pentagon papers case, commented, “The charge against Assange for “conspiracy” with a source is the most dangerous I can think of with respect to the first amendment in all my years representing media organizations.”
It is crucial to build support for Assange and preventive his delivery into the hands of the Biden administration and its prosecutors.
Julian Assange’s crime was to expose the war crimes, murder, and the inner workings of the American empire to the world press. He might pay for this embarrassment with his life.
Homerun4Julian.com
Guest – John Shipton, Julian’s father who is visiting the United States from his native Australia touring to raise support for his victimized son.
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Civil Liberties, Gaza, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Truth to Power, War Resister
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- Commentary: Jim Lafferty On Israeli – Palestinian Conflict
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Steven Donziger Trial: Continuing Coverage Part 2
After five days in court and 650 days on house arrest, environmental lawyer Steven Donziger chose not to take the stand and testify in his own defense. As listeners will recall, Steven was on trial for criminal contempt of court charges. In August 2019, he refused to turn over his computer, cellphone and other electronic devices and he has been detained pretrial for a misdemeanor offense. If convicted, he faces six months in prison.
The attorney who won a multi-billion-dollar settlement against Chevron oil for polluting an area Ecuador the size of Rhode Island and causing the indigenous people thousands of injuries and deaths by cancer and other illnesses, told The Intercept about the decision: “My lawyers said you’d be crazy to testify, so we decided to cut the case short. No need to continue to legitimize what’s essentially a charade.”
Judge Loretta Preska denied Steven a trial by jury, and many contend that a jury of his own peers might have acquitted the human rights defender of all six counts. Attorney and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson agrees. “This is a story of the denial of jury trial,” Nesson said. “He’s been effectively convicted and disbarred and more or less bankrupted without any jury. And now he’s about to be convicted. And all of this without a jury.”
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
Guest – Attorney Martin Garbus, one of three pro bono lawyers representing Donziger in an attempt to get his law license restored. Garbus has a long and distinguished career as a civil rights and first amendment litigator. Attorney Martin Garbus has represented Nelson Mandela, Daniel Ellsberg, and Cesar Chavez and worked in Rwanda, China, and the Soviet Union, among other countries.
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Take Me To Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class
We need to know our enemy because the task of changing society begins with understanding who holds power. In 1915 the great Irish socialist James Connolly said, “O, yes! The ruling class are worthy of study. The natural history of the ruling class is a fascinating interest. You begin with interest, you proceed with awe and admiration, you deepen into hatred, and you wind up with contempt for the nature of the beast. You realize that – the capitalist class is the meanest class that ever grasped the reins of power”. Jacobin magazine’s Spring 2021 issue is devoted entirely to an examination of the ruling class.
Guest – Doug Henwood who has an article in Jacobin titled Take Me To Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class. Doug Henwood is the editor of Left Business Review and the host of the radio program Behind the News.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Steven Donziger Trial: Continued Coverage
As we continue our coverage of human rights lawyer Steve Donziger’s criminal contempt trial, we look back to the origins of case he brought against Chevron Oil. They go back to the late 1960s when Texaco first discovered oil in part of an Amazon rainforest in northeastern Ecuador. The US oil company went on to lord over decades of environmental destruction on a monolithic scale, dumping two or three Exxon Valdez’s worth of oil and toxic byproducts and despoiling an area the size of Rhode Island. Since then, the indigenous tribes in the area have been victims of by cancer and other illnesses caused by the pollution, they say. In 1993, two years after graduating from Harvard Law School, Donziger joined a lawsuit seeking to force Texaco to clean up the mess. In 2000 Chevron purchased Texaco. They spent upward of $1 billion in legal fees defending this case.
Donziger has broad support from celebrities, including Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon; dozens of Nobel laureates; and thousands of lawyers and law students globally. A handful of sympathetic Democratic lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have written a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to look into the case. More than 200 attorneys with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers have filed a judicial complaint asking for Judge Kaplan to be taken off the bench.
Conversely, Chevron claims Donziger’s supporters are being duped by a con man. A few conservative outlets have reiterated that narrative. One National Review headline criticized the “Lefty Media” for championing the cause of “History’s Champion Scammer.”
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
Guest – Attorney Martin Garbus, one of three pro bono lawyers representing Donziger in an attempt to get his law license restored. Garbus has a long and distinguished career as a civil rights and first amendment litigator.
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Above The Law: How Qualified Immunity Protects Violent Police
The 1967 judicially created doctrine of qualified immunity has been so broadly interpreted that it acts as a shield for policeman in all but the rarest of circumstances. Only when the exact same abusive behavior of a cop has already been deemed unconstitutional by a court in the exact same jurisdiction can a victim succeed in a civil lawsuit against an abusive police officer. A plantiff must show that government officials violated clearly established law to receive damages for harm.
The plaintiff wins only if a prior court found an official liable under a nearly identical fact pattern. This standard is virtually impossible to meet and the protections promised under section 1983 civil rights act are therefore largely symbolic.
Guest – Ben Cohen – cofounder and former CEO of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. He is the founder of a variety of advocacy organizations and the author of several books including his latest titled Above The Law: How Qualified Immunity Protects Violent Police. Ben and his partner Jerry Greenfield are currently helping to lead the campaign to end qualified immunity.
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USPS Announces Closing Of 19 Mail Processing Plants
The US Postal Service advertises the official standard of delivering first-class mail — a typical letter with a 55-cent stamp—within “1-3 business days.” The News Department at WGBH Radio in Boston conducted its own test to see if this still holds true. News reporters and producers sent nearly 100 letters from different places in the metro area at various hours on the same day to their pick of correspondents in 38 states, creating a random sample. The letters were addressed to residents of large cities, suburbs and small towns. The Postal Service flunked the test. A little more than half of the letters arrived within the three-day window.
Slower delivery is just the tip of the Post Office’s problems. Things are going from bad to worse. The Postal Service issued a report titled Delivering for America calling for a reorganization that highlights something called shared sacrifice.
Many consider it an austerity plan to cover for de facto privatization. Critics say the plan will slow the mail, raise prices, and cut services. Since the report was published, the Postal Service announced the closing of 18 mail processing plants that will take place before November. Based on recent history, closing these plants will slow the mail and guarantee there will be problems with mail delivery during the peak season.
Guest – Chuck Zlatkin, legislative director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
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