CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Cuba, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
- Michael Smith and Guest Host Natasha Bannan Discuss 61st Anniversary of Cuban Revolution
—-
Venezuelan Embassy Protectors Could Face Fines And Prison
The first week of January 2020 marks the 61st anniversary of the Cuban revolution. The Cuban people now have some of the best healthcare in the world, free education through college, adequate housing, and a high-level of culture.
The attitude of the American government has been one of almost unrelieved hostility including violence and an ongoing economic, financial, and commercial blockade.
Unable to reverse the Cuban revolution United States sought from the beginning to contain its influence. From the 1960s the governments of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and recently Bolivia were overthrown by American sponsored coups because of their friendly position towards Cuba. As of today the Venezuelan government is being targeted by the United States.
In violation of international law in May of 2019, the United States government attempted but failed to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicolas Madura in Venezuela.
The United States had at that time attempted to install Juan Guida as the president of Venezuela and Guida’s right wing supporters attempted to take over the Venezuelan embassy in Washington DC. Under international law, the embassy is the property of Venezuelan government and is considered untouchable.
A number of Americans, known as the Embassy Protectors, moved in to the embassy to prevent its hostile takeover. The State Department, Secret Service, and the Metropolitan Police force laid seize to the embassy. Electricity and water were cut off. No food was allowed in.
Although the coup against the Maduro government failed the Embassy Protectors were arrested when the US government raided the Venezuelan embassy. Four of the protectors including today’s Law And Disorder guest Attorney Kevin Zeese were arrested and face trial. If convicted they could be fined up to $250,000 and given a one year prison term. Embassy Protectors
Guest – Kevin Zeese is a US lawyer and political activist. He helped organize the 2011 Occupy encampment in Washington DC. Kevin Zeese is currently the co-director of The Organization Popular Resistance.
—-
U.S. Anti-Immigration and Just Futures Law
Anti-immigrant discourse and policy has defined a large part of the Trump Administration since 2016. We take a look into attacks against immigrants in the United States and related rule making in the last few months.
Guest – Paromita Shah is the Executive Director of Just Futures Law, a new movement lawyering organization dedicated to ending the deportation and mass incarceration industrial complexes. Paromita has spent over 20 years in providing innovative legal and advocacy support to lawyers and legal advocates, grassroots groups and organizers, in the fight against criminalization and immigration enforcement. She has worked to support immigrant communities impacted by policing and immigration enforcement and has worked on issues like immigration detainers, gangs, and technology surveillance.
———————————
———————————
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
President Donald Trump, Ukraine, The Bidens And Impeachment
The late critic of American politics Gore Vidal often referred to the United States as the United States of amnesia. Even though it was only five years ago in 2014 that the Obama-Biden administration spent $5 billion to help overthrow the democratically elected government of the Ukraine, this fact is omitted in the mainstream press’ coverage of the current Ukraingate impeachment inquiry that the Democratic Party is conducting in the House of Representatives.
The purpose of the American sponsored overthrow of Ukrainian government it is thought by some observers, was to open up the natural resources of the rich Ukraine to American economic interests and secondly to incorporate the Ukraine into the North American Treaty Organization, the military alliance headed by the USA, which sought to further surround Russia militarily on its western border.
After the overthrow, with Joe Biden as then Vice President, his son Hunter got a position on the Board of Directors of Berksema, the large Ukrainian national gas company. Although he knew nothing about the workings of the gas industry Hunter Biden was paid $600,000 a year.
This is the background to President Donald Trump‘s now famous call to the president of the Ukraine asking him to investigate the Bidens. It has been alleged by the Democrats, but not proven, that Trump withheld $400,000,000 American dollars to purchase American weapons until Ukrainian president Zelensky announced a corruption investigation.
Guest – Aaron Maté is a contributing editor at the nation magazine and has the new Internet show Pushback on The Gray Zone. He won the 2019 Izzy Award for achievement in independent media for his coverage of Russiagate.
—-
The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered A Black Panther
Around 7AM, 50 years ago on December 4, 1969, attorney Jeff Haas was in a police lockup in Chicago, interviewing the fiancée of Fred Hampton. She was telling him how the police pulled her from the room as Fred Hampton lay unconscious on their bed. She heard one officer say, “He’s still alive.” She then heard two shots. A second officer said, “He’s good and dead now.” She looks at Jeff and asked, “What can you do?”
The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police
Murdered a Black Panther is Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor went after Hampton’s assassins, and ultimately prevailed over unlimited government resources and an FBI conspiracy. His book isn’t just a story of justice delivered, it also portrays Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.
Guest – Jeff Haas is a longtime member of the National Lawyers Guild who has dedicated his career to working for justice. In 1969 he and three other lawyers set up the Peoples Law Office in Chicago, whose clients included the Black Panthers, SDS, and other political activists. Haas went on to handle cases involving prisoners’ rights, police torture, and the wrongfully accused. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and children and continues to represent victims of police brutality.
——————————
——————————
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
CCR Attorney Brings GTMO Cases To Highest International Court
The International Criminal Court was established in 1998 and began sitting in 2002. To date there are 123 countries who have ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC and participate in it.
The role of the ICC is to bring to justice the world’s worst crimes known to humankind – war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The United States of America is not one of the 123 countries who participate in this International Court. But it can still be investigated and tried if the crimes it commits were committed in one of the 123 countries.
Guest – Attorney Katherine Gallagher, senior attorney at The Center for Constitutional Rights will be appearing before the ICC in the Hague in Holland on December 4, 2019. Attorney Gallagher will be representing two men currently being held and indefinitely detained in the US offshore prison camp in Guantánamo Cuba. Katherine works on universal jurisdiction and international criminal law cases involving U.S. and foreign officials and torture and other war crimes, and cases involving private military corporations and torture at Abu Ghraib. Her major cases include Al Shimari v. CACI, the international U.S. torture accountability cases, and Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) v. Vatican, seeking accountability for the crimes against humanity of sexual violence by clergy and cover-up.
—-
In Defense of Julian Assange Book Launch
Margaret Kunstler, Aaron Mate, Nathan Fuller, Amy Goodman, and Barry Pollack spoke about the wrongly prosecuted Julian Assange on the occasion of the recent publication by OR Books of In Defense of Julian Assange composed of 39 authors offering a range of insights and perspectives. The event on November 21, 2019 took place at the home of the late Michael Ratner, Assange’s former attorney. We hear from Margaret Kunstler, Barry Pollack, Nathan Fuller and Amy Goodman.
——————————
——————————
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Kings Bay Plowshare 7 Face Sentencing After Powerful Testimony
In our society nuclear weapons that can destroy all creation are taken as a normal, even an inevitable, part of life. In a dramatic action to break what they call “the crime of silence“ seven Catholic peace activists entered the Kings Bay Trident Submarine Base in Georgia last April to perform an act of symbolic disarmament. They were arrested, tried two weeks ago and quickly convicted on October 24, 2019 in a Georgia court. They face more than 25 years in prison.
Kings Bay is home port to six ballistic missile Trident submarines, each of which deploy 16 Trident missile’s carry in four or more warheads of at least 100 kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was 14 kilotons. Each submarine thus has the destructive power of at least 500 Hiroshima bombs.
Past interviews with Kings Bay Plowshare 7 Members:
October 7, 2019
February 18, 2019
Guest – Attorney Bill Quigley. Bill is the former legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and is currently a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill has been an active public interest and human rights lawyer since 1977. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, human rights, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.He practices and teachers law in New Orleans.
—-
Potential Retrial For Imam Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown)
“His voice had power. His booming delivery was infused with rousing socio-political rhetoric. With a rhythmic cadence, tone, and inflection, his voice kept a beat. It emboldened a generation of black youth, and frightened the white establishment.”
Those words by Obaid Siddiqui for Medium describe a former Minister of Justice for the Black Panther Party, known in the 1960s and 70s as H. Rap Brown. Once the chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Imam Jamil Al-Amin was one of the original four targets of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program. The Bureau called for the “neutralization” of Al-Amin and other prominent black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Stokely Carmichael. The FBI compiled enormous files on Al-Amin and his community.
Now 76 years old, he is serving a life sentence for what many claim was the wrongful conviction in 2002 for shooting two deputy sheriffs in Atlanta, Georgia on the night of March 16, 2000. This, despite a man named Otis Jackson confessing to the shooting. Investigative journalist Hamzah Raza reported on Otis Jackson and his confession that could exonerate Al-Amin.
Al-Amin was transferred from the ADX SuperMax prison in Florence, Colorado to Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He is currently being held at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona. https://www.kundnani.org/jamilalamin/
Guest – Arun Kundnani, Adjunct Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and teaches terrorism studies at John Jay College. He is the author of The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia and He is the author of The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain.
————–
————–
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Jeremy Hammond Refused To Answer Federal Grand Jury Questions
Imprisoned information activist Jeremy Hammond was recently found in contempt for refusing to answer seven questions in front of a Federal Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. Earlier this year Chelsea Manning was remanded into custody for failure to provide testimony before the same grand jury.
In late August 2019, Jeremy was removed from the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis, Tennessee where he was serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to charges he hacked the private intelligence contractor Stratfor Global Intelligence. At the time of his transfer Jeremy was enrolled in the Federal Bureau of Prison’s intensive Residential Drug Abuse Program. Participants qualify for early release on completion of the program. Jeremy’s release date was projected to come around mid-December of 2019. Because of his removal from the drug program and the summons to this grand jury his prison time incarcerated could be extended by over two years.
FreeJeremyHammond
HackThisSite
Jeremy is currently confined at William G. Truesdale Correctional Center in Alexandria, VA and will likely remain there for the duration of these proceedings.
Guest – Attorney Sarah Kunstler – Sarah attended law school and graduated from Columbia Law School in 2004. She began practicing law in 2005 and is an attorney at Kunstler Law, helping people with Civil Rights issues.
Guest – Jeremy Hammond is a member of the hacktivist network Anonymous and a gifted computer programmer whose case has attracted the attention of activists, civil libertarians and those concerned about the rights of whistleblowers. He is currently spending a decade in prison for allegedly disclosing information about the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), revealing that they had been spying on human rights defenders at the behest of corporations and governments.
—-
US Abandons Kurds Again
Russia was poised to step into the power vacuum left after President Trump ordered American troops to leave northeast Syria earlier this month, paving the way for a deadly Turkish offensive. U.S. forces only numbered around 1,000, but with their Kurdish partners they were able to beat back ISIS and bring relative stability to a large part of Syria after six years of war.
Thousands of the Kurdish-led fighters died while fighting ISIS, and now say they’ve been betrayed by America.
About 200,000 civilians have fled the clashes with Turkey, and a Kurdish lawmaker called on President Trump to stop what she called “ethnic cleansing” of the Kurds in northern Syria. Turkey insists its offensive has not targeted civilians and views the Kurdish-led forces as terrorists linked to a separatist movement based in southern Turkey.
Erdogan has said if the Kurds aren’t completely out of what he’s called a “safe zone,” stretching across most of Syria’s northern border and about 20 miles south into Syrian territory, his offensive against them will resume. Already it has claimed dozens of civilian lives and has forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Syria’s Russian-backed President Bashar Assad has lambasted Turkey for its offensive on his soil, and criticized Syrian Kurds for asking the U..S for help.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
—-
Fall Out From US Troop Withdrawal From Syria
The US constitution commands that Congress must declare war before the President, the commander-in-chief of the arm forces, can engage in hostilities.
Moreover, the United Nations charter, to which the United States is a signatory, and which was established after World War II to prevent wars of aggression, requires countries to obtain permission from United Nations Security Council before going to war. There are no exceptions except for self-defense.
Since 2011 United States has had troops in Syria in violation of both the US Constitution and the United Nations charter.
When Donald Trump ran for the presidency in 2016 he criticized the Iraq war. Recently he said that war, commenced in 2003, was based on a lie. The lie was that Saddam Hussein, then leader of that country, had been in possession of weapons of mass destruction and in league with the terrorist organization Al Qaeda. As a result of this lie tens of thousands of lives were lost and millions of people displaced and made into refugees.
Three weeks ago Trump withdrew US troops from neighboring Syria, where they had been sent after the commencement of the war in Iraq. This move was condemned by a lopsided vote in the US in the US House of Representatives, which included many Republicans and was condemned as well in the mainstream media. Trump was accused of betraying the Kurds who live in Northeast Syria and who had fought alongside American troops against the terrorist organization ISIS. After the withdrawal of US troops the Kurds were immediately attacked by forces of neighboring Turkey which has resisted autonomy for the Kurds since the end of World War in 1917.
contact – jmackler (at) lmai (dot) net
Guest – Jeff Mackler, author of “Syria: Anatomy of Another Imperialist War“. He is on the administrative committee and a founder of the United National Antiwar Coalition. Jeff Mackler is Socialist Action’s candidate for the US presidency in 2020.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Impeachment, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Impeachment Inquiry With Constitutional Law Professor Marjorie Cohn
Nearly 300 former U.S. national security and foreign policy officials signed an open letter on October 6, calling for an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The signatures were gathered by National Security Action, an organization that former Obama administration officials formed out of concern for Trump’s “reckless leadership.” The list includes many others who served as career officials in Republican and Democratic administrations.
The former national security professionals said they had largely avoided politics during their public service, but said allegations revealed in the recent whistleblower complaints warranted an additional investigation.
“The revelations of recent days, however, demand a response,” the statement says. “President Trump appears to have leveraged the authority and resources of the highest office in the land to invite additional foreign interference into our democratic processes.”
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught for 25 years. The former president of the National Lawyers Guild and criminal defense attorney is a legal scholar and political analyst who writes books and articles, and lectures throughout the world about human rights, US foreign policy, and the contradiction between the two. She has testified before Congress and debated the legality of the war in Afghanistan at the prestigious Oxford Union. MarjorieCohn
—-
Trump Impeachment Inquiry
Like President Richard Nixon before him President Donald Trump made the mistake of using his power as president to go after the wrong target.
Nixon had his people burglarize the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC. President Trump himself used his power to try to get the president of the Ukraine to investigate his, Trump’s, main Democratic Party rival, Joe Biden.
This transgression, not Trump’s caging of children, violating the separation of powers, or violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, was viewed by the mainstream of the Democratic Party and their leader Nancy Pelosi as a “high crime and misdemeanor” violative of the constitution and worthy of an impeachment inquiry. Joe Biden is the preferred candidate of the Democratic establishment.
By impeaching Trump they want to preempt any possible attack on Biden, or on themselves, that could emerge from the Ukraine. It is to be remembered that the Obama Biden Clinton administration orchestrated and overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014, replacing it with the current government, which, for the first time since World War II has actual fascists in the Ukrainian government.
The impeachment process as it gains momentum could spread to other figures in the Trump administration. Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani seems likely to get indicted for violating election finance laws.
The impeachment inquiry could also expose the reality of the democratic party itself which under Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton organized the overthrow in 2014 of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and opened the door to American investment in the country, especially in natural gas. Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, as is now widely known, got a seat on the board of Berksems, the largest natural gas company in the Ukraine. This evident sinecure netted him $50,000 a month for a period of several years.
Guest – Ron Jacobs, author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled Capitalism: Is the Problem.
—————————————–
—————————————–
