CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iran, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Political Analysis: United States Attacks On Syria
The recent American cruise missile attack on alleged chemical war infrastructure in Douma, Syria have been defended as legitimate, if not legal. Trump called Syrian president Assad “ an animal“ who gassed his own people and had to be deterred from further attacks on them.
Critics of the attack have said that it violated both American and international law and risked nuclear warfare. They argued that our Constitution states that only Congress can declare war, that there was no question of self-defense, that the United States was under attack, and that in any case The United Nations charter, to which the United States is a signatory, precludes what United States did. The UN charter is a treaty which binds America and is part of American law.
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former NLG president. My book, ‘Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues,’ was recently published in a second, updated edition. marjoriecohn.com.
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Inside Iran: The Real History And Politics Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran
Medea Benjamin presented a powerful book talk at the A.J Muste Memorial Institute. Medea was introduced by our own Heidi Boghosian.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, and “one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement” by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. She received numerous prices, including: the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Peace Prize by the US Peace Memorial, the Gandhi Peace Award, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Award. She is a former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry
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Kisela vs Hughes: Qualified Immunity
All too often government officials including law-enforcement agencies get away with gross abuses of power because they invoke the doctrine of qualified immunity. This is a doctrine which protects police who kill civilians.
In the United States, 2,934 civilians were shot and killed by police since 2015. That is nearly 1000 people a year. In most European countries the number of people killed by the police is zero.
The doctrine of qualified immunity prevents government agents from being held personally responsible for constitutional violations unless the violation was of clearly established law. This is something nearly impossible to prove.
A Supreme Court decision two weeks ago in the Kisela vs Hughes case decided against the plaintiff victim of police abuse by a 7 to 2 majority two liberal justices Sotomayor and Ginsberg dissented. They opined that the majority of supreme court judges have established what they called an absolute shield protecting police from what they labeled palpably unreasonable action that will go unpunished.
Guest – Attorney G.Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern Law School, is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, an office which has been dedicated to litigating civil rights, police violence, government misconduct, and death penalty cases for more than 40 years.
Guest – Attorney Ben Elson is a partner at the People’s Law Office. His practice focuses on representing victims of police and other governmental misconduct in civil rights cases, including people who have been wrongfully convicted, subjected to police brutality, and denied medical attention. He has obtained tens of millions of dollars in compensation for his clients through verdicts and settlements.
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Cathleen Caron – Justice In Motion
Attorneys who represent migrant workers face a host of challenges in transnational employment litigation. Some of these challenges range from not being able to obtain a visa for clients posed to begin trial but are physically back at home in Guatemala or another country, and cannot return to testify. Or clients may be entitled to past wages but their US lawyers are unable to find them once they have left the States.
For some lawyers, it’s cost-prohibitive to keep in contact or to track down clients when the case goes to trial and forgo representing them entirely.
This is where the organization Justice in Motion comes in. Their unique cross-borer model helps advocates and migrants overcome these barriers to what they call portable justice. Their mission is to ensure that migrants who suffered exploitation abroad are able to access justice even if they have returned to their home countries. They connect advocates and defenders, and support the development of cases to ensure that transnational litigation is working effectively and smoothly on behalf of migrants. They play a pivotal role in persuading attorneys to work on cases with a transnational dimension, and to not forgo them because of legal or logistical obstacles. This has led to a significant increase in the number of advocates in the region providing transnational legal services to migrants. Justice In Motion 2017 Brochure
Guest – Attorney Cathleen Caron, National Lawyers Guild member, Cathleen is the founding executive director of Justice in Motion, and she’s also one of our Lawyers You’ll Like. Cathleen has more than twenty years of human rights experience in the United States and abroad. Prior to launching Justice in Motion (formerly known as Global Workers Justice Alliance), she was in East Timor where she directed a national needs assessment of the human trafficking situation for the Alola Foundation, chaired by East Timor’s First Lady.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power
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Herman Bell Granted Parole After Serving 45 Years In Prison
A respected elder, Herman Bell, was granted parole having met all the criteria for release according to his sentence. The parole commissioners recognized his progress after serving nearly 45 years in prison and granted his parole application. He is looking forward to being reunited with his family and friends. Today we talk about some of the opposition, from politicians and the police union, to this decision. Support Herman Bell
Herman Bell – Twitter – #BringHermanHome
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
Guest – Jose Saldana, joins hosts and Laura Whitehorn to talk about Herman Bell. Jose was recently released from prison after serving 38 years. He’s worked with parole reform organizations and RAPP.
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10th Annual Brooklyn Folk Festival
The Brooklyn Folk Festival is coming up April 6-8 at historic St. Anne’s church in downtown Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Folk Festival celebrates and presents the best in American and world folk music with more than performances, workshops, film screenings, jam sessions, vocal and instrumental workshops, a square dance, and their famous banjo toss contest. The festival was started nine years ago by Eli Smith, the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music. Its a substantial and unique community event.
Folk or old time music runs counter to the commercial establishment music scene. It is truly a people’s music. It is non-commercial, non-corporate, and not a generator of huge profits. As a result this music, which should be central to American culture, has been down played and sidelined.
We know of some of its famous proponents – Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan . . but there are many great unknown folk musicians whose art is perpetuated and expanded on at the Brooklyn Folk Festival.
Guest – Eli Smith, the founder and main organizer along with the Jalopy Theatre and School Music, of the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Eli Smith is a banjo player and folk musician. He plays with the band called the Downhill Strugglers. He is a Folkways recording artist and has played around the country including the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Uncategorized, War Resister
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Gina Haspel, Rule of Law And Torture
Nazi generals and Nazi leaders were prosecuted at the end of World War II for war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide. These crimes were incorporated into international law.
The chief prosecutor was Robert Jackson, a Supreme Court judge. The Nazis defended themselves by arguing that they were just following orders. This defense was deemed unavailing. In many cases, they were found guilty and sentenced to lengthy prison terms or hung. He said that the war crimes tribunal at Nirenberg was not merely victors’ justice. But that the principles it followed would be universal and applied in the future, to all countries including the USA. And indeed, the United States signed on to the Geneva Conventions and Convention Against Torture and incorporate both the crimes and the concept of universal jurisdiction into its law.
Gina Haspel has been nominated by President Donald Trump to head the CIA. She is a war criminal. She violated both international and national law by running a black site secret detention center in Thailand where men were tortured. Although there were several court orders that the evidence be preserved, Gina Haspel had the videotapes of torture destroyed.
John Brennan, Obama’s ex head of the CIA, who was involved in the torture program, recently came to her defense, stating that she was just following orders: The Nazi defense.
Trump supports torture. He believes that torture works. This is both immoral and untrue. He says he is for waterboarding and worse. He now has a subordinate with whom he is in agreement.
Obama refused to prosecute the lawbreakers. Instead he threw CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou in prison for two years for disclosing American torture. He said we must look forward, not backward. This greenlighted what is going on now with Haspel.
Michael Ratner warned us about this eventuality. The European Center for Human and Constitutional Rights may seek Haspel’s arrest if she goes to Germany.
Such is the irony of history that the German fascist government that perpetrated the greatest crimes against humanity has been superseded by an American government which condones and is perpetuating them as well.
Guest – John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent, he is the author of Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. He spent 15 years working for the CIA including the period following September 11 2001. The next year he was invited to be certified in enhanced interrogation techniques and said no, rightly recognizing it as sanctioned torture. He was privy to all the details of the American torture program and personally knew Gina Haspel. In 2007 when ABC News asked him to rebut charges that he tortured and Al Qaeda prisoner he went on the air and disclose details about American torture policy. For this the CIA had him tried and convicted. He spent 23 months in prison.
Guest – Katherine Gallagher is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She 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, andSurvivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) v. Vatican, seeking accountability for the crimes against humanity of sexual violence by clergy and cover-up.
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The National Immigration Project And Protecting Haitian Refugees
The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn on March 15 to block President Trump’s cancellation of temporary protected status which had been granted to more than 50,000 Haitian refugees because of the terrible conditions in that country since the hurricane in 2010. The National Immigration Project declared President Trump’s actions to be unlawful, racially motivated, and evidence of a complete lack of knowledge of immigration law.
The TPS program exempts from deportation people from countries in turmoil due to war, natural disasters, and other extraordinary conditions.
The suit alleges that the federal government was arbitrary and capricious in his decision to end the program and was motivated by Donald Trump’s “racial and national origin animus towards patients.” The suit cites Trump’s demeaning remarks towards Haitians and Haiti. He has said that Haitians have AIDS and Haiti is a “s&*t hole” country. The Trump administration‘s position is that protecting Haitians is no longer necessary because conditions in Haiti have improved.
Guest – National Lawyers Guild Attorney Sejal Zota is the Legal Director of the National Immigration Project of the Guild. Sejal works on issues of removal defense, post-conviction, enforcement, and immigration consequences of crimes through litigation, education, and technical assistance. Previously, Sejal taught and wrote about the impacts of immigration on state and local government at University of North Carolina’s School of Government. She also regularly trained and advised defense attorneys throughout North Carolina on the immigration consequences of crime, and is the lead author of Immigration Consequences of a Criminal Conviction in North Carolina.
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Brooklyn Folk Festival 2018
Co-host Michael Smith reminds listeners of this year’s Brooklyn Folk Festival.
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Academic Freedom, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Victory: West Virginia Teachers’ Strike
After nine days on strike, the West Virginia governor and the state legislature caved, granting the teachers and all school staff a 5% wage increase. The pay raise also covers all state employees.
In an attempt to save face the Republicans talked about funding the pay increase by cutting social services and Medicaid. But there is no such wording in the agreement that was signed by the West Virginia Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers , the two workers organizations.
One strike supporter in West Virginia stated that “At this point the teachers and school staff have all the momentum and they can fight to make sure the funds for the raise come from the rich, not working people when the budget is eventually passed. Strikers here are ecstatic, people are literally hugging strangers, and whipping enjoy. It’s in a stark victory for the working class. Hopefully it will be the first of many to come.”
The strike was caused by decades of stagnating pay and rising health costs. 3/4 of the teachers are women.They played leading roles in the strike. West Virginia, especially its southern counties, have a history of militancy, Especially in the coal mines. Teacher job actions and walkouts spread from these very same southern counties.
The West Virginia teachers have shown Americans what it takes to win a strike. This is especially important when the anticipated Supreme Court ruling in the Janus case comes down. That ruling will likely reduce the power of public employee unions by taking away their right to collect dues.
Guest – Dale Lee is a graduate of Clinch Valley College (Wise, VA) and obtained his special education certification through the West Virginia College of Graduate Studies (WV COGS). He is completing his Master’s degree through Salem International University. A veteran teacher of 22 years, Dale’s assignment was teaching special education at Princeton Senior High School
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Law Firm Files 911 Terror Lawsuit Against Saudi Arabia
Nearly sixteen years have passed since the 911 attacks. The truth of who was behind the attacks has allegedly come out in a class action lawsuit brought by over 6500 victims and survivors. The lawsuit alleges that it was elements of the Saudi Arabian government that attacked the United States on 9/11. The Defendant in the lawsuit is Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian government hired 15 public relations firms to help them deny responsibility. They hired several Washington white shoe high powered connected law firms They hid behind the law of sovereign immunity, which had to be overturned by an act of Congress in order for the lawsuit to proceed. They were helped by the US government in the cover-up by the Bush and Obama administrations.
After more than sixteen years the case is now proceeding rapidly through the Federal courts and will either be dismissed, settled or tried. The object of the lawsuit is to obtain money explained Sharon Pemboli, one of the plaintiffs and leaders of a group of women from New Jersey known as “the Jersey girls” who lobbied to win passage of the law which made the lawsuit possible. She believes that if the Saudi Arabian government is deprived of funds it will not be able to fund Al Qaeda and the extremist Wahhabi clergy responsible for supporting the terrorism of Al Qaeda.
The American public has been led to believe mistakenly that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were behind 911. The attack on Iraq was a war of aggression. At the end of World War II, the United States set up the Nuremberg trials to try Nazi war criminals. They wanted to set forth principles that were not merely “victor’s justice.“ At the Nuremberg trials the Germans were found guilty of starting a war of aggression, which was called the greatest of all crimes because it has contained within it all other crimes.
Guest – Attorney Justin Green, Justin has successfully represented families in many major aviation cases. These include airline disasters, corporate airplane and helicopter accidents, and civil airplane and helicopter accidents. His practice has also included personal injury and wrongful death cases arising from other transportation accidents.
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Lynne Stewart Anniversary 2018
Hosts remember fearless activist and attorney Lynne Stewart. Heidi reads an excerpt from Michael’s yet to be published Lawyers You’ll Like. We’ll also hear a powerful speech by Chris Hedges delivered at Lynne’s memorial.
