CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Twenty Years Later Guantanamo Is Everywhere
The George W. Bush administration used the terrorist attacks on 9/11 to launch his so-called “Global War on Terror.” Under the guise of fighting terrorism, Bush illegally invaded two countries, instituted an unlawful dragnet of Arab men and boys in the United States, and opened a sinister prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in January 2002.
Nearly 800 men and boys were sent to Guantanamo, where many of them were subjected to torture and cruel treatment, and held indefinitely – many without charges, in violation of US and international law. Much of this mistreatment was documented in the “Guantanamo Files,” 779 secret files published in 2011 by WikiLeaks. It was documented as well in the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The 6,700-page report remains secret but the 499-page executive summary was published in 2014.
By locating the prison in Cuba, Bush sought to preclude any judicial review of the detention of the detainees. Most of them had no connection to terrorism. Locked away in Guantanamo for years, detainees lost hope. The only power they had was to refuse food. Many of them engaged in a hunger strike but were violently force-fed, a practice that amounts to torture.
The widely esteemed lawyer and co-founder of Law and Disorder, Michael Ratner, was Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights when the center filed the landmark case of Rasul v. Bush. It went to the Supreme Court, which ruled that Bush could not prevent detainees from challenging the legality of their detention in US courts. But 20 years later, Guantanamo remains open and 39 men are still there.
We are fortunate to have Baher Azmy with us today to discuss Guantanamo and the “war on terror” which continues today, with very little pushback from the American public.
Guest – Baher Azmy is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he directs all litigation around issues related to the promotion of civil and human rights. He is also professor of law at Seton Hall University.
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Dangerous Influence of Right Wing Propaganda
Hosts examine the over-all current role of the corporate, mainstream media in America today, in particular the increasing power and danger of the right-wing media. And to do so we are very fortunate to have as our guest today, Jeff Cohen.
Guest – Jeff Cohen is a highly regarded progressive critic of the media. Indeed, he was recently quoted in an important article in the Washington Post about the disclosure that FOX News hosts were advising the White House during the January 6th insurrection. Jeff Cohen, along with Martin Lee, were the co-founders of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, or “F.A.I.R.,” which is the anti-corporate media group that monitors and reports on the mainstream media’s bias, spin and misinformation. Jeff Cohen is also a lecturer on these matters and the author of the book, Cable News Confidential.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture
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Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison
American society is in an ever deepening crisis. Half the population is poor or near poor. Three men including Jeff Bezos of Amazon own as much as all these tens of millions of people combined. Climate catastrophe threatens life on our planet. Equally threatening is a very real potential for a nuclear war. Democracy and the rule of law are in free fall.
A manifestation of this societal crisis is our system of mass incarceration. It is the largest in the world, warehousing well over 2 million people. It is, along with militarized police, the primary form of social control, especially for poor people of color, in de-industrialized cities where the poor have been abandoned and are treated little better than human refuse.
Black Americans have especially suffered. They are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly 5 times the rate of white Americans. Nationally, one in 81 Black adults in the U.S. is serving time in state prison. Wisconsin leads the nation in Black imprisonment rates; 1 of every 36 Black Wisconsinites is in prison. In 12 states, more than half the prison population is Black: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Seven states maintain a Black/white disparity larger than 9 to 1: California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Chris Hedges has taught in the college degree program offered by Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system for over a decade.
His new book Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison, is the story of a class he taught in East Jersey State Prison. His 28 students, who collectively had spent 515 years in prison, wrote a play about their lives called “Caged.”
The process of writing the play, which was eventually performed at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, New Jersey to sold out audiences and was published by Haymarket Books, ripped down the emotional walls most erect in prison and allowed his students to express in heartbreaking detail the trauma, grief, loss and violence that marked their, as well as the institutionally racist structures, often unseen by those on the outside, which keep the poor poor. And yet, the play they wrote was, at its core, about radical love, the solidarity and bonds that keep them human outside and inside prison walls.
Guest – Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign correspondent, 15 of them with The New York Times, covering conflicts in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the former Yugoslavia. He learned overseas that the evils of empire are the external expression of white supremacy, just as mass incarceration, which he describes as the civil rights issue of our age, is the most brutal internal expression of white supremacy. Prisons , he writes, are the modern iteration of slave plantations. Hedges is the author of 14 books, The winner of a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, a graduate of Harvard Divinity school, and an ordained Presbyterian minister.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Racist Police Violence, Right To Dissent, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer
Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith interviewed some of Michael Ratner’s closest friends and colleagues as part of a special broadcast highlighting Michael Ratner’s legal work and mentorship. The special also marked the upcoming release of Michael Ratner’s autobiography Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer published by OR Books. In this one hour taken from the two hour fundraiser broadcast, we hear from attorneys including Eleanor Stein, Richard Levy, Ray Brescia, David Cole and Baher Azmy.
Michael Ratner’s pathbreaking legal and political work is unmatched. He provided crucial support for the Cuban Revolution and won the seminal case in the Supreme Court guaranteeing the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. Michael also challenged U.S. policy in Iraq, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Israel-Palestine. This book is a testament to his unflagging efforts on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world.
– Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Michael Ratner personified lawyering that brought both radical and human values into challenges to the use of governmental power to violate the essence of the Bill of Rights. From the torture of prisoners after 911 to the massive racial profiling by the New York Police Department, Michael’s voice and vision continue to resonate. This book provides a powerful testament to the spirit of this extraordinary man.
– Attorney Bill Goodman
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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Julian Assange: October 26 Appeal
Julian Assange was a young computer genius, an Australian citizen, the publisher of Wiki leaks, an award-winning journalist, and the person responsible for embarrassing the United States by publishing material on American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He figured out a way to receive information from whistle blowers and publish the information anonymously in order to protect them.
When Mike Pompeo was Trump’s Director of the CIA he called WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange, “a hostile non-state intelligence agency.” Pompeo suggested that Julian Assange be kidnapped from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had received political asylum, rendered, and assassinated.
What has been the reaction of the major news media to this extraordinary revelation? Will this affect the US governments continued efforts to have him extradited to the United States where he would be tried for espionage?
Assange is presently being held in solitary confinement in London‘s infamous Belmarsh prison. In earlier developments, Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that he could not be extradited to United States in defiance of the American request because she feared his prison confinement in an American maximum-security prison might cause him to commit suicide.
Her decision is on appeal by the Biden U.S. Justice Department and will be heard by the British High Court on October 26th.
In response to the revelations about Pompeo, Julian’s American attorney Barry Pollack said that “the extreme nature of the type of government misconduct that Yahoo News reported would certainly be an issue and potentially grounds for dismissal.“ He believes that Assange was targeted by both Trump and Biden like Nixon had targeted Daniel Ellsberg for his release of the Pentagon during the Vietnam war. In Ellsberg’s case the presiding judge dropped all charges against him.
Assange Defense
@defenseassange – Nathan Fuller twitter
Defend.wikileaks.org
Guest – Attorney Nathan Fuller who has been attending Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London. He leads the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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Host Discussion: Challenges To Roe v. Wade And Donziger Case Updates
Last week thousands demonstrated across the country over woman’s right to choose. The demonstrations took place one month after Texas had enacted its infamous heart beat law which is nearly a total ban on abortion. It prohibits abortion after 6 weeks, when most women don’t know they’re pregnant. Currently the law established by Roe v Wade, defends women and affords them to get an abortion during the first two trimesters of their pregnancy. One in four women in the United States has had an abortion. The first thing the fascist Hitler government did in 1933 when in came to power was to lock up all the family planning clinics. Anti-abortion laws disproportionately attack black, brown and poor women. The Women’s Health Protection Act which would codify Roe v. Wade has passed the House and is now in the Senate where it will likely lose. Coming up in the Supreme Court is the Jackson Healthcare Case which originated in Mississippi. That state passed a law limiting the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
Guest – Marjorie Cohn, former criminal law defense attorney and professor emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law. She was the past president of the National Lawyer Guild and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Professor Cohn has published four books about the war on terror. Last week she had published an article in the prestigious online magazine Jurist titled Samuel Moyn’s Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner is Shameful.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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50th Anniversary Of The Attica Prison Uprising
September 9th marks the 50th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising and the subsequent massacre by New York State police and prison guards. The rebellion at Attica prison, a medieval looking place near Buffalo New York, began on September 9, 1971 and ended four days later with governor Nelson Rockefeller, and aspiring presidential candidate, ordering the massacre. It resulted in the most people ever killed in a civil setting in the history of the USA.
The rebellion was inspiring to many around the country and around the world in that it represented a growing movement fighting for prisoners and human rights.
Civil rights attorneys, many from the National Lawyers Guild, came from around the country to immediately respond to the massacre. They provided legal representation to inmates who were charged with crimes due to their involvement in the rebellion.
Many of the participants, particularly key organizers, were subject to abuse and torture by the prison guards after the rebellion was suppressed.
Guest – attorney Michael Deutsch from the Peoples Law Office in Chicago. He along with the late attorney Elizabeth Fink were the main lawyers for the Attica brothers. He represented several Attica brothers in criminal lawsuits and the brothers in a class action civil rights lawsuit which lasted over 20 years and settled in 1999 for $12 million.
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Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine
The 1861 to 1865 Civil War and the reconstruction period which followed it is widely considered to be the second American revolution. The slave-owning planter class in the south was defeated, at least for a while. Slave labor was abolished, but came back in other forms after reconstruction was crushed by 1877.
The promise of the declaration of independence that all men are equal before the law was fulfilled, at least for a while. Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens was the foremost political leader in the struggle, even more than Abraham Lincoln. Stevens helped to bring about the abolition of slavery and was a leader in the effort during Reconstruct to make the United States a biracial democracy This wise and eloquent revolutionary has been vilified and rendered rendered obscure during most of the years since he died 153 years ago.
The distinguished historian Bruce Levine in his just published biography of Stevens “Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice” has secured a place for him alongside his contemporary John Brown in the pantheon of American revolutionary figures.
Guest – Bruce Levine, emeritus professor of history at the University Illinois and the author of four previous books on the Civil War era.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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David Gilbert Granted Clemency
My 77 year old friend David Gilbert was granted clemency by Governor Cuomo on August 23, 2021. David had served 40 years in almost every maximum-security prison in the state of New York. He had been sentenced to 75 years to life for his role as a getaway driver in the infamous 1980 Brinks armored truck robbery in in Rockland County. He was convicted of felony murder. Though he didn’t shoot anybody. Two Policeman and a security guard were killed. The law of felony murder states that if you are part of the crime even though you didn’t kill anybody you are also guilty of murder.
Cuomo granted clemency when he had one foot out the door with a moving van at the governor’s mansion and only five hours left as governor. David had support from many people including many influential people like two Nobel prize winners; one of them was Bishop Desmond Tutu, a hero of the South African anti-apartheid movement.
David’s great achievement was keeping his revolutionary politics and his health both mental and physical while serving those four decades of confinement, torment, and poor food. He wrote two books including one titled No Surrender. When my wife Debby and I would visit him it was always an up for us. He kept our spirits up. He would bound in to the visiting room and give us a hug. We will talk politics straight through for five hours. He was up to the minute on political events in America and around the world. He read widely. He subscribed to the New York Times which came three days late. A friend of his sent him a one hundred page collection of articles from the Internet every month. David never got a disciplinarian infraction over the course of all those years. He mentored many young people with whom he would correspond. Many would come visit him. Sometimes all the way to Wende Prison in Buffalo or to Dannemora in the Finger Lakes.
Because of the grant of clemency David is now eligible for parole and will soon come up before the parole board. They don’t necessarily have to let him out. We will keep up support and hope that sooner rather than later David Gilbert will be home and present amongst us. He is the real thing: A revolutionary leader and thinker. David, I’m behalf of all your friends and supporters we congratulate you.
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Remembering The Life Of Glen Ford
Glen Ford died last July 28 of lung cancer. I knew Glen the last seven years of his life. I first met him in 2014 after a speech that he gave at Harlem’s Riverside Church church on the occasion of the 7th anniversary of the Black Agenda Report of which he was the executive editor. The two other editors were Margaret Kimberley, who has taken over as the editor, and the late Bruce Dixon of Chicago who died two years ago. They were a formidable threesome. That night he spoke about what he called the Black misleadership class, a description he coined, and how it was an enemy of the movement. He said the Democratic party, which they populate, was not the lesser of two evils but the most effective of two evils.
In particular, he zeroed in on New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. I kept in touch with Glen. He was a guest on Law And Disorder several times.
I helped assemble a selection of his writings titled The Black Agenda which will very soon be published by OR books. Two months ago the publisher of OR books, Colin Robinson and I drove out to New Jersey to visit Glen.
He had just got out of the hospital where they took fluid out of his cancerous lung. He was somewhat frail but pretty chipper. We ate bagels and cream cheese at the dining room table and talked politics for two hours. As we left Colin remarked that it was a shame we hadn’t recorded our conversation. Glen was brilliant. Glen was the real thing. A Black nationalist and a socialist, as he described himself. He was a former Black Panther and usually wore a black beret when he spoke. He ended his speeches with his right arm held high in the air saying “power to the people.“
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The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy
We go now to hear Glen Ford speaking at the Black Agenda Report 7th anniversary gathering at Harlem’s Riverside Church. The theme of the event was ““The Black Misleadership Class Versus the Movement and its Legacy.” Ford gives strong criticism of newly elected New Jersey Senator Cory Booker as the essence of Black misleadership, showing the many ties of the current Newark mayor to corporate America.
Glen Ford is the Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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American Spring: Unfolding Crisis
The Chinese word for crisis consists of two characters. One means danger, the other means opportunity. We currently are in an historically unprecedented situation fraught with both danger and possibilities. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin once remarked that sometimes nothing happens in decades and other times decades happen in a few weeks. This is our situation now. We see an American spring unfolding.
The public lynching of George Floyd has triggered massive outpourings in several thousands of American cities, both large and small. Black Lives Matter is supported by a majority of Americans including a majority of whites. This kind of broad solidarity was absent during the time of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The demonstrations are in large part led by people of color, mostly young people. Elected officials and traditional civil rights leaders are not leading the current uprising. As the L.A. Progressive has written, “The gross underlying inequality, racially and more broadly economically, affects every aspect of life in the US. and is the root cause of the volcanic anger irruption against the veneer of obsolete institutions.“
Guest – Glen Ford, editor of the Black Agenda Report. Ford founded the Black Agenda Report and has edited it since 2006. He was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and he has delivered presentations at many colleges and universities.
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