CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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U.S. Antiwar Leaders Call for Actions to Oppose the Escalation of the Afghanistan War During the Week of the 16th Anniversary of the Invasion, October 2 – 8.
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Confederate Monuments and The Meaning of the Civil War
The American Civil War fought from 1861 to 1865 killed more Americans than all other wars combined. 600,000 Americans died in a war that was fought over whether slavery was to be abolished in the United States. The Confederate General, Robert E Lee, had only an 1100 acre plantation in Virginia and 60 slaves. The value of a slave was about $30,000 in today’s dollar. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, owned a 1400 acre cotton plantation in Mississippi.
The institution of slavery was enormously profitable and led to the establishment of America as a leading capitalist power in the world. Slavery was supported in the south not just by the slave owners themselves but by many white persons who by virtue of their skin color saw themselves as superior to blacks. It was widely believed that black people were inferior to white people, both intellectually and morally. Lincoln issued the revolutionary Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing southern slaves. They began taking up arms and fighting against the slaveowners. In the wake of the Civil War biracial democratic institutions were established in the south. This was overthrown shortly thereafter when the Northern capitalists and politician made a deal with the ex-slave owners in the south. Union troops which were supporting the black population were withdrawn.
Thereafter a system of Jim Crowe segregation was instituted and blacks were nearly reenslaved and used as landless sharecroppers or prison laborers. Segregation was reestablished and enforced by massive terror by whites against blacks. The Ku Klux Klan was founded and thousands of lynchings were undertaken, carried out before the white public who assembled in crowds for the event.
Statues of southern generals like Robert E Lee and monuments to the confederacy were erected, not after the Civil War, but many years later to reinforce Jim Crowe and combat the civil rights movement.
Guest – Bruce Carlin Levine – Civil War historian and University of Illinois Professor Emeritus. His latest book titled “Fall of the House of Dixie” is widely appreciated as one of the best books on the Civil war. “Bruce Levine has taught history at the University of California and the University of Illinois. He has written four books on the Civil War, including The Fall of the House of Dixie (Random House, 2005). He’s now writing a book for Simon & Schuster about the radical Republican leader during the Civil War era, Thaddeus Stevens.”
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Joe Aripao, Sheriff of Maricopa County Pardoned By President Trump
Last week President Trump pardoned, without him even requesting it, the infamous Joe Aripao, Sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes the heavily Latino community of Phoenix. Arizona. Sheriff Joe was in office for 26 years. Observers have called it a “reign of terror.”
He himself called his jail a “concentration camp.” He kept prisoners outside in tents with temperatures ranging from 40° to over 100°. Prisoners died at an alarming rate, often without explanation. He paraded hundreds of Hispanic prisoners in chains dressed in black and white stripes through the streets of Phoenix. Another time he force them to wear pink underwear.
He was pardoned by President Trump, who praised him lavishly, after a federal judge found him in contempt of court for ordering his department to arrest people soley because they looked Latino and ignoring a court order to stop. Arpaio was about to be sentenced when Trump stepped in and overrode the judge.
Guest – Professor Ellen Yaroshefsky, she teaches ethics at the law school at Hofstra University. She is a former staff attorney and later board member at the Center for Constitution Rights and a leader of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Afghanistan War, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
The spectacle of President Donald Trump and the palace intrigue in the White House has served daily to distract people from the political strategy and accomplishments of the radical right, which is taking over the Republican Party.
Over time, the GOP has been transformed into operation conducting a concerted effort to curb democratic rule in favor of capitalist interests in every branch of government, whatever the consequences. It is marching ever closer to the ultimate goal of reshaping the Constitution to protect monied interests. This gradual take over of a major political party happened steadily, over several decades, and often in plain sight.
Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean exposes the architecture of this change and it’s ultimate aim. She has written that “both my research and my observations as a citizen lead me to believe American democracy is in peril”.
Guest – Professor Nancy MacLean, whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, has been described by Publishers Weekly as “a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative… [and] a feat of American intellectual and political history.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994, MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy.
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Senate Intelligence Committee Torture Report: Attorney Scott Horton
Guantanamo suicides, CIA interrogation techniques, CIA ordered physicians who violate the Hippocratic oath, are topics of some recent articles by returning guest attorney Scott Horton. Last month, he was on Democracy Now to debate former CIA General Counsel John Rizzo on the question of declassifying a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report about the agency’s secret detention and interrogation programs. His book Lords of Secrecy The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy will be published January 2015.
Attorney Scott Horton:
- I think the results flow directly from the media coverage (ABC poll on Torture report)
- Now major publications and broadcasters that hedged using the word torture have stopped doing that. There are only a handful of media sources that won’t do it. NPR being one of them.
- The media also presents roughly twice as much time devoted to people justifying the use of torture techniques to those criticizing it.
- Barack Obama who should lead the push back has gone completely silent. It’s beyond silent he talked about “tortured some folks” making it very casual, and then he said the torturers were patriots.
- I thought it was electrifying reading. 90 percent of it I’ve heard about before and still when you read them in this clinical, plain, highly factual style and things were developed with a continuous flow with lots of background in decision making in Washington at the top and how all this effected what happened on the ground.
- As a consumer of Congressional reports this probably the single most impressive Congressional oversight report I’ve ever seen.
- It’s an excellent example of what the oversight committee should be doing all the time.
- They’re doing this with respect to a program which was essentially or very largely wrapped up by October 2006.
- We’re talking about 8 1/2 years ago.
- They’re only able to do this kind of review in any depth when its historical, not when its real time oversight, that’s disappointing.
- One thing that emerges from looking at these reports and the military reports is that there is a huge black hole which has never been fully developed and explored and that’s JSOC, its the military intelligence side.
- That escaped review within the DOD process and it escaped review in CIA process and its clear that there’s a huge amount there.
- I certainly don’t expect prosecutions to emerge for the next couple of years in the United States, but I see a process setting in that may eventually lead to prosecutions.
- On the one hand we’re seeing a dangerous deterioration in relations with Russia, is an aggressor, which has seized territory in the heart of Europe, is waging a thinly veiled war on one of its neighbors. That is very unnerving to the major NATO powers.
- On the other hand there’s never been a period in the history of the alliance when there is so much upset at the United States.
- That’s come largely from the rise of the surveillance state and the role of the NSA.
- I was looking at this report, and we know that in 2006, there was an internal review that led the CIA to conclude that these interrogation techniques were ineffective and the CIA internally decided to seek a large part of the authority for EIT’s and operation of black sites rescinded.
- Another thing that’s very important here from this report, it tells us that Michael Hayden, George Tenant, Porter Goss and other very senior people at the CIA repeatedly intervened to block any form of punishment of people who are involved with torture and running the black sites.
- That’s important because of the legal document Command Responsibility. The law says when command authority makes a decision not to prosecute and immunize people involved with torture and abuse, that results in the culpability of these crimes migrating up the chain of command.
- I interviewed CIA agents who were involved in this program, and they told me they’ve all been brought out by legal counsels office and told – they may not leave the country.
- That means you’ve got roughly 150 CIA agents, including many people near the top of the agency who can’t travel right now.
- Lords of Secrecy The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy
Guest – Scott Horton, human rights lawyer and contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine. Scott’s column – No Comment. He graduated Texas Law School in Austin with a JD and was a partner in a large New York law firm, Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. His new book Lords of Secrecy The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Foreign Policy.
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance
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Update:
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Fair Punishment Project: Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Efforts
Controversial and antiquated civil forfeiture procedures across the nation are causing many, including the country’s poorest, to have assets seized by law enforcement agencies to fill department coffers.
In 2016 the manager of a Burmese Christian Rock Band had just completed a five-month tour across the country, raising over $50K for an orphanage in Thailand and a college in Burma, when police pulled him over for a broken tail light. A routine traffic stop soon turned into a months-long nightmare.
After a drug dog allegedly “alerted” to the car, police searched it, but found no evidence of drugs. They did, however, seize the cash donations as supposed “drug proceeds.” After interrogating the band manager for six hours, the police eventually let him go, but kept the cash. Within a month, the Muskogee County District Attorney filed a civil-forfeiture action to keep the money for good.
In light of Attorney General Session’s announcement that he plans to increase the use of civil forfeiture, we can expect many more cases like this one.
Guest – Josie Duffy Rice is a lawyer and writer in New York. Josie is research director of the Fair Punishment Project.
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Venezuela: Media Distortion And Analysis
The great Latin American historic figure Simon Bolivar, known as the liberator, famously said that “the United States seems destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of the liberty.” The current situation in Venezuela seems to be a case and point. That country’s Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada and Carlos Ron, an official at the Venezuelan embassy, have recently accused Florida Senator Marco Rubio and CIA director Mike Pompeo of secretly conspiring to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicholas Monduro.
The United States has a history of causing regime change to governments in Latin America. These include the governments of Guatemala, Brazil, the Dominican Republic , Bolivia, Grenada, Chile, Panama, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Cuba where “regime change” is written into American law. There has recently been a wave of violence in Venezuela including assassinations, violence at demonstrations, and distruction of property.
Guest – Gregory Wilpert has lived in Caracas,Venezuela, and is now based in Quito, Ecuador. He is the author of Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chavez Government. As a journalist, he is the founder of VenezuelaAnalysis.com. He is married to Carol Delgado Arria, who has served the Venezuelan government as ambassador to Ecuador and consul general in New York. He is currently visiting Caracas and joins us from there.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Update:
- Rev Billy And The Stop Shopping Choir: Radical Ritual At Trump Tower
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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
The spectacle of President Donald Trump and the palace intrigue in the White House has served daily to distract people from the political strategy and accomplishments of the radical right, which is taking over the Republican Party.
Over time, the GOP has been transformed into operation conducting a concerted effort to curb democratic rule in favor of capitalist interests in every branch of government, whatever the consequences. It is marching ever closer to the ultimate goal of reshaping the Constitution to protect monied interests. This gradual take over of a major political party happened steadily, over several decades, and often in plain sight.
Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean exposes the architecture of this change and it’s ultimate aim. She has written that “both my research and my observations as a citizen lead me to believe American democracy is in peril”.
Guest – Professor Nancy MacLean, whose new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, has been described by Publishers Weekly as “a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative… [and] a feat of American intellectual and political history.” Booklist called it “perhaps the best explanation to date of the roots of the political divide that threatens to irrevocably alter American government.” The author of four other books, including Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006) called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best,” and Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, named a New York Times “noteworthy” book of 1994, MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy.
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Tuskegee Syphilis Study Aftermath
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a biomedical clinical study conducted by the US Public Health Service for four decades between 1932 and 1972. Its purpose was to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men in Alabama under the guise of receiving free health care from the government.
It collaborated with the historically black Tuskegee University in Alabama. Investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease. They were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study. After a cure for syphilis was discovered in penicillin, the study still continued without informing the men they would never be treated. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue.
Guest – Professor Susan Reverby is Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Women’s Studies at Wellesley College. She is editor of Tuskegee’s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
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Academic Freedom, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
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Trump Election Fraud Investigation
Donald Trump lost last November’s election by some 3 million of the popular vote. Subsequently, he falsely asserted that between 3 and 5 million votes were cast illegally. Then in May of this year, by executive order, Trump established The Election Integrity Commission. The nominal head of the commission is Vice President Mike Pence, but the functioning head is Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who has a long history of successful voter suppression. He is running for governor on this record. Kobach was recently fined by a federal magistrate for “making patently misleading representations to the court” and “abusing the judicial process” when he lied to the judge about the content of certain papers that he shared with Trump concerning voter suppression.
Kobach is helping Trump lay the groundwork for a national voter suppression effort. His commission wrote to the 50 Secretaries of State in the U.S. asking for private information on the voters in their states. Forty-four of the 50 Secretaries of State have told Kobach that they will give him a little or no information. A leading resister, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said “at best this committee was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large scale voter suppression.”
Guest – Eliza Carney is the senior editor at The American Prospect. She wrote an article about Kris Kobach titled The Limits of Lying and Cheating in the June 29 issue.
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Offense Strategy For Left
The election of Donald Trump has greatly emboldened the forces on the right. We have seen lynchings, stabbings and even murder. The acquittal of murderous cops is almost routine. Deportations number in the tens of thousands. A number of left-wing professors have been suppressed. Right wing provocateurs and racist speakers have appeared on campuses. Fascists have a attempted to organize rallies in major cities.
Hard core groups such as the Klan, racist skinheads and outright fascist organizations like Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute have been growing and so have militia organizations. The Republican Party, the congressional freedom caucus, fundamentalist, FOXNews aficionados, and neocons have also seen their strength and numbers and influence increase.
How do we fight this? Should we ask the government for help? Should we confront the right? Do we need a mass movement? Do we have to present a political alternative to provide real answers to real problems?
Guest – Jon Kurinsky is a Chicago activist, he recently gave a speech on the topic of fighting the right at the Socialism 2017 conference in Chicago which had a record attendance of more than 2000 people.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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This is Not Populism : John Bellamy Foster
Is Trump a neofascist? Thoughtful analysts on the left like Cornell West, Noam Chomsky, and Judith Butler think he is. But mainstream liberal commentators refuse to associate the Trump phenomena with fascism. They call him a right wing populist. What is neofascism? Right wing Populism? Does it really matter what Trump is called? The great German playwright and political thinker who lived in Germany during Hitler’s reign, Berthold Brecht, asked in 1935: “How can anyone tell the truth about fascism, unless he’s willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it fourth?” We speak today with John Bellamy Foster, the editor of the venerable magazine “Monthly Review”. He wrote the lead article in the current June 2017 issue titled “This Is Not Populism.”
Guest – John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He has written widely on political economy and has established a reputation as a major environmental sociologist. He is the author of Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (2000), The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (with Fred Magdoff, 2009), The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth (with Brett Clark and Richard York, 2010), and The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism: An Elaboration of Marxian Political Economy (New Edition, 2014), among many others.
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Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand
Author Benjamin Hett outlines the fascinating and tragic story of a young lawyer Hans Litten in his recent book Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. Before the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s, they incited calculated violence among the working class in German taverns. Four Nazi stormtroopers were charged with firing randomly into a dance hall where a communist hiking club were holding a party. Three young men were wounded. Hans Litton was the advocate for the 3 men.
Hans Litten called Hitler to the witness stand to show that the Nazi party was a violent party, and by cross examining Hitler he tried to prove that. Litten forced Hitler to contradict himself, reducing him to humiliating rage that revealed his true intention. At that time, Hitler wanted to be a legal party in Germany and of course you couldn’t be a party that was extra-constitutional and legal but at the same time he didn’t want to disappoint the base of his party which was this violent working class aspect. Two years later, the Nazi Party rose to power.
What came after the Reichstag Fire was the arrest of about 5 thousand people across Germany who the Nazis have identified as opponents or potential opponents. Hans Litten was among them and sent to a concentration camp. Author Benjamin Hett describes a powerful narrative of Hans facing torture yet still telling stories and teaching art to other prisoners.
Hans Litten was born in 1903 in Halle in Central Germany, his father was a law professor and Jewish but converted to German evangelical (Lutheran).
Guest – Benjamin Hett, author of Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand. Hett is a former trial lawyer, and now Associate Professor of History at Hunter College.
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