Civil Liberties, Right To Dissent, Truth to Power, Uncategorized, Whistleblowers
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Highlighting PETA Cases And Inherent Animal Protections
Each year, December 10 marks International Animal Rights Day to draw attention to the prevalent use and abuse of non-human animals. That’s the same day that Human Rights Day is observed, marking the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Non-human animals are sentient. That means they have a capacity to experience feelings, and to be responsive to or conscious of sense impressions. Sentient beings experience emotions such as happiness, joy, and gratitude, as well as pain, suffering, and grief. Animal rights or animal welfare activists urge society to stop thinking of animals as human property and as companions rather than pets. They urge abstention from all animal use, including meat, leather, milk, wool and silk, while also calling for an end to experimentation on animals. Other efforts include seeking an end to using animals for laboratory experimentation and for sporting events and entertainment.
Scientists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, have written an authoritative report from dozens of studies, some funded by the National Institutes of Health, that show sentience across the animal kingdom. It compiles evidence from dozens of studies—some funded by the federal National Institutes of Health—that show sentience across the animal kingdom. The report concludes that because other animals experience emotions as humans do, it is unethical to subject them to the trauma and emotional distress of experimentation.
Guest – Asher Smith is Director of Litigation at the PETA Foundation. He has helped secure the rescue of 25 big cats from roadside zoos featured in the Netflix series Tiger King. More recently he has focused on freeing 30 barn owls from a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
Guest – Attorney Tamara Bedic, chairperson of the National Lawyers Guild Animal Rights Project. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a masters degree from Columbia University-NY University. Tamara practices employment law with a focus on women and harassment in the workplace.
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More PETA Cases, Speciesism and Long Range Animal Protection
With more than 9 million members and supporters worldwide, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world. It opposes speciesism, the human-held belief that all other animal species are inferior. PETA’s work encompasses four areas in which animals have been suffering the most intensely and over the longest periods of time. They are in research laboratories, the food industry, the clothing trade, and the entertainment business. PETA conducts public education, investigative news gathering and reporting, research, animal rescue, legislation, and protest campaigns.
Guest – Jared Goodman, PETA Foundation Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Animal Law. He describes what speciesism is and how it has informed PETA’s work since its founding in 1980.
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Uncategorized
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Amazon Workers Unionize At Fulfillment Center In Bessemer, Alabama
There’s an historic battle for union recognition going on now at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama where mostly black workers package and ship orders to customers across the South. The votes of 5800 Amazon workers are being counted. On March 29th we will know the outcome on whether the first ever labor union representing Amazon employees with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union will prevail against a vicious trillion dollar company whose profits have almost doubled since the onset of the pandemic. Amazon owner Jeff Bezos is worth $184 billion and is one of the richest men in America.
Amazon employs 1 million people, second only to Walmart which employees over 2 million people. Because most of the workers at the Alabama Fulfillment Center are African-American, the unionization battle is also a civil rights fight. They’ve gotten broad solidarity from many such as celebrity Danny Glover, politicians Jamaal Bowman and Bernie Sanders, and even the players unions in major league baseball and the NFL.
Will a victory in Bessemer open the floodgates? Will other large company work forces be unionized? Will the South be unionized? Will this spread to the north? Historically the south has been a dragging progress in America going all the way back to the time of slavery. Will this start to change?
Guest – Michael Goldfield, former civil rights and labor activist and agitator, Professor Emeritus, and currently a research fellow at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is the author of numerous books and articles on race, labor, and the global economy, including The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States, The Color of Politics: Race and the Main- springs of American Politics, and most recently, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s.
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Florida Based Organization Tries To Unite Political Divisions
When asked about the state of politician’s discourse in the US, the public renders a harsh judgment. Many Americans say that their own personal conversations about political issues have become stressful incidents that they’d rather avoid, according to a Pew research poll.
A majority say the tone and nature of debate between politicians has become less fact-based, less respectful, less substantive, and more negative in the past few years. And everyday conversations about politics and other sensitive issues like abortion and free speech are often tense. Half say talking about politics with people they disagree with politically is “stressful and frustrating.”
When speaking with people they don’t know well, more Americans say they would be very comfortable talking about the weather and sports – and even religion – than politics. And it is people who are most comfortable with interpersonal conflict, including arguing with other people, who also are most likely to talk about politics frequently and to be politically engaged.
Why does this matter?
The founding fathers knew that with any political issue came disagreement so they created a system that runs on disagreement. The checks and balances between the branches of power within the Republic depend on division to protect freedom and liberty. The power of one branch is checked when another branch disagrees and seeks to enact its own ideas. So political disagreement, even bitter disagreement, isn’t new. What’s new is the idea that someone who disagrees with you is your enemy. One organization is trying to change this. The Florida-based Village Square has the mission of reviving civic connections across divisions in American communities.
Guest – Liz Joyner, Village Square founder and CEO. Liz has a Masters Degree in Social Work and created the Village Square after her experience working in politics convinced her that the way we work out disagreements in today’s public square is fundamentally flawed.
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Uncategorized
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Attorney Jim Lafferty On Trump’s Impeachment Case
According to a study by The Chicago Project published last week in the Atlantic magazine the Capitol rioters weren’t like other extremist. Most of them were middle-aged and middle class. Forty percent of them were business owners or had white-collar jobs as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, even lawyers. Only 9% of them belong to paramilitary groups like the 3 Percenters, The Boogaloo Boys or The Proud Boys. Most of them did not come from deep red states.
The article stated that “the overwhelming reason the rioters cited again and again in court documents was that they were following Trump’s orders to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden how’s the winner of the presidential election. They believed Trumps big lie that the election was stolen.
When Trump spoke at the rally before they marched on the capital he advised them to “show strength“., that “we fight. We fight like hell. And if we don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore… So let’s walk now to the capital.“ For this he has been charged with inciting insurrection and is being tried by the United States Senate. If found guilty he would not be able to run again in 2024.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said that the crowd was “provoked by the president“ and that “the mob was fed lies.“
Liz Cheney, The house Republican conference chair, broke with her party and summed up the case against Trump: “The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a betrayal of a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.“.
In his defense, Republican say that his speech was protected by the First Amendment. Secondly, they argue that since he has left office he can’t be tried.
Trump’s lawyers argued before the Senate on the first day of the trial that a guilty verdict against Trump will tear our country apart. Others have argued that the country is already torn apart and that there is an American fascist movement That has contempt for democracy and the rule of law. They see it as congealing, getting stronger, and it looking to Trump as its leader.
Guest – Jim Lafferty, the Executive Director Emeritus of the National Lawyers Guiid in Los Angeles. He is a member of the governing board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and an elected fellow of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California. Mr. Lafferty is a founding member, and steering committee member, of the national Julian Assange Defense Committee and the recent chair of the Office of the Americas. Jim Lafferty is the host of The Lawyers Guild radio show on our sister station in Los Angeles, KPFK. For the past 60 years Mr. Lafferty has been a recognized national leader in various movements against the US wars of intervention such as in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East.
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Chris Hedges Interviews Michael Smith On Michael Ratner’s Autobiography
We hear the interview Chris Hedges conducted with Michael Smith on his RT show On Contact.
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Michael Smith about civil rights attorney Michael Ratner’s recently published memoir, “Moving the Bar – My Life as A Radical Lawyer”. Smith was a close friend and collaborator of Ratner’s for over three decades. Michael Ratner was one of the most important civil rights attorneys in our era. He spent his life fighting on behalf of those who state and empire sought to crush, from the leaders of the prison uprising at Attica to Muslim prisoners held in Guantanamo, to Julian Assange.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power, Uncategorized
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President Trump Invokes 1807 Insurrection Act
Last week Donald Trump announced his readiness to deploy the military to enforce order inside the United States. From the Rose Garden he vowed that if city and state leaders did not “take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents” he would invoke the 1807 Insurrection act. The Act was renamed after Hurricane Katrina, but otherwise remains the same. It allows a president to deploy the military to suppress civil disorder.
In response, defense officials have expressed discomfort at the prospect of calling in active duty troops to police protected First Amendment activity. Many have emphasized the importance of having local law enforcement take charge. Some National Guard troops are also reportedly wary of this move, even as more are mobilized domestically than at any other time in history.
Army Major General Thomas Carden of the Georgia National Guard told reporters: “I believe that we in America should not get used to or accept uniformed service members of any variety having to be put in a position where they are having to secure people inside the United States of America.” He also said, “while we are glad to do it and honored to do it, this is a sign of the times that we need to do better as a country.”
During that Monday call with state governors, Trump intensified rhetoric about using military forces to “dominate” protesters. He wished there was an “occupying force” in cities across America and urged a tougher response to protests. Later that day, law enforcement officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets at a peaceful crowd outside the White House.
Guest – Mara Verheyden-Hilliard with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Mara is one of the nation’s pre-eminent authorities on the policing of First Amendment protected activities including the right to peaceably assemble and associate.
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President Trump Withdraws From The Treaty On Open Skies
The chance for nuclear war which would destroy human life on Earth has never been higher. Just last week President Donald Trump withdrew America from The Treaty On Open Skies. This treaty is an agreement between 34 nations that allows each country to fly over each other’s territories. The treaty is designed to provide transparency and mutual observation of military developments. He also withdrew from the Intermediary Intermediary Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia. As a consequence the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has pushed the hands of its doomsday clock on its magazine forward to almost midnight
Shortly after taking office Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. Trump enjoys the financial and political backing of big business, the banks, the hedge funds, and the military industrial complex. These money interests profit greatly from the nuclear rearmament which is now going on.
First under Obama and then Trump $1 trillion is planned to be spent over the next 30 years for a new generation of nuclear weapons, including low yield ones, which are likely to be used.
Whistleblowing truth teller Daniel Ellsberg has recently written the grimly important book The Doomsday Machine. He believes that so far, avoidance of a nuclear war has been miraculous and that the danger is as present today as it was during the Cold War. He thinks seeking profit in spite of the risk of nuclear winter is “institutional madness.“
Guest – Paul Jay is the editor of the blog the theanalysis.news. We will discuss with him the kind of movement that is needed to reverse the nuclear arms race as well as to bring about a democratic organization of the economy.
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Censorship, CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, Uncategorized, War Resister
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In Defense Of Julian Assange: Attorney Renata Avila
We continue our ongoing coverage of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who remains in confinement at London’s high-security Belmarsh prison. Julian is fighting extradition to the United States on 18 charges, including violating the Espionage Act and conspiring to hack government computers. As listeners will recall, the charges are in connection with Wikileaks’ release of thousands of secret cables in 2010.
Guest – Renata Avila, a member of the Julian Assange legal team. Renata is an international Human Rights lawyer from Guatemala, specializing in preserving human rights during the next wave of tech challenges. She is a Board member for Creative Commons, the Common Action Forum and is a Global Trustee of the Think Tank Digital Future Society. She is also a member of the WEF’s Global Future Council on Human Rights and Technology and a Steering Committee Member of the Information Society Advisory Council for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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The Prosecution of Julian Assange – CUNY School of Law and UCLA
We listen to two presentations from a panel discussion among leading journalists, attorneys and human rights defenders as the extradition trial in London of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is set to begin.
The first speaker is lead attorney Barry Pollack representing Julian Assange speaking at The Prosecution of Julian Assange forum at UCLA.
We then hear from Glen Ford speaking at the CUNY School of Law, Glen is the Executive editor, Black Agenda Report. He’s a broadcast, print and web pioneer and founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.
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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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