Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Biden Hypocritically Slams Arrest of US Journalist in Russia But Pursues Assange
May 3rd marks the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, established by the UN to remind governments about the necessity to respect their commitment to freedom of the press.
The Biden administration touts press freedom but continues the Trump administration’s efforts to extradite Julian Assange from the UK to the United States for trial on Espionage Act charges that could lead to 175 years in prison. Assange is being prosecuted for obtaining and publishing classified military and diplomatic documents evidencing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the first publisher to be charged under the Espionage Act for revealing state secrets.
The Biden administration hypocritically criticizes Russia for arresting Evan Gershkovich, a US journalist, for espionage while trying to extradite and try Assange, who is an Australian citizen. Both men are journalists detained in a foreign country on espionage charges for doing what journalists do.
Julian Assange Fact Sheet: Why Julian Must Be Freed
Guest – Marjorie Cohn is a member of the national advisory board of Assange Defense. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. Her new article about Assange and Gershkovich was just published by Truthout.
—-
Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America’s Surveillance Society
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s program “If You See Something, Say Something,” launched in 2010, urges citizens to be aware of and to report, potential threats. Examples of suspicious activity include unattended packages or baggage; circumstances that appear out of the ordinary, like an open door that is usually closed; a person asking for detailed information about a building’s layout or purpose, and changes in security protocol or shifts. Also of concern is any person seen loitering around a building, writing notes, sketches, and taking photographs or measurements.
The DHS website is careful to note that, “Factors such as race, ethnicity, and/or religious affiliation are not suspicious.” Yet as listeners know, incidents of ethnic profiling are many, including one in which a Southwest Airlines passenger was taken off a flight for speaking Arabic.
The history of citizen spying and reporting on others is not new in this country. And the “See Something” campaign isn’t the only civilian spying program around. Many jurisdictions have Neighborhood Watch programs. The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Neighborhood Watch initiative enlists community members to assist crime prevention and to prepare neighborhoods for disasters and emergency response.
Guest – Joshua Reeves author of Citizen Spies, The Long Rise of America’s Surveillance Society . He is associate professor of New Media Communications and Speech Communication at Oregon State University, where he’s also a fellow in their Center for the Humanities. An associate editor of the journal Surveillance and Society, he’s also written the just-released book, Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
—————————–
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Truth to Power, Violations of U.S. and International Law
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
UN Report Sounds Alarm On Climate Change
A new flagship United Nations report on climate change shows that harmful carbon emissions have never been higher in human history. And that this is proof that the world is on a fast track to disaster, with scientists arguing that it’s now or never to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Indeed, the report’s scientists claim that at the dismal rate matters to address climate change are now going, the world has but ten years—ten years–until catastrophic climate change is irreversible.
Or as the UN’s General Secretary Gutierrez puts it, the planet is now “nearing the point of no return.” In a Washington Post op-ed article, Gutierrez described the latest IPCC report as a “litany of broken promises,” which revealed a “yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality.” Indeed, the reality is that despite ever-increasing awareness of the consequences of climate change and the central role humans play–given our continuing use of fossil fuels, in bringing the change about–the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released into the atmosphere every year continue to rise every year and are each year greater than the prior year. For as Gutierrez wrote, corporations and high-emitting governments have not just turned a blind eye to the problem, “they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries.”
Already millions of the world’s people have been displaced by climate change, and the world now experiences a greater and greater increase in severe storms, unprecedented heat waves, widespread water shortages, and the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals.
Guest – Eleanor Stein, professor of law at Albany Law School, where she teaches Transnational Environmental Law is the author of Ecological Sensitivity and Global Warming: An International Human Rights Violation? For ten years Eleanor Stein served as an Administrative Law Judge at the New York State Public Service Commission in Albany, New York, where she presided over and mediated New York’s Renewable Portfolio Standard proceeding, a collaboration and litigation of over 150 parties, authoring in June 2004 a comprehensive decision recommending a landmark state environmental initiative to combat global warming with incentives for renewable resource-fueled power generation.
NY Times ON CLIMATE newsletter with Somini Sengupta, climate writings in NYT by David Wallace-Wells; NOT TOO LATE by Solnit and Lutunatabua; FALTER by Bill McKibben and all his current writings (and his breakthrough 1989 book on climate, The End of Nature and its sequel, EAARTH); Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker; Websites of WEACT (We Act for Environmental Justice), www.weact.org; UPROSE (United Puerto Ricans of Sunset Park), www.UPROSE.org, NYC-EJA, NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, www.nyceja.org.
—-
CCR Lawsuit: Louisiana’s Cancer Alley
The call it “cancer alley.” It is the 135 mile long strip along both sides the Mississippi river between Baton Rouge, Louisiana south down to New Orleans
In an environmental racism case, three Louisiana organizations sued on March 21 in Federal District court in New Orleans against the Parish Council of St. Jame’s Parish. A Parish is a county in New Orleans and the Parish Council is their government.
The predominantly white Parish Council granted a permit for a company to build $9 billion petrochemical plant to make plastics. The plant is expected to spew 6000 tons a year of cancer-causing chemicals into the atmosphere.
The lawsuit seeks to protect Black neighborhoods and is asking for a moratorium on the building of more hazardous petrochemical plants where people live and breathe and where Black people are getting sick and dying in disproportionate numbers.
Guest – Attorney Astha Sharma Pokharel of the Center or Constitutional Right where she specializes in international human rights law and in challenging racial and environmental injustice. In the “cancer rally“ lawsuit she represents the Mount Trump Baptist Church and inclusive Louisiana. A project at the Tulane law school represents RISE St. James. These are the three Black neighborhood organizations that are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
—————————–
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States
As the notion of perpetual war and a militarized society are normalized, notably absent are antiwar protests by faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, academics, and others. A new book, “The Trillion Dollar Silencer,” details this absence while laying bare the devastation wrought in the United States and abroad by the military industrial complex.
Author Joan Roelofs delves into the pervasive role of military contractors and bases that have come to be economic hubs of their regions. She discusses how state and local governments are intertwined with the Department of Defense (DoD), including economic development commissions at all levels. Contracts and grants to universities, colleges, and faculty come from the DoD and its agencies, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Minerva Initiative funds social scientists for military research. Civilian jobs in the DoD provide opportunities for scientists, engineers, policy analysts, and others. The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs are subsidized by the DoD.
In addition to businesses large and small, nonprofits receive DoD contracts and grants, including environmental and charitable organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and Goodwill Industries. Individuals, arts institutions, charities, churches, and universities share in the profitability of military-related investments. Pension funds for public and private employees and unions are replete with military stocks. In other words, the military industrial complex is so embedded in our political economy that it has become virtually impossible to find any sector of our society that is not intertwined with militarism.
Guest – Joan Roelofs, Professor Emerita of Political Science at Keene State College. She teaches in the Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning and writes for scholarly and political publications. Joan is the author of “Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism,” and “Greening Cities: Building Just and Sustainable Communities.” She has been an anti-war activist ever since she protested the Korean War.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Julie Hurwitz
—————————————–
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Right To Dissent, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers, worker's rights
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
How The United States Took Out The Nordstream Pipeline
The war in Ukraine is illegal. It’s a violation of international law. Peace forces in the United States are demanding a ceasefire and negotiations and the recognition of Russia’s legitimate security concerns. At the same time, we recognize that the Russians were provoked by the United States and NATO in to invading Ukraine, having placed so many military bases and bombs on Russia’s border.
The latest development of enormous economic and political consequences is the American blowing up of the two pipelines that provided cheap Russian natural gas to Europe. The great investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, has recently discovered and published a hugely significant investigative article on Substack, proving that the United States,despite its vehement denials, was in fact, responsible for the blowing up the pipelines.
This was done to prevent the integration of Russia into the European economy. Because now the United States and Norway sell liquefied natural gas and natural gas, to Western Europe at four or five times the price of Russian gas.
Guest – Seymour Hersh, has won a Pulitzer Prize and five Polk awards, beginning with his expose of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam where American troops killed 500 women, children and old men. His important articles were published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and other mainstream media outlets. But his article on the US blowing up of the two pipelines had to be self-published on his Substack platform.
—-
Denouncing The Horrors Of Socialism
On February 2nd of this year, the now Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution “ denouncing the horrors of socialism.” It passed overwhelmingly in a 328–86–14 vote. More than half of the Democrats voted for it, while 86 voted against it and 14 voted “present“. The resolution is made up of lies and half truths. We urge listeners to read it for themselves. It is online. The resolution is three pages in length and 99% of it consists of a series of whereas clauses pointing out with the Republican authors of the resolution believe are examples of the “horribles” of Socialism.
What is socialism? Socialism has never really existed anywhere yet there have been attempts starting with the great Russian revolution of 1917 which effectively ended the slaughter of World War I. It was overthrown in 1991 when the USA and others successfully restored capitalism. What would a socialist society be like? First of all it would be democratic politically and economically and it would not be run by the one percent.
America has a rich history of electing people with a socialist vision. Socialism would illuminate racism and economic want. It would provide for education and healthcare, housing and employment for everybody. Production would be for human needs, not for profit. It would clean up the environment and eliminate the threat of catastrophic man-made climate change.
Guest – Jeff Mackler is the National Secretary of Socialist Action and was their candidate for president in 2016 and in 2020. Mr. Mackler also serves on the Administrative Committee of the United National Anti-war Coalition, or “UNAC”. He is the Director of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and a steering committee member of the National Julian Assange Defense Committee. A lifelong activist, Jeff Mackler is the author of 25 books and pamphlets and political, economic, and anti-US imperial war movements.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
——————————
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Racist Police Violence, Torture, Uncategorized, Violations of U.S. and International Law
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Ending Structural Police Violence And Abuse
On January 7, after an unlawful traffic stop, several police officers in the SCORPION unit of the Memphis Police Department beat, kicked, punched and tased Tyre Nichols, who posed no threat to the public or the officers. He died in the hospital 3 days later. SCORPION, which was disbanded following Nichols’s death, stands for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in our Neighborhoods. In reality, SCORPION’s targets – as with similar such units around the country — were primarily Black men. Far from restoring peace, these officers escalated the violence and killed Nichols. The officers later lied about stopping him for reckless driving and the police chief admitted there was no legal basis for stopping Nichols.
One month later, in his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden introduced Nichols’s parents who were in the audience and he called for police reforms. We all know that racist police violence is nothing new. It has shown itself over and over throughout our history, and has led to calls for reform of the police, and abolition. But structural and systemic racism and police violence persist nevertheless.
In spite of the worldwide outrage at the public execution of George Floyd in 2020, and several superficial reforms, police killings continue to increase, not decrease.
Guest – Jonathan Moore, civil rights attorney in New York City who, since the late 1970’s, has specialized in police and governmental misconduct, employment discrimination, First Amendment advocacy, and international human rights. Jonathan represents the family of Eric Garner, who was killed in broad daylight in 2014 by the New York City police for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. He was also the lead attorney in the New York “stop and frisk” case in 2013 that led to the historic ruling that banned the practice as unconstitutional. And he represented the Exonerated Five (formerly known as the Central Park Five) in their successful wrongful conviction case against the City of New York.
—-
The Secret Files: Bill de Blasio, the NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform
The issue of police reform looms large across the nation, with daily reports and images of lethal police violence against Black and Brown persons striking a collective raw nerve. A new book by journalist Michael Hayes reads like both an investigative report and a gripping saga of the nation’s largest police department. Its protagonists are the New York City Police Department (NYPD), its powerful union, Black and Latino New Yorkers, and the Mayor. The book is “The Secret Files: Bill de Blasio, the NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.”
Bill de Blasio, mayor from 2014 to 2021, focused his campaign on making the NYPD more accountable to the public. Previously, while serving on the City Council, he introduced legislation to expand the purview and clout of the watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board. While in office, de Blasio tried to end the NYPD’s long-standing “stop and frisk” policy, among other pernicious practices. But from the beginning of his tenure, after two officers were fatally shot in Brooklyn in December 2014, the police department and its union doubled down in opposition to reform. One example was to effectively prevent public disclosure of internal investigation files or the identities of police officers known to be the subjects of those investigations.
Guest – Michael Hayes, in addition to his recently released book, Michael has long reported on the policies and practices of U.S. police departments and covered major criminal trials across the country.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
—————————————
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Political Prisoner, Right To Dissent, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Black History Month And Racist Police Violence
February is Black History Month in America. And on the very first day of Black History Month this year, Tyre Nichols, a young Black man, was laid to rest in Memphis, Tennessee, having been murdered by police officers of the Memphis police department, as he simply tried to get home.
I find it almost impossible to keep track of all the hundreds of cases of racist police violence against innocent Black and brown men and women in America. At the moment our nation is transfixed and in a state of great anger and anguish over the brutal murder of Tyre Nickols in Memphis, Tennessee. And the killings keep coming. In my city, Los Angeles, we’re outraged by the police murder of Keenan Anderson, the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder, Patrice Cullers. Both murders were filmed, and so once again the American people saw with their own eyes just how violent and despicable the police can be; and how indifferent the offending police officers are to the fact that what they are doing is being captured on film for all the world to see.
Now, the overwhelming percentage of victims of police assaults are people of color who’ve been murdered, or otherwise brutalized by white cops. But as the Nichols case demonstrates, police violence is so ingrained in policing in America that Black cops, too, often do not hesitate to employ gross violence in the course of their policing.
What accounts for this epidemic of cop killings of people of color in America? Is it connected to America’s history of Black enslavement? And, if requiring the police to be filmed while making arrests has not ended police violence, what will it take to finally end this epidemic of racist policing?
Guest – Attorney Carl Douglas is a partner in the law firm, Douglas/Hicks, one of Keenan Anderson’s family attorneys who’ve just filed a $50 million dollar claim against the City of Los Angeles for what the LAPD did in the Keenan Anderson case. Attorney Douglas, after working 6 years as a Public Defender, then spent 12 years in the Los Angeles law firm of famed, and now deceased, anti-police abuse attorney Johnnie Cochran. And now, his own law firm, the Douglas/Hicks law firm, specializes in police misconduct and other civil rights cases, criminal defense work, as well as personal injury and employment discrimination cases. In short, he is a true “lawyer for the people”.
—-
CIA Spied On Julian Assange Embassy Visitors: Lawsuit Update
We speak today with New York City attorney Deborah Hrbek who along with her law partner Margaret Ratner Kunstler are suing the CIA, its former Director Mike Pompeo, and the Company they contracted with to spy for them on Julian Assange and his visitors including attorneys at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange lived there for seven years having been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government. The CIA contract employee DC Global copied information off of their cell phones and computers when they visited their client Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
They are demanding an injunction forbidding the CIA to use the private information they stole from their devices. The CIA says that it has every right to do what it did because the plaintiffs had no right to expect privacy.
Julian Assange is one the greatest journalist of our time. His exposures of American war crimes, corruption in the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and CIA spying on us using our cell phones and smart TVs was the most embarrassing revelations ever revealed about the American war machine and it’s diplomatic corps.
In retaliation the US establishment and its institutions including both political parties and the intelligence agencies took their revenge on Julian by first smearing him, according to a Defense Department directive, and then threatening him with being charged as a spy under the Espionage Act so that he had to take refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
Then former President Donald Trump indicted Assange for espionage and had their British collaborators remove him from the Ecuadorian Embassy and put him in London’s Belmarsh, a notorious maximum-security prison, where he has been tortured daily for the last three years by being held in solitary confinement and denied adequate medical care.
The United States and its servant the British Crown Prosecutorial Service trashed the rule of law throughout the entire extradition proceeding. They lied about the conditions of confinement Assange would face in United States. Even the trial judge thought he might kill himself. The extradition order is eminent.
AssangeDefense
Guest – Deborah Hrbek is a founding partner at Hrbek Kunstler, a Manhattan entertainment law firm that has represented WikiLeaks in media law matters since 2015. In the course of her work with WikiLeaks journalist and filmmakers she has visited Julian Assange many times, both at the Ecuadorian Embassy at London where he was there as a political Ashlee and in recent years in Belmarsh prison, a maximum-security prison where he has been incarcerated since April 2019. Hrbek is one of the plaintiffs in “Kunstler versus the CIA”, an action that seeks to hold the US government accountable for its illegal activities in connection with its prosecution of Julian Assange.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
——————————————-
