Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Uncategorized, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change
Today we speak with University of Wisconsin history professor Alfred McCoy about his new book “To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change.” The United States of America has been governing the globe now for 80 years, since World War II. This is about to end. By 2030, China will have the world’s largest economy and hold more riches than the U.S., which is deeply in debt.
The America we know will change drastically as a world power just as the previous world powers, the British, and before them the Dutch, and before them the Spanish and the Portuguese, all saw their empires end.
Climate change will upend the world. It has already started. The effects of climate change on the population of the world, especially China, will be catastrophic. The great coastal city of Shanghai, where 18 million people reside, will sink, uprooting millions of the 400 million Chinese people in the North China Plain.
What can we learn from the demise of the great world powers in the past? Where is the United States headed and how soon? What might be done to ameliorate this dire future? Only a prodigious historian could undertake to answer these questions.
Guest – Alfred W McCoy holds the Fred Harvey Harrington chair of history at the University of Wisconsin. He has written 20 books, including “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia,” for which he became well-known, and recently, “In the Shadows of the American Century.”
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The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court
The nation is still reeling from the Trump administration’s assaults to the rule of law, and their ripple effects on democratic institutions. But these attacks were the result of strategic planning over decades, and the handiwork of networks of well-funded think tanks and lobbyists. Some of the country’s richest and most conservative individuals are, with so-called Dark Money, anonymously supporting these efforts.
Chief among these forces is the Federalist Society. Not well known until recently, the Society has worked quietly since the Reagan administration to overhaul the Supreme Court into a bastion of conservatism. Enriched with Dark Money, it’s had an outsized impact on the composition of the federal and the Supreme Court. Recently, we’ve witnessed how hard-fought social gains of the 20th century have been taken away from Americans, and landmark Supreme Court decisions have been overruled such as Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to reproductive freedom, and Lemon v. Kurtzman, guaranteeing the separation of church and state.
Guest – Attorney Lisa Graves, is the founder, director, and editor-in-chief of True North Research. Her analysis of such research has been cited by every major newspaper in the country. She has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government. Lisa served as chief counsel for the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy. She was also a career deputy assistant attorney general the US Department of Justice. Lisa has spent the past 12 years examining the impact of dark money on judicial selection.
Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith, Marjorie Cohn and Heidi Boghosian
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Surveillance, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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Project Blueprint: Haiti
Haiti is a nation in crisis, spiraling out of control since last year’s assassination of its president, Jovenet Moise. The government has cratered, and 200 violent gangs have seized control. There’s no fuel, and food and water are hard to come by. Businesses and schools are shuttered and hospitals, banks, and grocery stores teeter on the brink of closure. Clean water is scarce, and Haiti faces another cholera outbreak. An estimated one million people are starving in the middle of Haiti’s biggest city. Kidnappings, human trafficking, homicides and sexual and gender-based violence are rampant.
Last week, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti. It calls for sanctions on groups and individuals threatening peace and stability in the impoverished nation. The sanctions resolution implicated Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, whose gang has blockaded a central fuel terminal. Cherizier is a former police officer leading a group of gangs known as the G9 Family and Allies. He now faces asset freeze, an arms embargo and a travel ban.
Institute For Justice and Democracy In Haiti
Guest – Human rights attorney Brian Concannon, Executive Director of Project Blueprint, and the founder and former Executive Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Brian has been qualified as an expert witness on conditions in the country of Haiti in more than 40 cases in courts both in the United States and Canada.
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A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press
For more than a century, the 1917 Espionage Act has been used by the United States government to target critics of its foreign and military policy. From suppressing criticism of U.S. participation in World War I to present-day attempts to silence whistleblowers, political dissidents and journalists who expose our nation’s war crimes, the Espionage Act is a dangerous weapon in the federal government’s legal arsenal. It has been employed to limit freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of information.
In their new book, A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press, Ralph Engelman and Carey Shenkman trace the use of the Espionage Act against Eugene Debs, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, among others. During World Wars I and II, the Act was primarily directed at political opposition to government policies. During the Cold War, it was used to criminalize leaks, manipulate the flow of information, and mold public opinion. And during the “War on Terror,” the Act has been used as a means to combat digital disclosure and journalism.
Journalist Julian Assange, founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, is currently locked up in a maximum security prison in London while the Biden administration attempts to have him extradited to the United States to stand trial on Espionage Act charges that could result in 175 years in prison. The basis for the indictment against him is WikiLeaks’ revelation of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Guest – Carey Shenkman is a constitutional lawyer and litigator focusing on freedom of expression, transparency and technology. He serves on the panel of experts at Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression Program, and consults on media rights issues before the United Nations and around the world.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Supreme Court, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution
Time is running out for humanity to avoid a catastrophic planetary tipping point. The globalized system of capital accumulation has induced humanity to foul it’s on nest. The result is a planetary emergency that threatens all present and future generations and thrown into question the continuation of civilization and ultimately the very survival of humanity itself. Only by addressing the social aspects of the current planetary environment is it possible to develop the ecological and social resources for a new journey of hope.
The United Nations international panel on climate change, the IPPC, predicts that as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases by the year 2050 there will be 1 billion climate refugees. Temperatures must be held within a 1.5 Celsius increase. If it goes up, as predicted, an increase of 4 degrees would end civilization.
The crises we are in our multiple. Species extinction, ocean acidification, sea level rise depletion of soil, forest fires, broiling heat waves, hurricanes and drought have plagued us in the last few years. One third of Pakistan was underwater.
Guest – John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review magazine and a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon. He has written many books including The Robbery of Nature“ and “The Return of Nature. His most recent book is Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution.
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Impending Threats To American Democracy
In a recent New York Times article, by David Leonhardt, titled A Crisis Coming: The Two Twin Threats to American Democracy, Leonhardt, after first identifying the first threat being that things are now in place where for the first time in U.S. history, a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office, he identifies the second threat, as follows: “The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: the power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion. The run of Supreme Court decisions—both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular—highlight this disconnect. Although the Democratic Party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight elections, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees seems poised to shape American politics for years, if not decades.”
And another headline in a recent edition of the New York Times reads, “Three Huge Supreme Court Cases That Could Change America.” And that article is simply one of many, of late, warning of how the ever-more conservative, indeed one could say, “reactionary” Supreme Court, in its just opened fall term, may well change America in a number of vastly different ways…and ways inconsistent with the majority political views of the American people.
Guest – Steve Rohde is the past chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, the founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. He is a widely recognized expert on the U.S. Constitution, as well as a political activist. He is a prolific author. His books include American Words of Freedom and the book Freedom of Assembly. He has written numerous book reviews and articles on civil liberties and constitutional law, and his book reviews can be found frequently in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Death Penalty, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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CCR And Others Issue Complaint Against U.S. Death By Incarceration
The United States condemns one out of every seven prisoners–or more than 200,000 people– to die in prison, over two-thirds of them people of color. “Death by Incarceration,” or DBI, includes extreme sentences such as life, and life without possibility of parole. DBI violates two treaties the U.S. has ratified, the Convention Against Torture and the Race Convention. DBI “is the devasting consequence of a cruel and racially discriminatory criminal legal system that is designed not to address harm, violence, and its root causes, but to satisfy the political pressure to be tough on crime,” according to a complaint filed with UN special rapporteurs on September 15.
Valerie Kiebala helped bring together organizations including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Drop LWOP Coalition, and the Abolitionist Law Center, to file the 31-page complaint.
Related Article: Human Rights Groups Urge UN to Call for Abolition of Death by Incarceration by Marjorie Cohn.
Guest – Valerie Kiebala is a writer, organizer, and artist. She is the communications director for Straight Ahead, a nonprofit lobbying organization fighting for the human rights and liberation of incarcerated people. Valerie previously worked as an editorial manager and staff writer for Solitary Watch, a nonprofit organization documenting and exposing the use of solitary confinement across the U.S. Her work has appeared in the Root, the Appeal, Truthout, the Chicago Reporter, and Shadowproof.
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Fog Data Science: Constant Surveillance
Each time we access the internet, we open the door for companies to track our behavior and our location. This information is gathered and sold by data brokers, but not just for the purpose of helping marketers send us targeted ads. Our movement data is also marketed to law enforcement agencies around the nation. State sheriffs, highway patrol, and local police now can trace millions of Americans’ everyday movements dating back several years. One Virginia data broker contracts to sell telephone geolocation data to state and local law enforcement, according to an investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF.
EFF Staff Technologist Bennett Cyphers led the investigation. He and his team found that Fog Data Science sells access to a database with information about where a person was at any point in time over the past several years. The surveillance isn’t limited to possible crime scenes. It includes homes, churches, workplaces, health clinics—places in which we have constitutionally-protected expectations of privacy.
Guest – Bennett Cyphers is a staff technologist on EFF’s Tech Projects team. He focuses on consumer privacy, competition, and state legislation. He also assists with development of Privacy Badger, a browser add-on that stops advertisers and trackers from secretly tracking your movements.
Hosted by Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Mass Rally Mumia, Assange and Palestine in Berkeley, California September 17, 2022
Veteran socialist and organizer Jeff Mackler initiated a call for a mass rally on September 17, 2022 in Berkeley, California in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Julian Assange, and Palestinians. In 1982 radio journalist and Black Panther Mumia Abu -Jamal was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for murdering police officer Daniel Faulkner on a Philadelphia Street. He served 28 1/2 years on death row before his sentence was reduced to life in prison. Still in prison, he has served 40 years. An International movement has developed demanding “Free Mumia.”
Award winning Australian journalist and publisher Julian Assange sits in Belmarsh. a maximum security prison in London. In declining mental and physical health,he has been incarcerated for over 1000 days while he awaits extradition to the Northern District federal court in Virginia where he will be tried and certainly convicted of violating the espionage act of 1917. His crime: embarrassing United States by publishing true information about US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and spying on the American public.
The Gaza Strip imprisons 1 million Palestinians. It is largest open air prison in the world. A month ago the Israeli military killed 49 people, 17 of them children, in military attacks. The weapons were made and supplied by America. North of the Gaza Strip in June in the Israeli militarily occupied territory of the West Bank an Israeli sniper assassinated the beloved veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was covering an Israeli army incursion. She had been reporting on the situation of Palestinians In the West Bank for many years.
American ideology has it that our country is a force for good in the world. That it is a democratic society, that it promotes freedom and democracy abroad, and that at home it is a place where hard work leads to success. But the truth is quite different. These myths are increasingly being exposed for what they are.
Recognizing that free journalism is at stake a diverse group of organizations are sponsoring the September 17th mass rally In Berkeley. Mumia will speak via phone. Vincent de Stefano of the Assange Defense Committee will speak. So will Daniel Ellsberg, famous for his release of the Pentagon papers, Susan Schnall, President of Vets for Peace, Mama Pam of Friends of Mumia’s International Family, the great journalist Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice walker, and Jeff Mackler among others.
The slogan of the rally is Free Mumia! Free Julian! Free Palestine!
Guest – Jeff Mackler is a founder and leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), hey founder of the Northern California Climate Mobilization, and the national secretary of Socialist Action and it’s two time candidate for the US presidency.
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Analysis: The Taiwan-US Relationship And China
Trips to Taiwan, by Congressional leaders like Nancy Pelosi, followed up by trips to Taiwan by other members of Congress, has served to push the United States and China closer to a catastrophic conflict. Richard Becker, our guest for this topic today has written, “Pelosi’s decision raises the specter of all-out war between the two world powers. and the consequences of her actions remain to be seen.”
The Biden Administration, which obviously approved of Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, added fuel to the fire by deploying an aircraft carrier off the coast of Taiwan along with accompanying warships.
Pelosi’s argument that the U.S.-Taiwan relationship was based on a shared belief in “self-determination and self-government, democracy and freedom” is ridiculous. The U.S. and other colonial efforts to dismember Taiwan from the rest of China goes back to at least the 19th century. And at the end of World War Two, the U.S. government supported the Nationalist Party of dictator Chiang Kai-Shek in the civil war between his party and the ruling communist party of China; a war that Chiang lost. After Chiang lost that civil war he retreated to the Chinese island of Taiwan, where he ruled as a vicious dictator. Of course, he continued to receive with massive military and diplomatic support from the United States. And even after it was forced to abandon its absurd policy that Taiwan represented the legitimate government of China, the U.S. has maintained its de facto alliance with the regime in Taiwan. And China, which still claims Taiwan as a part of China, has not ruled out eventually bringing Taiwan back under mainland China’s governance, including with the use of force if need be.
Guest – Richard Becker a leader in the Party for Socialism and Liberation. He’s also the Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, the coalition to end war and end racism; and Mr. Becker is the author of a number of books, including, Storming the Gates: How the Russian Revolution Changed the World, the book, Palestine: Israel and the U.S. Empire; and the book, The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks.
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Crony Capitalism, Supreme Court, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Trump Affidavit Contains Broad-Based Probable Cause of Three Federal Crimes
On August 8, FBI agents seized 33 boxes, containers or items of evidence with more than 100 classified records from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound. They included information classified at the highest levels. The Department of Justice had applied for the search warrant after Trump stonewalled them for seven months.
A federal judge found probable cause to believe that agents would find evidence of three federal crimes at Mar-a-Lago. They include a violation of the Espionage Act, which has recently been used to prosecute whistleblowers, publishers and journalists who publicize evidence of government wrongdoing.
Trump claims that the documents are his but in fact they belong to the National Archives. He is seeking the appointment a special master to review the documents for possibly privileged material. Attorney General Merrick Garland will use the seized documents to inform his decision about whether to indict Trump and/or his associates.
Guest – Law and Disorder co-host Marjorie Cohn, A former criminal defense attorney and professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Marjorie does frequent written and broadcast commentary about these and other legal and political issues.
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Nationalizing The Fossil Fuel Industry
Thomas Hanna has been Research Director for the Democracy Collaborative since 2015, after working for five years as a research assistant to Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative and well-known historian and political economist. The Democracy Collaborative was founded in 2000 as a research center at the University of Maryland, to develop a theoretical and historical framework for building a truly democratic society, based on the principles of democratic economy, community wealth building and the democratization of ownership.
Hanna’s areas of expertise include public ownership, privatization, local government, democratic ownership and banking. He is the author and editor of a number of books, articles and reports, including Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States which was published by Manchester University Press in 2018.
Hanna’s recent article, The Supreme Court is Gutting the Regulatory State. Let’s Look at our Other Options, published in In These Times, provides a fascinating analysis of the historical evolution of the regulatory system in the United States. Since the New Deal and the end of World War II, the use of regulatory legislation has been used to protect capitalism, based on the notion that “the excesses and injustices of capitalism can be ameliorated primarily through state regulation of private enterprise, rather than large-order shifts in the ownerships of these enterprises.” In his article, Hanna articulately explains how these historical attempts to regulate capitalist power within the context of capitalism is destined to fail because of its own structural limitations.
In the wake of the “existential threat of catastrophic climate change and rising tide of right-wing extremism,” we are seeing – predictably – the explicit dismantling of that regulatory system. Hanna explores the recent rulings from the new right-wing majority on the US Supreme Court, particularly the case of West Virginia v. EPA, in which the court literally kneecapped the agency’s ability reduce the devastating effects of corporate pollution in order to protect private profit and “free enterprise.” Hanna explores an alternative vision of creating a system of economic and political democracy based on public and collective ownership of important assets, enterprises and services, including the fossil fuel industry.
Today’s show is hosted by Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn, and Julie Hurwitz
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