Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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In Defense of Julian Assange
Whistle-blowing truth telling journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange now sits in solitary confinement in London‘s infamous Belmarsh prison. The Trump administration has asked that he be extradited to Virginia for trial as a spy. Today we interview Margaret Kunstler and Tariq Ali who edited and introduce the just published book titled In Defense of Julian Assange. The book demonstrates convincingly what is at stake in his upcoming trial is the future of free journalism, here and abroad.
Julian faces a 175 year sentence under the century old Espionage Act, passed during World War I to be used against spies. He is charged with conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq war logs, the Afghanistan war logs, and State Department cables.
Former CIA director and current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called WikiLeaks a “non-state intelligence service.“ Hillary Clinton wanted him assassinated by drone. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer recently visited him in prison and concluded that indeed he was being tortured. When he last appeared in court he was incoherent and couldn’t remember his name or date of birth.
WikiLeaks was launched by Julian Assange in 2006, three years after Bush and Cheney commenced the illegal catastrophic war against Iraq in 2003.
Julian is a computer genius. He invented a way for publishers like WikiLeaks to receive truth telling information anonymously. The first bombshell he published in 2006 was “The Iraqi war logs.“ He got them from whistle-blower Chelsea Manning who was then in the military. They showed a video of American soldiers in a helicopter committing a war crime by gunning down and executing a number of Iraqi civilians, two Reuter’s journalists, and several children. Then they chuckled about it. A photo of the murders is shown on the book’s cover. This leak, furnished by Chelsea Manning, was devastating to the United States. Other whistle-blower leaks followed. The government became relentless in trying to close down WikiLeaks.
Guest – Margaret Kunstler – a civil rights attorney who has spent her career providing movement support and protecting the rights of activists. A powerful speaker on human rights issues, Kunstler is a consultant to the emerging voices of Occupy Wall Street protesters and Anonymous supporters. Kunstler’s Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in Twenty-First Century America, co-authored with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is the leading handbook for activists today.
Guest – Tariq Ali, writer, journalist and film-maker, born in Lahore and educated at Oxford University. He writes regularly for a range of publications including The Guardian and The London Review of Books. He has written more than a dozen books including non-fiction as well as scripts for both stage and screen.
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Music is Power: Popular Songs, Social Justice and the Will to Change
Throughout U.S. history social justice music has played many roles, from motivating soldiers on their way to war, to inspiring activists fighting police repression during the civil rights movements. In his new book, “Music Is Power” author Brad Schreiber chronicles a century of politically-conscious music, from Pete Seeger through Joan Baez, Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols and to modern-day rap music.
Perhaps associated largely with folk music, social justice music spans a range of musical genres, from rap, heavy metal, reggae, and psychedelia. Schreiber not only shines a spotlight on musicians’ different approaches, from soulful ballads to expressions of anger, but he also tells engaging stories behind the public figures who have brought music into our lives. There are many surprises in his animation of long-time favorites, many of whom overcame obstacles in bringing their messages of social justice to the recording industry and to the airwaves.
Guest – Brad Schreiber – award-winning author, journalist and screenwriter, his previous books include Death in Paradise, Becoming Jimi Hendrix, and Revolution’s End. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Press Foundation, Edward Albee Foundation, International Book Awards, Independent Publisher Book Awards and Los Angeles Press Club.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Victory: Trump Administration Rescinds Planned Anti-Protest Rules
In a stunning victory for free speech, the National Park Service was recently forced to do an about face. It withdrew a proposal that would have place burdensome restrictions on protests on the Mall and other federal land in Washington, DC.
Citing feedback it had received from the public — more than 140,000 comments — the Park Service announced it was ending its effort to rewrite the regulations governing speech and demonstrations on public lands under federal jurisdiction in the nation’s capitol. The proposed new regulations made public in August 2018 by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke would have imposed hefty and unprecedented fees on groups organizing protests on federal park lands in Washington.
The Park Service has the responsibility and the legal obligation to protect First Amendment activity, and so it is good that officials dropped this plan.
Guest – Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in Washington, DC. Over the years, Mara and the Partnership have secured millions of dollars in settlements for police infractions of protesters’ rights at mass assemblies, from the 2000 and 2002 IMF/World Bank protests to cases where law enforcement used false arrest tactics based on political affiliation. She also successfully challenged New York City’s efforts to restrict mass assembly in Central Park.
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United States Officially Recognizes The Armenian Genocide
In a bipartisan rebuke to Turkey after its offensive into northeastern Syria, the U.S. House of Representatives recently approved two measures pushing back at its longtime NATO ally.
The first measure was a symbolic resolution labeling the deaths of roughly 1.5 to 2 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923 in the Ottoman Empire, now modern-day Turkey, as a “genocide.” It passed 405-11, with 3 members voting present. The second measure was a bipartisan bill that imposed sanctions on Turkish officials and prevents the sale of arms to Turkey for use in Syria. That passed overwhelmingly as well: 403-16.
To this day, the Republic of Turkey enforces a gag-rule against U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide, despite overwhelming evidence documenting its crimes against humanity.
Despite formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. government in 1951 and 1981, successive U.S. presidential administrations have supported the Turkish government’s revisionism. Fearful of offending Turkey they have opposed passage of Congressional Armenian Genocide resolutions and objected to the use of the word “genocide” to describe systematic destruction of the Armenian people.
A just resolution of the Armenian Genocide would decrease regional tensions, open the door to improved Armenia-Turkey relations, help reform Turkey into a pluralist and tolerant society.
Guest – Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America or ANCA. ANCA is the largest and most influential Armenian American grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters and supporters throughout the United States and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCA actively advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Kings Bay Plowshare 7 Face Sentencing After Powerful Testimony
In our society nuclear weapons that can destroy all creation are taken as a normal, even an inevitable, part of life. In a dramatic action to break what they call “the crime of silence“ seven Catholic peace activists entered the Kings Bay Trident Submarine Base in Georgia last April to perform an act of symbolic disarmament. They were arrested, tried two weeks ago and quickly convicted on October 24, 2019 in a Georgia court. They face more than 25 years in prison.
Kings Bay is home port to six ballistic missile Trident submarines, each of which deploy 16 Trident missile’s carry in four or more warheads of at least 100 kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was 14 kilotons. Each submarine thus has the destructive power of at least 500 Hiroshima bombs.
Past interviews with Kings Bay Plowshare 7 Members:
October 7, 2019
February 18, 2019
Guest – Attorney Bill Quigley. Bill is the former legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and is currently a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill has been an active public interest and human rights lawyer since 1977. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, human rights, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.He practices and teachers law in New Orleans.
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Potential Retrial For Imam Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown)
“His voice had power. His booming delivery was infused with rousing socio-political rhetoric. With a rhythmic cadence, tone, and inflection, his voice kept a beat. It emboldened a generation of black youth, and frightened the white establishment.”
Those words by Obaid Siddiqui for Medium describe a former Minister of Justice for the Black Panther Party, known in the 1960s and 70s as H. Rap Brown. Once the chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Imam Jamil Al-Amin was one of the original four targets of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program. The Bureau called for the “neutralization” of Al-Amin and other prominent black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr and Stokely Carmichael. The FBI compiled enormous files on Al-Amin and his community.
Now 76 years old, he is serving a life sentence for what many claim was the wrongful conviction in 2002 for shooting two deputy sheriffs in Atlanta, Georgia on the night of March 16, 2000. This, despite a man named Otis Jackson confessing to the shooting. Investigative journalist Hamzah Raza reported on Otis Jackson and his confession that could exonerate Al-Amin.
Al-Amin was transferred from the ADX SuperMax prison in Florence, Colorado to Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma. He is currently being held at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona. https://www.kundnani.org/jamilalamin/
Guest – Arun Kundnani, Adjunct Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and teaches terrorism studies at John Jay College. He is the author of The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia and He is the author of The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Jeremy Hammond Refused To Answer Federal Grand Jury Questions
Imprisoned information activist Jeremy Hammond was recently found in contempt for refusing to answer seven questions in front of a Federal Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. Earlier this year Chelsea Manning was remanded into custody for failure to provide testimony before the same grand jury.
In late August 2019, Jeremy was removed from the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis, Tennessee where he was serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to charges he hacked the private intelligence contractor Stratfor Global Intelligence. At the time of his transfer Jeremy was enrolled in the Federal Bureau of Prison’s intensive Residential Drug Abuse Program. Participants qualify for early release on completion of the program. Jeremy’s release date was projected to come around mid-December of 2019. Because of his removal from the drug program and the summons to this grand jury his prison time incarcerated could be extended by over two years.
FreeJeremyHammond
HackThisSite
Jeremy is currently confined at William G. Truesdale Correctional Center in Alexandria, VA and will likely remain there for the duration of these proceedings.
Guest – Attorney Sarah Kunstler – Sarah attended law school and graduated from Columbia Law School in 2004. She began practicing law in 2005 and is an attorney at Kunstler Law, helping people with Civil Rights issues.
Guest – Jeremy Hammond is a member of the hacktivist network Anonymous and a gifted computer programmer whose case has attracted the attention of activists, civil libertarians and those concerned about the rights of whistleblowers. He is currently spending a decade in prison for allegedly disclosing information about the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), revealing that they had been spying on human rights defenders at the behest of corporations and governments.
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US Abandons Kurds Again
Russia was poised to step into the power vacuum left after President Trump ordered American troops to leave northeast Syria earlier this month, paving the way for a deadly Turkish offensive. U.S. forces only numbered around 1,000, but with their Kurdish partners they were able to beat back ISIS and bring relative stability to a large part of Syria after six years of war.
Thousands of the Kurdish-led fighters died while fighting ISIS, and now say they’ve been betrayed by America.
About 200,000 civilians have fled the clashes with Turkey, and a Kurdish lawmaker called on President Trump to stop what she called “ethnic cleansing” of the Kurds in northern Syria. Turkey insists its offensive has not targeted civilians and views the Kurdish-led forces as terrorists linked to a separatist movement based in southern Turkey.
Erdogan has said if the Kurds aren’t completely out of what he’s called a “safe zone,” stretching across most of Syria’s northern border and about 20 miles south into Syrian territory, his offensive against them will resume. Already it has claimed dozens of civilian lives and has forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Syria’s Russian-backed President Bashar Assad has lambasted Turkey for its offensive on his soil, and criticized Syrian Kurds for asking the U..S for help.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
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Fall Out From US Troop Withdrawal From Syria
The US constitution commands that Congress must declare war before the President, the commander-in-chief of the arm forces, can engage in hostilities.
Moreover, the United Nations charter, to which the United States is a signatory, and which was established after World War II to prevent wars of aggression, requires countries to obtain permission from United Nations Security Council before going to war. There are no exceptions except for self-defense.
Since 2011 United States has had troops in Syria in violation of both the US Constitution and the United Nations charter.
When Donald Trump ran for the presidency in 2016 he criticized the Iraq war. Recently he said that war, commenced in 2003, was based on a lie. The lie was that Saddam Hussein, then leader of that country, had been in possession of weapons of mass destruction and in league with the terrorist organization Al Qaeda. As a result of this lie tens of thousands of lives were lost and millions of people displaced and made into refugees.
Three weeks ago Trump withdrew US troops from neighboring Syria, where they had been sent after the commencement of the war in Iraq. This move was condemned by a lopsided vote in the US in the US House of Representatives, which included many Republicans and was condemned as well in the mainstream media. Trump was accused of betraying the Kurds who live in Northeast Syria and who had fought alongside American troops against the terrorist organization ISIS. After the withdrawal of US troops the Kurds were immediately attacked by forces of neighboring Turkey which has resisted autonomy for the Kurds since the end of World War in 1917.
contact – jmackler (at) lmai (dot) net
Guest – Jeff Mackler, author of “Syria: Anatomy of Another Imperialist War“. He is on the administrative committee and a founder of the United National Antiwar Coalition. Jeff Mackler is Socialist Action’s candidate for the US presidency in 2020.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Impeachment, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Impeachment Inquiry With Constitutional Law Professor Marjorie Cohn
Nearly 300 former U.S. national security and foreign policy officials signed an open letter on October 6, calling for an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The signatures were gathered by National Security Action, an organization that former Obama administration officials formed out of concern for Trump’s “reckless leadership.” The list includes many others who served as career officials in Republican and Democratic administrations.
The former national security professionals said they had largely avoided politics during their public service, but said allegations revealed in the recent whistleblower complaints warranted an additional investigation.
“The revelations of recent days, however, demand a response,” the statement says. “President Trump appears to have leveraged the authority and resources of the highest office in the land to invite additional foreign interference into our democratic processes.”
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught for 25 years. The former president of the National Lawyers Guild and criminal defense attorney is a legal scholar and political analyst who writes books and articles, and lectures throughout the world about human rights, US foreign policy, and the contradiction between the two. She has testified before Congress and debated the legality of the war in Afghanistan at the prestigious Oxford Union. MarjorieCohn
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Trump Impeachment Inquiry
Like President Richard Nixon before him President Donald Trump made the mistake of using his power as president to go after the wrong target.
Nixon had his people burglarize the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC. President Trump himself used his power to try to get the president of the Ukraine to investigate his, Trump’s, main Democratic Party rival, Joe Biden.
This transgression, not Trump’s caging of children, violating the separation of powers, or violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, was viewed by the mainstream of the Democratic Party and their leader Nancy Pelosi as a “high crime and misdemeanor” violative of the constitution and worthy of an impeachment inquiry. Joe Biden is the preferred candidate of the Democratic establishment.
By impeaching Trump they want to preempt any possible attack on Biden, or on themselves, that could emerge from the Ukraine. It is to be remembered that the Obama Biden Clinton administration orchestrated and overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014, replacing it with the current government, which, for the first time since World War II has actual fascists in the Ukrainian government.
The impeachment process as it gains momentum could spread to other figures in the Trump administration. Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani seems likely to get indicted for violating election finance laws.
The impeachment inquiry could also expose the reality of the democratic party itself which under Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton organized the overthrow in 2014 of the democratically elected government of Ukraine and opened the door to American investment in the country, especially in natural gas. Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, as is now widely known, got a seat on the board of Berksems, the largest natural gas company in the Ukraine. This evident sinecure netted him $50,000 a month for a period of several years.
Guest – Ron Jacobs, author of Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books. His latest offering is a pamphlet titled Capitalism: Is the Problem.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Case Update October 2019
In our society, nuclear weapons that can destroy all creation are taken as a normal, even an inevitable part of life. In a dramatic action to break what they call “the crime of silence” seven Catholic peace activists entered the Kings Bay trident submarine base in Georgia last April to perform an act of symbolic disarmament. They used hammers to follow the prophecy of Isaiah “to beat swords into plowshares” and poured blood to make holy what was evil in a sacramental action. Kings Bay is homeport to six ballistic missile trident submarines, each of which deploy 16 trident missiles carrying four or more warheads of at least 100 kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was 14 kilotons. Each submarine thus has the destructive power of at least 500 Hiroshima bombs. The plowshares seven face up to 25 years in federal prison. Their trial is coming up. Theirs was the latest of 100 plowshares actions around the world since 1980.
Guest – Martha Hennessey, Kings Bay Plowshares 7 co-defendant, activist and volunteer with the New York Catholic Worker.
Guest – Patrick O’Neill, Kings Bay Plowshares 7 co-defendant, activist and volunteer with the New York Catholic Worker.
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Flint Water Crisis Case and Michigan Private Prisons Update
The notorious Flint, Michigan poison drinking water case has been in litigation for more than three years. Detroit constitutional attorney Bill Goodman joins us to give an update on the case.
Former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, high-ranking former members of his staff and other state employees are the target of a federal civil rights lawsuit over the city of Flint’s water crisis. The lawsuit, which also targets the city, alleges that the officials tried to balance the City’s budget through a pattern of devious and race-based activity that targeted the people of Flint. It claims that these public official lied to the people of Flint by continuing to mail water bills to Flint residents, which they allege fraudulently misrepresents that the city is providing safe, clean water to its residents.
A group of Flint residents filed the lawsuit on behalf of all the citizens of Flint seeking financial compensation for injuring virtually every adult and child in that beleaguered city – for lead poisoning and brain damage to the kids, for severe skin ailments and hair loss for everyone, for death from Legionnaires disease, and countless other injuries; in addition, there had been tremendous psychological injury to the entire population. Beyond that, people in this community have sustained massive property damage, loss of business, and financial losses. In addition to compensation, they demand life-time future medical care.
This case asserts that this disaster was caused when a multitude of public officials decided to change the source of water from clean safe water, to dangerous, untreated water, knowing – at all times of the danger – and yet lying to the public and claiming that they water was safe when they knew that it was dangerous and poisoned.
We will also speak with him about his lawsuit against a private prison corporation for negligence in allowing a gang execution in one of the private prisons it owns. Attorney Goodman is counsel to the inmates at the Wayne County, Michigan jail in the oldest jail conditions case in the United States going back to 1971. Detroit is in Wayne County.
Guest -Attorney Bill Goodman is the former Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. He is the attorney for a number of victims of water poisoning in Flint, Michigan.
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