CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself
COVID-19 did not cause the current economic devastation to billions of people around the world. It triggered the crisis. It illuminated the inherent instability in the capitalist system itself. Capitalism exacerbates unemployment, inequality, racism, and patriarchy and threatens the health and safety of workers and our communities.
We are in the worst economic crisis since the great depression of 90 years ago. Half of the American population is poor or near poor. Twenty million people are unemployed. It is estimated that 400,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by the end of the year. Most of these people will be Black, Latino, the poor and the elderly.
The large corporations have bought out both the Republican and Democratic parties. Neither one of these parties has put forward an effective plan on what to do to get us out of this catastrophic situation.
Guest – Professor Richard Wolff, author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. His previous books are Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism.
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Julian Assange Extradition Case Update
The decline of democracy and the rule of law, already advanced under Obama , has accelerated under Trump. By his own admission it is widely known that President Trump will not consent to leaving office if he loses the election. What is not so widely known is the case that he caused to be prosecuted against journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange.
Assange is being railroaded in the Old Bailey courthouse in London in an effort by US government, in collaboration with its British ally, to extradite Assange and send him to the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Assange told the truth about American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2010. He is 49 years old and in terrible mental and physical health. If he loses and is sent to the Eastern District of Virginia for trial and successfully prosecuted, which is a given, it will be the death of free journalism and a blow to the first amendment which is a keystone of our democracy because it involves the right to learn.
Assange Defense
@defenseassange – Nathan Fuller twitter
Defend.wikileaks.org
Guest – Attorney Nathan Fuller who has been attending Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London. He leads the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Chris Hedges Analysis Of Pre-Election Society In The United States
We are living in extraordinary times. At the same time we face both tremendous danger and extraordinary opportunity.
The danger comes from a failed state, a failed racist capitalist state they cannot afford safety let alone opportunity to its citizens. Our opportunity comes from the massive social mobilizations that we have not seen in 75 years. A young generation has risen up. White people are involved with black people who are providing leadership. Perhaps 20 million have taken to the streets.
Trump is desperate and resorts to stoking fear of violence, race baiting, lying, explaining to his followers that all the unrest is due to agitators, antifa, Marxist and socialists.
The Democratic Party has chosen to oppose Trump with Joe Biden. The best you can say about him is that he’s not Trump. He has vowed to veto a medicare for all bill if it comes across his desk and has suggested that police violence could be curbed if they shot people in the legs, not the chest. He is for giving police departments more money. The worst you can say about Biden and the Democratic Party is that they are not a bulwark against fascism.
The big financial backers of the Democratic Party crushed the Sanders campaign indicating they would rather have Trump than a social democrat who would cost them money and raise expectations. Sanders for his part missed his historic moment, twice, when he refused to break from the Democratic Party in both 2016 and 2020.
Instead he performs the function of a sheepdog herding people back into a moribund capitalist party that has nothing to offer as a way out of the combined climate, economic, race, the health crisis, and nuclear annihilation and nuclear annihilation
Guest – Chris Hedges about where we are at, how we got here, and what to do next. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He was the foreign correspondent for the New York Times for 15 years and served as middle eastern bureau chief. He is the host of Emmy award nominated RT America show On Contact and the author of numerous books Including America: The Fairwell Tour, Empire of Illusion, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
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Global Peace Film Festival 2020
At the end of September each year since 2003, the Global Peace Film Festival has used the power of the film to advance peace on earth. The Festival views “peace” not as the absence of conflict but as a framework for channeling, processing and resolving conflict through respectful and non-violent means. This year, the festival will be virtual, and runs from Monday September 21 until Sunday October 4.
In keeping with the spirit of the festival, the films highlight themes such as civil rights, environmental justice, ethics, human rights, immigration, LGBTQ+, music, social justice, voting, wellness and wildlife. Each year, our program is carefully curated to create a place for open dialogue, using the films as catalysts for change.
Guest – Nina Streich, The Global Peace Film Festival founder and executive director.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Complaint Filed Against Judge Demanding Release of Attorney In Chevron Case
Last week dozens of legal organizations representing more than 500,000 lawyers along with more than 200 individual lawyers submitted a judicial complaint against Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in New York. The violations were directed at human rights lawyer Steven Donziger whose case we’ve been following on Law and Disorder. Donziger, listeners will recall, won a historic judgment against Chevron in Ecuador to clean up the pollution caused by decades of oil drilling with no environmental controls.
The complaint was filed by the National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). The Chief Judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Robert Katzmann, has a duty to read the complaint and determine if he will appoint a committee to investigate and issue findings.
The complaint documents is a pattern of ethics violations committed by Judge Kaplan, a former tobacco industry lawyer.
Kaplan denied Donziger a jury trial, put in place a series of unusual courtroom tactics, severely restricted Donziger’s ability to mount a defense, and detained him at home for more than one year on contempt charges that were rejected by the U.S. Attorney. Kaplan allowed Donziger to be prosecuted by a private law firm that has Chevron as a client. He imposed enormous fines on Donziger that have all but bankrupted him.
The complaint alleges that the “statements and actions of Judge Kaplan over the last ten years show him to have taken on the role of counsel for Chevron … rather than that of a judge adjudicating a live controversy before him.”
Despite accepting jurisdiction in Ecuador, Chevron came back to the US and filed a civil “racketeering” case against the Donziger and all 47 named plaintiffs. They potentially sought $60 billion in damages — the highest personal liability in US history. Judge Kaplan denied Donziger a jury and let Chevron pay a witness at least $2 million while moving him and his entire family from Ecuador to the US. Chevron lawyers coached the witness, Alberto Guerra, for 53 days before Kaplan let him testify against Donziger; Guerra later admitted under oath that he had lied on the stand. Kaplan also refused to let Donziger testify on direct examination.
Twenty-nine Nobel laureates and several human rights organizations have criticized the harassment of Donziger by judicial authorities and have demanded his immediate release.
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
MakeChevronCleanUp
Guest – Lauren Regan, a member of Steven Donziger’s defense team. She is also executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center and a member of the National Lawyers Guild.
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The Tragedy of American Science: From Truman To Trump
Science came out of the enlightenment. Research then was unbiased and done in the interest of the public. This is no longer the case with the militarization of science and it’s corporatization.
In our times biased research has been conducted to show that tobacco doesn’t cause cancer, that chemicals and pesticides used in agriculture do no harm, that opioids will not kill thousands, and that there is no such thing as human caused climate change.
Science and technology has been chained to the military where trillions of dollars have been spent in the effort to more effectively kill people.
The US economy’s addiction to military spending distorts and deformed science by making it overwhelmingly subservient to military interests. This has transformed science from the classic idea of a creative force for the advancement of humankind into its destructive and anti-human opposite. That trillions of dollars in resources and scientific talent are not devoted to solving the problems of poverty, disease, and environmental destruction is one of the greatest tragedies of our times.
Guest – Dr. Clifford D Conner is a historian and he teaches the history of science at the School of Professional Studies, CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks and biographies of three revolutionaries: John Palmer Road, Arthur O’Connor, and Colonel Edward Marcus Despard.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Update:
$600M to Settle Flint Water Crisis Litigation
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Julian Assange Update August 2020
President Obama prosecuted and imprisoned more whistleblowers than any other president. But President Trump did one thing that Obama did not do. He indicted Julian Assange for conspiracy under the Espionage Act charging that in 2010 Assange and his publishing organization WikiLeaks released truthful information about American war crimes.
Obama held off making such a charge because the US government has never before gone after a publisher; not even the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon papers.
Assange sits in solitary confinement in the notorious Belmarsh prison in London. He awaits the outcome of the USA’s extradition request.
His partner, Stella Moris, the mother of their two young children said: “Julian is being targeted by the United States for the crime of journalism. He helped expose the war crimes and human rights abuses which the US would have preferred to keep hidden from public view. He revealed the killing of unarmed civilians and the torture of innocent people. No one has been held responsible for the serious crimes Julian has exposed. This extradition aims to entomb and silence him forever.”
He is in bad shape mentally and physically. Nels Melzer, The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture visited Julian and reported that he was being tortured by the months on end of solitary confinement. He hasn’t seen his lawyer in five months nor his companion and their two children. He can’t prepare his defense. He was finally given a computer but the keys were glued down. When he last appear in court he could barely pronounce his name. Defend.wikileaks.org
What is at stake is the future of free journalism. Journalists have a right to publish and we, their audience, have a right to learn. This is what the US government is attempting to take away.
Guest – Nathan Fuller, the American head of the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
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Open Letter To The Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League pretends to be a civil rights organization, but the ADL is not an ally. It has a legacy of supporting racist policing, surveillance, colonialism and the silencing of social justice activism. It has branded itself as a civil rights organization in ways that conceal and legitimatize is right wing activities, undermined the rights of Black, immigrant, queer, Muslim, and Arabs.
In August 2020, 100 organizations signed an open letter exposing the ADL. Among the signatory organizations whose work Law And Disorder has covered on this radio program include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and Palestine Legal.
These 100 organizations signed an open letter announcing the publication of a pamphlet written by a working group with contributions from the American Friends Service Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Palestine Legal.
Guest – Lesley Williams, member of the coordinating committee for Jewish Voice for Peace in Chicago, the advisory board of speakers bureau for Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, and a founding member of the Tzedek Chicago, a non-Zionist pro social justice synagogue in Chicago. She is the author of “The Anti-Defamation League Kills the Black Jewish Alliance” and “We Can’t Fight Anti-Semitism and anti-Black Racism in Isolaton“. She works with a local coalition of teachers and activists to bring Palestinian history into school curricula.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Democracy, If We Can Keep Keep It: The ACLU’s 100 Year Fight For Rights In America
The American Civil Liberties Union was formed 100 years ago in 1920 in a climate of fear in our country not unlike what exists today. Anarchists and socialists were scapegoated. They were rounded up, tried under the newly passed espionage act, and hundreds were deported or imprisoned, Eugene V Debs being the most prominent.
To mark a century of defense of the first amendment and the Bill of Rights, Ellis Close has written an important history of the ACLU titled Democracy, If We Can Keep Keep It: The ACLU’s 100 year fight for rights in America. The Los Angeles review of books recently featured an extensive appreciation of Closs’ book written by constitutional lawyer Stephen Rhode.
Guest – Attorney Stephen Rohde has been on the board of the southern California ACLU over 25 years. He has taught constitutional law and has written a number of books on civil liberties.
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Dakota Access Pipeline: Update
July has been a legal roller coaster ride with respect to efforts to shut down the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipelines. First, a judge invalidated federal permits saying that the Army Corps of Engineers failed to address the potential damage from oil spills in the Dakota pipeline. He ordered the company Energy Transfer to stop pumping crude oil through South Dakota. On the heels of that order, a federal appellate court temporarily blocked that shutdown.
As for KXL, which would carry tar sands oil from Alberta Canada through Montana and South Dakota before reaching Nebraska, the Supreme Court in early July rejected the Trump administration’s request to allow construction of the KXL Pipeline by TC Energy. A Montana court ruling halting construction therefore still stands.
As listeners will recall, protesters and lawsuits against both pipelines cite the devastation that pipeline leaks would cause to the environment. In the case of tar sands oil, it is thicker, highly volatile, and more corrosive than conventional crude oil. This increases the likelihood of a leak. That renders it far more difficult, if not impossible, to clean up such a spill.
https://www.wecaninternational.org/divest-invest-protect
Guest – Attorney Natali Segovia is the Staff Attorney for the Water Protector Legal Collective – the organization that grew out of the legal tent at Oceti Sakowin camp in the Standing Rock resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. She chairs the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Committee of the National Lawyers Guild and serves on the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Global Justice. She also serves on the Indian Law Section Executive Council of the Arizona State Bar.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Attorney Marjorie Cohn: Trump, Assange, Democracy And Rule of Law
Without democracy and the rule of law there can be no significant social change. However, much democracy was constricted by race and class before the attacks on September 11, 2001 and before Trump, democracy and the rule of law are now facing lethal attacks on many fronts.
Trump has successfully put 198 young, reactionary, and some ignorant judges on the federal bench. He has illegally called out troops to violently disperse peaceful protesters in the park in front of the White House. Trump has threatened the personnel of the International Criminal Court who are attempting to investigate US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. These include the crime of torture. These crimes, perpetrated under the Bush administration, went unprosecuted by President Obama who infamously said “we must look forward not backward.”
Trump’s Justice Department is pursuing and attempting to extradite truth telling whistle blowing journalist Julian Assange who 10 years ago released the “collateral murder” video showing the commission of American war crimes in Iraq, among other embarrassing information. Assange is confined in London’s Belmarsh prison. He is sick, in solitary, and has been psychologically tortured. He faces 175 years in prison in the United States if convicted under the old Espionage Act for activities protected by the first amendment.
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law where she taught for 25 years. She is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, a criminal defense attorney, a legal scholar, and a political analyst. She 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 at the prestigious Oxford Union.
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