CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Death Penalty, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Updates:
- Hosts Discuss the Recent Film – Vice
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Philadelphia Judge Rules Mumia Abu-Jamal Can Reargue Case
We are pleased to begin the new year with a major development that might pave the way to freedom for former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, the award-winning journalist convicted in the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
In late December, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge ruled that Mumia can reargue his appeal in the case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The decision hinges on a recent Supreme Court Decision with similar facts. Then presiding Chief Justice Ronald Castille failed to excuse himself due to his prior role as Philadelphia district attorney in Mumia’s earlier appeal. Mumia’s attorneys argued that Castille made statements related to persons accused of killing police officers that indicated he should have recused himself. His campaign speeches and letters urged capital punishment in police-killing cases.
As we’ve long reported, Mumia spent nearly three decades on death row before his sentence was thrown out over flawed jury instructions. In 2001, prosecutors agreed to a sentence of life without parole.
Judge Leon Tucker’s decision this past December was split; he denied Mumia’s claim that Castille had, “personal significant involvement” in the case while in the DA’s Office.
Guest – Professor Johanna Fernandez, is a native New Yorker. She received a PhD in History from Columbia University and a BA in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University. Professor Fernández teaches 20th Century U.S. History, the history of social movements, the political economy of American cities, and African-American history. She has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, PA and Trinity College in Hartford, CT and is, most recently, the recipient of a Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa that will take her to Jordan in spring 2011, where she will teach graduate courses in American History. She is with the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.
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Anti-War Movement Gains Traction Amid Perpetual War
American wars undertaken in the Middle East have been raging for an historically unprecedented 17 years, ever since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
President George W. Bush understood that being at war president would boost his sagging popularity. First, he ordered the attack on Afghanistan on the pretext that it harbored Osama bin Laden and would not give him up.
Then, in 2003, with designs on Iraq’s oil, the United States of America unleashed an illegal war on that country. It was falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties with Al Qaeda. The war involved the bombing of cities and was supposed to be of short duration. Americans were advised that the Iraqi people would welcome the American intervention. Their president Saddam Hussein was captured and executed. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands we’re made refugees.
The entire Middle East was destabilized as the wars spread under the Obama administration. His secretary of state Hillary Clinton planned the aggression against Libya, where its leader Mohamar Qudaffi was captured and bayoneted to death. The country was destroyed. Clinton said at the time “we came, we saw, he died.“
The war was extended Syria, which the United States had coveted since World War II. The United States and Israel failed to kill its leader Bashar Assad but reduced much of the country to ruins and created thousands of refugees Then the United States militarily backed and supplied its Allie Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen where 85,000 children have died of starvation.
All in all the United States made war on seven middle eastern countries simultaneously. Then, recently, fulfilling a campaign promise, President Donald Trump, the commander-in-chief, ordered the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Syria. He has been opposed in this by the entire establishment, the military, the media, the intelligence agencies, and both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Guest – Ajamu Baraka, an initiator and leader of the Black Alliance for Peace, an organization which is part of the coalition. He has also just returned from a meeting of international leaders because the USA’s involvement of a possible overthrow of the government of Venezuela. Ajamu Baraka helped organize a conference in Baltimore Last month concerning USA’s 800 bases abroad particularly the new ones in Africa.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Michael E. Tigar On Challenges Lawyers Currently Face
Recently on Law And Disorder we interviewed Baher Azmy, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and National Lawyers Guild President Natasha Bannan. We were interested in their views of the challenges facing leftist lawyers and their movement clients face in these difficult times.
Attorney Jim Lafferty, the former head of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who has a program on our sister station in Los Angeles, KPFK, joins me in the studio to cohost. We are going to speak for the entire hour with human rights attorney Michael Tigar.
Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, our democracy, however restricted at the time, has been even further shrunk by the growth of the national security state and the all knowing surveillance apparatus that has been set up. Moreover, the President, as the head of the executive branch of the government, has gathered unto to himself an unprecedented amount of power over the judicial and the legislative branches of the government. tigarbytes.blogspot.com/
Guest – Michael Tigar, emeritus professor of law at Duke University and at Washington College of Law. He has been a lawyer working on social change issues since the 1960s. He has argued numerous cases in United States Supreme Court and many Circuit Courts of Appeal. His books include “Law and the Rise of Capitalism”, “ Fighting Injustice ”, and the forthcoming Mythologist of State and Monopoly Power.“
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Ray McGovern: Clinton Email Wikileaks Valid
The prevailing Russia-gate narrative is that Russia colluded with Donald Trump to swing the 2016 election his way.
Special prosecutor Robert Mueller has led a nearly 2 year investigation in search of proving this. Under American law when a crime is committed prosecutors search for the culprit . In this case, critics say, the search is for the crime.
The investigation seems to be winding down with the expectation that he will soon issue his report. The major news media, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the intelligence community have conducted a drum beat with a nearly fact free assertion that the Russians helped steal the 2016 election.
Is this story true? Is there more to it? Donald Trump after all ran his campaign on a position of easing tensions with Russia.
Is it really in our interest to perpetuate a cold war with a nuclear armed power?
Did Russia use Wikileaks and it’s editor Julian Assange to reveal secrets about the Democratic party? What were the secrets? What danger to free journalism and to truth tellers and whistle blowers does the acceptance of the allegation of Russian interference in the US elections are we facing?
Guest – Ray McGovern former CIA intelligence analyst, Ray briefed President George H. W. Bush every morning on intelligence matters, particularly with respect to Russia. He is a founder of VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a contributor to the blog Common Dreams.
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Defund Islamophobia Campaign
Fear and hatred of Arabs and Muslims existed in the United States especially after the first Gulf war, started by President George H. W. Bush a decade before the attacks on September 11, 2001.
This fear and hatred increased tremendously in the aftermath of those terrorist attacks. How could it be otherwise? It was used to stir up the American public in the ensuing devastating war against Iraq whose government was falsely linked to the attacks but wars were also fought simultaneously in six other predominately Muslim countries.
Anti-Muslim fear and hatred has been promoted in the United States by several groups and people including Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, and David Horowitz.
It turned out that these people and the groups through which they operate were massively funded to the tune of millions of dollars by the United Jewish Appeal in New York City and other Jewish charities in Chicago and San Francisco.
Guest – Donna Nevel is a community psychologist, educator, and co-director of PARCO. She is a long time organizer for justice and is a founding member of Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, Jews Say No!, and the Nakba Project.
Guest – Asaf Calderon is an Israel-American organizer and member of Jewish Voice for peace – New York City. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1991 and moved to New York in 2016. Asaf has a degree in history of the Middle East and Africa from the University of Tel Aviv, and he currently studies for his Masters of Social Work at Hunter College.
Islamophobia Report
BDSmovement.net / Endtheoccupation.org / JewishVoiceForPeace.org
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Guantanamo Diary: Mohamedou Ould Slahi
The American offshore prison camp in Guantánamo, Cuba is still operating. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, it was set up as a place where neither American or international law would apply and where prisoners could be brought, tortured, detained forever, and never charged with a crime. Ten years ago, former President Obama promised to close the offshore prison when he ran for office. It remains up and running to this day. Mohamedou Ould Slahi spent 18 years of his life there. He was an electrical engineer from Mauritania in Africa and educated in Germany. He was 32 years old when he was apprehended in his home, taken to Jordan where he was tortured, then to Afghanistan, then to Guantanamo and 16 years later at age 48, he was released. He walked out of Guantanamo Bay Prison in October 2016 without being charged with a crime and returned to his native Mauritania.
While in prison in 2005 he wrote a memoir, in English, one of his four languages. His attorney Nancy Hollander had asked him to do it and she finally got it declassified in 2012 but with heavy redactions. It was made into a book, titled Guantánamo Diary, and published in 2015 and became an international bestseller.
In it, he describes how he was tortured in ways personally approved by then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Torture is a criminal act under both US and international law. As many know, Rumsfeld has yet to be prosecuted.
Guest – Mohamedou Ould Slahi joins hosts from his native country of Mauritania where he is a writer. He is the author of Guantanamo Diary.
Guest – Attorney Nancy Hollander has been a member of the firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, P.A. since 1980 and a partner since 1983. Her practice is largely devoted to criminal cases, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Hollander also served as a consultant to the defense in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland, has assisted counsel in other international cases and represents two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Nancy is co-author of WestGroup’s Everytrial Criminal Defense Resource Book, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence, 15th Edition, and Wharton’s Criminal Procedure, 14th Edition. She has appeared on national television programs as PBS Now, Burden of Proof, the Today Show, Oprah Winfrey, CourtTV, and the MacNeill/Lehrer News Hour.
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Manhattan Neighborhood Network Supreme Court Case
Is a public-access TV channel run by private nonprofit corporation subject to the First Amendment? The Supreme Court will consider that question in a case involving the Manhattan Neighborhood Network or MNN. In 1991 MNN was designated to operate as a public-access channel in New York City. The Manhattan Borough President has no control over MNN but does pick two of its thirteen board members.
In 2012 Jesus Melendez, an occasional contributor to MNN, was suspended for trying to attend a board meeting. His associate Deedee Halleck then videoed him outside talking about the situation. MNN banned the video from airing. Melendez and Deedee brought a First Amendment claim against MNN asking if the network is a state actor for purposes of their First Amendment rights. The district court said no, noting that, while it was a close call, other circuits had concluded that privately run public-access networks were not state actors.
The Supreme Court hasn’t directly weighed in on this question although Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a 1996 concurrence in a case dealing with laws regulating content on public-access channels, wrote they should be considered state actors who run public fora and thus be subject to the First Amendment. Justice Clarence Thomas disagreed in his concurrence, writing that “franchising authorities require cable operators to create public access channels, but nothing in the record suggests that local franchising authorities take any formal easement or other property interest in those channels that would permit the government to designate that property as a public forum.”
Defenders of MNN claim, that while it’s possible that some public-access channels could be rightly called state actors, the Court should take the case to clarify the state-actor test and to review the Second Circuit’s unnecessarily broad opinion.
Guest – Deedee Halleck one of the plaintiffs in this case and among the top media activists. She’s co-founder of Paper Tiger Television and also the Deep Dish Satellite Network, the first grass roots community television network. She is Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication at the University of California at San Diego.
Guest – Attorney Paul W. Hughes, a partner in the law firm Mayer Brown’s appellate and Supreme Court practice. Paul has handled more than 200 appellate matters, more than 125 of which were in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2017The American Lawyer named Hughes “Litigator of the Week” in connection with his immigration work.
Censorship, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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How the Rats Re-Formed Congress
A fable is a short tale that anthropomorphizes animals. The animals personify human virtues and vices, and function as an instrument of moral instruction. We mention this because Ralph Nader joins us to discuss his new book How the Rats Re-Formed Congress. It’s a Fable about an invasion of rats in Congress that triggers a peoples’ political revolt. It begins when a Congressional reporter breaks a bizarre story: “Rats have invaded the toilet bowls” of the Speaker of the House and the Minority Leader. A national news frenzy ensues.
Activists seize on the breaking story to organize for a populist agenda. Spontaneous rallies erupt. The activists see the rats upending “business as usual” routines on Capitol Hill as a symbol against lobbyists and corporate Congress. Millions flood into the nation’s capitol to take back Congress from Wall Street. Congressional offices are deluged with citizen rallies and meetings. Members are challenged in primaries. Incumbents join the movement.
Wall Street and its lobbyists warn of economic collapse and mass layoffs if the people’s agenda passes Congress. Corporate front groups are formed to disrupt peaceful crowds. Despite that, corporate lobbyists and think tanks can’t overcome the organized will of the determined citizenry. Tortmuseum.org
Listen to our past interview with Ralph Nader about the Tort Museum.
Guest – Ralph Nader, one of the nation’s most effective and well-known social critics. He has raised public awareness and increased government and corporate accountability. As a young lawyer in 1965 he made headlines with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, leading to congressional hearings and passage of a series of life-saving auto safety laws in 1966. His example has inspired a generation of consumer advocates, citizen activists and public interest attorneys. Full biography.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Crash Course : From the Good War to the Forever War
US Army Ranger turned conscientious objector Rory Fanning recently wrote in this in The Guardian newspaper: “Last week Sunday ,November 11, we celebrated Veterans Day. It used to be called Armistice Day and was a celebration of peace after the slaughter of World War One. Now it is called Veterans Day. The United States has 668 military bases around the globe. The United States has conducted military operations in 2/3 of the world’s countries since September 11, 2001. It has spent 3/4 of $1 trillion each year on it’s military – more than the next 13 countries combined. The US has taken hundreds of thousands of lives around the world these past 14 years and shows no signs of slowing down.“
Guest – H. Bruce Franklin, is one of America’s leading cultural historians, H. Bruce Franklin is the author or editor of nineteen books and more than 300 articles on culture and history published in more than a hundred major magazines and newspapers, academic journals, and reference works. He has given over five hundred addresses on college campuses, on radio and TV shows, and at academic conferences, museums, and libraries, and he has participated in making four films. He has taught at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, and Yale and currently is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark. Before becoming an academic, Franklin worked in factories, was a tugboat mate and deckhand, and flew for three years in the United States Air Force as a Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer. Professor Franklin is touring the country to speak about his just publish book Crash Course : From the Good War to the Forever War.
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