Academic Freedom, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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Guilty of Journalism
The pending criminal case against journalist Julian Assange is the most significant far reaching First Amendment matter in our lifetime. It will have, in fact it already has had, an impact on publishing and journalism. This is so because it constricts our freedom to know as well as journalists and publishers freedom to publish.
Our government functions as the executive committee of the ruling rich. It intends to keep it this way, in the words of the great civil rights attorney William Kunstler, “by any means necessary and for as long as possible.”
If as is likely the imprisoned journalist Julian Assange is extradited at America’s request from his solitary prison cell in London’s Belmarsh prison where he has been kept for four years and sent to Virginia to be tried for espionage he will be certainly be convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
His victimization is being accomplished under the 1917 Espionage Act, a law originally put into place during World War I to imprison spies. It is now used to get truth tellers like Julian Assange silenced.
Julian Assange Fact Sheet: Why Julian Must Be Freed
Guest – Kevin Gosztola who more than anyone has covered the whistleblower situation since he attended the court martial trial of Sergeant Chelsea Manning. Manning was convicted of giving government secrets to Julian Assange. Kevin Gosztola‘s book “Guilty of Journalism “was published by Seven Stories Press and Censored Press last month.
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Attorney Stephen Rohde: A Set Of Ideas Under Threat
American history has been marked by ongoing conflicts between those who are seeking an open, equal and inclusive society and those who cling to the racist origins of the United States and seek to literally whitewash that history and perpetuate white privilege.
We find ourselves in the midst of one of those conflicts today. The right of Black people to learn their own history is being denied them. The same is true of anyone who is not heterosexual.
The teaching of critical race theory is increasingly disallowed. The study of human sexuality in schools is being obliterated. Books are being banned in record numbers, and curricula is being rewritten to conform to a sanitized version of American history. Seven states, including Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Utah, have already passed laws limiting materials in libraries…and at least 113 bills are pending across the country that would negatively impact libraries or curtail peoples’ freedom to read.
As Jonathan Friedman, the Director of free expression and education at PEN America, a free speech organization said, “People need to understand that it’s not a single book being removed in a single school district, it’s a set of ideas that are under threat just about everywhere.”
Guest – Stephen Rohde is a noted constitutional scholar and activist. He is the past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the founder and current Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; the author of American Words of Freedom, and of Freedom of Assembly. Steve Rohde is a regular contributor to TruthDig as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Surveillance, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Political Prisoner, Right To Dissent, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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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”.
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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
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Cuba, Gaza, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Racist Police Violence, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Cars and Jails: Freedom, Dreams, Debt and Carcerality
What is the connection between cars and jails? Every day more than 50,000 Americans are pulled over by police officers while driving. Most of them will come away from this encounter owing money to the municipality or county in which they were stopped. Some will be arrested. They will join the nearly 9,000,000 Americans to cycle through our countries’ jails each year.
Police can choose from hundreds of traffic code violations to make a pretext stop and conduct a vehicle search. This may result in a fine or or an arrest.
American consumer lore has long held the automobile to be “freedom machine” consecrating the mobility of a free people. Yet paradoxically, the car also functions at the crossroads of two great systems of unfreedom and immobility – the credit economy and the American carceral system.
Guest – Andrew Ross who along with his co-author Julie Livingston has investigated this paradox and written the book “Cars and Jails: Freedom, Dreams, Debt and Carcerality”. It was just published by OR Books. The book shows how the long arms of debt and the carceral state operate in tandem in the daily life of car use and ownership. Andrew Ross is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, and a social activist and analyst. He has authored and edited numerous books and has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, The Nation, and Al Jazeera.
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Remembering Michael Ratner
Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith remember Michael Ratner as cohost, activist, radical attorney, author and close friend. In this show, hosts reflect on Michael’s work and listen back to several monologue updates. They include his work as co-counsel for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the Dahiya Doctrine, SNAP- Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, NSA survelliance in the Bahamas and Guantanamo Bay prisoner exchange.
Michael Ratner (1943-2016) was president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. Michael worked for decades, as a crusader for human rights both at home and abroad litigating many cases against international human rights violators resulting in millions of dollars in judgments for abuse victims and expanding the possibilities of international law. He acted as a principal counsel in the successful suit to close the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees on Guantanamo Base, Cuba. Michael Ratner has litigated a dozen cases challenging a President’s authority to go to war, without congressional approval. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Center has focused its efforts on the constitutionality of indefinite detention and the restrictions on civil liberties as defined by the unfolding terms of a permanent war. Among his many honors were: Trial Lawyer of the Year from the Trial lawyers for Public Justice, The Columbia Law School Public Interest Law Foundation Award, and the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award.
Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Can A Lawsuit Against The CIA Affect U.S. Extradition Attempt of Julian Assange?
In August 2022, a group of U.S. citizen attorneys and journalists sued the CIA and its former director Mike Pompeo. They alleged that the CIA, during Pompeo’s tenure, spied on them during meetings with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. The WikiLeaks founder sheltered there for 7 years in an effort to avoid extradition to the United States.. Assange is charged with 17 counts under the Espionage Act for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes. If convicted, he faces 175 years in prison.
The lawsuit says that the CIA violated the privacy rights of those journalists and lawyers. Plaintiffs include journalists Charles Glass and John Goetz, and New York City attorneys Margaret Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, who have represented Assange. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for the plaintiffs for the violations of their rights. It also seeks the removal of any information held by the CIA which was collected from them during their visits to see Assange and prevention of the release of any this information to a third party.
The CIA, as listeners may know, is prohibited from collecting intelligence on U.S. citizens, although several lawmakers have alleged that the agency maintains a secret repository of Americans’ communications data. Richard Roth, the lead attorney in this case, had this to say: “The United States Constitution shields American citizens from U.S. government overreach even when the activities take place in a foreign embassy in a foreign country.”
Journalists and lawyers visiting Assange were required to surrender their electronic devices to Undercover Global before each visit. U.C. Global is a private security company which was providing security to the embassy. The lawsuit alleged that the company copied that information and handed it over to the CIA.
In early November, Deborah Hrbek and our own Marjorie Cohn discussed the lawsuit and the case against Assange, in a program sponsored by the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee. For our show today, we’re delighted to bring you their remarks and answers to several audience questions. Deborah Hrbek starts off the event. In addition to being a member of the Assange defense team, her law practice focuses on entertainment and small business law. Marjorie is a member of the national advisory board of Assange Defense.
Hosted by Attorney Heidi Boghosian
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