Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Iraq War, Truth to Power, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Recalling San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin
Chesa Boudin has been serving San Franciscans as their district attorney for nearly 2 years. He is a leading progressive in what has been called the progressive prosecutors’ movement. Other progressive district attorneys in that small cohort are George Gascon in Los Angeles and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia.
In Berger v. United States, the Supreme Court said that the duty of a prosecutor “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” Yet all too many prosecutors are more concerned with winning cases than doing justice, which includes the protection of constitutional rights.
Chesa campaigned by proposing solutions to the disaster of mass incarceration, the civil rights issue of our time. He introduced policies of diversion and no cash bail. He put fewer juveniles behind bars. He opposed the death penalty and focused his efforts on helping victims of crimes. Chesa Boudin said that the recall effort is about criminal justice reform, that it is “a question of whether we are going to go forward and continue to implement data driven policies that center on crime victims, that invest in communities impacted by crime, and that use empirical evidence to address root causes of crime in our communities or if we are going to go back to the failed policies of Reagan and Trump.”
Chesa’s efforts are now being challenged. A claimed 83,000 signatures were gathered in San Francisco by paid workers to put a recall Boudin question on the San Francisco county ballot in June. Even Donald Trump has injected himself into the campaign in what has become a national well-funded Republican putsch.
ChesaBoudin.org
Fear mongering is employed to create a false conception that crime in San Francisco is rising. Today, my co-host Marjorie Cohn, a former criminal defense attorney and law professor, and I talk with Chesa Boudin about his philosophy and successful efforts as a progressive prosecutor.
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Decision To Not Extradite Julian Assange To U.S. Reversed
A devastating decision, the worst decision against free journalism in modern U.S. history came down on December 10th from a British appellate court against Julian Assange. It will abolish “National security“ journalism everywhere giving United States the power to reach across oceans and indict journalists and publishers who publish stories exposing and embarrassing the U.S. government. This is what Julian did.
The horrible but not unexpected decision reversed the decision of Vanessa Baraitser, the lower court judge who had refused a U.S. Government request to extradite Julian and send him to the Eastern District of Virginia where he will be put on trial for 17 counts under the 1917 Espionage Act. The charges stem from WikiLeaks’ 2010 revelations of U.S. war crimes. It is unlikely he could receive a fair trial in that most conservative district where most of the so-called War on Terror cases have been tried.
The lower court judge had ruled that the conditions of imprisonment in a U.S. prison are so egregious that Assange, who is in very frail mental health, would likely take his own life. He had already tried to do so in the wretched London Belmarsh prison where he is now being held in torturous solitary confinement.
When Baraitser’s decision came down, the United States was quick to offer so-called “assurances“ to the appellate court that Assange would not be sent to the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado and would not be subjected to special administrative measures which would cut him off from human contact. It was these assurances on which the appellate court relied in overturning the lower court’s decision.
Julian Assange was a young computer genius, an Australian citizen, who figured out a way to receive information from whistle blowers and publish that truth telling material anonymously in order to protect them.
When he began publishing WikiLeaks, Assange won awards for his journalism. He exposed U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo. He embarrassed the Democratic Party by showing how Hillary Clinton stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders.
When Mike Pompeo was Trump’s CIA director, he called WikiLeaks “a hostile non-state intelligence agency” and CIA officials suggested that Assange be kidnapped from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had received political asylum, and assassinated.
It was to the United States that the British High Court had no hesitation in sending Julian. So can the U.S. government’s assurances be trusted? Probably not, as they have reneged on nearly identical assurances in the past.
Meanwhile Julian Assange sits in isolation in Belmarsh prison in failing physical and mental health. His lawyers will appeal the decision to the British Supreme Court. But in the meantime, the United States has Julian exactly where they want him in the upcoming months or years that an appeal would take.
U.S. smearing, persecution, and isolation of Julian Assange has been going on now for 10 years. The sordid story began a decade ago when the US Department of Defense took the position that Julian should be discredited and slandered. He was falsely blamed for sexual misconduct in Sweden involving two women who never wanted Julian targeted. But the United States was able to get a prosecutor who did. A warrant was sent from Sweden to England requesting that Julian be sent to Sweden for questioning.
Our own Michael Ratner was representing Julian at the time. In an attempt to avoid being sent to Sweden, which would have extradited Julian to the United States for trial under the Espionage Act, Julian was granted political asylum in the tiny apartment that serves as the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He remained there for seven years under the direct video surveillance 24 hours a day by the CIA
Then the U.S. bribed and bullied its way to reverse the grant of asylum after a U.S.-friendly president assumed the helm of the Ecuadorian government. The British police brutally extracted him from the embassy and put him in solitary confinement in the notorious London Belmarsh prison, where he has remained for nearly 3 years.
Then the Trump administration brought the Espionage Act charges against him. Biden had referred to Julian as “a high-tech terrorist,” and his administration continued Trump’s historically unprecedented pursuit of Assange.
AssangeDefense.org
Guest – Chris Hedges whose many books and brilliant journalism have caused him to be respected as a moral philosopher. He is a regular columnist for Scheerpost” and is host of the show On Contact. Chris’ most recent article on the decision to extradite Julian Assange.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Attorney Jim Lafferty Commentary On Rittenhouse Case
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Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2021
The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the effects of Agent Orange, the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971, poisoning both the people and the land. The defoliant was used to more effectively prosecute the war against the Vietnamese people, exposing their hideouts, destroying their crops and food.
Descendants of approximately 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans who were exposed to the toxin continue to record disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of many diseases.
U.S. veterans receive some compensation from the U.S. government, but very little assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, who were the intended victims of the defoliant Agent Orange. Thus, on May 25, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) introduced H.R. 3518, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2021, in the House of Representatives. The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign (for which I serve as co-coordinator) assisted Lee in drafting the bill.
Lee said, “The United States has a moral responsibility to compensate the victims of the Agent Orange campaign. In the same way we are focused on beginning to repair the damage of systemic racism in the form of reparations, and the war on drugs with restorative justice, it is also our responsibility to try and atone for this disgraceful campaign during the Vietnam War.”
Susan Schnall is co-coordinator of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign. She was an active duty Navy nurse during the conflict in Vietnam and in 1969, she was tried and found guilty by general court martial of conduct unbecoming an officer for dropping anti-war flyers over military bases in the San Francisco Bay area and an aircraft, and wearing her uniform in the GI and Veterans March for Peace demonstration in San Francisco.
Guest – Susan Schnall is a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the American Public Health Association. She is also President of the New York City Veterans for Peace chapter and a board member of national Veterans For Peace. Susan organized and led a delegation of Science/Public Health professionals to Vietnam in 2013 to survey the land that had been contaminated by the US use of Agent Orange/dioxin and visit the people who had been harmed by the chemicals. In 2006, Susan was awarded the medal for peace and friendship between peoples by the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organizations.
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The U.S. Role In Cuba Destabilization
First the Trump and now the Biden administration have accelerated their efforts to destabilize and overthrow the Cuban socialist government with the aim of reestablishing capitalism on the island.
This effort is 62 years old going back to 1959 when a popular revolution lead by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara succeeded in getting rid of the U. S. imposed dictator Batista. The still popular revolution has improved the lives of the Cuban people. Back in 1959 Cuba was a U S. colony. Its resources were owned by US corporations, its dictatorial government was a puppet of the United States.
The population, both urban and rural, was desperately poor. These were the people who made the revolution. The new government instituted land reform. They offered to pay the US corporations for the value of the land. The corporations refused so the Cuban government nationalized the land and re-distributed it to the peasantry, as was their legal right.
In retaliation, the US-owned oil refinery was shut down, crippling the Cuban economy. So the Cubans nationalized the oil refinery, the telephone company, the nickel mines and so on. This all came under control of the Cuban people. This is the essence of the Cuban revolution. The US Government immediately instituted its policy, which continues to this day, of isolation and aggression. It started in 1960, a year after revolution. President Dwight D Eisenhower, pursuant to a 1960 memo written by a senior state department official, the US Government instituted a financial, economic, and commercial blockade of Cuba which is enshrined in our law and continues to this day.
Trump introduced some 200 new measures to overthrow the Cuban revolution. Biden continued this effort with even more measures. The US government and its counter-revolutionary supporters in South Florida promoted the recent July 11 demonstrations in cities throughout the island. These demonstrations were joined by many Cubans who have valid criticisms about bureaucracy, mismanagement, and corruption in the Cuban government. For example, there are long lines people have to wait in to buy food and a lot of items are unavailable.
The situation of the Cuban people is one of hardship brought about by the 60 year old commercial and economic blockade set up at United States. Their suffering has been further exacerbated of course by the pandemic. Cubans suffer a shortage of food and medicine and a blow to the economy which was largely based on tourism. The US counter-revolutionary efforts involve a massive spending of money on social media and a direct role in organizing opponents of the Cuban government. After the July demonstrations a new one was planned for November 15. It was a total flop.
Guest – Attorney Art Heitzer, author and head of the Cuba subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild.
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Civil Liberties, Right To Dissent, Truth to Power, Uncategorized, Whistleblowers
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Highlighting PETA Cases And Inherent Animal Protections
Each year, December 10 marks International Animal Rights Day to draw attention to the prevalent use and abuse of non-human animals. That’s the same day that Human Rights Day is observed, marking the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Non-human animals are sentient. That means they have a capacity to experience feelings, and to be responsive to or conscious of sense impressions. Sentient beings experience emotions such as happiness, joy, and gratitude, as well as pain, suffering, and grief. Animal rights or animal welfare activists urge society to stop thinking of animals as human property and as companions rather than pets. They urge abstention from all animal use, including meat, leather, milk, wool and silk, while also calling for an end to experimentation on animals. Other efforts include seeking an end to using animals for laboratory experimentation and for sporting events and entertainment.
Scientists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, have written an authoritative report from dozens of studies, some funded by the National Institutes of Health, that show sentience across the animal kingdom. It compiles evidence from dozens of studies—some funded by the federal National Institutes of Health—that show sentience across the animal kingdom. The report concludes that because other animals experience emotions as humans do, it is unethical to subject them to the trauma and emotional distress of experimentation.
Guest – Asher Smith is Director of Litigation at the PETA Foundation. He has helped secure the rescue of 25 big cats from roadside zoos featured in the Netflix series Tiger King. More recently he has focused on freeing 30 barn owls from a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
Guest – Attorney Tamara Bedic, chairperson of the National Lawyers Guild Animal Rights Project. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and a masters degree from Columbia University-NY University. Tamara practices employment law with a focus on women and harassment in the workplace.
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More PETA Cases, Speciesism and Long Range Animal Protection
With more than 9 million members and supporters worldwide, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the largest animal rights organization in the world. It opposes speciesism, the human-held belief that all other animal species are inferior. PETA’s work encompasses four areas in which animals have been suffering the most intensely and over the longest periods of time. They are in research laboratories, the food industry, the clothing trade, and the entertainment business. PETA conducts public education, investigative news gathering and reporting, research, animal rescue, legislation, and protest campaigns.
Guest – Jared Goodman, PETA Foundation Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Animal Law. He describes what speciesism is and how it has informed PETA’s work since its founding in 1980.
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Impeachment, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Racist Police Violence, Right To Dissent, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer
Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith interviewed some of Michael Ratner’s closest friends and colleagues as part of a special broadcast highlighting Michael Ratner’s legal work and mentorship. The special also marked the upcoming release of Michael Ratner’s autobiography Moving The Bar: My Life As A Radical Lawyer published by OR Books. In this one hour taken from the two hour fundraiser broadcast, we hear from attorneys including Eleanor Stein, Richard Levy, Ray Brescia, David Cole and Baher Azmy.
Michael Ratner’s pathbreaking legal and political work is unmatched. He provided crucial support for the Cuban Revolution and won the seminal case in the Supreme Court guaranteeing the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees. Michael also challenged U.S. policy in Iraq, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Israel-Palestine. This book is a testament to his unflagging efforts on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world.
– Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Michael Ratner personified lawyering that brought both radical and human values into challenges to the use of governmental power to violate the essence of the Bill of Rights. From the torture of prisoners after 911 to the massive racial profiling by the New York Police Department, Michael’s voice and vision continue to resonate. This book provides a powerful testament to the spirit of this extraordinary man.
– Attorney Bill Goodman
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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Julian Assange: October 26 Appeal
Julian Assange was a young computer genius, an Australian citizen, the publisher of Wiki leaks, an award-winning journalist, and the person responsible for embarrassing the United States by publishing material on American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. He figured out a way to receive information from whistle blowers and publish the information anonymously in order to protect them.
When Mike Pompeo was Trump’s Director of the CIA he called WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange, “a hostile non-state intelligence agency.” Pompeo suggested that Julian Assange be kidnapped from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had received political asylum, rendered, and assassinated.
What has been the reaction of the major news media to this extraordinary revelation? Will this affect the US governments continued efforts to have him extradited to the United States where he would be tried for espionage?
Assange is presently being held in solitary confinement in London‘s infamous Belmarsh prison. In earlier developments, Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that he could not be extradited to United States in defiance of the American request because she feared his prison confinement in an American maximum-security prison might cause him to commit suicide.
Her decision is on appeal by the Biden U.S. Justice Department and will be heard by the British High Court on October 26th.
In response to the revelations about Pompeo, Julian’s American attorney Barry Pollack said that “the extreme nature of the type of government misconduct that Yahoo News reported would certainly be an issue and potentially grounds for dismissal.“ He believes that Assange was targeted by both Trump and Biden like Nixon had targeted Daniel Ellsberg for his release of the Pentagon during the Vietnam war. In Ellsberg’s case the presiding judge dropped all charges against him.
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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Host Discussion: Challenges To Roe v. Wade And Donziger Case Updates
Last week thousands demonstrated across the country over woman’s right to choose. The demonstrations took place one month after Texas had enacted its infamous heart beat law which is nearly a total ban on abortion. It prohibits abortion after 6 weeks, when most women don’t know they’re pregnant. Currently the law established by Roe v Wade, defends women and affords them to get an abortion during the first two trimesters of their pregnancy. One in four women in the United States has had an abortion. The first thing the fascist Hitler government did in 1933 when in came to power was to lock up all the family planning clinics. Anti-abortion laws disproportionately attack black, brown and poor women. The Women’s Health Protection Act which would codify Roe v. Wade has passed the House and is now in the Senate where it will likely lose. Coming up in the Supreme Court is the Jackson Healthcare Case which originated in Mississippi. That state passed a law limiting the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
Guest – Marjorie Cohn, former criminal law defense attorney and professor emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law. She was the past president of the National Lawyer Guild and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Professor Cohn has published four books about the war on terror. Last week she had published an article in the prestigious online magazine Jurist titled Samuel Moyn’s Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner is Shameful.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Right To Dissent, Truth to Power, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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- Alarming Growth In Urban Homeless: Commentary by Attorney Jim Lafferty
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Judge Rules Attorney Donziger Guilty of Six Contempt Charges; Faces Jail Time
Steven Donziger, who listeners will recall has been embroiled in a decades long fight against Chevron over their pollution in the Amazon rainforest the size of Rhode Island, was found guilty this July of criminal contempt by US district judge Loretta Preska. She ruled that Steven was guilty of six contempt charges for refusing to turn over evidence in a complex legal case that has pitted the lawyer directly against Chevron.
In a 245-page judgement, Judge Preska said Steven had “repeatedly and willfully” defied court orders adding that “it’s time to pay the piper,” with Steven facing six months in jail.
It has now been two years since Steven has been wearing a monitoring bracelet and under house arrests in his NYC home. He said he expected the decision and will appeal.
In 2016, US judge Lewis Kaplan granted Chevron seizure of the lawyer’s laptop and phone. When Steven appealed, he was slapped with the contempt charges and placed under house arrest.
Judge Preska’s judgment explicitly denies the lawyer has been the victim of a conspiracy, however. “Contrary to Mr Donziger’s assertion that his conviction was ‘pre-ordained’, the court finds him guilty on each count for one reason and one reason only: Mr Donziger did that with which he is charged. Period,” she wrote.
DonzigerDefense.com
ChevronToxico.com
ChevronInEcuador.com
Guest – Attorney Martin Garbus, one of three pro bono lawyers representing Donziger in an attempt to get his law license restored. Garbus has a long and distinguished career as a civil rights and first amendment litigator. Attorney Martin Garbus has represented Nelson Mandela, Daniel Ellsberg, and Cesar Chavez and worked in Rwanda, China, and the Soviet Union, among other countries.
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Samuel Moyn’s Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner is Shameful
A controversy was ignited two weeks ago when the New York Review of Books published an article by Yale Law Professor Samuel Moyn. The article singled out human rights attorney Michael Ratner, the cofounder of Law Disorder Radio. Ratner was the longtime president of the Center for Constitution Rights. He died five years ago. Professor Moyn uses him as a whipping boy to support his bizarre theory that punishing war crimes prolonged the wars in the Middle East by making them more palatable.
Professor Moyn disingenuously claims that enforcing the conventions against torture and opposing illegal war are mutually exclusive.
Moyn’s book Humane: How the United States abandoned Peace and Reinvented War was recently published. It was a chapter from this book that appeared in the New York Review of Books. Moyn makes the false and astonishing claim that “no one perhaps has done more than Ratner to enable a novel sanitize version of permanent war.”
Moyn wrote that Ratner and the CCR prolonged the Middle Eastern wars by suing the Bush- Cheney administration to stop them from abolishing the right of habeas corpus for Muslims the American government had imprisoned on its offshore prison in Guantánamo. The right of habeas corpus is ancient. It allows for a person held by the government to be informed of the charges against him, to be allowed to have a lawyer, and to be given a trial.
Guest – Marjorie Cohn, former criminal law defense attorney and professor emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law. She was the past president of the National Lawyer Guild and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Professor Cohn has published four books about the war on terror. Last week she had published an article in the prestigious online magazine Jurist titled Samuel Moyn’s Unprincipled Attack on Human Rights Giant Michael Ratner is Shameful.
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