CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Police, Politics And Violent Repression Against Pro-Palestine Student Protest
During the Occupy Wall Street protests of late 2011 and early 2012, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a domestic terrorist threat. That was even though the Bureau acknowledged that organizers were calling for peaceful protests. Massive resources were deployed to track the movement, and FBI and counter-terrorism agents around the nation coordinated with local and federal law enforcement to track and gather intelligence, effectively serving as an arm for private business.
More than a decade later, college administrators are calling local armed police—some in riot gear—to arrest and in many instances brutalize hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters in actions and encampments sweeping the nation. More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested over the last two weeks on campuses in states including Texas, Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, California and New Jersey. At UCLA, last week, after pro-Israel supporters carrying symbols of radical Jewish groups, not of student age, allegedly threw fireworks into a solidarity encampment, students defending the camp were attacked with stones and sticks. Yet, after an hour of violence, police standing nearby failed to intervene.
Guest – attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund and the Center for Protest Law and Litigation in Washington, DC. Mara is one of the nation’s leading litigators defending protesters and winning numerous reforms in police practices at mass assemblies and demonstrations.
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Legacy of Protest At Columbia University
One of the great events of the 60s is the Columbia student takeover of several key buildings on their campus in protest of the university’s complicity in the war against the Vietnamese people. The takeover was also a protest to building a gym in a public park in Harlem adjacent to Columbia University, considered to be a racist act.
The student actions at Columbia brought down a terrific repression. Hundreds of students were arrested and beaten. Our own Michael Ratner, a cofounder of Law and Disorder, and a law student at Columbia, was also beaten by the police. For Michael, there was no turning back. He went on to become one of the great movement lawyers of his generation.
Guest – anti-Vietnam war activist Eleanor Stein, like Michael, she was a student at the law school. Eleanor Stein went on to become an attorney, she is a climate change, environmental justice and human rights activist and advocate. She teaches climate change and human rights at the State University of New York, at Albany, and has just recorded a Continuing Legal Education session on this subject for the CUNY Law School. In addition, she facilitates international forums on climate change and energy. And for years, Professor Stein was an Administrative Law Judge at the NY state agency that regulates the energy industry.
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Academic Freedom, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Nationwide Peaceful Protests Against Genocide In Palestine
Around the nation, peaceful campus protests against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza are spreading. And they’re meeting with a rash of arrests by local police departments, dozens of school suspensions, and evictions from student dormitories. Many of those evicted have been students of colors, students with disabilities, and first-generation students. In New York, the NYPD arrested 108 students at Columbia University, and gave them 14 minutes to gather their belongings and leave their dormitories. New York University erected a plywood wall around Gould Plaza, an outdoor campus space in Greenwich Village, where police had earlier arrested protesting students.
All this because they took part at the large protest. Officials at Harvard University closed Harvard Yard in anticipation of possible protests and suspended the student group Palestine Solidarity Committee. Police arrested 9 students at the University of Minnesota for their refusal to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment. The California campus of Cal Poly Humboldt was shut down after students occupied a building. Shutitdown4Palestine.org
In an April 23 letter to the New York Times, nearly 60parents of students at Columbia and Barnard, from a variety of religious faiths ad social backgrounds wrote that they “find the actions taken by the administration deeply troubling and contrary to the principles of liberty, justice and academic freedom that are fundamental to the mission of higher education.”
Guest – Brian Becker is the director of the Answer Coalition, a founder of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and host of The Socialist Program.
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Julian Assange Extradition Case Update
Regarded by many as the greatest journalist of our generation for exposing American war crimes Julian Assange is about to be extradited at America’s request to a federal criminal court in Virginia to be tried for his journalistic activities which exposed extensive murderous American crimes and embarrassed US government particularly the CIA.
Julian was a young computer genius in Australia. He figured out a way to receive information from whistleblowers anonymously. This was done in order to protect them when his publication company WikiLeaks revealed to the world the activities of the CIA, the American military and U. S. diplomats.
As published by WikiLeaks the Vault Seven revelations exposed the CIA had developed technologies to turn our cell phone into listening devices, even when turned off and tap our personal computers, and even control our automobiles. WikiLeaks exposed American torture in Afghanistan. They published a video of an American gunship helicopter murdering Iraqi civilians, even children, and two Reuters journalists on the streets of Baghdad.
Julian was given political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he holed up for seven years. Then five years ago the British police at America’s request removed him from the embassy and put him into solitary confinement in the notorious Belmarsh Prison.
Now the United States has succeeded in getting a compliant British court to extradite Julian , despite the law, preventing extradition of political prisoners, especially to a country that has the death penalty, and no guarantee of free speech for foreigners.
Guest – Vincent De Stefano is the National Organizing Director of the U.S. Julian Assange Defense Committee. Mr. De Stefano is on the Southern California ACLU board of directors and executive committee and he has worked with Amnesty International for more than four decades.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Uncategorized, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Chris Hedges: Israel’s Trojan Horse
The Israeli military is the fourth most powerful military in the world. In the last six months it has turned the Gaza Strip into a howling wilderness. Most of us 2.2 million inhabitants have been driven into a tiny corner in the south in the city of Rafa where they face an invasion planned by Israel with American support. Israel sent a delegation to Washington last week. The story spun by the Biden administration is that they are working with Israel to try to “moderate” Israel. This is perception management.
Meanwhile, in another PR move, the United States, announced that it is building a temporary pier on the Mediterranean shore of Gaza to facilitate the importation of food stuffs. But it doesn’t say that the pier will facilitate the export of Palestinians in to permanent exile.
Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The United States is not serious about getting food for Palestinians. It continues to supply the Israelis with weapons, including opening up its weapons storage facility in Israel for the Israelis to freely use.
Contrary to American law, the Biden administration, has circumvented Congress 100 times to send even more weapons and bombs which have killed more than 32,000 people and injured another 70,000 while destroying most of the homes in Gaza, their hospitals, schools, mosques , water and sanitation plants, and electrical infrastructure.
Israel’s reaction to the judgment of International Court Of Justice, the highest court in the world, was to ignore their founding of “plausible, genocide“ and to ignore their decisions – taken together amount to a cease-fire. Israel’s goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza and resettle it with their own people. Last week Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner gave his opinion on the subject calling the western shore of Gaza “good beachfront property“ most suitable for development now that the Palestinians have been driven out of their homes.
Defenders of Israel say that Israel is acting in self-defense, that Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon are behind Hamas, and that in any case the figures of death and injury of Palestinians are lies perpetrated by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas.
Guest – Chris Hedges, award-winning journalist and political writer. Chris Hedges reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times’ Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001 Hedges was one of the Times’ writers on an entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Prior to his work for the Times, he worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for the Christian Science Monitor, NPR and the Dallas Morning News. His books include “Death of the Liberal Class”, “War on America”, “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”, and his book “War Is a Force That Gives US Meaning”, which was a finalist for the national Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction.
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Billionaires, Economies And Elections
There were 614 billionaires in America four years ago before the pandemic. Now there are 737. Their total wealth is more than $5 trillion. In the last four years they went from having 2,947,000,000,000 to having 5,529,000,000,000. The golden rule in the United States is that he who has the gold makes the rules. A corollary to this rule is – follow the money.
The immense concentration of wealth among a handful of billionaires in America has destroyed every institution in our country from education to politics. What effect does it have on elections? We have two parties. Both support capitalism which has resulted in having two parties of big money. They make it nearly impossible to challenge their hegemony by forming a third party.
The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United ruled that corporations are people. Thus, they can exercise their free speech rights and donate an unlimited amount of money to preserve and advance their perceived interests. In 1937 the great political journalist Ferdinand Lundburg analyzed wealth and class in the USA in his book America’s 60 Families. He wrote about how they functioned for the purpose of gaining and keeping political and economic power.
In 1968 Lundburg published The Rich and the Super Rich. It shows how the ruling elite controls the mainstream media and the US economy and have virtually uncontested influence over American political institutions. The infamous names of the ruling class back then were Rockefeller, Ford, Vanderbilt, Melon, Dupont, Guggenheim, Whitney, and Astor. They made their money in oil, steel, chemicals, that is to say, basic industry. But their wealth was relatively small compared to today’s economic titans who have made their money in tech industries and speculation.
Guest – Patrick Martin, senior editor at the world socialist web site where he covers a range of political issues in the United States.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States
As the notion of perpetual war and a militarized society are normalized, notably absent are antiwar protests by faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, academics, and others. The Trillion Dollar Silencer details this absence while laying bare the devastation wrought in the United States and abroad by the military industrial complex.
Author Joan Roelofs delves into the pervasive role of military contractors and bases that have come to be economic hubs of their regions. She discusses how state and local governments are intertwined with the Department of Defense (DoD), including economic development commissions at all levels. Contracts and grants to universities, colleges, and faculty come from the DoD and its agencies, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Minerva Initiative funds social scientists for military research. Civilian jobs in the DoD provide opportunities for scientists, engineers, policy analysts, and others. The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs are subsidized by the DoD.
In addition to businesses large and small, nonprofits receive DoD contracts and grants, including environmental and charitable organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and Goodwill Industries. Individuals, arts institutions, charities, churches, and universities share in the profitability of military-related investments. Pension funds for public and private employees and unions are replete with military stocks. In other words, the military industrial complex is so embedded in our political economy that it has become virtually impossible to find any sector of our society that is not intertwined with militarism.
Guest – Joan Roelofs, Professor Emerita of Political Science at Keene State College. She teaches in the Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning and writes for scholarly and political publications. Joan is the author of “Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism,” and “Greening Cities: Building Just and Sustainable Communities.” She has been an anti-war activist ever since she protested the Korean War.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Julie Hurwitz
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, FBI Intrusion, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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The World Supports Julian Assange
In the past few days, the case of imprisoned journalist Julian Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, who published the truth about the multitude of war crimes committed by United States and its allies, in the course of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was back in court in London, where Assange is fighting extradition back to the United States. He is charged in the U.S. under an obscure section of the 1917 U.S. Espionage Act. As Megan Specia, writing in the New York Times put it, the two-day hearing “will determine whether he has exhausted his right to appeal within the U.K. and whether he could be one step closer to being sent back to the United States.” And she added, “and whether or not the people of the United States are one step closer to losing what is left of a free press in America, and with it what is left of our democracy.”
Assange has been effectively incarcerated for years now, the last five of which in solitary confinement in a notoriously horrid British prison in London, where both his physical and mental health have been steadily deteriorating. Indeed, a lower court judge in his extradition case had ruled against extraditing him because of the strong likelihood he would die in an equally horrid U.S. prison.
A nationwide and world-wide movement to free Julian Assange has been fighting for Assange’s freedom for years now. Virtually all of the world’s leading associations of journalists, and human rights organizations have called for an end to the U.S. government’s prosecution and persecution of Assange. As have major U.S. and foreign newspapers. Assange is an Australian citizen, and the Australian government has called for his release; Australian Prime minister Albanese says he did so when he recently met with President Biden.
Well, why did the Trump Administration decide to prosecute Assange in the first place, and as we now know, at one point plot to murder him? Why did the Obama Administration decide not to continue with the prosecution, and why has the Biden Administration nevertheless continued to do so?
And if Julian Assange loses this his last appeal within the British courts, does he have any remaining legal remedy?
Guest – Chris Hedges, award-winning journalist and political writer. Chris Hedges reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times’ Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001 Hedges was one of the Times’ writers on an entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Prior to his work for the Times, he worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for the Christian Science Monitor, NPR and the Dallas Morning News. His books include “Death of the Liberal Class”, “War on America”, “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”, and his book “War Is a Force That Gives US Meaning”, which was a finalist for the national Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction.
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Flint Taylor Representing Malcom X’s Family In Reinvestigation Case
An assassination is a political murder. Malcolm X was assassinated on February 22, 1965 when he was speaking in the afternoon at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. The New York Police Department and the FBI were involved. J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI, said “. . . we must stop the rise of a new black messiah.”
Days before the murder the NYPD arrested two of Malcolm’s bodyguards who would’ve protected him that afternoon. Two of the men who were convicted of the murder and who each served over 20 years in prison have been exonerated and released. One person, the trigger man, was convicted and served 45 years. But others involved have gone free as a result of withholding information by the police and the FBI.
Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who represented the family of George Floyd, has been retained by Malcolm X’s daughters to pursue the matter. On his team are attorneys Flint Taylor, Ben Elson, and Roy Hamlin. The function of the FBI and police departments nationwide is to protect the status quo. Hoover and the NYPD recognized the threat Malcolm posed with his newly formed Organization of African -American Unity.
Malcolm X was rapidly evolving into a socialist revolutionary. He had said with respect to the capitalist order that it could not produce social justice, that a chicken cannot lay a duck egg and if it ever did, it would be a pretty revolutionary chicken. Malcolm was killed on February 22, 1965. The FBI had opened a file on him in 1953. Thereafter he was under constant surveillance. In 1964 the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, commanded “do something about Malcolm X.“ Malcolm was assassinated the next year.
Malcolm X stood for Black consciousness, unity in action, solidarity with those struggling against imperialism worldwide, independence from the two capitalist political parties, and a deep sense of love for people.
Guest – Flint Taylor of the Peoples Law Office. Taylor is a nationally recognized civil rights attorney. He represented the family of Fred Hampton demonstrating that the Chicago Police Department and the FBI were responsible for the assassination of the young Black Panther leader. He’s written the book “The Killing Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago”. He is one of the editors of the “Police Misconduct Law Reporter. He’s the author of The Torture Machine: Racism And Police Violence In Chicago.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith, Maria Hall and Jim Lafferty
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