Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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The Federalist Society, Charles Koch, The Bradley Foundation and The U.S. Supreme Court
Despite the clear language of the constitution that Congress shall have no religious test for the office of judge last week every Republican in the Senate except one put Amy Coney Barrett on an already packed right wing Supreme Court.
Barrett is a leader of the charismatic Christian cult called “ People of Promise.” It is a group of Protestant and Catholic evangelicals who reportedly speak in tongues. They believe in the subjugation of women, oppose their right to choose, oppose gay marriage, and are authoritarian and pro corporate in the extreme.
Garrett earned her bones by first clerking for the now dead Justice Antonin Scalia. She was part of the legal team along with John Roberts who helped republican George W. Bush steal the presidency by stopping the the recount of ballots in Florida in the year 2000.
The Federalist Society, led by Leonard Leo, has been responsible for packing the federal courts with over 200 largely unqualified young ideologues who serve for life. Leo, like the 6 of 9 Supreme Court justices, is an ultra right wing Catholic. For 20 years he has guided the Federalist Society. He is a member of Opus Dei, Latin for God’s work. It was founded on 1928 by a Spanish priest who was also a lawyer and supporter of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
Ultra right wing billionaire Charles Koch and the Bradley foundation have contributed to the efforts of the Federalist Society. Dark money is behind the appointments of the over 200 judges to the federal judiciary. Organizations funded by dark money find and encourage plaintiffs to bring cases challenging laws they don’t like and write the briefs to submit to the judges they helped appoint.
Guest – Attorney Lisa Graves, created True North Research and is it executive director and editor-in-chief. Her research and analysis has been cited by every major paper in the country. Attorney Graves has served as a senior advisor in all three branches of government. She has served as chief counsel for nominations for the US Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Patrick Leahy. She was a career deputy assistant attorney general at the US Department of Justice. Graves has spent the past 10 years investigating the impact of dark money on judicial selection.
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The Future of Academic Freedom and Big Tech Intrusion
Big tech companies rather than leaders of academic institutions, it seems, are fast becoming an arbiter of academic speech.
Two weeks ago Zoom shut down a New York University-organized webinar; ironically it was on the issue of censorship by tech platforms. The webinar was going to take up the censorship of an earlier open classroom session at San Francisco State University, featuring Palestinian rights advocate Leila Khaled. It was part of a so-called “Day of Action Against the Criminalization and Censorship of Campus Political Speech.”
Censored Zoom Video
Canceling a campus event violates the principle of academic freedom that universities must observe. Allowing Zoom to override this bedrock principle, at the behest of organized, politically motivated groups, is a grave error for any university administration to make, and it should not escape censure from faculty
Sifting and Winnowing
Guest – Professor Henry Reichman, former vice president of the American Association of University Professors and longtime chair of its committee on academic freedom and tenure. Reichman is especially qualified to discuss the issue. Professor emeritus of history at California State University at East Bay, Professor Reichman devotes nearly 300 pages doing so in his new book by Johns Hopkins University Press.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
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Attorney Michael Tigar: Sensing Justice
Democracy and the rule of law have been in decline long before the Trump administration came at the office. The decline is accelerating. We can trace it back at least 19 years to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The Patriot Act resulted and put in place the surveillance state making Americans the most spied on people in history.
The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United allowed for dark money guided by the right wing Federalist Society to pack the federal judiciary with 200+ Trump appointed right wing judges, Amy Comey Barrett being the latest. Local police forces have been militarized and we have seen the results of this in the Black Lives Matter uprisings since June.
The attack on democracy has been bipartisan. The Obama administration claimed the right to assassinate anyone without due process including American citizens, even children. They put more whistleblowers in prison than ever before. Trump initiated the unprecedented prosecution of Julian Assange, a whistleblowing publisher who exposed US war crimes. Now Trump, with the backing of the Republican Party and gun toting militias have promised not to honor the results of the upcoming election if he loses.
Guest – Constitutional attorney Michael Tigar, professor emeritus from The Washington College of Law and has taught at the University of Texas and Duke University. He is the author of Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power. He has practice before the Supreme Court, arguing his first case when he was 24 years old. Tigar has written or edited more than a dozen of important books including “Law and the Rise of Capitalism.“ Since 1996 he has practiced law with his wife Jane B. Tigar. Michael Tigar’s blog Tigarbytes.
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The Chicago Seven: Attorney Bill Kunstler At Carolines Comedy Club
We hear part of the presentation by William Kunstler at Carolines Comedy Club in 1995.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Truth to Power
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How Can You Steal The U.S. Presidential Election?
How can you steal a U.S. presidential election? Let us count the ways. That’s the topic of a front-page article in the LA Progressive. It details the likely ways President Donald Trump will try to steal the election, and what the progressive movement should do to try and stop it. As we’re less than one month away from November 3 we’re delighted to welcome back Jim Lafferty.
Guest – Attorney Jim Lafferty, Executive Director Emeritus of the Los Angeles National Lawyers Guild. Jim is also host of The Lawyers Guild Show on sister station KPFK in Los Angeles; and a frequent contributor to the LA Progressive on-line magazine. His most recent article, and the subject of our interview today, is: Massive Mobilization: Only Sure Way to Save the Election.
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One People’s Project: Proud Boys Update
During President Trump’s presidential debate with former VP Joe Biden on September 29, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists. He commented that the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, should “stand by.”
When moderator Chris Wallace asked the president if he would condemn white supremacist groups, Trump said he was “willing to do that.” But he went on to blame the “left wing” for most of the unrest in cities across the nation. Trump asked Wallace “who would you like me to condemn,” and Biden asked the president to respond to the Proud Boys. Trump said: “The Proud Boys — stand back and stand by,”
Members of the Proud Boys took the president’s words as encouragement. They went so far as to add the phrase “stand back and stand by” to their logo on the social media platform Telegram. Joe Biggs, one of the group’s leaders, wrote on the conservative social media platform Parler that Mr. Trump’s comment “makes me so happy.” Many social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, have suspended the group.
Guest – Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of One People’s Project, joins us today. Since 1988 Daryle has been documenting and writing about right-wing individuals and organizations even while serving as a police officer in the US Air Force. In 2000, he founded One’s People’s Project out of a counter-protest to a rally in Morristown, NJ. The organization soon gained a reputation of publicly documenting hate groups and their activities.
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Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Pen Pal: Prison Letters From a Free Spirit on Slow Death Row
Tiyo Attalla Salah-El died in 2018 on “ Slow Death Row” while serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison. He was a man with a dizzying array of talents and vocations: author, scholar, teacher, musician, and activist: he was the founder of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons. He was also an extraordinarily eloquent correspondent.
Today we are going to talk with his friend Paul Alan Smith about the letters that Smith exchanged with Tiyo which were written over a decade and a half. We will also speak with Paul’s friend the actor Carl Weathers who read the letters for the audiobook. The book is called Pen Pal: Prison Letters From a Free Spirit on Slow Death Row. It has a preface by Mike Africa, Jr.
Guest – Carl Weathers, multi-talented director, actor and former professional football athlete. Carl Weathers learned about the life and letters of Tiyo and read the letters for the audio book version of Pen Pal.
Guest – Paul Alan Smith, an agent and manager representing directors working in both film and TV. He’s most recently known as the founder of New Deal Mfg. Co., which seeks to shift representation to a more client-centric approach, rather than focusing on the needs of corporations.
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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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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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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