Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Prison Visitation and Support
In hundreds of correctional facilities across the nation, in person visits are being phased out. Instead, video technology run by Securus and other companies is used to replace these visits. One researcher at the Prison Policy Initiative has pieced together hard to gather stats that suggest at least 600 US prisons have video visitation programs in place. In Florida, for example, on retired prison inspector who writes about video visitation, says that over the past five years, most jails there are using only video visitation and have altogether stopped in-person visitation.
The Prison Policy Initiative’s data suggests that 74% of US correctional facilities that implement video calling end up either reducing in-person visits, or totally eliminating them. Is the elimination of prison visits a human rights violation? Most prisoners receive few, if any visitors, or human contact.
Guest – Steve Gotzler, executive director of the Prison Visitation and Support. Steve is the former program director at the Pennsylvania Prison Society, and he knows firsthand what it’s like to spend time in federal prison.
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Supreme Court Rules On Civil Forfeiture
In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Constitution limits the ability of state and local law enforcement to seize and then use cash, property, and other assets that may have been used the commission of crimes, especially when used to fill the coffers of police departments. Law enforcement need only suspect the property has been used as a crime; they don’t need to charge you.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion on her first day back at the court. Civil liberties organizations have criticized this practice for years. That’s because many local governments use these fines to raise revenue, increasing incentives for arrests.
Not surprisingly, civil asset forfeiture disproportionately affects vulnerable communities, notably African Americans and lower-income neighborhoods. In the state of South Carolina, for example, The Greenville News reported that the state took $17 million from seizures from 2014 to 2016. Sixty-five percent of those targeted were African American. The high Court said that fines may not be excessive, and that states are currently using excessive fines for improper purposes, including for raising revenue.
Guest – Josie Duffy Rice is a lawyer and writer in New York. Josie is a former research director with the Fair Punishment Project.
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, NSA Spying, Political Prisoner, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Cyber Threats And US Cyber Security
Russian hackers need only 19 minutes after breaking into a computer to wreak greater destruction and data theft, according to a recent CrowdStrike report. The Kremlin beat out North Korean and Chinese hacker groups who needed two and four hours respectively to go from breaching one computer to another. Cyber threats from Russia are sophisticated and aggressive, according to earlier findings and many experts. As a results Russian saboteurs have moved beyond network intrusion into data manipulation and taking down power systems.
Guest – Patrick Tucker, technology editor for Defense One. Patrick is the author of the 2014 book, The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist. He has written widely about emerging technology for such publications as Slate, MIT Technology Review, and BBC News Magazine.
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10 Years Since Operation Cast Lead
Last month marked the 10 year anniversary of Israel’s illegal massive deadly attack on the Palestinian people living in the open air prison of the Gaza Strip along the Mediterranean sea in the south of Israel-Palestine.
The attack was carried out with the political and military support of the George W. Bush regime during its final few days. Some 1200 Palestinians were killed including 500 children. This has been documented in the United Nation’s sponsored Goldstone Report.
Israel’s continuing illegal settlement of Palestinian land and it’s dispossession of Palestinian people is made possible by American political, military, and economic support. But this support is coming under increasing challenge with Israel’s violation of human rights and of international law being more widely exposed and discussed.
Guest – Helena Cobban is the publisher of Just World Books and is active through her new not-for-profit organization Just World Educational. She works in broad community education campaigns on matters of war, peace, and justice in the Middle East.
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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.
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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Death with Dignity
Seventy percent of Americans support the end-of-life option permitting qualified terminally ill people to end their lives through physician-prescribed medications. Despite this, forty-four states don’t have statutes outlining the procedure, and safeguards, for getting medications to hasten inevitable death.
Death with Dignity is a growing movement that works to ensure terminally ill Americans have the freedom to control their end-of-life options, including how they die. Its state-by-state campaign strives to change that.
California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia have assisted dying statutes. They allow mentally competent, terminally-ill adult state residents to request and receive a prescription medication enabling them to die in a place and time of their choosing.
Guest – Mark Glaze is a strategist in public affairs, advocacy and politics. His clients have included the Open Society Institutes, the American Federation of Teachers, the Human Rights Campaign and Amnesty International. Mark is the former executive director of Everytown for Gun Safety, the nation’s largest gun violence prevention group. After the Newtown mass shooting the Wall Street Journal called him “the face of the gun control movement.”
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Strongmen
The spectacle and recent emergence of the strong man leader has been seen in a number of countries across the world, not only in the United States. We have witnessed the rise of Modi in India, Duterte in the Philippines, Erdogan in Turkey and Putin in Russia. In the 1920s and 1930s fascist dictators emerged in Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. These men were monsters. The new kind of strongmen are not fascist dictators, but monsters nonetheless. We welcome professor Vijay Prashad who has edited and introduced the recently published book titled Strongmen. The book is a collection of five essays, some of them in the form of a fable, which explains the phenomena of the strong men.
Guest – Professor Vijay Prashad, is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is the author and editor of several books, the most recent is titled Red Star Over the Third World.
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Truth to Power
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Impeaching the President: Past, Present and Future
Two U.S. presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, and Bill Clinton in 1998. Richard Nixon would have been impeached but he resigned in 1974. Rumblings of impeaching the winner of the 2016 president elections even took place before the votes were in. Opponents of Hillary Clinton cited her use of a private e-mail server as Secretary of State as reason. Opponents of Donald Trump cited his business interests disqualified him. Possible criminal activities involving the Trump campaign added fuel to those calls.
Restraints on executive power exist because he greatest risk of tyranny comes from the executive branch. That’s partly because the president is a single person. In contrast, Congress and the Supreme Court must persuade a majority of their colleagues in order to act. As well, presidential authority as commander in chief includes the power to deploy weaponry as the head of the military and law enforcement.
The nation’s founding fathers value checks on tyranny. in part because of oppression by the British monarchy. At the Constitutional Convention some delegates opposed making one person responsible for executing the nation”s laws. While it decided in favor of a one-person executive, it adopted provisions aimed at preventing the president from becoming king-like.
Limits including four-year terms and voter approval to stay in office. The founders knew that even in four years the president could do much damage. So they created a mechanism for quicker replacement of the President if needed. The House of Representatives could “impeach” him, an accusation of wrongdoing that would prompt a trial in the Senate. If the Senate voted by two-thirds vote to convict the president, it would automatically result in removal from office. Impeachment can also be used to remove all federal officers.
Guest – Alan Hirsh, author of Impeaching the President: Past, Present and Future. Alan is a Lecturer in Humanities and Chair of Justice and Law Studies at Williams College. He’s also the author of For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights and A Citizen’s Guide to Impeachment.
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Remembering Mujahid Farid, Lead Organizer of Release Aging Persons in Prison
Today we remember and celebrate the life of Mujahid Farid who passed away last week in New York. Listeners will recall that Farid had been on Law and Disorder several times in the last few years, along with Laura Whitehorn and Dave George from his organization Release Aging Persons in Prison. In 1978, Farid was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. He was 28 years old. He first became eligible for parole in 1993. He had earned four college degrees including two masters degrees while incarcerated. He was denied parole nine times. As we’ve discussed in prior segments, New York state parole commissioners denied his requests as with many others based on the nature of his crime rather than he many accomplishments he made while in prison.
In an article in the Village Voice, Farid noted that he asked the commissioners: “Is there anything I can do to make myself eligible for release?” He didn’t get a response but said he saw disapproving changes in the body language and facial expressions of the commissioners that his question wasn’t welcome. He was denied again. These denials added 18 years to his incarceration.
In 2011, Farid appeared before the parole boar for the tenth time. He stood before two new commissioners who had high rates of granting parole and that year, Farid was released. Farid became a 2013 Soros Justice Fellow. During his confinement, in 1987 Farid was part of a trio that created and proposed the first HIV/AIDS peer education program in New York State prisons, that later developed into the widely acclaimed state-wide program called PACE (Prisoners AIDS Counseling & Education). Farid participated in the creation of a college certificate program sponsored by New York Theological Seminary, and he taught introduction to sociology courses for people training for Alcohol and Substance Abuse (ASAT) counseling certification.
Since his release Farid initiated two programs designed to have an impact on dismantling mass incarceration: The RAPP Campaign and the Rise & Shine Small Business Coalition, the latter providing support for the creation and start-up of community businesses operating on principles of social entrepreneurship. In 2013 Farid was awarded a joint New York State legislative commendation for his community work and a Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc. award for social activism.
As listeners may recall, the number of people aged 50 and older in New York State, where RAPP was founded, has doubled since 2000; it now exceeds 10,000— which is about 20% of the total incarcerated population. This reflects a national crisis in the prison system and the extension of a culture of revenge and punishment into all areas of our society.
RAPP focuses on aging people in prison, many of whom are long-termers convicted of serious crimes. Many of these human beings have transformed their lives and developed skills and abilities they lacked before incarceration. They could be released from prison with little or no threat to public safety. Yet many are denied release, often for political reasons, and they needlessly remain imprisoned into old age. These elders could return to their communities if current mechanisms such as parole and compassionate release were correctly utilized.
Farid, you are in our thoughts and we send you our love.
Guest – Laura Whitehorn is a former political prisoner and native New Yorker, who was active in supporting groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Movement and was active with Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. Laura worked to help expose the FBI’s Counter Intelligence programs.
Guest – Mujahid Farid co-founded the Prisoners AIDS Counseling and Education program and helped design prison-based sociology and theology courses that allowed others to earn college-credited in prison. He also earned four college degrees and other certifications while incarcerated, including his paralegal certificate, NYS Department of Labor Certificate in Human Development Counseling, and NYC Department of Health Certificate in HIV/AIDS Counseling.
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