Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Right To Dissent, Surveillance
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Israel Authorizes Military to Kill Palestinians With Drones
In October, the Israeli government announced that commanders of the Israeli Occupying Forces have been authorized to use armed drones to kill Palestinians in several parts of the occupied West Bank, with the approval of Chief of Staff-Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi.
Since 2008, the Israeli Air Force has been killing Palestinians in Gaza with drones, especially during protests against the Annexation Wall and colonies. Drones have also been used to fire gas bombs and live rounds at residents in cities, towns, and refugee camps of occupied Jerusalem. Drones are employed for surveillance, but this is the first time that weaponized drones will be used in the occupied West Bank. Drones make up 80% of the total flight hours in the Israeli Air Force.
Here to discuss this disturbing development is our own Marjorie Cohn, who recently published an article in Truthout titled Israel Authorizes Military to Kill Palestinians With Drones in the West Bank.
Guest – Attorney Marjorie Cohn is a legal and political analyst who provides commentary on local, national and international media. She is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.”
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State Of The Free Press: The News That Didn’t Make the News And Why 2023
The United States has a disinformation problem so endemic that the government says it threatens our national security. Effective solutions have proven elusive. When the Department of Homeland Security created a disinformation board in April, critics from all sides denounced it as a potential tool of censorship. That’s no surprise given that censorship is on the minds of many. During the past school year, more than 1,600 books were banned, according to a PEN America report. And the “cancel culture” movement teeters between a tool of accountability and outright shaming, often with little regard for the truth.
Since 1976, one group has been working to raise awareness about censorship in our society, and the urgent need for media literacy. Founded as a media research program, Project Censored focused on student media literacy and critical thinking skills as applied to the US news media. In 1993, the Project began publishing an annual book with a list of what it considered the most significant but most under-reported news stories of the year.
Dr. Andy Lee Roth is associate director of Project Censored. Along with Mickey Huff, he co-edits the State of the Free Press Yearbook series. He also helps coordinate the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program, which links students at faculty at several dozen US college and university campuses in the collective effort to identify and vet important but under reported news stories.
Guest – Andy Lee Roth joins us to talk about the 2023 edition of State Of The Free Press: The News That Didn’t Make the News and Why, that will hit bookstores in December. In addition, the Censored Press and Triangle Square Books for Young Readers recently published The Media and Me. It contains critical thinking skills, practical tools and real-life perspectives, intended to help young adult readers become independent media users.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Surveillance, Violations of U.S. and International Law, Whistleblowers
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Project Blueprint: Haiti
Haiti is a nation in crisis, spiraling out of control since last year’s assassination of its president, Jovenet Moise. The government has cratered, and 200 violent gangs have seized control. There’s no fuel, and food and water are hard to come by. Businesses and schools are shuttered and hospitals, banks, and grocery stores teeter on the brink of closure. Clean water is scarce, and Haiti faces another cholera outbreak. An estimated one million people are starving in the middle of Haiti’s biggest city. Kidnappings, human trafficking, homicides and sexual and gender-based violence are rampant.
Last week, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti. It calls for sanctions on groups and individuals threatening peace and stability in the impoverished nation. The sanctions resolution implicated Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, whose gang has blockaded a central fuel terminal. Cherizier is a former police officer leading a group of gangs known as the G9 Family and Allies. He now faces asset freeze, an arms embargo and a travel ban.
Institute For Justice and Democracy In Haiti
Guest – Human rights attorney Brian Concannon, Executive Director of Project Blueprint, and the founder and former Executive Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Brian has been qualified as an expert witness on conditions in the country of Haiti in more than 40 cases in courts both in the United States and Canada.
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A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press
For more than a century, the 1917 Espionage Act has been used by the United States government to target critics of its foreign and military policy. From suppressing criticism of U.S. participation in World War I to present-day attempts to silence whistleblowers, political dissidents and journalists who expose our nation’s war crimes, the Espionage Act is a dangerous weapon in the federal government’s legal arsenal. It has been employed to limit freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of information.
In their new book, A Century of Repression: The Espionage Act and Freedom of the Press, Ralph Engelman and Carey Shenkman trace the use of the Espionage Act against Eugene Debs, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, among others. During World Wars I and II, the Act was primarily directed at political opposition to government policies. During the Cold War, it was used to criminalize leaks, manipulate the flow of information, and mold public opinion. And during the “War on Terror,” the Act has been used as a means to combat digital disclosure and journalism.
Journalist Julian Assange, founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, is currently locked up in a maximum security prison in London while the Biden administration attempts to have him extradited to the United States to stand trial on Espionage Act charges that could result in 175 years in prison. The basis for the indictment against him is WikiLeaks’ revelation of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Guest – Carey Shenkman is a constitutional lawyer and litigator focusing on freedom of expression, transparency and technology. He serves on the panel of experts at Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression Program, and consults on media rights issues before the United Nations and around the world.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
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Crony Capitalism, Supreme Court, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Trump Affidavit Contains Broad-Based Probable Cause of Three Federal Crimes
On August 8, FBI agents seized 33 boxes, containers or items of evidence with more than 100 classified records from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound. They included information classified at the highest levels. The Department of Justice had applied for the search warrant after Trump stonewalled them for seven months.
A federal judge found probable cause to believe that agents would find evidence of three federal crimes at Mar-a-Lago. They include a violation of the Espionage Act, which has recently been used to prosecute whistleblowers, publishers and journalists who publicize evidence of government wrongdoing.
Trump claims that the documents are his but in fact they belong to the National Archives. He is seeking the appointment a special master to review the documents for possibly privileged material. Attorney General Merrick Garland will use the seized documents to inform his decision about whether to indict Trump and/or his associates.
Guest – Law and Disorder co-host Marjorie Cohn, A former criminal defense attorney and professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Marjorie does frequent written and broadcast commentary about these and other legal and political issues.
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Nationalizing The Fossil Fuel Industry
Thomas Hanna has been Research Director for the Democracy Collaborative since 2015, after working for five years as a research assistant to Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative and well-known historian and political economist. The Democracy Collaborative was founded in 2000 as a research center at the University of Maryland, to develop a theoretical and historical framework for building a truly democratic society, based on the principles of democratic economy, community wealth building and the democratization of ownership.
Hanna’s areas of expertise include public ownership, privatization, local government, democratic ownership and banking. He is the author and editor of a number of books, articles and reports, including Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States which was published by Manchester University Press in 2018.
Hanna’s recent article, The Supreme Court is Gutting the Regulatory State. Let’s Look at our Other Options, published in In These Times, provides a fascinating analysis of the historical evolution of the regulatory system in the United States. Since the New Deal and the end of World War II, the use of regulatory legislation has been used to protect capitalism, based on the notion that “the excesses and injustices of capitalism can be ameliorated primarily through state regulation of private enterprise, rather than large-order shifts in the ownerships of these enterprises.” In his article, Hanna articulately explains how these historical attempts to regulate capitalist power within the context of capitalism is destined to fail because of its own structural limitations.
In the wake of the “existential threat of catastrophic climate change and rising tide of right-wing extremism,” we are seeing – predictably – the explicit dismantling of that regulatory system. Hanna explores the recent rulings from the new right-wing majority on the US Supreme Court, particularly the case of West Virginia v. EPA, in which the court literally kneecapped the agency’s ability reduce the devastating effects of corporate pollution in order to protect private profit and “free enterprise.” Hanna explores an alternative vision of creating a system of economic and political democracy based on public and collective ownership of important assets, enterprises and services, including the fossil fuel industry.
Today’s show is hosted by Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn, and Julie Hurwitz
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Racist Police Violence
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January 6 Committee Has Provided Sufficient Evidence for Garland to Indict Trump
During the course of eight public hearings, the House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack presented overwhelming evidence of former President Donald `Trump’s guilt of at least 2 federal crimes and crimes in the state of Georgia. Although it has been more than 2 years since Trump initiated his wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Attorney General Merrick Garland still has not indicted the ex-president.
Through the testimony primarily of Trump loyalists, the Committee demonstrated that Trump was the fulcrum of a multipronged conspiracy to fraudulently declare himself the winner of the election. The Committee has provided Garland with more than enough evidence to indict Trump. But will Garland bring charges against Trump?
Guest – Marjorie Cohn, is a former criminal defense attorney, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She has published several books and writes a regular column for Truthout. Her most recent piece is titled, “January 6 Committee Has Provided Sufficient Evidence for Garland to Indict Trump.”
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Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Bill Goodman
Bill Goodman, the son of Ernie Goodman, who was one of the founding members of the National Lawyers Guild, is a legend in his own right. A past national president of the NLG, one of the founding officers of the NLG National Police Accountability Project, the former Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and a founding board member of the Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, Bill was also a partner in the first racially integrated law firm in the United States. He is currently a partner in the Detroit civil rights firm, Goodman Hurwitz & James, where he continues to work tirelessly for the rights of victims of government and corporate abuse. Bill is also an adjunct professor of law at Wayne State Law School, where he teaches Constitutional Litigation. Bill has successfully litigated numerous police and government misconduct cases as well as other high-profile cases on behalf of prisoners, toxic tort victims, the wrongfully convicted and victims of racism, always in the pursuit of constitutional, social and economic justice.
Host Attorney Julie Hurwitz: Bill is also my law partner in Goodman Hurwitz & James and a former long-term partner in life – we’ve known each other a long time! We’ll discuss two cases that have been brought to confront the unconstitutional and inhumane conduct of individual police officers, but more importantly, the historically unconstitutional and inhumane ways in which police departments institutionally tolerate, promote and reward such behavior by their officers.
Hosted By Attorneys Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Prison Industry, U.S. Militarism, War Resister
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- Michael Smith Commentary – Recall Of District Attorney Chesa Boudin
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Opposition Grows Against Florida’s Don’t Say Gay Law
In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the Parental Rights in Education bill, known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The bill bans instruction or classroom discussion about LGBTQ issues in kindergarten through third grade. Older students may discuss gay and transgender issues if they are “age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” Florida’s legislators believe that classroom education about sexual orientation and gender shouldn’t start at an early age, and that parents can have the final say about what their children learn and when.
Sex education has already been banned in Florida and many other states until the fifth grade. Critics contend the new law focuses on a problem that doesn’t exist for the state’s youngest students. By limiting discussions about LGBTQ issues, it could stifle conversations for kids who need to process their own gender or sexual-identity questions, they say.
Many school librarians have accused their schools of removing race- and LGBTQ-related books from their shelves to avoid a fight. The Washington Post reported that schools with small budgets cannot afford to contest court challenges that the law will surely draw. Some schools are reportedly peeling off rainbow safe-space stickers from windows. As with other restrictive laws, the chilling effect is already being seen in schools across the nation.
Joining us today is K&L Gates attorney Michael Komo – a triple alumnus of George Washington University. Michael is well known for his work on behalf of the LGBTQ community and has been recognized at the local, state, and federal level, with accolades including Pittsburgh Magazine’s 2021 40 under 40 honorees and City and State PA’s 2022 Pride Power 100 honorees. He co-founded the LGBTQIA+ Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative with the FBI, started the Pride Night Series for Pittsburgh’s professional sports teams, and serves as the chair of the LGBT Rights Committee of the Allegheny County Bar Association.
Guest – attorney Michael Komo is well known for his work on behalf of the LGBTQ community, with accolades including Pittsburgh Magazine’s 2021 40 under 40 honorees. He co-founded the LGBTQIA+ Anti-Human Trafficking Initiative with the FBI, started the Pride Night Series for Pittsburgh’s professional sports teams, and serves as the chair of the LGBT Rights Committee of the Allegheny County Bar Association.
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Investigating The Assassination Of Palestinian American Journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh
The Zionist colonial settler state of Israel is not the moral legatee of the victims of the Holocaust much less the moral legatee of the ancient prophets of the Jewish people.
Never has this been more evident than last month with the exposure of the Israeli army’s assassination of the beloved Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh. Assassination is a political murder.
Shireen had covered the Israeli military’s occupation of the West Bank for Al Jazeera for 25 years. The day she was killed she was reporting on the Israeli military invasion of Jenin, an Arab town on the West Bank occupied by the Israeli army for 55 years. She was wearing a helmet and a protective vest marked “PRESS.”
It is the practice of the Israeli army to shoot journalists and otherwise suppress the truth of their war crimes including the illegal theft of Palestinian lands. Israel’s brutal occupation has been going on since it illegally seized the West Bank as a prize of the 1967 war between Israel and three of its neighbors. Since then the Israeli military has ruled the native Arabs. Shireen is the 86th journalist to be killed while covering Israel’s illegal occupation since 1967.
The murder of Shireen was not adequately exposed by the U.S. press. The United States supports Israel politically, ideologically, economically, and morally. The U.S. gives the state of Israel more than $3.8 billion a year in weapons. Shireen was killed by a high-velocity armor-piercing 5.56 mm bullet fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semi automatic rifle – a weapon made in the U.S.
Israel has refused to conduct an investigation of Shireen’s assassination, because it “would provoke opposition and controversy within the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] and in Israeli society in general,” according to the Israeli government. Although complaints have been filed in the International Criminal Court against Israel, the court does not appear to have the political will to thoroughly investigate those charges.
There is an apocryphal story of three rabbis dispatched from a Zionist congress in Vienna many years ago to report back on the situation in Palestine. They reported back that the bride is beautiful but she’s married to another man.
The claim of the Zionist is that Israel was built on a land without a people for a people without a land. This is Israeli propaganda. This propaganda is less and less swallowed by the new generations in the United States and Europe as they witness Israel taking over more and more of historic Palestine and attempting to prevent the truth of what they are doing from coming out.
Guest – Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and Director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. He was educated at Yale and Oxford universities and is the author of many books on the Middle East. He is also the author of Under Siege: PLO Decision Making During the 1982 War, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East and recently The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017.
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