Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power
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Vaccine Passports, Privacy And Civil Liberties
New York State became the first in the country to premier a Covid-19 vaccine passport. They call it the Excelsior Pass and proponents say it’s a safe and efficient way for people to return to sporting events, concerts, Broadway theaters and other large group settings. You show a QR code proving a recent negative test or full vaccination.
The pass is voluntary and lets New Yorkers upload their official results—from a number of different vaccination sites and labs—into the system to verify that the person holding the pass meets the standards for entry. The state first used the pass at a Buffalo Bills football game in January after which they monitored attendees for 14 days after and discovered “almost negligible” transmission.
Registration in the program requires three pieces of information: Name, date of birth, and zip code. The pass is matched to vaccination and testing records using a series of questions to prevent fraud. When the person arrives at a venue, all they have to do is show a photo ID with their code, which will generate a green check mark at the venue.
New York state officials say they’ve been in close talks with surrounding states about integrating systems, but their neighbors say it’s not the priority. What are vaccine passports and who is considering implementing them? Connecticut, for example says it doesn’t have immediate plans to roll out a vaccine passport, although Governor Ned Lamont has said it’s possible to see private sector solutions if demand grows and if the technology is proven effective.
Guest – Attorney David J. McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. McGuire also is the chair of the Connecticut Special Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, serves on the state’s Racial Profiling Prohibition Project Advisory Board, and is a member of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System.
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Attorney Flint Taylor : Police Brutality And The Derek Chauvin Trial
The cruel and sadistic police murder of George Floyd last June on a Minneapolis sidewalk was videoed by a courageous 17 year old bystander. Her video was viewed by Americans across the country and the world. It captured Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, smirking, with one hand in his pocket as he knelt for 9 minutes and 29 seconds on George Floyd’s neck. Floyd was handcuffed behind his back and restrained by two other police officers at the time. He begged for his life, called for his mother, and repeatedly said “I can’t breathe!”
Onlookers gathered in protest as the murder progressed but their intersession was of no avail. George Floyd‘s life drained out of him. He lost his pulse. Still Chauvin persisted, kneeling on a dead man. An ambulance came to take away George Floyd’s corpse.
People responded, it was massive and sustained. In some two thousand cities across America 20 million people, white and Black , Black lead, protested in the streets. More than demanding that George Floyd’s killer be brought to justice, they demanded that police departments be defunded, that police be controlled by the community, and that ending police murders of Black people be brought to halt once and for all.
We are now in the midst of the trial of killer cop Derek Chauvin. Millions of Americans are watching the trial. It seems to them that this latest racist police outrage is the culmination of so many past murders. They are asking, what is to be done?
Guest – Attorney G. Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People Law Office in Chicago starting out over 50 years ago representing the family of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Who was assassinated by the Chicago Police Department with the help of the FBI. He has represented numerous police torture survivors during the past 33 years. Taylor was one of the lawyers involved in the struggle for reparations and has chronicled the decade long fight against Chicago police torture in his award-winning book “The Torture Machine : Racism and Violence in Chicago.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iraq War, Military Tribunal, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Prosecution of the Bush Administration, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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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.
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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
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
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- Commentary On Julian Assange’s Case By Attorney Jim Lafferty
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Capital Punishment: Mumia Abu-Jamal And Heidi Boghosian
Journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal spent 40 years on death row in Pennsylvania. As listeners will recall, in 2012 his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal Court and he entered general population. While on death row he published 13 books and numerous commentaries on issues of social justice and the carceral state. In a special interview, Mumia joins us to reflect on capital punishment and its relationship to our modern society.
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CCR: A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days
Some political skeptics , distrusting of the incoming Biden administration, are saying that it’s “ out with the old in with the older.“ That is that the old neo-liberal crew from the Obama/Clinton days are back in power and that little will change, nothing fundamental.
They are especially concerned about the impending climate catastrophe, systemic racism, the threat of nuclear war, the shifting of wealth from the bottom to the top, and the never ending forever wars. The Center for Constitution Rights has developed a comprehensive program to challenge this. It is called A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days.
Guest – Center for Constitutional Rights Advocacy Director attorney Nadia Ben-Youssef, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Boston College of Law. She has worked with the Adalah Justice Project for Palestinian rights In the Negev in southern Israel.
Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iraq War, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Julian Assange Update With Journalist Kevin Gosztola
The problem of the 2020 United States election between Biden and Trump from the standpoint of defending free national security journalism was that one of them would win. Whereas Trump was a caricatures of the system Biden is its embodiment. He has pledged “nothing will fundamentally change.“ This is the fear of Julian Assange and his defenders.
The Trump administration initiated an indictment against Julian Assange for 17 counts of espionage. Assange revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan 10 years ago. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called his organization, WikiLeaks, which published his whistleblowing articles, “a non-state hostile intelligence entity.”
Biden has called Assange “a high tech terrorist.” Hillary Clinton said “we should drone him.” One of the legal advisors to Biden was a prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia and sent whistle blowers, John Karakuo and Jeffery Sterling, to federal prison. He wanted to indict Julian Assange but left office to join a private law firm before he could get around to it
Julian Assange is now in solitary confinement in Britain’s infamous and Covid wracked Belmarsh prison in London. He is in terrible physical and mental shape. The extradition request of the United States has been litigated. We await the judges decision which is expected at January 4.
The defense has submitted their arguments in support of Julian, principally that this is a political prosecution which is illegal under an American British treaty.
Guest – Kevin Gosztola, a journalist who has covered the recent extradition hearing and writing on whistleblowers for many years. He writes for “Substack” and does the podcast “ Unauthorized Disclosure“. He has closely followed the Julian Assange case.
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Release Aging People In Prison Campaign During Covid 19 Risks
As coronavirus positivity rates have been rising nationwide two states—NY and California—have shown vastly different responses. In New York State, nearly 5% of the state’s prisoners have tested positive for Covid 19. Public health experts have warned that to reduce the spread of the virus, prison populations should be cut to 50% capacity.
While Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered the release of 3,109 New Yorkers, he hasn’t used his power of clemency, either through a pardon of commutation. In stark contrast, Governor Gavin Newsom of California has expedited the release of nearly 9,000 prisoners and issued 55 commutations and 4 medical reprieves between March and November.
In contrast, Andrew Cuomo has granted 2 commutations in January, and another 3 in June. Critics call that number outrageous. Steve Zeidman, who co-directs CUNY Law School’s Defenders Clinic Second Look Project told Gothamist that clemency is “an urgent necessity that is being ignored.” The clinic currently represents 50 people whose clemency petitions await the governor’s decision.
The governor’s office declined to comment on whether he will issue more commutations this year. For the past six holiday seasons, advocates have gathered to plead with Cuomo to commute more sentences. For the most part, he has ignored their pleas.
Guest – Jose Saldana, executive director of Release Aging People in Prison.
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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, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
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The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself
COVID-19 did not cause the current economic devastation to billions of people around the world. It triggered the crisis. It illuminated the inherent instability in the capitalist system itself. Capitalism exacerbates unemployment, inequality, racism, and patriarchy and threatens the health and safety of workers and our communities.
We are in the worst economic crisis since the great depression of 90 years ago. Half of the American population is poor or near poor. Twenty million people are unemployed. It is estimated that 400,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by the end of the year. Most of these people will be Black, Latino, the poor and the elderly.
The large corporations have bought out both the Republican and Democratic parties. Neither one of these parties has put forward an effective plan on what to do to get us out of this catastrophic situation.
Guest – Professor Richard Wolff, author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. His previous books are Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism.
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Julian Assange Extradition Case Update
The decline of democracy and the rule of law, already advanced under Obama , has accelerated under Trump. By his own admission it is widely known that President Trump will not consent to leaving office if he loses the election. What is not so widely known is the case that he caused to be prosecuted against journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange.
Assange is being railroaded in the Old Bailey courthouse in London in an effort by US government, in collaboration with its British ally, to extradite Assange and send him to the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Assange told the truth about American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2010. He is 49 years old and in terrible mental and physical health. If he loses and is sent to the Eastern District of Virginia for trial and successfully prosecuted, which is a given, it will be the death of free journalism and a blow to the first amendment which is a keystone of our democracy because it involves the right to learn.
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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