Prosecution

Talk Nation Radio: Donald McInnis on Miranda Rights for Children

Leave a Comment /

Donald E. McInnis is the author of She’s So Cold: Murder, Accusations, and the System that Devastated a Family. He is a California criminal defense attorney, and he represented one of the three accused boys, Aaron Houser, in the Stephanie Crowe murder case. Over the span of his 40-year legal career, Mr. McInnis has worked alternately for the prosecution and for the defense, having served as a deputy district attorney for two California counties read more

Talk Nation Radio: Donald McInnis on Miranda Rights for Children Read More »

Talk Nation Radio: Deirdre Enright on Freeing Innocent People from Prison

Leave a Comment /

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-deirdre-enright-on-freeing-innocent-people-from-prison

Deirdre Enright is director of investigation for the University of Virginia Law School’s Innocence Project Clinic. Enright previously worked at the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center, where she represented clients and consulted on cases in all stages of capital litigation, with primary focus on federal and state post-conviction proceedings and Supreme Court certiorari review. After graduating from the University of Virginia Law School in 1992, Enright worked as a staff attorney at the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Center. We discuss the work of freeing innocent people from prison.   See: http://www.innocenceprojectuva.org  Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.

Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!

read more

Talk Nation Radio: Deirdre Enright on Freeing Innocent People from Prison Read More »

Talk Nation Radio: U.S. Mass Incarceration, Police Militarization, and Crimes Against Palestinians

Leave a Comment /

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-us-mass-incarceration-police-militarization-and-crimes-against-palestinians

Two guests this week: Jeff Fogel and Ntebo Mokuena.

Jeff Fogel is a candidate for Commonwealth’s Attorney here in Charlottesville, Virginia. After graduating from Rutgers School of Law in 1969, Jeff received a fellowship to work providing legal services to indigent residents in Newark, New Jersey.  After several years, he left that read more

Talk Nation Radio: U.S. Mass Incarceration, Police Militarization, and Crimes Against Palestinians Read More »

Why Release the Torture Report Now

Leave a Comment /

A young man was tortured in Chicago this week. It wasn’t an act of the Chicago police. It was live streamed on Facebook. And the President of the United States declared it an horrific hate crime.

The President did not advise “looking forward” rather than enforcing the law. Nor did he hold open the possibility that the crime might have served some higher purpose. In fact, he didn’t excuse the crime in any way that might help recommend it for imitation by others.

Yet this same president has read more

Why Release the Torture Report Now Read More »

Suing Saudi: Congress Is Right, Stephen Kinzer Is Wrong

Leave a Comment /

Now there you have two things that I never expected to write. How often is Congress right about anything or Stephen Kinzer wrong? Congress wants 9/11 victims’ families to be able to sue Saudi Arabia for its role in those crimes. Kinzer does not.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about victims’ families. It’s not that he’s worried about disturbing relations with the Saudi monarchy (which could perhaps stop selling the United States the fossilized poison it uses to read more

Suing Saudi: Congress Is Right, Stephen Kinzer Is Wrong Read More »

Impeach and Prosecute Tony Blair

Leave a Comment /

The Chilcot report’s “findings” have virtually all been part of the public record for a decade, and it avoids key pieces of evidence. Its recommendations are essentially to continue using war as a threat and a tool of foreign policy, but to please try not to lie so much, make sure to win over a bit more of the public, and don’t promise any positive outcomes given the likelihood of catastrophe.

The report is a confused jumble, given that it records evidence of the supreme read more

Impeach and Prosecute Tony Blair Read More »

Should Criminalizing War Start by Pretending It’s Legal?

Leave a Comment /

There’s a terrific new book on abolishing war called Abolishing War: Criminalizing War, Removing War Causes, Removing War as Institution. The authors are Johan Galtung, Erika Degortes, Irene Galtung, Malvin Gattinger, and Naakow Grant-Hayford. Johan Galtung, who was recently on my radio show, is brilliant as always, drawing on vast knowledge and wisdom.

As the book’s subtitle suggests, it proposes three types of approaches to eliminating war: “three approaches to have war join slavery and read more

Should Criminalizing War Start by Pretending It’s Legal? Read More »

You Should Watch Making of a Murderer

Leave a Comment /

There’s a 10-hour documentary on Netflix with more to teach us than all the combined episodes of Star Wars. (Yes, it’s nice to see a storm trooper refuse to fight, but only until he gleefully joins in the killing for the other side, with all his victims still in masks so that we, the executioner audience, don’t have to see faces die.)

Making of a Murderer is a hugely important film, and it is in fact quite suspenseful. And I am about to SPOIL the plot for you. So please read more

You Should Watch Making of a Murderer Read More »

Video and Audio of Pilots Who Bombed Hospital

Leave a Comment /

There is video and audio. It exists. The Pentagon says it’s critically important. Congress has asked for it and been refused. WikiLeaks is offering $50,000 to the next brave soul willing to be punished for a good deed in the manner of Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, and so many others. You can petition the White House to hand it over here.

The entire world thinks the U.S. military intentionally attacked a hospital because it considered some of the patients enemies, didn’t read more

Video and Audio of Pilots Who Bombed Hospital Read More »

Amnesty International Once Again Refuses to Oppose War

Leave a Comment /

In an online discussion I asked Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, a fairly straightforward question:

“Will Amnesty International recognize the UN Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact and oppose war and militarism and military spending? Admirable as it is to go after many of the symptoms of militarism, your avoidance of addressing the central problem seems bizarre. The idea that you can more credibly offer opinions on the legality of constituent elements of a crime if read more

Amnesty International Once Again Refuses to Oppose War Read More »

Where there were massacres there are now power plants

Leave a Comment /

In the United States it’s hard to imagine admiring an attorney general. The words call to mind people like Eric Holder, Michael Mukasey, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Janet Reno, and Edwin Meese. There were those who fantasized that Barack Obama would not prevent an attorney general from prosecuting top officials for torture, but the idea of a U.S. attorney general prosecuting a U.S. president for war/genocide doesn’t even enter the realm of fantasy (in part, because Americans don’t read more

Where there were massacres there are now power plants Read More »

Talk Nation Radio: Inder Comar on Prosecuting Bush for War

Leave a Comment /

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-inder-comar-on-prosecuting-bush-for-war

D. Inder Comar is legal director at Comar Law, a boutique law firm in San Francisco. We discuss the case of Saleh v. Bush in which he is lead counsel, currently in the 9th Circuit, seeking to hold George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and others responsible under the laws of Nuremberg for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. See: http://witnessiraq.com

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David read more

Talk Nation Radio: Inder Comar on Prosecuting Bush for War Read More »

Pentagon Admits that War is Illegal

Leave a Comment /

The Pentagon has just published 1,204 pages on how it thinks you can behave legally during a war. Looking through this “Law of War Manual” at various hot topics, one finds some atrocities excused as acceptable (cluster bombs, nuclear bombs) and others rejected as completely disallowed (torture) even when in reality they are routinely engaged in.

Beginning to wonder what the point is of writing out such a lengthy description of laws when someone could just read the laws themselves in read more

Pentagon Admits that War is Illegal Read More »

Peace Work Because of You

Leave a Comment /

A note from David Swanson:

You may have seen this article I wrote recently on ongoing U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons. It’s on dozens of websites, including my own WarIsACrime, but also Al Jazeera, Truthout, Counterpunch, FireDogLake, OpEdNews, Washington’s Blog, Z, and many others.

Guess what I got paid, in total, from all of those outlets? —–>>>

But I can pay the bills and keep working for peace if you help read more

Peace Work Because of You Read More »

Talk Nation Radio: Rebecca Gordon on Mainstreaming Torture

Leave a Comment /

https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-rebecca-gordon-on-mainstreaming-torture

A new book called Mainstreaming Torture argues that torture has been with us for a long time and remains with us and has been mainstreamed and increased in acceptability in the years since Bush and Cheney left office.  We speak with the author, Rebecca Gordon. She teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. Previous publications include Letters From Nicaragua  read more

Talk Nation Radio: Rebecca Gordon on Mainstreaming Torture Read More »

AP Re-Used Three-Year-Old Article on Torture Report

Leave a Comment /

The Associated Press is denying claims by two of its writers that cost-savings was a motivation.  Rather, says editor Richard Giardino, an error resulted in the accidental re-publication last week of an article on a Senate committee report on torture, an article that had originally been published in 2011.

In defense of the wire service, Giardino noted in a 2,000-word explanation, that “while the article may have been dated, it ran in dozens of newspapers without anyone noticing.” read more

AP Re-Used Three-Year-Old Article on Torture Report Read More »

Arrest Bush in Richmond, Va.

Leave a Comment /

To: Richmond, Va., Mayor Dwight C. Jones, Police Chief Ray J. Tarasovic, Sheriff C.T. Woody Jr,

From: David Swanson, author; Phil Wilayto, editor, The Virginia Defender; Ana Edwards, chair, Defenders’ Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project

We hope you will consider this request from deeply concerned Virginians on its legal merits rather than its acceptability in certain social circles or how it might be received by certain television talking heads.

Conspiracy to torture has long been read more

Arrest Bush in Richmond, Va. Read More »