Trevor Timm is back with an update on Julian Assange’s extradition hearing. Timm was a witness for the defense, where he argued against the idea that what Assange and WikiLeaks do is categorically different than the activity of other journalists. The prosecution has argued that Assange’s solicitation of classified documents amounts to collaboration in an illegal activity—Timm explained that this is no different whatsoever from what any mainstream journalistic outlet does. Just because some...

Kevin Gosztola is back for another update on Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, where most recently the defense has been debunking the prosecution’s claim that Assange engaged in a hacking scheme with Chelsea Manning. Gosztola says the defense was able to establish the baselessness of this claim, based in part on the fact that WikiLeaks had already published just about everything Manning leaked to them before the supposed hacking would have taken place. Gosztola fears that despite this...

Gilbert Doctorow discusses the latest aggressive maneuvers being carried out by the U.S. government and its allies toward Russia. Doctorow says that the flying of planes near Russia’s border just for intelligence gathering is quite common and relatively unthreatening—but lately America has been sending bombers to those same areas, which actively engage their weapons systems in a way that Russia can detect. Doctorow says that the only possible motive for doing this is to send the message that...

Scott talks to Jessica Katzenstein from the Costs of War Project about her recent paper on the effects of America’s foreign wars on police militarization. She and Scott trace police militarization to the escalation of the war on drugs in the 1990s, when SWAT raids became especially prevalent. Today that trend has reached all-time highs, with Katzenstein estimating 60,000 raids per year. With so much military equipment being funneled to police departments from the military and Homeland...

Scott talks to Grant Smith about his ongoing work on the Israel lobby and its influence in America. Scott likens the story of Israel and Palestine to the history of the U.S. government and the Native Americans—for a long time everyone learned a skewed version that obscured American government crimes, but slowly the revisionist account became the widely accepted one. Scott and Smith hope that a similar transformation is on the horizon when it comes to American perception of Israeli treatment of...

Trevor Aaronson discusses the FBI’s dubious techniques for luring people into fake terrorist plots, which very often border on entrapment. In this case he takes up the story of two Americans involved in the “boogaloo” movement, who were approached by FBI agents masquerading as members of Hamas. The FBI was able to induce these young men into cooperating with a scheme that supposedly would have involved attacks on Israeli soldiers. Whether or not these two were at all likely to have committed...

Scott interviews Andrea Prasow about the war crimes and human rights violations being perpetrated by all sides in the war in Yemen. She reminds us that although civilians always suffer the most during war, this war has seen a particularly cruel strategy by the Saudis, supported by the U.S., of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and blocking the delivery of food and humanitarian aid. Also unlike most of America’s wars, congress has made several attempts to force an end to U.S....

Kevin Gosztola is back for another update on Julian Assange’s extradition hearing. A major focus of the last few days, he says, has been Assange’s mental health, including a brand new diagnosis of Asperger syndrome. The defense has argued that this, combined with serious depression, would make him unfit for high-security imprisonment and for certain kinds of questioning that he would likely have to undergo in the U.S. The defense has also continued to emphasize the insidious and illegal...

Scott inverviews Tom Secker about the immense influence that the police, the military, the intelligence agencies and, especially, the Department of Homeland Security wield in Hollywood. Secker describes the complicated process required for a writer or producer to include any material about the U.S. security state apparatus in a movie or TV show, detailing just how much creative control these agencies demand in exchange for information, shooting locations and special equipment—in other words,...

Peter Van Buren discusses yet another development in the “Russiagate” story, one that he says exposes the whole thing for what it really is. He describes the way “media watchdog” groups will discover small, insignificant websites, come up with an excuse for why they seem to be connected to Russia and then get large platforms like Facebook and Twitter to ban those sites in the name of truth and accuracy. Then mainstream publications like the New York Times will run stories about the bans, and...

Scott talks to Dave Smith about the upcoming election and the role of the Libertarian Party in presidential politics. Both agree that the right move for the Party, given that it has essentially no chance of winning the presidency in the near future, is simply to spread the message of liberty to as many people as possible, just as Ron Paul did during his campaigns. Instead, the LP seems more focused on saying the politically correct thing, not offending too many people and accepting a few...

Gareth Porter discusses the slow death of the “Russiagate” narrative, which has been allowed to live on mainly because of deliberate obfuscation by democrats and the mainstream media. Rarely do they lie outright about the facts, says Porter—instead they will cherry-pick statements from favorable experts and make vague references to incidents where some website or database was accessed by a computer somewhere in Russia. None of this is enough to prove actual Russian interference in the 2016...

Muhammad Sahimi discusses Mike Pompeo’s continual efforts to provoke a war between the U.S. and Iran, or to incite regime change from within. His “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign is part of the quest to attain one of these outcomes, a policy that Sahimi thinks is both doomed to fail and incredibly dangerous for America. The JCPOA, negotiated by the Obama administration, helped to take the excuse for war off the table, easing tensions between the U.S. and Iran. But President Trump withdrew...

Scott talks to Grant Smith about the role of evangelical Christians in the Zionist movement in America. Grant examines the premise that evangelicals are the most significant driving force behind American support for Israel, a popular notion ever since George Bush Sr. blamed his loss to Bill Clinton on his failure to appease evangelical voters on the issue of Israel. But Smith argues that their influence is overblown. He says that the power wielded by actual lobbying groups like AIPAC are still...

Scott interviews Tana Ganeva about her recent article detailing the death of a woman due to medical neglect in one of America’s worst private jails. Holly Barlow-Austin, an HIV patient, was detained for violating probation starting in April, and within a few short months of brutal neglect, had died. Ganeva hopes to bring attention to this story and others like it through her reporting on private prisons and corrupt police departments. Discussed on the show: “In April, She Was Jailed on a...