Unauthorized Disclosure

Guest: Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) appears on the show to discuss the release of three of the last members of the "Cuban Five," who were serving prison sentences in the United States. She talks about this victory for activists who had organized for their release. She also highlights what made the five Cuban spies political prisoners and discusses the larger context in which their case unfolded over the past couple of decades. Discussion: Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola talk some more about the shift in US policy toward Cuba. A story of police brutality involving a SWAT Team in and around Houston, Texas, is highlighted, and the results of a torture poll is discussed as well.

This week’s episode of “Unauthorized Disclosure” features an interview with Alka Pradhan, who is a DC counsel for Reprieve US and primarily represents prisoners who remain in indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay. The organization has represented a number of detainees who were once in CIA custody and tortured.

Pradhan shares her reactions to reading the torture report summary and what details stunned her. She breaks down some of the broader aspects of the report and outlines what effect the new information might have on new efforts to achieve justice for torture victims.

Later in the podcast, Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola continue to dig into what was learned about CIA torture this past week. For example, we confront the  of "rectal rehydration" on detainees.

We also recorded an additional twenty minutes of material to talk about a USAID contractor trying to help the US government the Cuban government by co-opting the hip-hop underground scene. Palestinian American organizer Rasmea Odeh's  until her sentencing is highlighted as well.

Kevin Gosztola hosts this episode. Joey Mogul, an attorney with the People's Law Office and a part of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials project, discusses the findings of the UN Committee Against Torture against the Chicago Police Department. She highlights the history of Chicago police torture, the importance of the UN Committee and the campaign to get reparations for torture survivors. 

In the discussion part of the episode, the latest delay of the release of the executive summary of the Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture is covered as well as the US government's position that the FBI may impersonate repairmen and break into your private property to collect evidence against persons.

This not-an-episode thanks listeners for their support and also calls out Big Box retailers and other corporations, who hate families and are making them work on Thanksigiving.

Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek are joined by one of the attorneys for Palestinian American organizer Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted of an immigration fraud offense in Detroit on November 10. She was immediately arrested and jailed after the judge revoked her bond and will be in detention until her sentencing on March 10. 

Deutsch provides background on who she is, why the government knew who she was and allowed her into the United States, how she was torture victim who had been abused by Israeli forces, how the judge gutted Odeh's defense and sought to protect Israel and how the prosecutors, in many ways, pursued this like a terrorism case. 

In the discussion portion after the interview, we discuss the UN Committee Against Torture proceedings with the US delegation, journalists Max Blumenthal and David Sheen possibly being banned from German parliament, a Navy war games exercise threatening national park land with electromagnetic radiation and a US Marshal's Service dragnet spy program intercepting phone communications.

Nathan Patches Pim, a Food Not Bombs volunteer, joins the podcast to highlight what has been happening in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with people resisting a sharing ban against feeding the homeless. He recaps several arrests that happened in the past week and then discusses what is behind the city pushing laws to criminalize the homeless. 

During the discussion portion, the show's hosts, Rania Khalek and Kevin Gosztola, discuss the outcome of the midterm elections, the Pentagon learning from Israeli about how to prevent civilian deaths, the coup leader in Burkina Faso having US military training and a school in Huntsville, Alabama, placing its students under dragnet surveillance and expelling mostly black children.

Page May, organizer with We Charge Genocide, joins "Unauthorized Disclosure" this week to talk about the group's "shadow report" to the UN Committee Against Torture on Chicago police violence and the process of putting it together. She discusses police militarization, sexual assault by police, mass detention and harassment in the context of a system with a history that goes all the way back to the days of slavery in the United States. She also addresses where the name comes from, its historical basis and how it helps frame the group's organizing efforts in Chicago.In the discussion portion, we discuss Israel  the Al Aqsa mosque, US military plans to  "advisers" to the Anbar province in Iraq and the FBI impersonating  and , accused cop killer Eric Frein's , and Josh Rogin and Eli Lake's  with Bloomberg.

Hosts Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek are joined by journalist and author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, Max Blumenthal. He also shares his experiences in Israel and Gaza in the midst and aftermath of Israel's summer assault, which killed over two thousand Palestinians and damaged infrastructure more severely than Israel's two previous wars on Gaza.

He also talks about the fanatical protesters he encountered when he went to the Lincoln Center on the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's "Death of Klinghoffer" and how Jewish people are perpetuating the "spirit of the Holocaust" to maintain their status in the world and preserve Israeli military occupation of Palestinians.

This week on the “Unauthorized Disclosure” podcast the guest is Cori Crider, a director for and a counsel representing Guantanamo prisoner Abu Wa'el Dhiab. She describes the kind of treatment Dhiab has suffered in Guantanamo while he has been on hunger strike and why he decided to bring a lawsuit against the United States government. She highlights the significance of 32 videos of Dhiab's force-feeding and forced removal from his cell, which a federal judge has ordered be released (although the government is appealing). She also discusses the critical role she plays as an attorney who can publicly advocate for Dhiab while he remains in indefinite detention.

During the discussion portion, hosts Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek debrief and reflect on "Ferguson October," since they were both there in St. Louis last weekend to cover the "weekend of resistance." Then, the show highlights plans by the Obama administration to for battle in Syria, which will make it possible for inmates and former offenders to be silenced if they want to engage in speech and that only 4% of US drone strike victims in Pakistan have been al Qaeda.

Hosts Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek are joined by Montague Simmons, chair of  (OBS). He provides an update on aggressive action by police against protestors. He talks about helping community residents feel they will be secure when they participate in actions and how "jail support" is being handled. He also offers a preview of an upcoming weekend of resistance, "Ferguson October," that will take place October 10-13. During the discussion portion, Gosztola and Khalek talk a bit about Ebola (they don't have it). Then, the war in Syria and Iraq is highlighted, particularly how Obama has abandoned the "near-certainty" standard, which was developed to prevent civilian casualties in the administration's covert drone war. We talk NSA spying and how the government has its own definition of "collection" that does not mean what you might think. And the show wraps with Khalek reflecting on a hashtag she and journalist Max Blumenthal started, which garnered quite a bit of attention: #JSIL.