NATO Summit Trip Debrief; The Chilcot Report; and Systemic Police Violence Against Black Communities

Russia, the United States and NATO Summit Trip Debrief

Noam Chomsky has recently written with alarm about the two threats facing humanity – climate change and nuclear war. The likelihood of a nuclear war has increased he wrote because of NATO military buildup and expansion east to the Russian border thus breaking a promise the U S made to Russia when East and West Germany were unified. Moreover under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the U S spent 5 billion dollars in successfully overthrowing the democratically elected government of the Ukraine, a country bordering Russia on its south western frontier. The Center for Citizen Initiatives

Guest – Ann Wright, has just returned from Russia. Wright was in the US army for 25 years and then in the diplomatic corp. Ann Wright grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas, and attended the University of Arkansas, where she received a master s and a law degree. She also has a master s degree in national security affairs from the U.S. Naval War College. After college, she spent thirteen years in the U.S. Army and sixteen additional years in the Army Reserves, retiring as a Colonel. She is airborne-qualified.

In 1987, Col.Wright joined the Foreign Service and served as U.S. Deputy Ambassador in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. She received the State Department s Award for Heroism for her actions during the evacuation of 2,500 people from the civil war in Sierra Leone, at the time the largest evacuation since Saigon. She was on the first State Department team to go to Afghanistan and helped reopen the Embassy there in December 2001. Her other overseas assignments include Somalia, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada, Micronesia, and Nicaragua. On March 19, 2003, the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ann Wright cabled a letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell, stating that without the authorization of the UN Security Council, the invasion and occupation of a Muslim, Arab, oil-rich country would be a violation of international law. Voices of Conscience.

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The Chilcot Report

Great Britain has just released the Chilcot report. It exposes the role of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in taking his country into the war against Iraq, joining the US in illegally overthrowing Saddam Hussein and beginning a war that has been ongoing since 2004, destroying that country and destabilizing the Middle East leading to wars. In Libya, Syria and Yemen. The Chilcot Report reinforces the observation of Robert Breedlove, the head of MI 5, the British CIA, after a visit to the USA, before the war began, that the USA was dishonesty manufacturing “intelligence ” and that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was of no danger.

Guest – Professor Robin Andersen, teaches communications at Fordham University in New York and writes for Fairness and Accuracy In Media, FAIR, the media watchdog group.

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Roger Wareham: Systemic Police Violence Against Black Communities

New York s attorney general Eric Schneiderman is investigating an off-duty NYPD officer’s fatal shooting of 37-year old Delrawn Small in Brooklyn, after he and his girlfriend and 3 children celebrated the Fourth of July holiday. Shortly after midnight Small and an undercover officer, driving his personal vehicle, were involved in a traffic dispute.The officer shot three times with his service weapon, killing Small. Authorities justified the attack by claiming Small had punched Isaacs in the face. But surveillance footage later released showed that the police had lied about the incident and show that Small was shot within one second after approaching Isaac’s unmarked car.

Zaquanna Albert, Small s girlfriend, witnessed the attack from the car, along with their 4-month-old child. On Monday, the NYPD announced that it had stripped Isaacs of his gun. He has been placed on modified duty and will, for now, be restricted to desk work.

Guest – Attorney Roger Wareham who is representing Delrawn Small. A longtime human rights attorney, Roger has represented many Black political prisoners in federal lawsuits across the country, and was co-counsel in representing three of the young men wrongfully convicted in the Central Park Jogger case.

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