Marjorie Cohn on Portland Secret Police
We live in the United Stats of Bedlam. Two lying parties (the only ones allowed by the gatekeeping whore media), two equally spurious versions of reality, fighting it out at all levels, with the public divided and hopelessly ignorant and confused.
Heavily militarized police (and probably other units of the gianormous repressive machinery of the United States), are now being deployed to various cities, possibly as test of tactics on how to contain oncoming unrest caused by the decadent capitalist system and its inherent inability to deal with the profound crises it originates. As suggested already by other observers, these "unidentified" agents are members of the US Customs and Border Protection bureaucracies, both of which ae especially loyal to Trump.
CounterSpin Marjorie Cohn Interview
(image: Sparrow Project, 7/15/20)
This week on CounterSpin: Some corporate media appear agog that militarized federal agents—deployed with a mission reflected in Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s comment that city streets are a “battlespace,” filled with what acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf called “violent mobs”—would go ahead and tear gas protesters in Portland, Oregon, even though Portland’s Democratic mayor, Tom Wheeler, was among them. Outrageous, sure, but we’re a bit beyond outrage now, aren’t we? While we wait to see if corporate media can decide which optic is an optic too far, we talk about the legal, constitutional elements of the fight for our right to protest, including against the very forces that are sent to police the protesting. Our guest is Marjorie Cohn, past president of the National Lawyers Guild, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and contributor/editor on a number of books, including The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, and Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
Janine Jackson is the program director of FAIR, and the host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin—a weekly program of media criticism airing on more than 150 stations around the country.
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