This Can't Be Happening

Kansas correspondent Mike Caddell, to discuss the release from Ft. Leavenworth prison of whisteblower extraordinaire Chelsea Manning, the case of released, rearrested and re-released Anonymous hacker Barrett Brown, and of how the rolling Trump presidential disaster is playing in ultra-Red State Kansas.  

Guest Michael Uhl, author, peace activist with Veterans for Peace, and a Vietnam combat veteran draftee who turned critic of the war anf became, in Noam Chomsky's words, "One of the most prominent figures of the veteran's resistance movement that played a crucial role in bringing to the American people the shocking reality of the Vietnam War," talks with host Dave Lindorff about a visit he made to a meeting of Vietnam vets organized in Maine as part of a nationwide, decade-long Pentagon campaign to revise and prettify the history of the Vietnam War.

Host Dave Lindorff updates the case of incarcerated black journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has been left untreated by Pennsylvania prison authorities for two years with a virulent case of active Hepatitis-C he contracted in prison, explaining that an Appellate Court just shot-down an effort by the Department of Corrections to delay giving him needed medicine indefinitely until the court could hear his case. Lindorff also talks about the need to move from fighting to defend Obamacare to fighting for Medicare for all. Also on the program, guest Chris Goldstein, communications director of Philadelphia NORML, talks about the federal government's efforts to bar financial aid to college students busted for even minor drug offenses.

Dave does a show on Flynn, the Russians, and the Deep State, with prairie radical Michael Caddell out of Kansas. 

Ellen Schrecker, author of "No Ivory Tower" and other books about the McCarthy era, and a widely acclaimed expert on that subject, talks about similarities -- and differences -- between that era of anti-communist witch-hunts and our own era of official hounding of government critics, immigrants and "pro-Russian" leftists.

  Sometimes "This Can't Be Happening!" can refer to a bit of unbelievably good news and today's show is one of those times. As Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, a Pennsylvania prisoner advocacy legal service  and one of two attorneys fighting to force the state's Corrections Dept. to provide effective anti-viral medication to inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal to treat his raging Hepatitis C infection, reports, a federal judge yesterday issued an injunction ordering the prison system to begin treating the internationally known prisoner within 14 days. This is a huge victory, even if the state tries to appeal it and it offers hope that Abu-Jamal, whose death sentence was overturned and replaced with life without parole, will not end up being medically executed by the state through willful neglect.

Retired CIA Sr. Analyst Ray McGovern, who used to give presidents back to Ronald Reagan the CIA's daily briefing, and who later co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), talks with host Dave Lindorff about the CIA's claim --which he calls "a crock" -- that the Russians and Vladimir Putin were behind the release of Democratic National Committee and Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta's emails, in an effort to throw the election to Donald Trump. 

John Grant, a Vietnam veteran, noir genre writer and peace activist with Veterans for Peace, and his partner artist and peace activist Lou Ann Merkel, talk about the Standing Rock stand against the Dakota Oil Pipeline, and the unique development of thousands of veterans pouring onto the bitterly cold prairie protest action site to put their bodies on the line defending water protectors against militarized law enforcement repression. Lou Ann just returned to Philadelphia from a week at Standing Rock.

Robb Kall, founder of the progressive website OpEd News, and host Dave Lindorff, both smeared by the Washington Post and the obscure website PropOrNot.com that it relied upon in an article claiming 200 news sites to be working in league with Russian propaganda organs to undermine US democracy, talk about this return to McCarthyite red-baiting by the once great newspaper that brought us the expose of the Watergate Scandal.  

Jules Mermelstein, constitutional law expert and a life-long Democrat active in local politics in Pennsylvania politics who quit that party in disgust and joined the Green Party after watching the Clinton campaign and the DNC sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders offers his unique insight into the current political crisis the day after Trump's election in a conversation with host Dave Lindorff on "This Can't Be Happening  

Host Dave Lindorff talks with Keegan Stephan, law student, activist and writer working with attorneys and Black Lives Matters activist in a lawsuit to force the NYPD to come clean and disclose the extent of undercover infiltration of the Black Lives Matter movement that the department has been engaged in since its inception. The case developed out of an FOIA request concerning such infiltration of a Black Lives Matter protest last year in Grand Central Station.

 Native News Online publisher and editor Levi Rickert reports on developments in the Indigenous community, in particular a meeting in Washington of reps from the 500 Indian Tribes and Nations with government officials to hammer out how to comply with President Obama's executive order requiring "substantive" talks with Native Peoples' before any actions by government bodies that impact indian lives and lands. He also updates listeners on developments at Standing Rock, ND, where, ignored by most of the corporate media, the Lakota and their supporters are standing firm against plans for the Dakota Access oil pipeline to cross indian land and sacred sites, threatening the tribe and also environmental disaster. Host Dave LIndorff also discusses the ongoing slaughter of innocents by America's increasingly violent and militarized police.

Levi Rickert, editor of Native News Online, a national publication about indigenous peoples of North America, talks about what he calls the most significant political action by Native Americans since the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation on the Pine Ridge reservation. He tells how activists from over 200 Indian tribes as well as representatives of indigenous peoples from around the world have converged at Standing Rock in North Dakota to help the local embattled Standing Rock Sioux People defend their land and water against despoilation by the Army Corps of Engineers, which is trying to construct a pipeline across Sioux lands to carry Bakkan Field crude oil to St. Louis.

Guest Karl Denninger, a libertarian, internet entrepreneur and one of the early founders of the Teaparty Movement -- as well as a supporter of the Occupy Movement -- tells host Dave Lindorff that the US is "doomed" if it doesn't return to the rule of law. Specifically, he says that unless the country begins seriously prosecuting -- and jailing -- political and top corporate criminals, like the executives of the nation's largest banks for example, the corruption that plagues US society, politics and business will only get worse. 

Host Dave Lindorff interviews John Whitehead, founder and head of the Rutherford Institute, a legal organization dedicated to defending civil liberties, and combating threats to the Bill of Rights. Whitehead talks about his concrete experiences defending people wrongfully arrested by gestapo like federal, state and local police, about police militarization, and what he decries as the rapid consolidation of a police state in the US.

Mike Caddell, self-described "prairie radical," who is running a seemingly long-shot campaign as a Democrat in the reddest of states, Kansas, home of the Koch Brothers, but as guest on "This Can't Be Happening!" tells host Dave LIndorff that he's getting cheered at local parades and pancake breakfasts when he calls for a Kansas revolution to "sweep the statehouse clean of Republicans." Something is happening in Kansas.

Vietnam War veteran and ThisCantBeHappening! collective members John Grant and show host Dave Lindorff talk about their two latest articles on ThisCantBeHappening.net, John's on the politicization of PTSD and Dave on the idea that assault weapons should not only be banned in the US for civilians, but also should be barred as standard issue weapons for police.

Kevin Zeese, former press spokesman for Ralph Nader's 2004 presidential campaign, Green Party activist, organizer with PopularResistance.org and currently part of a movement to push Bernie Sanders to run for president in the general election, discusses with host Dave Lindorff a proposal from Jill Stein and other Green Party leaders and activists to have Sanders run as their candidate for president, They go on to consider about how such a remarkable campaign could actually win the White House, either outright, or by negotiations in the Electoral College, and how a Sanders candidacy could institutionalize Sanders' 'Political Revolution' by transforming the Green Party from a perennial protest vote vehicle into a major national party of the left.

Greg Haddock, an activist in Germany with the #BernieOrBust movement that is urging Americans to pledge not to vote for Hillary Clinton if she gets, or steals, the Democratic presidential nomination from Bernie Sanders, talks about the campaign and about efforts to pressure Sanders to run in the coming General Election as an independent or as the Green Party's candidate if he doesn't get the Democratic Party's nod.

Seattle's socialist councilwoman Kshama Sawant talks about her efforts, including a petition at movement4bernie.org/run-all-the-way, to get Bernie Sanders to reject endorsing Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination, and to instead continue to run for the general election, either as an independent or as the Green Party Candidate. Host Dave LIndorff also talks about a grass roots effort being organized to bring hundreds of thousands of Sanders backers to Philadelphia for the July 25 Dem Convention, to demand that Sanders not back Clinton if he doesn't get the nomination, but to run as an independent or a Green. Go to:  https://veritynow.com/2016/04/23/thousands-prepare-to-march-on-the-dnc/