"The Laura Flanders Show" (25 minutes)
Can music make a movement? This week, legendary music producer Danny Goldberg takes us back to a time when "All You Need is Love" was not meant to be ironic, and we talk about his new book, In Search of the Lost Chord about the hippie summer of 1967. Then, from today's movement music scene, Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman celebrate the release of their new album, Intrinsic, and perform for us in studio.
"Here the Rains Never Come" (8 minutes)
In a first for a case involving CIA torture, the American Civil Liberties Union settled a lawsuit against the two psychologists who designed and implemented the agency’s brutal program. A jury trial was scheduled to begin on September 5, after the plaintiffs successfully overcame every attempt by the psychologists to have the case dismissed.
The lawsuit was brought by the ACLU on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, who froze to death in a secret CIA prison. The three men were tortured and experimented on using methods developed by the CIA-contracted psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen.
The full terms of the settlement agreement are confidential.
Until now, every lawsuit trying to hold people accountable for the CIA torture program has been dismissed at initial stages because the government successfully argued that letting the cases proceed would reveal state secrets. But unlike previous cases, this time the Justice Department did not try to derail the lawsuit. The defendants attempted to dismiss the case multiple times, but the court consistently ruled that the plaintiffs had valid claims.
"Can Art Amend History?" (13 minutes)
Artist Titus Kaphar makes paintings and sculptures that wrestle with the struggles of the past while speaking to the diversity and advances of the present. In an unforgettable live workshop, Kaphar takes a brush full of white paint to a replica of a 17th-century Frans Hals painting, obscuring parts of the composition and bringing its hidden story into view. There's a narrative coded in art like this, Kaphar says. What happens when we shift our focus and confront unspoken truths?
"A Deal With the Devil" (6 minutes)
A plea deal is an arrangement to resolve a case without going to trial. This is an option most often taken by those who cannot afford bail and want to go home instead of wait days, months, even years locked up in jail. An estimated 177,624 innocent Americans pleaded guilty in 2013 alone. Does this sound like a just system to you?
"Preventing Gun Violence – An International Perspective" (55.5 minutes)
On October 25, 2015, the Joint Annual Dinner of the Sacramento Chapters of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the United Nations Association featured keynote speaker Rebecca Peters, the founding director of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). Following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Australia, Ms. Peters led a grass roots gun control campaign that led to prompt action by the Australian government to ban all assault weapons in their country. For her work on gun violence prevention, she received the Australian Human Rights Medal, the Australian equivalent of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.
During her keynote address, Ms. Peters described how she and her Australian colleagues were able to get the nationwide ban on assault weapons passed. She noted that following the ban, over a million firearms were removed from circulation, overall rates of firearm related deaths and injuries, already much lower than in the United States, declined even further, and there hasn't been a single additional mass shooting.
Ms. Peters challenged Americans to take similar action to stop the epidemic of gun violence in our country.