Loud & Clear

Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was indicted today on sex trafficking charges for maintaining what the indictment calls a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York, Palm Beach, and his private jet. Epstein has long standing political, business and personal ties to Republican President Donald Trump and former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, attorney Alan Dershowitz, and many other politicians, businessmen, bankers, and media elites. Some of Epstein’s many underage female victims and their families have been fighting back and demanding justice. Supported by courageous journalists and attorneys and their families, they have exposed how Epstein was shielded by friends in high places who provided him with a sweetheart prosecution deal in 2008. Will true justice be served this time around and will Jeffrey Epstein’s friends and possible collaborators be brought down as the new case proceeds?Iran said yesterday that it would exceed the limit in the 2015

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Professor Gerald Horne, a prolific author, who has recently released “Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music” and “White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela.”On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” It was a scathing speech in which Douglass said, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn.” What do those words mean 167 years later? Yesterday was July 4th. The anniversary of the start of the American Revolution. Since its founding there have been many mythologies created about the United States. The race for the presidency is going strong, and many of the candidates are talking about American Exceptionalism. Most Americans, though, don’t understand the term, and they don’t understand how

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, John Kiriakou and Nicole Roussell (sitting in for Brian Becker) are joined by Gareth Porter, a historian, investigative journalist, and analyst specializing in U.S. national security policy.Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said today that Iran would enrich as much uranium as it wants, beginning on Sunday, because of the Trump Administration’s decision to scrap the JCPOA. Meanwhile, a Defense Department spokesman said that several apparently empty ships have been seen approaching Iranian waters, they’ve dropped off the radar, and they have reappeared days later, apparently full and leaving Iranian waters. Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes in Iraq was found not guilty of first degree murder and myriad other charges in the deaths of civilians and one ISIS fighter in 2017. He was convicted of the crime of posing with a body and sentenced to four months, although he already has served more than that in pretrial detention. Gallagher’s own men turned him in,

Yesterday there were protests by students against police repression in Honduras, while Friday marked the 10th anniversary of a US-backed coup against the government of Honduras that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and sent him into exile. Honduran governments since then have been imposed on the Honduran people by the military and the police. Ten years later, dissenting voices are still silenced, the opposition is routinely jailed, and in many cases tortured. And all the while, the American government continues to prop up a government that even the Honduran Supreme Court has ruled is illegitimate.Federal authorities are investigating whether Customs and Border Protection agents participated in a private Facebook group for Border Patrol employees that hosted racist, sexist, and sexually violent memes and conversations about immigrants and members of Congress, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez and other members of Congress toured the detention camps and condemned conditio

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, John Kiriakou and Nicole Roussell (sitting in for Brian Becker) are joined by Walter Smolarek, a Sputnik News analyst and one of the producers of this show, who is in Seoul, South Korea, covering the meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim.President Trump over the weekend became the first sitting president in history to take a step into North Korea after inviting himself to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone. There, he announced that nuclear talks between the two countries would restart within weeks. The 50-minute meeting was Trump’s third with Kim. Stocks surged today on news that President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping had agreed on a truce on the trade war between the two countries. Trump agreed to ease restrictions on Chinese tech giant Huawei’s US technology purchases and to hold off on extending tariffs on virtually all Chinese goods, while Xi agreed to resume trade talks and to

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jim Kavanagh, editor of thepolemicist.net, and Sputnik News analyst and producer Nicole Roussell.Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on the democratic debates from last night, where they examine Kamala Harris’s attack against Joe Biden’s ongoing and recent embrace with the most notorious racists and segregationists in the US Senate. They also look at Kamala Harris’s own record as a prosecutor and her neocon political positions. Plus, they talk about the decline of european centrist parties and the announced shift back by European elites and capitalists to democratic socialism, and about US-Iranian tensions, including an Iranian saying today that they’ve examined North Korea’s trajectory as a lesson for their own next move. Donald Trump and South Korean president Moon Jae-in are about to hold a major summit and

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Lee Camp, a writer, comedian, activist, journalist, host of the television show “Redacted Tonight” on RT America, and at www.leecamp.com.Did you know that the Trump Administration drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes? Last night was the first Democratic Party debate. And this particular fact did not come up, but the issues of war and peace were discussed. Every 12 minutes somebody is being killed, maimed, or made homeless all in our names. And this is despite the fact that we are officially, legally at war with nobody. At the same time, the Pentagon has lost $21 trillion of the taxpayers’ money. Meanwhile, climate change is bringing us closer and closer to disaster. The first half of the first round of Democratic presidential debates took place last night in Miami, Florida, hosted by MSNBC with 10 Democrats facing questions. Although the format was unwieldy--every response from every candidate was limited to 6

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director who became a legendary national security whistleblower. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the National Security Agency, or NSA, last year continued to collect records about US calls and text messages that it was not authorized to obtain, renewing privacy concerns about a program that NSA said it had discontinued. The unauthorized collection took place last October, several months after NSA leaders said they had ordered that previously unauthorized material collected since 2015 be purged from NSA databases. The House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill to provide funding for undocumented migrants being held in what are being described as inhumane conditions at ICE facilities along the southwestern border. The bill is unlikely to pass in the senate. In the meantime, the children being held in these facilities are dealing with an outbreak of lice and the flu, are

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history at the University of Houston and the author of many books, including his most recent “Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music,” newly available from Monthly Review Press.More than two dozen Democratic candidates for president will be on the debate stage tomorrow, trying to convince the American people that they should sit in the Oval Office for the next four or eight years. All that diversity should mean diverse opinions. But does it? Where do voters turn when the Democrats and Republicans end up agreeing on most issues of war, peace, and economy? The Trump Administration yesterday announced strong new sanctions on Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and moderate Foreign Minister Muhammad Zarif in response to the Iranian shoot-down of a US Global Hawk drone. The Iranians responded by saying that negotiations with the United States were over forever. Mea

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Juan Carlos Ruiz, cofounder of the New Sanctuary Movement.President Trump over the weekend abruptly postponed his already announced immigration raids and said he would give Congress two weeks to make changes to the asylum law before sending agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement around the country to seize and deport undocumented migrants. The raids had been set to begin yesterday in 10 major cities around the country. The United States Cyber Command, an adjunct of the National Security Agency, on Thursday initiated a cyber attack against an Iranian intelligence group that US officials say planned the attacks against oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman in recent weeks. The Iranian government announced today that it was aware of the cyber attack but that it failed and there was no damage. Meanwhile, Mike Pompeo is in Saudi Arabia meeting with the King and Crown Prince and the government of Bahrain is going forward with pl

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Sputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell.Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on the narrowly avoided U.S. attack on Iran last night and the ongoing danger of a devastating regional war as well as the visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to North Korea. President Trump tweeted today that US forces were 10 minutes away from launching a missile attack on Iran, but that he canceled the attack after learning that there likely would have been 150 Iranian casualties. The statement, simple on its face, reveals serious splits within the Administration. And the real question mark is what would the Iranian response have been? Kevin Zeese, the co-coordinator of Popular Resistance, whose work is at popularresistance.org, joins the show. Hero pilot Sully Sullenberger’s testimony before the H

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Mohammad Marandi, an expert on American studies and postcolonial literature who teaches at the University of Tehran.Iran announced this morning that it had shot down a US military drone the size of an airliner this morning near the Strait of Hormuz. The US acknowledged the shoot-down, saying that the drone was in international airspace. The Iranians countered that it was in Iranian airspace. Meanwhile, a rocket struck a building housing the headquarters of international oil companies in Basra, Iraq, including ExxonMobil. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which injured two Iraqi workers. Top Trump administration officials are now engaged in high-level international and domestic consultations, raising fears of all-out conflict. Joe Biden says some dumb things. He once told reporters, “I’ve done some dumb things. And I’ll do dumb things again.” Well, earlier this week, Biden felt compelled to defend himself ag

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Ben Norton, a journalist with the Grayzone Project and co-host of the Moderate Rebels podcast, and Sputnik News analyst and producer Walter Smolarek.Wednesday’s weekly series, In the News, is where the hosts look at the most important ongoing developments of the week and put them into perspective, including U.S. cyber attacks on the Russian electrical grid and the latest US moves against Iran. Wednesday’s regular segment, Beyond Nuclear, is about nuclear issues, including weapons, energy, waste, and the future of nuclear technology in the United States. Kevin Kamps, the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear, and Sputnik news analyst and producer Nicole Roussell, join the show. Former Vice President Joe Biden caused outrage when he fondly noted what he called the “civility” of the US Senate of the 1970s and 1980s by invoking by name two of the body’s most polarizing segregationists--Senators James Eastl

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Juan José Gutiérrez, the executive director of the Full Rights for Immigrants Coalition.President Trump said yesterday that his administration plans a sweeping immigration enforcement crackdown on undocumented migrants that could see coordinated raids in multiple cities across the country. The move comes ahead of Trump’s official re-election campaign launch, but grassroots activists are vowing to fight back.The Justice Department has admitted that the FBI relied on information provided by the private company Crowdstrike concluding that Russia was to blame for hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s servers, even though that information had been heavily redacted by the company. The FBI never had access to any of the original documents. That news was just made public yesterday in a filing by Roger Stone’s defense attorneys. Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net, joins the show.The Pentagon announced yesterday t

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Massoud Shadjareh, the founder of the Islamic Human Rights Commission.The Iranian government has announced that it will break the uranium stockpile limit agreement agreed to as part of the JCPOA nuclear deal in the next 10 days. The move came in response to the Trump administration’s decision to scrap the deal. Iranian President Rouhani said that his country would not withdraw from the JCPOA, but would reduce its commitments to the deal. He also urged European countries to mediate between Iran and the United States as tensions between the two countries continue to flare in the aftermath of explosions that hit two tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia said on Saturday that Chelsea Manning would be fined $500 per day for refusing to testify before a grand jury looking into Wikileaks cofounder Julian Assange. If Manning still does not testify after one month, the fine will be

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Lee Camp, a writer, actor, activist, journalist, and host of the television show “Redacted Tonight,” which you can see on RT America, and Sputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell.Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on the Middle East oil tanker attack and escalation between the US and Iran, Julian Assange’s extradition hearing today, the leak of documents this week showing the political imprisonment of former Brazilian president lula da silva, and the rebellion in memphis after cops shot a young Black man. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said yesterday that US intelligence showed that Iran was responsible for attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. He showed a Pentagon video that he claimed showed Iranian sailors removing an unexploded magnet mine from the side of a Japan

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Ambassador Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria.Two oil tankers came under suspected attack in the Gulf of Oman today. Both the US and Iranian navies responded to distress calls, and the vessels’ crews were safely evacuated. The attacks come amid heightened tension because the US and Iran and in the middle of a visit to Tehran by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Justice Department has asked US Attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russiagate case. Durham said yesterday that he is seeking testimony from two CIA officers--one a counterintelligence expert and the other a senior analyst. CIA director Gina Haspel said that her people will cooperate, but would “protect sources and methods.” Aaron Maté, a journalist for The Grayzone and The Nation and a former host and producer at Democracy Now and The Real News, joins the show. Authorities in Memphis, Tennessee claim that 24 police officers and two

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, John Kiriakou and Nicole Roussell (sitting in for Brian Becker) are joined by Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent who in 2002 was named Time Magazine person of the year along with two other whistleblowers.The House of Representatives yesterday approved a resolution authorizing the Judiciary Committee to go to court to enforce its subpoena for former White House Counsel Don McGahn’s testimony and to seek grand jury information from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. The resolution also authorized the Committee to take its subpoena of Attorney General William Barr to court, but an agreement struck with the Justice Department on Monday will put that action on hold for now.Scott Warren is an activist with an Arizona group called No Mas Muertes, or No More Deaths. He was arrested last year for providing food, water, and shelter to migrants crossing the Sonoran desert. Supporters call him an apostle of humanitarianism. Prosecutors call him a criminal and asked tha

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Jackie Walker, a life-long activist against racism and the former Vice Chair of the pro-Jeremy Corbyn organization Momentum.The Washington Post yesterday reported that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a group of American Jewish leaders in a private meeting that the US would seek to block Jeremy Corbyn from becoming British Prime Minister if the US detected what Pompeo called “antisemitism.” He said the US government would “push back” against Corbyn and that “we won’t wait for him to do those things,” presumably meaning oppose Israel. The Pentagon says that it is canceling Turkey’s involvement in the F-35 Stealth fighter program over Ankara’s plans to buy a Russian S-400 missile defense system. Turkish pilots will no longer be trained on the F-35, and they’ve been asked to leave a US Air Force base in Arizona. Turkish President Erdogan said that he is undeterred by the US action and will complete the purchase and installati

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Sputnik News analysts and producers of this show Nicole Roussell and Walter Smolarek.In this segment, which we call The Week Ahead, the hosts take a look at the most newsworthy stories of the coming week and what it means for the country and the world, including the political theater of Donald Trump’s threats of new tariffs against Mexico, the emerging Democratic party strategy of new hearings on Russiagate, a new outrage from Guantanamo, and much more. Monday’s regular segment Technology Rules with Chris Garaffa is a weekly guide on how monopoly corporations and the national surveillance state are threatening cherished freedoms, civil rights and civil liberties. Web developer and technologist Chris Garaffa joins the show. House Democrats are pushing ahead with plans to hold hearings this week that would feature testimony--or a lack of testimony--by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Sc