Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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South Africa Brings Israel To World Court
On January 11 and 12, South Africa and Israel appeared in a historic case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, in The Hague. South Africa’s legal team made a strong and persuasive argument that Israel is engaging in genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. South Africa asked the court to impose nine emergency “provisional measures” aimed at putting an end to the slaughter.
South Africa’s application to the ICJ places Israel’s genocidal acts and omissions in the broader context of Israel’s 75-year apartheid policy, 56-year occupation, and 16-year blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. This siege was described by the Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza as “a silent killer of people.”
South Africa told the court that it “unequivocally condemned the targeting of civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and the taking of hostages on 7 October.” But, it continued, “no armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can provide any justification for, or defence to” genocide. Israel “has crossed this line.”
Israel responded by placing responsibility on Hamas for the situation in Gaza. It accused South Africa of an “attempt to weaponize the term genocide.” Israel argued that international humanitarian law is the relevant framework — that Hamas committed war crimes. In Israel’s view, this is not a genocide case; if anyone was the victim of genocide, Israel claims IT was on October 7 when Palestinian resistance forces killed what Israel claims were 1,200 people. However, Hamas is not part of this case, because it is not a state party to the Genocide Convention.
Guest – co-host Marjorie Cohn is Dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and a member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Marjorie is also professor of law emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She writes prolifically about Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and Israel’s violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people.
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Honoring the Legacy Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
We hear part of an hour long program honoring the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr.Martin Luther King. Our listeners know all too well that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was shot on April 4, 1968. Not so well known is the radical Dr. King, who said in the last months of his life that:
“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world, declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo.”
Joining us are special guests Ruby Sales, a colleague of Dr. King’s and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson, Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (F.O.R.). We’re also joined by author and activist Matt Meyer, a board member of the AJMI.
Dr. King began close ties with A.J. Muste and with the F.O.R. during the Montgomery bus boycott, when FOR staff members Bayard Rustin and Glenn Smiley came to Alabama to support local efforts nonviolently challenging racial segregation. Dr. King developed a special relationship with former FOR chairman A.J. Muste, whose absolute pacifism King had, as a theological seminary student, questioned.
Before heading F.O.R., Muste was a prominent labor leader, helping to found the militant Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). And Dr. King, of course, was killed exactly one year after taking a staunch anti-Vietnam war position and in the midst of supporting a significant strike of sanitation workers, linking—as he had been—issues of race, class, and violence as King deepened his critique of the roots of oppressive U.S. society.
Guest – Ruby Sales is the founder and director of the “SpiritHouse Project”, a national organization that uses the arts, research, education, action and spirituality to bring diverse peoples together to work for racial, economic and social justice as well as for spiritual maturity. A life-long organizer, scholar and public theologian in the areas of civil, gender and other human rights, she was a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and served as national convener of the Make Every Church A Peace Church movement.
Guest – Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson is the Executive Pastor of The Concord Baptist Church of Christ, Brooklyn, NY. She has combined pastoral ministry with the social justice community. The former Executive Director of the Children’s Defense Fund she is now the Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Guest – Matt Meyer is Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, Chair of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Financial Advisory Committee, Africa Support Network Coordinator of the War Resisters International, and Senior Research Scholar at U-Mass Amherst. As current National co-chair of FOR and former Chair of the War Resisters League, he is second only to AJ Muste in holding the top post of those two historic US peace organizations. He is author of the recently published White Lives Matter Most And Other “Little” White Lies.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn (also as guest)
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Unwavering U.S. Support Of Israeli War Atrocity
Israel, with indispensable American support, is destroying the people of Gaza. They are being bombed by American planes dropping American bombs and shot at by Israeli soldiers, using American weapons and ammunition. Israel has prevented them from getting food and water, medical supplies and fuel. They are sick and starving. 85% of the population of 2.3 million have had their homes destroyed and are living outside in the cold without food, fuel medicine or clean water
Already some 20,000 Palestinians have been murdered, the majority, women and children. At least 800 children have had their limbs amputated. It is a one-sided war. The American equipped Israeli Air Force and Army is the fourth largest military force in the world. The Palestinians are essentially defenseless against this. They have been herded to the south tip of tiny Gaza, their homes, schools, hospitals pulverized. They are living in the streets, in the cold, with no sanitation, awaiting their certain destruction by starvation, dehydration, and cholera.
The American government has fully supported this genocidal operation with military supplies, diplomatic, cover, and propaganda. Last week, the United States voted to block a cease-fire resolution at the UN Security council – 13 to 1. The US and Israel are looked upon as moral outlaws by the rest of the world.
Why has the American government supported Israel? What is the history of this support for the Israeli colony which was set up in 1948 in the heart of the Arab world and has been expanding and displacing Palestinians ever since?
Professor Khalidi OpEd LA Times
Guest – Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and Director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. He was educated at Yale and Oxford universities and is the author of many books on the Middle East. He is also the author of Under Siege: PLO Decision Making During the 1982 War, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East and recently The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017.
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Anti-Semitic or Pro Palestine, Quick Silencing Of Student Protests
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past week or so, you know about the firings and attempted firing of university heads at M.I.T, Harvard, and Penn in the wake of the new Israeli-Palestinian war. At M.I.T. and Penn, their top bosses were, in fact, fired. So far, Claudine Gay at Harvard has held on to her job, but many still think her days there are numbered. The moves to get rid of these university bosses flowed from the claim that they were not strong enough in their condemnation of the October 7th Hamas attack, and of the way their students sloganized in the course of their boisterous on-campus protests against Israel, because of the humanitarian crisis resulting from what Israel is doing in Gaza.
In short, they were deemed to be, if not out and out anti-Semantic themselves, clearly insufficiently pro-Israel in their over-all statements and actions since this latest Israeli/Palestinian war began. Of course, there have been conflicts at many, many other U.S. colleges and university arising from the war, often resulting in the outlawing on campus of campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Put simply, despite the fact that a very significant pro-Palestine bias may exist among students on our nation’s campuses of higher learning, these students’ grownups know what’s best…and that means unwavering support for Israel and the supportive role played by the U.S. in that war. And it means trying to silence criticism of Israel and bold support for Palestine. Shout our certain slogans, such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, or “down with Zionism, down with Israeli apartheid”, or “Israel, Israel you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide”, and the censors won’t be long in attacking you, or simply silencing you.
Aside for my grief and anger over what is happening to the Palestinian people in this war, there are a couple of other aspects of all of this that have me particularly disturbed, have me angry and greatly worried. One is the simplistic, quick to condemn, efforts to shut down the actions and slogans of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. The other is how reminiscent this is of how the ruling elite in this country went after the leadership, and rank-and-filers, in the anti-Vietnam war movement of the 60’s and early 70’s. Then, the charges were that the slogans and the demonstrations were “anti-American” and, in fact, down right “communistic.” I, along with a handful of other anti-Vietnam War leaders, was then called before the new House Un-American Activities Committee, to testify about the supposed, and I quote, “Soviet money and leadership that was supporting U.S. antiwar groups and coalitions.”
Are today’s pro-Palestinian leaders now to be called to account and asked by the authorities, “are you now or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist”? “Are you getting money from the Islamists?” Yes, the growing danger to free speech in our country, and the right to defend those who the government may disfavor, or claim to be the enemies of our people, is to be greatly feared. It often grows slowly, at first, like some cancerous viruses, but once it gathers strength…well, remember our history.
Guest – Stephen Rohde is a noted constitutional scholar, retired civil rights lawyer and activist. He is the past Chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the founder and current chair of Interfaith communities United for Justice and Peace; the author of Freedom of Assembly and American Words of Freedom. Steve Rohde is also a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Review of Books, TruthDig, and a leader in the national campaign to free imprisoned investigative reporter, Julian Assange.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith, Maria Hall and Jim Lafferty
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Censorship, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Supreme Court
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Sealed Search Warrant After Raiding Journalist’s Home Leaves News Gatherers Timid
At 6 a.m. on May 8, seven FBI agents with guns drawn raided the home newsroom of Florida journalist Tim Burke. For nearly 10 hours, they seized computers, phones, video equipment and other devices. The raid came on the heels of Burke’s obtaining outtakes of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Ye (formerly known as Kanye West). In those outtakes, Ye made antisemitic and other offensive remarks. The FBI investigation involves alleged violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA.
It is not clear why prosecutors believe Burke, who runs the media company Burke Communications, broke the law. That’s because the government successfully fought to keep the affidavit supporting the search warrant sealed from public view. As listeners may recall, the CFAA is the federal law that prohibits unauthorized access to a computer. Burke has said he got the outtakes from websites where Fox News uploaded unencrypted live streams to URLs that anyone could access, using publicly accessible login credentials.
In response to the raid, more than 50 organizations sent a letter to the Department of Justice in October demanding transparency about the government’s basis for believing that Burke’s newsgathering broke the law. Florida’s First Amendment Foundation and the ACLU took the lead on the letter, with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, PEN America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists, among others, also signing on.
Guest – Seth Stern, Advocacy Director at the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF). Prior to joining FPF, Seth practiced media and First Amendment law in Chicago for more than a decade. Before that, he worked as a reporter and editor in the Chicago and Atlanta areas.
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The SuperMajority : How the Supreme Court Divided America,
In late June 2022, a package of Supreme Court decisions drastically altered the nation’s legal landscape and divided the nation. It took just three days to roll back some of the most consequential gains for civil rights, voting, the separation of church and state, a woman’s right to choose, and more.
In his new book The SuperMajority : How the Supreme Court Divided America, Michael Waldman offers an in-depth analysis of the 2022 key rulings and the radical ways in which they were crafted. He provides historical context for how the Supreme Court has amassed power far beyond what the Framers intended, and how the current supermajority ascended to the high court. Waldman also points to previous Courts (on both the right and the left) that overreached and describes their consequences for the country. Significantly, he writes that the seizure of so much power by a few members of the Court, and their energetic wielding of it, poses a crisis for U.S. democracy.
A backlash against the Court is underway. Rather than seeking a supermajority of their own, Waldman writes that, “Liberals must fall out of love with the Supreme Court.” He recommends reform measures to curb the Court’s power while applying other pressure points – such as in the court of public opinion.
Guest – Michael Waldman is the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. An expert on the Constitution and the courts, Waldman served on President Joe Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of The Fight to Vote and The Second Amendment: A Biography. Waldman was director of speechwriting during the Clinton administration. Sign up for newsletter – Briefing
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, War Resister
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American Jews Redefining Judaism
Israeli war planes are bombing the northern half of the Gaza Strip, reducing everything – hospitals, mosques, schools, homes – to rubble. Those who survive the march south may be driven into the Sinai desert. More than 1 million Palestinians had lived there. They have been ordered to vacate their homes and walk south on pain of death. Food, water, electricity, and medical supplies have been cut off to these people, half of whom are children. This is being facilitated by American military, financial, diplomatic, and media support.
Guest – Rabbi Brant Rosen is the leader of the congregation Tzedek Chicago whose members are not Zionists and who oppose the historic Zionist project of dispossessing the native Palestinians forcing them out of their homeland. The attention of the world today is focused on the tiny northern half of the Gaza Strip. Tsedek Chicago’s website states that “during the course of his rabbinate, Rabbi Brant Rosen became an increasingly vocal activist for justice and human rights, particularly in Israel/Palestine. After publicly wrestling with his relationship with Israel and openly questioning his lifelong Zionism, he eventually became a prominent Jewish presence in the Palestine solidarity movement cofounding the Jewish Voice for Peace rabbinical council .“
Rabbi Brant’s writings have appeared in many journals and publications, including Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the Jewish Forward, Tikkun, and Truthout. Tikkun, magazine editor Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote that Rabbi Brant Rosen is “at once a courageous rabbi and the voice of a new generation of American Jews who are refusing to allow the right wing voice of the Jewish world to define Judaism.“
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Christian Fascism Poised To Reshape The United States
Our guest today claims that we are far down the road that leads to fascism in the United States, and he places the blame at the feet of the liberal class to halt the corporate assault on working people that has spawned an ascendant Christian fascism that is poised to seize power and radically reshape America. As he says in his article of October 8th, “the parting gift, I expect, of the bankrupt liberalism of the Democratic Party will be a Christianized fascist state.
The Liberal class, a creature of corporate power, captive to the war industry and the security state, unable or unwilling to ameliorate the prolonged economic security and misery of the working class, blinded by a self-righteous woke ideology that reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness and bereft of any political vision, is the bedrock on which the Christian fascists, who have coalesced in cult-like mobs around Donald Trump, have built their terrifying movement.”
Guest – Chris Hedges, award-winning journalist and political writer reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times’ Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001 Hedges was one of the Times’ writers on an entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Prior to his work for the Times, he worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and the Dallas Morning News. His books include Death of the Liberal Class, War on America, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
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Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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International Community Call For Cease Fire As Civilians Targeted And Generations Under Siege In Israel, Gaza
On October 7, Hamas fired 2,000 missiles from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and sent hundreds of fighters into Israel, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians. Israel retaliated with overwhelming force – bombing Gazan civilians, homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and civilian buildings. As we record this interview on October 11, Israel is reportedly planning to mount a ground offensive in Gaza with 360,000 Israeli reserve troops poised to invade.
As of today, at least 1,200 Israelis and 950 Palestinians have been killed and tens of hundreds have been wounded on both sides.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas but Israel’s actions reveal that Israel is mounting war on the Palestinian people as a whole – especially in Gaza.
Targeting civilians constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Convention, regardless of who commits them. And if we’re serious about stopping all war crimes, it’s crucial that we under the context. Hamas’s offensive was launched in the context of decades of the Israeli apartheid regime and settler colonialism.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, who serves as the International Adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace, and is a member of the national board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is the 7th updated edition of “Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer,” published in 2018. Phyllis wrote a new article in The Hill titled As Israel and Gaza Erupt, The US Must Commit To Ending The Violence – All The Violence.
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Investigating The Assassination Of Palestinian American Journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh
The Zionist colonial settler state of Israel is not the moral legatee of the victims of the Holocaust much less the moral legatee of the ancient prophets of the Jewish people. Never has this been more evident than with the exposure of the Israeli army’s assassination of the beloved Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh. Assassination is a political murder.
Shireen had covered the Israeli military’s occupation of the West Bank for Al Jazeera for 25 years. The day she was killed she was reporting on the Israeli military invasion of Jenin, an Arab town on the West Bank occupied by the Israeli army for 55 years. She was wearing a helmet and a protective vest marked “PRESS.”
It is the practice of the Israeli army to shoot journalists and otherwise suppress the truth of their war crimes including the illegal theft of Palestinian lands. Israel’s brutal occupation has been going on since it illegally seized the West Bank as a prize of the 1967 war between Israel and three of its neighbors. Since then the Israeli military has ruled the native Arabs. Shireen is the 86th journalist to be killed while covering Israel’s illegal occupation since 1967.
The murder of Shireen was not adequately exposed by the U.S. press. The United States supports Israel politically, ideologically, economically, and morally. The U.S. gives the state of Israel more than $3.8 billion a year in weapons. Shireen was killed by a high-velocity armor-piercing 5.56 mm bullet fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semi automatic rifle – a weapon made in the U.S.
Israel has refused to conduct an investigation of Shireen’s assassination, because it “would provoke opposition and controversy within the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] and in Israeli society in general,” according to the Israeli government. Although complaints have been filed in the International Criminal Court against Israel, the court does not appear to have the political will to thoroughly investigate those charges.
There is an apocryphal story of three rabbis dispatched from a Zionist congress in Vienna many years ago to report back on the situation in Palestine. They reported back that the bride is beautiful but she’s married to another man.
The claim of the Zionist is that Israel was built on a land without a people for a people without a land. This is Israeli propaganda. This propaganda is less and less swallowed by the new generations in the United States and Europe as they witness Israel taking over more and more of historic Palestine and attempting to prevent the truth of what they are doing from coming out.
Guest – Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi is a Palestinian American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and Director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. He was educated at Yale and Oxford universities and is the author of many books on the Middle East. He is also the author of Under Siege: PLO Decision Making During the 1982 War, Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East and recently The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael Smith and Marjorie Cohn
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Cuba, Gaza, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Racist Police Violence, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, Whistleblowers
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Cars and Jails: Freedom, Dreams, Debt and Carcerality
What is the connection between cars and jails? Every day more than 50,000 Americans are pulled over by police officers while driving. Most of them will come away from this encounter owing money to the municipality or county in which they were stopped. Some will be arrested. They will join the nearly 9,000,000 Americans to cycle through our countries’ jails each year.
Police can choose from hundreds of traffic code violations to make a pretext stop and conduct a vehicle search. This may result in a fine or or an arrest.
American consumer lore has long held the automobile to be “freedom machine” consecrating the mobility of a free people. Yet paradoxically, the car also functions at the crossroads of two great systems of unfreedom and immobility – the credit economy and the American carceral system.
Guest – Andrew Ross who along with his co-author Julie Livingston has investigated this paradox and written the book “Cars and Jails: Freedom, Dreams, Debt and Carcerality”. It was just published by OR Books. The book shows how the long arms of debt and the carceral state operate in tandem in the daily life of car use and ownership. Andrew Ross is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, and a social activist and analyst. He has authored and edited numerous books and has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, The Nation, and Al Jazeera.
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Remembering Michael Ratner
Hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Smith remember Michael Ratner as cohost, activist, radical attorney, author and close friend. In this show, hosts reflect on Michael’s work and listen back to several monologue updates. They include his work as co-counsel for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the Dahiya Doctrine, SNAP- Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, NSA survelliance in the Bahamas and Guantanamo Bay prisoner exchange.
Michael Ratner (1943-2016) was president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. Michael worked for decades, as a crusader for human rights both at home and abroad litigating many cases against international human rights violators resulting in millions of dollars in judgments for abuse victims and expanding the possibilities of international law. He acted as a principal counsel in the successful suit to close the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees on Guantanamo Base, Cuba. Michael Ratner has litigated a dozen cases challenging a President’s authority to go to war, without congressional approval. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the Center has focused its efforts on the constitutionality of indefinite detention and the restrictions on civil liberties as defined by the unfolding terms of a permanent war. Among his many honors were: Trial Lawyer of the Year from the Trial lawyers for Public Justice, The Columbia Law School Public Interest Law Foundation Award, and the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award.
Hosted by Attorneys Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian
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