Censorship, Civil Liberties, Freedom Of Speech, Human Rights, Iran, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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With God On Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary and an Evangelical Christian, has explicitly framed the Iran war through the lens of his religious faith, weaving scripture into his remarks, praying for “overwhelming violence” against his enemies and insisting that God stands with the U.S. against Iran, a Muslim-majority nation of some 90 million people. The ex-Fox News host has long worn his faith on his sleeve — and on his flesh. He has a large Jerusalem cross tattooed on his chest and the words “Deus Vult,” a rallying cry used by the Crusaders, which means “God wills it,” are inked on his arm. In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth rejected the principle of separation of church and called it “leftist folklore.” At a prayer breakfast on Feb. 6, he said that the U.S. “remains a Christian nation in our DNA, if we can keep it.”
Hegseth told CBS News on March 6: “The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops.” When asked if he views the conflict in a religious context, Hegseth responded: “I’m a man of faith, who encourages our troops to lean into their faith.” During a press briefing on the war four days later, he quoted Psalm 144, stating, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.” Last week, while hosting a Pentagon prayer service, Hegseth implored God to: “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation” and asked that “wicked souls be delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”
Guest – Mikey Weinstein has been described by Harper’s magazine as “the constitutional conscience of the U.S. military, a man determined to force accountability.” Mikey’s family has a long and distinguished U.S. military history spanning three consecutive generations of military academy graduates and over 130 years of combined active duty military service. Mikey is a lawyer and a 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy.
A registered Republican, Mikey spent over three years working for the Reagan Administration as legal counsel in the White House. In 2006, he founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to battle the influence of far-right militant radical evangelical religious fundamentalists in the US military.He’s the author of two books “With God On Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military” and “No Snowflake in an Avalanche: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, its Battle to Defend the Constitution, and One Family’s Courageous War Against Religious Extremism in High Places.”
In 2011, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State presented Mikey with AU’s first ever Person of the Year Award, calling him “the leading voice protecting church-state separation in the military.” In December 2012, Defense News named Mikey one of the 100 Most Influential People in U.S. Defense. He was also named one of the 50 most influential Jews in America by the Forward, one of the nation’s preeminent Jewish publications. Not unexpectedly, Mikey has been reviled by the radical fundamentalist Christian far-right, which has called him “Satan”, “Satan’s lawyer”, “the Antichrist”, “That Godless, Secular Leftist”, “Antagonizer of All Christians”, “Most Dangerous Man in America” and “Field General of the Godless Armies of Satan.”
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We Need More ‘Muckrakers and Fewer Buck-Takers
There was a time when journalism didn’t just report the news—it changed the country. It broke monopolies, exposed corruption, and forced presidents to act. Today, with public trust in media at historic lows, that kind of reporting can feel like a relic. But what if the real story isn’t that it’s gone—but that we’ve stopped supporting it? Media scholar and activist Mickey Huff has just written a provocative call to action titled We Need More ‘Muckrakers and Fewer Buck-Takers. It’s a phrase rooted in the legacy of Carl Jensen, who believed journalism should serve the public—not profits—and who spent decades exposing the stories corporate media ignored.
At a moment when misinformation spreads faster than truth and corporate consolidation shapes what we see and don’t see, this conversation asks something deeper: What kind of media system does democracy require—and what role do we play in rebuilding it?
Guest – Mickey Huff is the director of Project Censored and president of the Media Freedom Foundation, where he has co-edited its annual Censored book series since 2009. In 2024, he joined Ithaca College as a Professor of Journalism and the Distinguished Director of the Park Center for Independent Media. Through these roles, he leads efforts in critical media literacy, independent journalism, and the production of the weekly syndicated Project Censored Show. Park Center For Independent Media
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Cuba, Economics, Iran, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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The Long War Against Iran: New Events, Old Questions
The war the United States and Israel started against Iran has been going on now since the last day of February. It will end Trump says “when I feel it in my bones.” For the US’s part, President Trump wants a regime change and a weak client state. He had hoped that assassinating Ayatollah Khomeini the Supreme Leader, as well as many others in the top tiers of the Iranian government would accomplish this. It did not.
The Iranian people are protecting their sovereignty against an illegal war – the greatest of all crimes – which already has killed 2000 people and destroyed much of the infrastructure of their country. Twenty three years ago, President George W. Bush falsely alleged that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and attacked that country in violation of the United Nations charter.
The Israeli American war against Iran was initiated by the same sort of fraud by alleging that Iran was on the brink of developing nuclear weapons and missiles to developed them all the way to the United States. The day before the war was initiated The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran did not have and was not trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has falsely accused Iran of being on the edge of developing nuclear weapons for 30 years.
Although the United States would like to reduce Iran to a weak client state, the Israeli government would like to make it into a failed state. Are we on the verge of World War III? We don’t know. Iran is achieving successes against American military assets in the region and doesn’t want a ceasefire, although none has been offered, because they want to make sure this never happens again.
Guest – Professor Behrooz Ghamari is the author of The Long War Against Iran: New Events, Old Questions. He is affiliated with the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto and before that was Professor and Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Although he’s not a supporter of politics of the current clerical regime he is a defender of Iran sovereignty.
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Cuba’s Future After 2026 Blockade
Actions taken by the Trump Administration have ensured that Cuba’s government, weakened by decades of US sanctions and illegal boycotts, is facing one of its most severe situations in years, with the country edging toward a humanitarian crisis. Power outages are widespread, hospitals are cutting back on surgeries, shortages of fuel and food are worsening, and tourism is declining.
The situation in Cuba deteriorated further after the January 3 US military invasion that removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, whose government had long supplied Cuba with heavily subsidized oil. Severing Venezuela’s relationship with Cuba is clearly part of Washington’s broader strategy of toppling Havana’s government. Since mid-December, Washington has blockaded Venezuela from shipping oil to Cuba, economically strangling the island.
US officials say the invasion to capture Maduro also exposed Cuba’s vulnerabilities, killing dozens of Cuban security personnel assigned to protect Maduro. Washington’s decision to leave some of Maduro’s allies in power in Venezuela, including allowing Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to be acting president, signaled that the Trump administration may be willing to strike deals with Cuban rival factions rather than seek total regime change.
US officials had already been quietly holding hush-hush meetings with Venezuelan elites before Maduro’s capture and are now reportedly exploring similar contacts with influential figures in Cuba. And on March 16th, President Trump, when asked about Cuba said, “I’ll take it!” And, “I’ll do whatever I want with it.”
Guest – Sandra Levinson is the Executive Director of the Center for Cuban Studies. The Center for Cuban Studies, since the early 1970’s, has been organizing trips to Cuba and hosting events and showcasing installations of Cuban art all around the United States.
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Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Iran, Surveillance, War Resister
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Aerial Investigation Research Pilot Program And Persistent Tracking
As the nation erupts in protests against racially-infused police violence, the Baltimore Police Department has just launched a six-month, day-time aerial surveillance experiment. A Texas billionaire has funded the project that is being operated by an Ohio-based company, Persistent Surveillance Systems. The plane flies overhead and records the movements of everyone in the city.
Michael Harrision, Baltimore Police Commissioner, has justified the nearly $4 million experiment by saying, “There is no expectation of privacy on a public street, a sidewalk.”
The Aerial Investigation Research Pilot Program is, by contract, limited to monitoring such felony crimes as robberies, car jackings, shootings and homicides. Images recorded are, in theory, to be used solely in criminal investigations and will be stored for 45 days. A first prong of the program was conducted covertly in 2016 under a different police commissioner.
The ACLU of Maryland calls this initiative the most comprehensive surveillance of a U.S. city in history. ACLU Senior Staff attorney David Rocah said, “It’s the virtual equivalent of having a police officer follow a resident every time they walk out the door, and if that happened in real life, all of us would understand the huge privacy implications in doing that.”
Guest – ACLU Senior Staff attorney David Rocah has worked on a number of significant cases involving free speech, police misconduct, privacy, election law and more. In 2011 he was an inaugural recipient of the James Baldwin Medal for Civil Rights. David previously worked as a Senior Trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division at the US Dept of Justice, focusing on police misconduct and conditions in prisons, jails and other state institutions.
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President Trump Withdraws From The Treaty On Open Skies – PART 2
The chance for nuclear war which would destroy human life on Earth has never been higher. Just last week President Donald Trump withdrew America from The Treaty On Open Skies. This treaty is an agreement between 34 nations that allows each country to fly over each other’s territories. The treaty is designed to provide transparency and mutual observation of military developments. He also withdrew from the Intermediary Intermediary Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia. As a consequence the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has pushed the hands of its doomsday clock on its magazine forward to almost midnight
Shortly after taking office Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. Trump enjoys the financial and political backing of big business, the banks, the hedge funds, and the military industrial complex. These money interests profit greatly from the nuclear rearmament which is now going on. First under Obama and then Trump $1 trillion is planned to be spent over the next 30 years for a new generation of nuclear weapons, including low yield ones, which are likely to be used.
Whistleblowing truth teller Daniel Ellsberg has recently written the grimly important book The Doomsday Machine. He believes that so far, avoidance of a nuclear war has been miraculous and that the danger is as present today as it was during the Cold War. He thinks seeking profit in spite of the risk of nuclear winter is “institutional madness.“
Guest – Paul Jay is the editor of the blog the theanalysis.news. We will discuss with him the kind of movement that is needed to reverse the nuclear arms race as well as to bring about a democratic organization of the economy.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iran, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Human Rights Attorney Michael Tigar
As we enter into the new decade we look back at where we have been, legally speaking, and where we are headed.
2020 began with President Donald Trump illegally and recklessly ordering the assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani who was on a peace mission in Iraq at the time he was killed by a US drone.
Although assassination has been secretly used by the US government since the formation of the CIA in 1947, Barack Obama, Trump’s predecessor, began the illegal extra-judicial open assassination of people in what was called “targeted killings.“ This included American citizens.
With regard to deportations, the Obama administration set a record by deporting more than 3 million people. Trump has continued massive deportations but also has illegally frustrated and prevented people fleeing political repression from seeking asylum in America, separating children from families and caging them in a process that continues.
The Authorization for the Use of Military Force was voted on shortly after 9/11 to justify the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. The AUMF has been used illegally to justify the presence of American troops in the Middle East since then. It was recently renewed.
The Patriot Act has also been renewed, allowing for massive US government surveillance of American citizens in the illegal derogation of their Fourth Amendment right to privacy democratic rights and the rule of law are in obvious, unprecedented, serious jeopardy.
Truth telling whistle blowing Australian journalist Julian Assange, in the most important first amendment civil liberty case, is about to be extradited from London to Virginia where he faces espionage charges. The issue is his right to be a journalist and our right to know. If convicted he will go to prison for life destroying investigative journalism in areas the government deems “national security.“
The peoples’ constitutional right to impeach a president is also in jeopardy. The Democratic party’s attempt to remove Donald Trump from office is sure to fail because of Trump and the Republicans’ refusal to honor the constitution and allow for a fair trial in the Senate.
Trump has appointed hundreds of reactionary judges to the federal trial and appellate benches. A woman’s right to control her own body, decided in the famous case of “Roe vs Wade”, will be decided by the Supreme Court whose ranks have been bolstered by two additional reactionary judges, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
The separation of church and state and the separation of powers are also in jeopardy.
Guest – Human rights attorney Michael Tigar, a veteran of 1960s activism. He’s appeared many times before the Supreme Court, taught law at three schools and has written numerous books including the now classic, Law and the Rise of Capitalism and most recently Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq War, Truth to Power, War Resister
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Assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani: Geopolitical Discussion
An assassination is a political murder. Last week, President Donald Trump assassinated General Qasem Soleimani when he was at the airport in Baghdad, Iraq. Soleimani was the second most important leader of Iran. This action is in violation of both American and international law.
Trump ordered the illegal assassination without advising Congress, which is also illegal in violation of the War Powers Act. President Trump however did first advise Israel, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, countries which have long favored provoking a war with Iran.
Currently the United States has imposed harsh economic sanctions on the Iranian people hoping they will turn against their government. President Trump called Soleimani a terrorist with the blood of hundreds of Americans on his hands and that he was planning an imminent attack. If Iran should respond to the murder Trump has threatened, in violation of international law, to destroy 52 of Iran’s ancient cultural heritage sites. The US President has sent 3000 additional troops to a wreck because he was sick and threatened to impose sanctions on Iraq if they expel American troops.
Listen To May 27, 2019 Interview With Phyllis On Threats Against Iran.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she works on anti-war, US foreign policy and Palestinian rights issues. She has worked as an informal adviser to several key UN officials on Palestinian issues. Her books including Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, and Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.
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Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy
The FBI is suffering a crisis of credibility, making news headlines not for solving crimes but for agency shortfalls and blunders. From Bureau officials lying to cover up leaks, to retaliation against Internal whistle-blowers, to agents facing criminal charges on obstruction to leaking classified material, something is clearly amiss inside the nation’s top law enforcement agency. There have also been several public failures—overlooked warnings in the Parkland, Florida school killings, delays in Olympic doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual misconduct probe, and misconduct by agents after armed militia standoffs in Nevada and Oregon.
That’s why Mike German’s new book, Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy, feels especially timely. German is a former FBI undercover special agent whose assignments included infiltrating white nationalist organizations.
Disrupt, Discredit and Divide focuses on how the Bureau transformed after the attacks of September 11, 2001. It went, German asserts, from being a law enforcement agency to a covert domestic intelligence agency, unparalleled in U.S. history. He discusses how leaders took advantage of fears of terrorism to remove longstanding legal checks and balances on agents. By focusing on national security over law enforcement, the Bureau has in fact undermined public confidence in justice and the rule of law.
Guest – Mike German is a fellow with the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. He has worked at the ACLU and served 16 years as an FBI special agent. He is also the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist.
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Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Human Rights, Iran, Supreme Court, Truth to Power, War Resister
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When at Times the Mob Is Swayed, A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic
Trump was elected by about 25% of the eligible voters. Half of the voters who could have, didn’t vote. He lost the popular election by 3 million votes. Since then, this appalling man has proceeded to aggrandize his power. Backed by large corporations to whom he gave huge tax breaks and for whom he cut regulations, the military to which he just gave a $750 billion budget, a Republican Supreme Court and the right wing media such as Sinclair Broadcasting and Fox News he has maintained a steady base of support in the population.
Increasing a sense of dread has spread across our country, it appears possible that Trump may get reelected. Democracy and the rule of law are increasingly threatened.
Guest – Constitutional Lawyer, Burt Neuborne is the former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and has argued many cases before the US Supreme Court. Attorney Neuborne’s book “When at Times the Mob is Swayed” has been recently published by the New Press. He is currently the Norman Dorsen Professor of Civil Liberties at NYU School of Law.
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Prominent Environmental Activist Maggy Hurchalla Loses Appeal Of 4.4 Million Dollar Jury Verdict
Issues of the environment, citizen advocacy, and the public’s right to know are converging in two South Florida court cases. One involves 78-year-old Maggy Hurchalla, a former Everglades Coalition’s Conservationist of the Year and winner of a National Wetlands Award from the Environmental Law Institute. Now she owes a developer $4.4 million for speaking out about a critical local environmental issue.
In 2012 Hurchalla learned that Lake Point Restoration was considering conveying water to West Palm Beach for a fee. She complained about the company’s operation in emails to Martin Country commissioners and after Lake Point lost out on some contracts. Lake Point claims Maggy lied and was intent on hurting the company.
In a second related case, the nonprofit Everglades Law Center requested a transcript of a closed door meeting of South Florida Water Management’s governing board. The response? They were hauled into court, with Maggie Hurchalla added to the lawsuit.
Guest – Professor Richard Grosso, director of environmental and land use practice at NOVA Southeastern University. Professor Grosso is a widely recognized legal expert, practicing attorney and policy advocate, with over 30 years of experience litigating and advocating on statewide and south Florida environmental issues.
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