Academic Freedom, Censorship, Freedom Of Speech, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims
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The First Amendment And TikTok
On January 17, for the first time in modern American history, a unanimous US Supreme Court upheld a sweeping prior restraint on free speech imposed by Congress banning over 170 million users in the United States from having access to the popular social media platform TikTok that the Court itself admitted “allows users to create, publish, view, share, and interact with short videos overlaid with audio and text.” In 2023 alone, U. S. TikTok users uploaded more than 5.5 billion videos, which were in turn viewed more than 13 trillion times around the world. The avoid the ban, the law requires TikTok’s parent company, the China-based ByteDance, to divest its ownership.
From January 18 to 19, the ban was in effect for about 12 hours until Donald Trump tweeted that as President he would grant a stay of execution, pending a potential sale of TikTok. It was only 12 hours some may say, but it is estimated that during that time the ban blocked 6,750,000 videos that would have been viewed over 178,000,000 times worldwide. The ban is easily the most extensive act of censorship in human history.
Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump signed an Executive Order purporting to suspend the ban for 75 days. Serious questions have been raised whether Trump’s order is legal and enforceable. And despite his order, Apple and Google have still not reinstated TikTok at their stores preventing new subscribers from accessing TikTok.
Meanwhile, the First Amendment rights of 170 million TikTok users hang in the balance.
Guest – Ramya Krishnan is a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. Her litigation focuses on issues related to government transparency, protest, privacy, and social media. Ramya co-authored the Knight Institute’s amicus brief in TikTok. v. Garland, one of the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the TikTok ban which resulted in the Supreme Court’s decision. Read Amicus Brief
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Federal Court Rejects Attempt To Remove Ethnic Studies Curriculum
As Israel’s war in Gaza and the West Bank rages on, the free speech battles here in the United States continue with Congress, state legislatures and college administrators trying to silence pro-Palestinian protests by conflating criticism of Israel with the odious epithet of “antisemitism.” Pro-Palestinian groups are being banned, students are being disciplined, and faculty members are being suspended and fired.
But last November, there was some hopeful news when a federal court rejected attempts by Jewish parents and teachers to remove an ethnic studies curriculum from the Los Angeles Unified School District that they had labelled “antisemitic” and “anti-Zionist.”
On November 30, 2024, in a 49-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Fernando M. Olguin wrote that a system of education “which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues” must allow teachers and their students “to explore difficult and conflicting ideas.” He added that “we must be careful not to curb intellectual freedom by imposing dogmatic restrictions that chill teachers from adopting the pedagogical methods they believe are most effective,”
The ruling represents a welcome rebuke to the efforts of Republican state legislators and conservative parent groups to try to restrict the teaching of comprehensive American history in public schools, to ban books that examine that history as well as racism, sexism, and LGBTQ issues, and to eliminate programs that seek to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion in American education.
In 2022, a group calling itself “Concerned Jewish Parents and Teachers of Los Angeles,” comprised of what the lawsuit calls Jewish, Zionist teachers and parents of students sued the Los Angeles Unified School District; United Teachers of Los Angeles; its president Cecily Myart-Cruz; the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium; Theresa Montaño, the Consortium’s secretary; and Guadalupe Carrasco, its co-founder.
To discuss the important free speech and academic freedom issues involved in this case, we’ve invited the lawyer who represented the ethnic studies curriculum, Ms Montano and Ms Carrasco.
Guest – Mark Kleiman is a former activist and organizer and a long-time civil rights and human rights attorney. With extensive experience in whistleblower protection, he has brought cases that exposed massive fraud against public programs and has forced drug companies, nursing home chains, and defense contractors to repay hundreds of millions of dollars. Since 2019 he has devoted thousands of hours to defending activists, scholars, and students who have been attacked for their defense of Palestinian human rights.
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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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Remembering The Legacy of Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter passed away on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100. His legacy in human rights has left an indelible mark on global diplomacy. Elected in 1977 as the 39th President of the United States, Carter made human rights a central theme of his administration. He believed that as a global power, the US had a responsibility to champion freedom, dignity, and justice for all people, regardless of nationality or political system. This vision led to the introduction of policies aimed at addressing both the internal injustices within the U.S. and the broader human rights violations occurring around the world.
One of Carter’s most significant achievements in this realm was his focus on condemning authoritarian regimes and promoting democratic movements. His administration applied pressure on governments, particularly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, to uphold human rights standards, often linking U.S. foreign aid and diplomatic relations to a country’s record on human rights. Though controversial at times—especially in relation to U.S. alliances with regimes like those in Iran and Egypt—Carter’s commitment to human rights was revolutionary in its directness.
Beyond policy, Carter also helped create lasting institutions that would carry forward his vision. The Carter Center, founded in 1982, became a beacon for promoting democracy, advancing health, and improving human rights globally. Through the Center, Carter personally monitored elections, mediated peace talks, and worked to eliminate diseases that disproportionately affected the world’s most vulnerable populations. After leaving office, Carter’s work as a human rights advocate set a new precedent for U.S. foreign policy, showing that human rights can—and should—be a priority in shaping international relations and peace efforts.
Guest – Mischa Geracoulis is a journalist and critical media literacy expert. Mischa is the Curriculum Development Coordinator at Project Censored, and serves on the editorial board of the Censored Press and The Markaz Review. She writes about journalistic ethics and standards, press and academic freedoms, identity and culture, and the protracted disinformation campaign against the Armenian Genocide. She is author of the forthcoming book to be published by Routledge, Media Framing and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage.
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War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine
The United States is engaged in constant, if often invisible, wars. Or, if not invisible, at least not accurately and fully reported on in the corporate media. Thereby leaving the people of the United States far from fully informed as to what and where U.S. military troops are stationed or engaged in military action. For example, while there has been a great deal of media coverage of the U.S. supported Israeli war in Palestine, one would have needed to pay extra close attention to that coverage to know that the U.S., even before that war began, had 40,000 U.S. troops stationed in the area. Or that the Biden Administration has just recently sent at least 1,500 more to join them. And how many of us know that late last year retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick, said that, and I quote: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. Everyone understands that we (Israel) can’t fight this war without the United States.
So last year, Norman Solomon, our guest today, wrote a much noted and much-admired book titled, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine. And that book has just been reissued with an up-dated afterword about the Gaza War, by the author. Naomi Klein, best-selling author of The Shock Doctrine, says the book is “A Staggeringly Important Intervention”. Noam Chomsky, says Solomon’s book is a “gripping and painful study of the mechanisms behind our invisible, but perpetual, national state of war.”
Guest – Norman Solomon is the co-founder of RootsAction.org and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, and is, in fact, the author or co-author, of 12 books, most touching on today’s topic in either close or tangential ways. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, War Resister
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Taxpayers Against Genocide: Lawsuit Against Congress Members For Approving $26.38B In Military Aid To Israel
On December 19, 2024, a coalition of human rights activists and organizations filed a class action lawsuit against California Congress members Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman. The lawsuit alleges that the representatives misused their authority by approving $26.38 billion in military aid to Israel, despite evidence that these funds contribute to ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Supported by more than 500 plaintiffs across Northern California, the case highlights growing public demands for accountability in U.S. foreign policy. It was filed by the group Taxpayers Against Genocide.
At the core of the lawsuit is the argument that Thompson and Huffman ignored clear evidence of war crimes committed with U.S.-provided weapons, effectively forcing their constituents into moral complicity. Plaintiffs describe profound emotional and moral injuries resulting from their representatives’ actions, emphasizing the ethical responsibility to prevent taxpayer dollars from funding human rights violations.
Sign up to the TAG mailing list: classactionagainstgenocide@proton.me
The lawsuit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, aiming to halt military aid to Israel and secure accountability for decisions made in Congress. With plaintiffs ranging from seasoned activists to ordinary constituents, the case represents a significant legal challenge to U.S. military support for Israel amid increasing scrutiny over its devastating consequences for Palestinian civilians.
Guest – Seth Donnelly, a Sonoma County resident, former Bay Area high school teacher, human rights advocate, and one of the founders of Taxpayers Against Genocide.
Guest – Maria Barakat, a Lebanese Palestinian antiwar activist, sociologist of law and society, and public policy expert specializing in equity from UC Berkeley. Both Seth and Maria are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
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Judges Who Issued ICC Arrest Warrants Against Netanyahu Accused Of Being Anti-Semitic
On November 1, when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Netanyhu accused the judges of “anti-Semitic hatred toward Israel.”
When Donald Trump vowed to crack down on campus protests by invoking the Insurrection Act to enlist the US military, he warned American colleges and universities that if they do not “end antisemitic propaganda,” they would lose accreditation and federal financial support.
Today, one of the oldest and most virulent forms of hatred – antisemitism – is being weaponized as a cudgel to silence opposition to Israel’s war against the Palestinians. If you criticize Israel, you are an “antisemite.” If you condemn Zionism, you are an “antisemite.” If an international court, with 125 member countries, dedicated to what Kofi Annan called “the cause of all humanity,” accuses Israel (and it is important to note, also Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif) of war crimes, the judges (from France, Benin, and Slovenia) are guilty of “antisemitism.”
The founders of Israel willingly took on a known risk when they established a Jewish state, choosing sacred religious symbols, the Star of David (Magen David) as the official state insignia on the nation’s flag, the menorah as the official state emblem, and Hebrew as the state’s official language. In 2018, the Knesset doubled down by passing a law designating Israel the “Nation-State of the Jewish people.” The chairman of the special legislative committee that drafted the law, described it as simply confirming “the founding principle on which the state was established,” that “everyone has human rights, but national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people.” The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel said the law “contains key elements of apartheid.”
During the highly contested debate over Zionism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anti-Zionists and non-Zionists repeatedly warned that establishing a Jewish state would pose grave dangers not only to indigenous Arab inhabitants, but to Jews around the world. Today that complex history has been largely replaced by an official, sanitized version that doggedly erases the many Jewish voices that have sounded well-grounded alarms over the establishment of a militarized theocracy.
Guest – Professor Marjorie Feld is the author of a new, groundbreaking book, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism. She is a professor of history at Babson College and the author of Nations Divided: American Jews and the Struggle Over Apartheid.
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Civil Liberties, Crony Capitalism, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Uncategorized, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Charting A Way Forward: A Billionaire President, Economies and Policies
The corporate media has been working to normalize Trump and his cabinet nominees who are waiting in to take the reins of the US government on January 20, 2025. Trump won the popular vote by less than his three predecessors Biden, Obama, and Bush. He lost in 2020 and attempted to stay in power by a coup that failed. But last month he succeeded in staging a comeback. He will be more focused, organized, and more brutal than he was the last time.
During his campaign he took full advantage of peoples’ disgust with the neoliberal capitalist Democratic Party and Biden and Harris. Her campaign emphasized joy but put forward no real program to address their situation. 70 million people voted against her.
Real wages in America have not risen in 50 years. The minimum wage has stayed the same – $7.50 an hour-for 15 years under both Democratic and Republican administration. Half the country is poor or near poor. Most people don’t have enough money in the bank to survive a crisis.
For profit health care Is so arbitrary and cruel that Luigi Mangione has become a popular hero, like Robin Hood, even though he shot someone in the back.
Food prices have skyrocketed. Rent is too high. Home purchases are impossible for the average person. So is paying college tuition without going into debt. And the final insult was that Trump, the adjudicated rapist, has been named man of the year by Time Magazine which put his photo on the cover and wrote about his ringing the bell opening the New York Stock Exchange surrounded by his repellent family.
On January 20 he will be, in his words, dictator for the day. He’ll begin his program of massive deportations and retribution against his opponents in the press and in the government. Who are the people he has chosen to support this effort? What might we expect?
Guest – Patrick Martin, senior editor at the world socialist web site where he covers a range of political issues in the United States.
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CCR Landmark Verdict Brings 42 Million in Settlement To Torture Victims
Last month, in a landmark verdict, a jury in a federal court in Virginia found a government contractor liable for its role in the torture of three Iraqi men at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison back in 2003-2004, and ordered the company to pay a total of $42 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the men who brought the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs were represented by attorneys from the famed Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City and pro bono counsel from Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, and Akeel & Valentine. The private defendant company, acting as a government contractor, was CACI Premier Technology, Inc.
The company was found liable for conspiring to torture and commit cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of the Iraqi men, one a middle school principal, one a fruit vendor and one a journalist.
Guest – Attorney Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights filed this landmark case more than 16 years ago. Her areas of legal expertise include matters of torture, war crimes and militarism. Among her many major cases is the case titled, Situation of Afghanistan at the International Criminal Court; and the case titled, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests-v-Vatican. Prior to her work at the CCR, she worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
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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, worker's rights
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Fascism on Trial: Education, and the Possibility of Democracy
Fascist Germany’s industrial murder of Jews in Europe 80 years ago has been seared into the consciousness of humankind. Today its a great irony of history that the Israeli government, which claims to be the moral legatee of the holocaust, is carrying out a genocide against millions of Palestinians in Gaza.
This is being done with the full support of the American government which supplies political, diplomatic, and propaganda cover for what Israel is doing. It supplies the bombs, planes, artillery shells, tanks and bulldozers to physically destroy the buildings and infrastructure of the Gaza strip. The people who live there have been systematically starved, as the Nazis starved the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto.
The response of American students and college campuses across the country was magnificent. Tent encampments sprung up in several hundred places. They became the focal point for a full-throated discussion of the realities in Gaza and American complicity in the ongoing genocide. Demands for cease-fire were raised. Demands that the universities divest themselves of investments in Israel and American arms manufactures were put forward.
Sadly, this manifestation of critical thinking came to a crashing end. The wealthy and their servants in Congress, and in the mass media, accused the students of being antisemitic and of supporting terrorism. Congressional hearings were held. University presidents were fired. Professors lost their jobs. Students were expelled from schools. The great campus uprising was closed down. And new and much more restrictive rules for protest have been imposed in campuses all across the United States.
Guest – Professor Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies department and is the Pablo Frère, Distinguished Scholar in Creative Pedagogy. Henry Giroux has authored many books, most recently with Anthony DiMaggio, titled, Fascism on Trial: Education, and the Possibility of Democracy.
Sending a another big thank you to a generous donor from Wisconsin bringing us closer to our fundraiser goal. Please consider helping us reach our fundraiser goal by sending us a donation of any amount.
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The Power Of Labor And A Workers’ Party
The forces of the gathering authoritarian storm in our country are evident in many ways. It is manifesting itself in powerful and continuing nationalism, in disdain for human rights, in the entwinement of government and religion, in a controlled mass media, in the protection of corporate power and the suppression of labor power and in the encouragement of violence.
The power of labor has been channeled into the Democratic and Republican Party, the twin parties of capitalism. We need a workers ‘ party, but we don’t even have the nucleus of one. Race and gender are formative in the building of authoritarian regimes. We see this in the United States. Haitians, who are Black, have been accused of eating cats and dogs. Women’s right to control their own bodies is under attack from the Supreme Court on down and women are marked as “childless cat ladies” and told to stay home and bear children.
Guest – Dianne Feeley is an editor of the magazine Against the Current. She is a leader of Solidarity, a socialist feminist organization. Dianne lives in Detroit where she has been an activist for many years in the United Automobile Workers union.
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Crony Capitalism, Human Rights, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, worker's rights
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Understanding Capitalism
The great German playwright, and political figure, Berthold Brecht, observed that to understand fascism you have to understand capitalism, from whence it springs. Today, it is also helpful for us to understand that the rise of fascism in Germany 100 years ago, has parallels we can see now with the rise of fascism in the United States.
Prior to World War I, which began in 1914, the German working class and middle class were relatively prosperous. The German unions were strong and influential. Prior to World War I, Germany also had the largest and strongest socialist party in the world, and it was the second largest political party in the German Parliament. The German economy was booming. And German culture was the jewel of Europe.
This all came to a crashing end in 1917, when Germany was defeated in what was an inter-imperial war against the United States, France, Great Britain and Russia. The consequences of that defeat brought us fascism and World War II, 20 years later. In the 1920’s, inflation wiped out the savings of the German people. When the depression hit in 1929, the German working class was desperate. The ground was fertile for the rise of Adolf Hitler, a ruthless, cunning and violent demagogue.
Here in the United States, our economy boomed for 100 years, from the end of the Civil War until the 1970s. But since then, American workers have not made any progress. Their wages, in real terms, have not risen in 50 years! “Neo- liberalism”, which is just another word for aggressive capitalism, has wiped out 30 million industrial jobs in the US, starting in the 1980s. Women were driven back into the workforce. People had to work two jobs just to keep up.
In Germany, it was the Jews who were blamed. Here in the US, it is immigrants and people of color who are scapegoated. The demagogue Trump, like Hitler before him, is a captivating speaker and a very effective cult leader, who is now poised to take the power of the government and turn it against “we the people.”
Guest – Richard Wolff is Professor Emeritus from the University of Massachusetts, and the author of the forthcoming book, “Understanding Capitalism”. According to New York Times, Richard Wolff is, probably America’s most prominent Marxist economist. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their national syndicated show Economic Update. Professor Wolff has authorized numerous books on capitalism and socialism, including most recently “The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself“, “Understanding Socialism“; and “Understanding Marxism”, which can be found at democracyatwork.info.
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Present Danger Of Fascism In The United States
The rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters has transformed American politics, perhaps more than anything else has since the gathering of forces of the rebellious slave owners in the south, a century and a half ago. His first four years in office were chaotic, uninformed programmatically, and not animated by any kind of cadre of capable administrators. It was, instead, full of his statements and actions that many critics deemed to be racist, sexist and Xenophobic.
He lost the election in 2020, although he received 74 million votes! As he runs for the Presidency again, this time he is talking rather openly about wanting dictatorial authority, if he is elected again.
And this time if he does win, he now has the aid of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has produced the 900-page “Project for 2025” document on how to radically change our country so as to make it far, far more conservative, providing far fewer rights to the American people, and allowing any president so inclined, to run the country as an authoritarian, a virtual dictator. He has an authoritarian right wing Supreme Court, which in its latest decision, aptly named “Donald Trump versus the United States of America,” has given the presidency carte blanche immunity, placing the president above the law, allowing the president to do almost anything he or she wants to do, as long as it’s deemed to be “an official presidential act”.
Today’s program is the lead off to a series of shows on fascism, how to resist it, and how to defend against it. I will be conducting this series with my co-host, Michael Smith, who cannot be with us today due to illness.
Guest – Chris Hedges, the journalist and author spent two decades as a foreign correspondent serving as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of 14 books including War is a Force That Gives us Meaning, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and The Death of the Liberal Class.
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