Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age
Homelessness in the USA has reached catastrophic proportions. In New York City alone 125,000 people are homeless. One out of eight children in public school are homeless. Shelters for homeless people are overflowing. Many sleep outside or in the subway system. Their conditions of life have driven many of these people over the edge.The problem is long-standing and quite evident.
There’s a lack of affordable housing. Why? Because building affordable housing is not as profitable as building luxury housing. How realistic is it to get money for affordable housing when the oligarchy in power lacks empathy and only seeks to enrich itself, shift money from the bottom to the top, and poor people have very little political clout in the two party system.
Guest – Patrick Markee is a prominent advocate and policy analyst known for his extensive work on homelessness in New York City. He worked at the Coalition for the Homeless for several decades. Markee’s forthcoming book Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age pinpoints systemic factors such as economic and equality, housing affordability, and policy decisions that have perpetuated homelessness since the regular administration 40 some years ago.
—-
Silencing Those Speaking Out Against The US-Israel War In Palestine
All across this country, academic freedom is under severe attack. Why? Well, at colleges and universities, professors and students who dare to speak out in defense of the Palestinian people and condemn Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, have been censored, disciplined, fired, deported, and arrested. Universities are told who they can hire and what they can teach under the threat of the cut-off of grant money. This is so that, in our ever more authoritarian country, centers of opposition can be brought into line, as they were in Germany. And these attacks on academic freedom are not limited to actions by university administrators, but include those by the federal government, as well.
Visiting scholars, adjuncts and lecturers without tenure have had their contracts terminated, or haven’t been renewed. Some had their classes suddenly cancelled. Faculty members who espouse views contrary to official U.S. policy vis-a-vis the Israeli-U.S. war in Palestine have been criticized in ways that have trampled on their reputations and hurt their careers. As an excuse for this present-day McCarthyism, college and university administrators, and President Trump, often claim their censorious actions are undertaken only on behalf of ensuring their Jewish students feel “safe” on campus and to fight so-called “anti-Semitic speech and actions” on campus. But there is a distinct lack of evidence to support their claimed motivation. In fact, the largest pro-Palestinian actions on campuses are often organized by Jewish groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace.
We ask our guest Professor Alan Wald about McCarthy-styled witch hunts against academic personnel, and learn how federal law is being misused as a mechanism of political repression against academia. We’ll also discuss the role that controversy over slogans such as those condemning Zionism play in this new attack on academic freedom, and what strategies are best employed today by the opponents of Israel’s war in Gaza against these attacks, as the ever more deadly Israeli-U.S. war in Palestine continues.
Guest – Professor Alan Wald, the H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan…which, I might add, is my alma mater. Professor Wald has authored nine books related to today’s topic. He has been a socialist scholar since the 1960’s, and is currently an editor of the journal Against the Current, as well as a member of the editorial board of Science and Society. Professor Wald is also a founder of the University of Michigan’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine committee.
———————-
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Gaza, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
A New Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement Amid Tension
In 2015 the United States and Iran negotiated an agreement designed to allow Iran to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons. That agreement was terminated in 2018 during Trump’s first administration, and sanctions on Iran were re-imposed, sanctions that have proven to be very damaging to Iran’s financial well-being. Now, Trump has said his new administration is prepared to enter into a new nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Iran. But at the recent conclusion of what was the third round of U.S.-Iran negotiations on the issue, negotiations that appear to have gathered momentum, Israel’s Netanyahu has demanded that even Iran’s nuclear program for peaceful uses be dismantled, something Iran has steadfastly refused to consider.
Will Israel be successful in opposing Iran’s development of a nuclear program even if it is limited to peaceful uses? If Iran will not agree to give up its peaceful uses of nuclear energy, is a war between Israel and Iran inevitable? Meanwhile, the back-and-forth attacks by Israel on Iran and Iran on Israel continue. Just last week the Houthis, an Iran proxy, dropped a missile near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. All of this raises the question, “Would the Trump Administration join Israel if it waged war on Iran, perhaps including its nuclear facilities and how would other Middle Eastern nations respond if war did break out between Israel and Iran and, perhaps, with the United States fighting alongside Israel?”
Guest – Richard Becker is the Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER—Act Now to Stop War and End Racism—Coalition, and the author of Palestine, Israel the U.S. Empire and of the book The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks.
—-
Entrenching Authoritarianism: Expanding the Terrorism Framework and the Infrastructure of Surveillance to Repress Expression and Stifle Dissent
Recently, the Center For Constitutional Rights along with a group of four human rights organizations together with legal clinics published a new report urging the United Nations to denounce the accelerated disintegration of democracy in the US. The report focuses on the US government’s increasing criminalization and repression of free speech, dissent, and protest under the guise of “national security.” The report was then submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to formally review the United States compliance with its human rights obligations in November. The link to the report is above.
Guest – Attorney Nadia Ben-Youssef, the Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights is quoted saying “Our hope is that the report sounds the alarm for the international community to act with greater urgency to challenge this administration and its belligerent efforts to dismantle constitutional protections and international law.” She directs all advocacy around issues related to the promotion of civil and human rights. Together with the legal, advocacy, and communication teams, Nadia identifies opportunities for the Center for Constitutional Rights to make strategic cultural and political interventions that shift public narrative and policy on our issues.
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Illegal Immigration, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Chris Hedges: Trump 2.0
Trump 2.0 is qualitatively different from his first term in office. This time Trump and his allies have brought down a tsunami on us, creating fear and chaos. Tens of thousands of government workers have been fired. Thousands have been deported, some to a torture prison in El Salvador. Due process was ignored. The court orders challenging this have been ignored, as well.
With his extreme tariff measures, Trump has damaged our economy, and it looks like there may be a recession down the road. Trump has promised to use the Army and National Guard to suppress protests. Should there be an act of violence committed by a lone wolf, Trump could use it as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the troops. This is all too reminiscent of what happened in Germany when a lone wolf set fire to the German parliament building. Hitler used this as a pretext for suspending civil rights and civil liberties and outlawing the communist and socialist parties, which were huge at the time.
Moreover, and most importantly, not only politics, but the culture of our country is being changed, as well. The Department of Education has been disbanded. Books are banned. Certain words are forbidden. Universities have come under Trump’s control, starting with Columbia University in New York City The great Kennedy Center, a mecca for U.S. culture, has been taken over by Trump and his Philistine allies.
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. Chris’ forthcoming book is titled A Genocide Foretold.
—-
The Great Moral Crime Of Our Time
Israeli -American killing of the Palestinian people living in Gaza is the great moral crime of our time. Gaza is a strip of land 25 miles long and 5 miles wide situated on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea immediately South of Israel. It used to have a population of 2.3 million people and was one of the most densely populated areas on the planet.
The Palestinian people have been murdered by American made bombs dropped on them from American planes and American drones for the last year and a half. A short cease-fire, was recently unilaterally broken by Israel, which resumed the killing in preparation for the removal of the entire population to the Sudan or the Sinai desert in Egypt.
Guest – Philip Weiss is the founder of Mondoweiss, a news and opinion website known for its critical perspective on Zionism and Israeli government policies as well as his support for Palestinian rights. Weiss, a former mainstream journalist, launched Mondoweiss in the mid 2000s as a personal blog before it evolved into a larger platform. His background includes work with publications such as the New York Observer and Esquire magazine. Overtime, Mondoweiss has built a team of contributors and has become a significant voice in progressive circles when it comes to Middle Eastern policies.
—————————-
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Violations of U.S. and International Law
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The Silencing of Genocide Critics
The International Court of Justice, known as the World Court, found it plausible that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian people living in Gaza. Thereafter the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Since October 8, 2023 Israel has murdered, on an industrial scale, upwards of 70,000 people and reduced most of the Gaza strip to a pile of rubble. They used American bombs and received American diplomatic cover and financial aid. On March 18, 2025, Israel unilaterally broke a recent cease-fire killing 400 people, including 174 children, in one night. Israel is carrying out the final stage of the genocide. The people living in Gaza will either be deported or killed.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote “ The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.“ Israel has fallen. It is a profound historical truth, as Mark Twain observed 100 years ago, that you can’t have imperialism abroad and a republic at home. The Democratic rights that we citizens of the United States hold are being suppressed here as an illustration of this maxim.
American partnership with Israel’s war has worked to destroy our liberal universities here at home. It started with the trustees at Columbia University totally surrendering the universities academic freedom, self government, and free speech in return for the promise by the Trump administration of restoring $400 million in federal funding. Columbia has been more than compliant in hopes that they’ll get the money.
Using the pretext of providing security for their Jewish students, American universities across the country enforce the silencing of critics of the ongoing genocide. They have not fought back to preserve the integrity of their institutions and the freedom of their students.
Law and Disorder: The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine Interview
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.
—-
Is The Trump Administration Upholding The Bedrock Of America’s Democracy?
On March 3rd, the American Bar Association issued a statement titled, The ABA rejects efforts to undermine the courts and the legal profession. They called upon the Trump Administration to adhere to four major principles of law that have, they say, “guided our country for more than 200 years.” The four principles are: to defend judges and the courts; to acknowledge the role of the courts; to adhere to the rule of law; and to respect the separation of powers and the three co-equal branches of government with distinct duties and responsibilities. These principles have, they state, been the “bedrocks of American democracy.” The ABA statement accuses the Trump administration of violating these principles in several ways. Law and Disorder co-host Stephen Rohde takes our guest seat to evaluate whether the Trump Administration is upholding, or violating the principles that the ABA calls “the bedrock of America’s democracy.”
Guest – Stephen Rohde is a writer, lecturer and political activist. For almost 50 years, he practiced civil rights, civil liberties, and intellectual property law and has won significant First Amendment victories in state and federal appellate courts. He is a past chair of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and past National Chair of Bend the Arc, a Jewish Partnership for Justice. He is a founder and current chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; member of the Board of Directors of Death Penalty Focus, and a member of the Black Jewish Justice Alliance. Mr. Rohde is the author of the books
American Words of Freedom: The Words That Define Our Nation and Freedom of Assembly plus numerous articles and book reviews on civil liberties and constitutional history for the Los Angeles Review of Books, American Prospect, LA Times, Ms. Magazine, Los Angeles Lawyer, LA Progressive, and Truthdig
.
—————————–
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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.
—-
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.
—————————
Civil Liberties, Crony Capitalism, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Uncategorized, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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.
—-
![]()
![]()
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.
——————————————–
