Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Peace Plan? Biden Administration Continues Full Support Of Escalation In Ukraine War
Sixteen months ago, Russia launched an illegal invasion of Ukraine, albeit in the context of a history of threats to its security by NATO countries. It is estimated that as of February, Russia has suffered 189,500 to 223,000 casualties and Ukraine has suffered 124,500 to 131,000 casualties.
Meanwhile, the United States and its allies continue to provide Ukraine with all the weapons it requests and impose increasingly harsh sanctions on Russia. But there appears to be little appetite in the U.S. for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the bloodshed.
Guest – Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, where she is the director of the New Internationalism Project and 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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Peace In Ukraine: Peace Groups Convene In Vienna Austria To End Ukraine War
For the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, peace groups from around the world convened — on June 10 and 11 in Vienna, Austria. Their mission was to discuss creative solutions and to promote negotiations to the Russia-Ukraine war. Groups included the International Peace Bureau, CODEPINK, Europe for Peace, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Peace in Ukraine Coalition, Campaign for Peace Disarmament and Common Security, and several Austrian peace groups. Conference attendees grappled with controversial issues related to Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine.
Representatives discussed the devastating consequences of this war on their countries. The conference concluded with an urgent global appeal, the “Vienna Declaration for Peace,” calling on all sides to work toward a ceasefire and negotiations. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright noted, “For those of us in the U.S., it is important to remind our elected leaders that we want peace in our world, not war, and for them to get moving on peace talks.” The former U.S. diplomat added, “The U.S. is a belligerent in this war, just like Russia and Ukraine, and our taxes are funding the deaths of Ukrainians and Russians.”
Guest – Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the international antiwar organization CODEPINK. She is the author of several books, including, with Nicholas J.S. Davies, War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, and “one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement” by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Marjorie Cohn
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, War Resister
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The Nakba Didn’t End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians Daily
On May 15, Palestinians marked the 75th anniversary of al-Nakba, which means “the catastrophe” in Arabic. On that date in 1948, Israelis ethnically cleansed nearly 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and destroyed more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages. In addition, on May 15, for the first time ever, the UN General Assembly officially condemned the Nakba.
May 15 was also the day that Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt to stop the violence that resulted in the deaths of 33 Palestinians and 2 Israelis. The Israeli assault on Gaza was the sixth such attack since 2007, when Israel imposed a permanent siege on Gaza, controlling the ingress and egress of Palestinians.
Israel maintains an illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. And the United States enables this occupation by providing $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel each year.
Guest – Michel Moushabeck, is a Palestinian American writer, editor, translator and musician. He is the founder and publisher of Interlink Publishing, a 36-year-old, Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house. Michel wrote the article titled, “The Nakba Didn’t End in 1948, It Continues to Impact Palestinians Daily,” which was recently published by Truthout.
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Junior ROTC In High Schools: Pressure To Join
On her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas and several other freshmen at Detroit’s Pershing High School learned they were enrolled in a class called J.R.O.T.C., or Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. School administrators told them the program was mandatory.
Funded by the U.S. military, the program required students to wear military uniforms in class, recite patriotic declarations, and obey orders from an instructor who often yelled at them. When several tried to drop the class, school officials refused permission, even though the Pentagon says that requiring students to take the programs runs counter to its guidelines. The New York Times recently learned that thousands of public-school students were enrolled in J.R.O.T.C. either as a requirement or through automatic enrollment. Most of the schools with high enrollment numbers were attended largely by nonwhite students and those from low-income households.
Critics of Junior ROTC say that the program’s militaristic discipline prioritizes obedience over independence and critical thinking. And as we reported earlier on Law and Disorder, and now noted by the Times, the program’s textbooks often rewrite or downplay the failings of the U.S. government. With its concentration in schools with low-income and nonwhite students, some claim J.R.O.T.C. encourages students to enlist in the military rather than explore other routes to college or jobs in the civilian economy.
Guest – Rick Jahnkow works for two San Diego-based anti-militarist organizations, the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities, or YANO, and the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft. We spoke earlier with Rick about YANO’s J.R.O.T.C. textbook review project.
Hosted by Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom
America was not founded as a Christian nation. Church and state were separated. The founding fathers were mostly deists, not Christians. They did not believe in a personal all powerful God that knew everything and intervened in human affairs
They separated church and state because they understood from European history that bad and bloody results resulted when the government acted in the name of God.
All this is changing in America now under the thumb of a right wing activist politicized majority on our Supreme Court. They were put there by an extremely well funded well organized conglomeration of ultra right wing figures and organizations. They have an agenda and they are carrying it out.
The newest Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a message for new lawyers. She said being a lawyer “is but it means to an end. … and the end is building the kingdom of God.“ This ascendant ultra-right wing can best be described as white Christian nationalists. These white Christian nationalists have won significant victories and are on roll. Taking away a woman’s right to control their own bodies in the recent overturn of Roe versus Wade is just the latest example. They have stacked the federal courts and particularly the Supreme Court where they have a 6 to 3 majority.
Guest – Andrew Seidel, author of American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom. He is a constitutional attorney with more than a decade of experience arguing about religion and law as a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a director at the Freedom From Religion Foundation He is the author of “The Founding Myth” the definitive book which demonstrates that America’s not founded by Christians as a Christian country.
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John Pilger: The Coming War With China
Is China a threat to (the United States)? Is the fear being stirred up about China legitimate? We speak with 83-year-old renowned journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker John Pilger from his home in Australia about his most recent article The Coming War With China.
China has the second largest economy in the world. It will soon be the first. In response to China’s commercial threat the United States of America has responded militarily by surrounding the Chinese industrial heartland with 400 bases in what has been called “a noose“. The USA has some 1100 bases around the world, China has six.
President Obama initiated a multi trillion dollar vast nuclear buildup. This was coordinated with what he termed “a pivot towards Asia.” Most of the U.S. Navy now patrols the waters off of China. Tensions have been exacerbated with respect to who governs Taiwan.
The US Government has shored up it’s military alliances with the surrounding countries around China of South Korea, Japan the Philippines, and Australia, The USA is selling billions of dollars worth of nuclear submarines to Australia.
We live in a country whose government has been in a perpetual war the last 3/4 of a century, except with a brief interlude after its 20 year old war Vietnam ended in defeat. 3 million Vietnamese died in the American war.
Guest – John Pilger covered that war as a young reporter and understood that it was based on the lie that Lyndon Johnson told falsely stating that the North Vietnamese had attacked an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. Another 1 million people died in the Iraq war That war was based on the now well known lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was going to use against us and that he was responsible for 911. A similar campaign of fear mongering is going on now about China. The major news media parrot the government’s fact free line that China is our enemy. In his article “The Coming War With China” John Pilger wrote “a US war against China beckons and we have a responsibility to speak out. We know what is coming. Silence must be broken.”
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Maria Hall
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genocide, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Truth to Power, War Resister
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It Was Genocide: Armenian Survivor Stories
Around the world, April 24 marks the observance of the Armenian Genocide. On that day in 1915 the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire ordered the arrest and hangings of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. It was the beginning of a systematic and well-documented plan to eliminate the Armenians, who were Christian, and who had been under Ottoman rule and treated as second class citizens since the 15th century.
The unspeakable and gruesome nature of the killings—beheadings of groups of babies, dismemberments, mass burnings, mass drownings, use of toxic gas, lethal injections of morphine or injections with the blood of typhoid fever patients—render oral histories particularly difficult for survivors of the victims.
Why did this happen? Despite being deemed inferior to Turkish Muslims, the Armenian community had attained a prestigious position in the Ottoman Empire and the central authorities there grew apprehensive of their power and longing for a homeland. The concerted plan of deportation and extermination was effected, in large part, because World War I demanded the involvement and concern of potential allied countries. As the writer Grigoris Balakian wrote, the war provided the Turkish government “their sole opportunity, one unprecedented” to exploit the chaos of war in order to carry out their extermination plan.
As Armenians escaped to several countries, including the United States, a number came to New Britain, Connecticut in 1892 to work in the factories of what was then known as the hardware capital of the world. By 1940 nearly 3,000 Armenians lived there in a tight-knit community.
Pope Frances calls it a duty not to forget “the senseless slaughter” of an estimated one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923. “Concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it,” the Pope said just two weeks before the 100th anniversary of the systematic implementation of a plan to exterminate the Armenian race.
Special thanks to Jennie Garabedian, Arthur Sheverdian, Ruth Swisher, Harry Mazadoorian, and Roxie Maljanian. Produced and written by Heidi Boghosian and Geoff Brady.
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Criminalizing Dissent, War Resister
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My Country Is the World: Staughton Lynd’s Writings, Speeches, and Statements against the Vietnam War
Staughton Lynd was an activist, historian and attorney who became a leading critic of the U.S. war in Vietnam which claimed the lives of more than 3 million Vietnamese people and 58,000 Americans. He argued that the United States was committing war crimes and crimes against humanity and should immediately and fully withdraw from Vietnam.
Lynd traveled to Hanoi with Tom Hayden and Herbert Aptheker at the end of 1965 to the beginning of 1966 to try to open diplomatic channels between the U.S. and the Vietnamese. For that effort, he was denied tenure at Yale University and his passport was revoked. Lynd and his wife Alice worked in the draft resistance movement and advocated civil disobedience including the non-payment of taxes to confront the war machine.
Guest – Luke Stewart is a historian and has collected many of Lynd’s writings and speeches against the Vietnam War and published an important book called “My Country Is the World: Staughton Lynd’s Writings, Speeches, and Statements against the Vietnam War.”
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Detroit Poet Warrior: Dr. Gloria Aneb House
Around Detroit, one woman has touched many lives in many ways: artistically, intellectually and spiritually. A poet-warrior on the front lines of the fight for social justice, Dr. Gloria Aneb House has lived for decades at the intersection of art, education and urgent political movements — from the 1960s free speech movement in Berkeley, and the civil rights struggles organizing sharecroppers in Alabama and her involvement in SNCC, to the movement for justice for Cuba, and the anti-war movement, to the current movement to end racist police brutality. During Detroit’s water shutoffs, and other human rights and anti-war causes, she was in the streets protesting.
Among other accomplishments, she taught and fought discriminatory policies at Wayne State University for 27 years, and then went on to develop and direct the African American Studies major at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for 10 years, until her retirement in 2014. She has also been an instrumental leader in the efforts to win freedom for several political prisoners over the years, including former Black Panther Ahmad Rahman.
Guest – Dr. Gloria Aneb House has published several books of poetry since the 1980s under her chosen African name Aneb Kgositsile. She has also published essays and books since the early 1980s and taught at universities from Michigan to South Africa. Among her many awards, she received the Kresge Eminent Artist Award in 2019.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Marjorie Cohn and Julie Hurwitz
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CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States
As the notion of perpetual war and a militarized society are normalized, notably absent are antiwar protests by faith-based organizations, civil rights groups, academics, and others. A new book, “The Trillion Dollar Silencer,” details this absence while laying bare the devastation wrought in the United States and abroad by the military industrial complex.
Author Joan Roelofs delves into the pervasive role of military contractors and bases that have come to be economic hubs of their regions. She discusses how state and local governments are intertwined with the Department of Defense (DoD), including economic development commissions at all levels. Contracts and grants to universities, colleges, and faculty come from the DoD and its agencies, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Minerva Initiative funds social scientists for military research. Civilian jobs in the DoD provide opportunities for scientists, engineers, policy analysts, and others. The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs are subsidized by the DoD.
In addition to businesses large and small, nonprofits receive DoD contracts and grants, including environmental and charitable organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and Goodwill Industries. Individuals, arts institutions, charities, churches, and universities share in the profitability of military-related investments. Pension funds for public and private employees and unions are replete with military stocks. In other words, the military industrial complex is so embedded in our political economy that it has become virtually impossible to find any sector of our society that is not intertwined with militarism.
Guest – Joan Roelofs, Professor Emerita of Political Science at Keene State College. She teaches in the Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning and writes for scholarly and political publications. Joan is the author of “Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism,” and “Greening Cities: Building Just and Sustainable Communities.” She has been an anti-war activist ever since she protested the Korean War.
Hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Julie Hurwitz
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