Letters and Politics – May 1, 2024

Guest: Ilan Pappe is Professor of History, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, UK.  He is the author of A History of Modern Palestine. The post Ilan Pappe on A History of Palestinian Resistance appeared first on KPFA.

Guest:  Benjamin Balthaser is an associate professor of multi-ethnic US literature at Indiana University, South Bend. He is the author of Anti-Imperialism Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War, and Dedication, a personal history of growing up in a Jewish “red diaper” family. His forthcoming book from Verso, Citizens of the Whole World:  The American Jewish Left and Cultures of Anti-Zionism, is due to be out this fall. The post A History of Jewish Anti-Zionism appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported from more than 50 countries. He spent 15 years at The New York Times as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief and is the author of several books, including his latest The Greatest Evil Is War.  He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, The University of Toronto, and in the New Jersey prison system.  He is the host of the show The Chris Hedges Report.   Statements Below from Maximilian Alvarez, Editor in Chief of the Real News Network and Chris Hedges,  host of The Chris Hedges Report   Statement from Maximilian Alvarez, Editor in Chief of the Real News: I can’t speak to Chris’s reasons for doing so, or to the motivations of any outlet that accepted his version of events without bothering to ask me/TRNN about it, but in his public statements he is grossly misrepresenting the situation and our last conversation. Contrary to his original statement on Thursday, I never said, implied, or indicated in our final conversation that TRNN couldn’t continue being a production and copublishing partner of The Chris Hedges Report because I had some issue with Chris’s reporting on Gaza, Israel, Julian Assange, etc. That is completely false, and I’m glad to see that anyone who knows anything about me, TRNN, our team, and our reporting knows that we have covered these issues from a critical perspective long before Chris, and we will continue to do so. It’s unfortunate to see that Chris apparently cared so little about the rest of our team and the work we’ve been doing that he could convince himself that he was somehow the only person at TRNN covering these stories, which he was demonstrably not, and that we’re somehow moving away from that coverage, which we are not. What actually happened and what I actually said is all there in the statement I put out on Friday: https://therealnews.com/update-on-the-status-of-the-chris-hedges-report-from-trnns-editor-in-chief. I had a witness in the room with me, TRNN’s Chief of Editorial Operations Kayla Rivara, who heard every word of my conversation with Chris on speakerphone and can corroborate everything I said in the statement. As anyone who listens to Chris’s speeches and interviews knows, and as he has told me numerous times, he feels he has a moral duty to say what’s in his heart about Biden, Trump, the 2024 election, and how people should vote. And that is the one etched-in-stone rule for nonprofits, and the consequences of violating it pose severe, even mortal, risks to an organization like ours. And TRNN’s own longstanding editorial code of ethics prohibits us from campaigning, lobbying, or advocating for/against candidates for elected office in their professional capacity representing TRNN, or while using TRNN’s resources. Chris knows that. Our whole team knows that. I made the same commitment to Chris a long time ago that I’ve made to all our journalists: I won’t censor them and their journalism. And I understand that he feels a moral obligation to address how he’s voting and/or how others should vote if and when the topic comes up, especially as the election gets closer. Even though Chris and I were trying to keep that separate from the show itself and his coverage for as long as possible, we acknowledged that the topic is going to inevitably come up in relationship to virtually any news story he covers and he’s gonna need to be free to say what’s in his heart. So I freed him to do that and offered to help him find a more suitable outlet to help him produce and copublish the show. Chris needs to be free from the constraints of a nonprofit to say what he needs to say throughout the election season and beyond. That’s what I told him, that’s what I reiterated in the statement. That’s it, plain and simple. Everything else is either rumor and speculation. Lastly, as I made clear in the statement; I never “fired” Chris because he was never an employee (all his money comes from Substack and will continue to); I never “canceled” the show because it was never a TRNN-only show to cancel (that’s why all episodes are freely available on his Substack and the show will continue without us); and I never “censored” him (in fact, I released the show back to him so he wouldn’t feel like he had to censor what he wanted to say because the show would be copublished on a nonprofit news platform).   Statement from Chris Hedges, author and host of The Chris Hedges Report: There is less and less space for dissent. The courageous students in our universities show us this. There is less and less room to write the truth. I have clashed with institutions before, most notably The New York Times, where I was pushed out for denouncing the invasion of Iraq, and Truthdig, where, after I organized a strike of all but two of the staff to protest the ousting of Truthdig editor Bob Scheer by the site’s wealthy publisher, the strikers were fired. This act of defiance meant a nearly 50 percent drop in my income. The principal funder of The Real News, T.M. Scruggs, once demanded Bob Scheer delete from  Scheerpost a column I wrote defending the writer Alice Walker from charges of antisemitism. When Bob refused, Scruggs said he would no longer support Scheerpost, of which he was a major donor. His animus towards me, also apparently driven by my critiques of the Democratic Party and support for third party candidates, did not go away once RT, where I hosted a show, was shut down, my six years of archives were disappeared from YouTube, and I arranged to move to The Real News. Although Max Alvarez at The Real News insists that the reason for canceling the show was that it jeopardized his nonprofit status, I find it hard to believe that Scruggs’ hostility towards me did not play a significant factor in his decision. Scruggs, according to Alvarez, has made it clear that if The Real News does anything, in his eyes, that contributes to the election of Donald Trump, he will pull the funding. This is an inverted way of saying, support Joe Biden and the Democrats. That such a stance is anathema to journalism is obvious. I did not endorse Dennis Kucinich in the last show I did on The Real News, but he is running for Congress in Ohio as an independent, and is critical of the two ruling parties. I did not violate guidelines for nonprofits. Nevertheless, the episode with Kucinich was removed from the site, and immediately afterwards my program was terminated. The model of wealthy people and corporations owning and funding news organizations does not work. The wealthy patrons who own sites such as Salon or Truthdig, or control sites such as The Real News, or the corporations that own news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC, too often interfere in ways that cripple honest inquiry and reporting. As A.J. Liebling said, “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” I am fortunate in having Substack, but most important, I am fortunate in the support of all of you. Without you, I could not do my work. I will resurrect my show on an independent platform, although it will take a few weeks to set up. You make all this possible. Thank you.   Photo credit: Wikimedia The post Speech in Times of War: the Israel’s Assault on Gaza appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Angela Garcia is an anthropologist and writer. She is the author of the book, The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande, and her latest, The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City’s Anexos.   The post Anexos: Addiction Treatment Centers in Mexico City and Beyond appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Robert Cohen is a Professor of history and social studies at New York University.  He is the author of several books including, Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary: Sit-ins, Civil Rights, and Black Women’s Student Activism and co-author with Sonia E. Murrow of Rethinking America’s Past: Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in the Classroom and Beyond.     Photo credit: Wikimedia commons The post A History of Student Movements appeared first on KPFA.

A look at burning political issues and debates and their historical context within the US and worldwide, hosted by Mitch Jeserich. The post Letters and Politics – May 1, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Gray Brechin has worked as a journalist and television producer and is coauthor of Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream; and Imperial San Francisco, With a New Preface: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. The post The Creation of Cities: Wealth, Inequality and Environmental Destruction appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Asaf Elia-Shalev is an Israeli American journalist.  He is a staff writer for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the author of the book, Israel’s Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation’s Founding Myth.   The post The Mizrahi: From the Black Panthers to Likud appeared first on KPFA.

Guests: Michael Isikoff is an award-winning Washington investigative journalist and the author of three New York Times bestsellers: Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story; Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War (with David Corn); and Russian Roulette (also with David Corn).  His latest coauthored with Daniel Klaidman is Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election Daniel Klaidman is an award-winning journalist and author.  He is the author of Kill or Capture:  The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency.  He is the co-author with Michael Isikoff of Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election. The post An Investigative Look Behind Trump’s Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election appeared first on KPFA.

Guest: Steve Coll is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Dean Emeritus of the Columbia Journalism School. Previously he was president of the public policy institute New America,  in Washington, DC.  He is an editor at The Economist in London and the author of several books, including The Bin Ladens, Private Empire, Directorate S, and his latest, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq.     The post The U.S. & Iraq Before The Wars appeared first on KPFA.