Background Briefing: July 24, 2023

On By gram

 

Massive Demonstrations in Israel Against Netanyahu’s Power Grab to Avoid Jail

We begin with massive demonstrations in Israel over the weekend and today against the Netanyahu power grab in which the country’s leader, facing the prospect of going to jail, has changed the law to protect himself and other cronies who have been convicted by passing a law 64 to 0 since the opposition had left the Knesset in protest, to change Israel’s Basic Law, stripping the Supreme Court of it powers of judicial review. Joining us from Israel is Avraham Burg, the son of holocaust survivors who has been active in politics as a leader in the Israeli Labor Party and the One Israel party. He was Speaker of the Knesset from 1999 to 2003 and is the author of The Holocaust is over; We Must Rise from Its Ashes and the chairman of Molad, the Center for Renewal of Democracy.

The Global Heatwave and It’s Not Game Over on Climate Change But Game On

Then we examine the global heatwave with heat domes over four continents and scorching temperatures in Europe, North America and Asia with wildfires in Greece and Canada as well as catastrophic flooding in Japan and South Korea and in the US from Pennsylvania to Vermont. Joining us is Michael Mann, the Presidential Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He has received many honors and awards, including National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s outstanding publication award in 2002, selection by Scientific American as one of the fifty leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002, and, additionally, he contributed, with other IPCC authors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and in 2020 was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of numerous books, including Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, and his forthcoming book is Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.

 

Does The US Government and the Pentagon Want Ukraine to Lose the War?

Then finally, since Russia has escalated following the recent NATO summit, we look into the possibility that the US government and the Pentagon do not want Ukraine to win the war against Russian aggression and destruction with the Biden administration constantly delaying shipments of weapon systems while Pentagon contractors make money off dumping weapons Ukraine does not want. Joining us is Elizabeth Beavers, Vice President of Public Affairs at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft who recently served as Associate Policy Director for the Indivisible Project, a Senior Campaigner for the U.S. section of Amnesty International, and led the Militarism & Civil Liberties advocacy program at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. She has an article at Time Magazine, “Congress Is Grappling With the Wrong Questions on Ukraine.”