Background Briefing: October 10, 2024
The UN Warns Israel it is in Breach of Humanitarian Law For IDF Attacks on UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon
We begin with the UN’s warning that Israel is in breach of humanitarian law following attacks on UNIFIL UN peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon by the IDF in which two Indonesian soldiers were injured when an Israeli tank shot up a UN watchtower. Joining us is Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and Director of the Center for International Research and Policy. Until recently, he was worked as a journalist based in Lebanon and his books include A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, and most recently, Shia Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003-2023.
The Impact of Hurricane Helene and Trump/Vance’s Lies on Whether Harris Will Win North Carolina
Then we assess the impact of hurricane Helene on North Carolina in terms of how it will affect Kamala Harris’s chances of winning the state as well as the firehose of lies and disinformation coming from Trump and Vance about FEMA and Democrats geoengineering the weather. Joining us is Jonathan Weiler, a professor in Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics and his latest book co-authored with Marc Hetherington is Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide. He writes regularly at jonathanweiler.substack.com where his latest article is “The Pathological Endgame.”
A New Film Exposing the Border Industrial Complex and the Profitable Business of Immigration
Then finally we will look into the border industrial complex and the profitable business of immigration as well as its human cost and speak with Pamela Yates, an award-winning film director and the co-founder of Skylight, a not-for-profit media organization that for over 35 years has combined cinematic arts with the quest for justice to inspire the defense of human rights. Among her films are When the Mountains Tremble, winner of a 1984 special jury award at the Sundance Film Festival; Teatro; State of Fear; Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship; Disruption; and 500 Years. She executive produced the Academy Award winning documentary short subject Witness to War and her latest film now opening across the country is Borderland – The Line Within.