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Earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would not act to prevent the Islamic State from seizing Kobani because the Syrian Kurdish town was not a "strategic objective." But as news cameras on the Turkish-Syrian border showed Islamic State fighters assaulting a town in plain sight, the U.S.-led coalition responded with the most airstrikes of its Syria campaign. The U.S.-led coalition has also begun dropping air supplies of weapons and aid to the Syrian Kurds, a move it had resisted for weeks. Now Turkey says it will open its border with Syria to let Iraqi Kurdish fighters join the fight. The Turkish government had opposed aiding the Syrian Kurds in Kobani because of their links to Turkey’s longtime foe, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK. To help us sort out this complicated picture, we are joined by longtime international law professor and former United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, who has just returned from four months in Turkey.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We begin with the continued fight for the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani and the issues it’s raised with the country on its border, Turkey. After a more than month-long assault, the Islamic State appeared on the verge of taking Kobani just last week. The U.S. initially appeared indifferent, saying Kobani was not a part of its, quote, "strategic objective." But as news cameras on the Turkish-Syrian border showed Islamic State fighters assaulting a town in plain sight, the U.S. responded with the most airstrikes of its Syria campaign. A resurgent defense by Syrian Kurdish forces appears to have stopped the ISIS advance for now. And after weeks of U.S. pressure, Turkey said Monday it will open its border with Syria to let Iraqi Kurdish fighters join the fight. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced the move.
MEVLUT CAVUSOGLU: [translated] We are fully cooperating with the coalition with respect to Kobani. We want to eliminate all kinds of threats in the region, and we see the military and medical aid, outfitted by our Iraq Kurdish brothers and airdropped by the United States to all groups defending Kobani, from that perspective. We are facilitating the passage of Peshmerga fighters to Kobani. Further talks are underway on this matter.
AARON MATÉ: For weeks, the Obama administration had been urging Turkey to take a more active role against ISIS. The Turkish government has opposed aiding the Syrian Kurdish PYD, which it considers an extension of its longtime foe, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK. But Turkey reportedly backed down this weekend under heavy U.S. pressure. According to Al Jazeera, President Obama told Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan that the situation in Kobani is "desperate."
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. has also begun dropping air supplies of weapons and aid to the Syrian Kurds, a move it had resisted for weeks. That adds a new twist to the shifting alliances that the fight against ISIS has provoked. The Syrian PYD is closely allied to the PKK, a group on the U.S. terrorism list. Just last week, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish PKK rebels near the Iraqi border. The strikes were the first by Turkey against the PKK since a 2012 truce.
Well, to help us sort out this complicated picture, we’re joined by a guest who’s just spent four months in Turkey. He’s been involved in global politics for a lot longer—since the 1960s. Richard Falk is with us, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and research professor in the global studies department at UC Santa Barbara. He has authored, co-authored, edited more than 40 books on international law and world affairs, and has just completed a six-year term as the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, which we will talk about in our next segment.
Richard Falk, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Start off by talking about these latest developments with Turkey, Syria, the United States.
RICHARD FALK: Well, I think it’s a very complicated situation in which none of the political actors know quite what to do, what will work and what they really are trying to achieve. And the whole situation there is complicated—in my view, unnecessarily—by the refusal to treat the conflict as potentially solvable by diplomacy rather than relying totally on military power, which has consistently failed in the region. American interventions, especially the Iraqi intervention of 2003, is really the proximate cause of this surge of extremism in the region. And we, over and over again, rely on military intervention and refuse to learn the lesson of the 21st century, that wars are not won by weapons alone. They are won primarily in this period by securing a political outcome that reflects not only the equities involved, but also what the people subject to these pressures wish to achieve. Self-determination on the ground is a very important dimension of political reality that Washington can’t seem to perceive, because it’s invested so heavily in the military machine and it’s so powerful within the bureaucracy, that it’s almost impossible for our elected leaders to think outside the military box.
See, if Iran was brought into this diplomatic framework—it’s been excluded, mainly, I think, due to Israeli objections to having Iran be a political player in the region, and that limits the possibility of solving the Syrian conflict, which in turn makes it very difficult to conduct this kind of limited war against ISIS. So, there’s—and Turkey is caught in the middle between—
AMY GOODMAN: You think if Iran were included, this could be resolved much more easily?
RICHARD FALK: I think you never know. Diplomacy is filled with uncertainties and different kinds of trade-offs, but not to try to solve it that way is really a terrible failure of political imagination.
AARON MATÉ: You were just in Turkey. The U.S. appears to have accepted that Assad is not going to be overthrown, at least for now. Turkey has not come to that position. Do you see them changing their stance and accepting that Assad will have to be a part of a political solution that you talk about?
RICHARD FALK: I think Turkey has a much more flexible leadership than the American media portrays, and it’s much more balanced. Erdogan is not Putin, the way he’s sort of presented as this kind of autocratic, domineering figure in the Turkish scene. That’s the way the opposition in Turkey wants to perceive him. But there’s a very capable prime minister, who’s Ahmet Davutoglu, who has a very nuanced sense of the difficulties confronting Turkey in shaping a policy. On the one hand, they’re trying to solve the problems with Turkish Kurds, the Kurdish minority. On the other hand, the PKK has become more militant in this phase, perhaps to increase their bargaining power in this political process of ending the Turkish conflict. So there’s a Turkish dimension, and then there’s the extremist ISIS dimension, which Turkey probably is partly responsible for because of its earlier preoccupation with getting the Syrian regime, the Assad regime, overthrown. So, the enemy of your enemy has become the sort of operational logic of the region.
AMY GOODMAN: So the Turkish warplanes bomb the Kurdish PKK rebels for the first time since the 2012 truce, but they also let Kurds go over into Syria to fight.
RICHARD FALK: Well, that illustrates this tension between opposing goals. They want the Kurds to act against ISIS, but they of course don’t want the Kurds to resume their internal struggle against the Turkish central government. And for whatever reasons—it may be internal to the Kurdish movement in Turkey that they have assumed a more militant posture. And the bombing of the PKK didn’t come in a vacuum. The PKK was doing things. They were capturing Turkish children, and they were committing various acts in some of the villages in eastern Turkey. So, it’s a complicated—everything in that region is complicated—
AMY GOODMAN: And the Kurds feel—the Kurds feel immensely oppressed in Turkey.
RICHARD FALK: And they have been. On the other hand, this government has tried more than any other government—
AMY GOODMAN: Leyla Zana, the famous Kurdish parliamentarian—
RICHARD FALK: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —imprisoned simply because she spoke Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament.
RICHARD FALK: Yeah. But this government is moving beyond that phase of the Turkish-Kurdish relationship, and it has a much more pluralistic sense of what will make Turkey stable and successful. And if you read Erdogan’s acceptance speech after he won the presidential election, it was all about seeing how to implement a pluralist vision of Turkey, which means bringing the minorities into a position of equality, which goes directly against the Ataturk Kemalist view that Turkey—the ethnic identity of Turks should all be Turkish. And he called, you know, the Kurds "mountain Turks," for instance, and forbade the language, and it was all part of his state-building project that went far too far.
AARON MATÉ: If you could help us sort out what the U.S. is doing in Kobani—it initially appeared the U.S. would not act to prevent Kobani’s fall to the Islamic State. Speaking earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry said protecting Kobani is not a strategic U.S. objective.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: As horrific as it is to watch in real time what’s happening in Kobani, it’s also important to remember you have to step back and understand the strategic objective and where we have begun over the course of the last weeks. … Notwithstanding the crisis in Kobani, the original targets of our efforts have been the command-and-control centers, the infrastructure. We’re trying to deprive the ISIL of the overall ability to wage this, not just in Kobani, but throughout Syria and into Iraq.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Secretary of State John Kerry just a few weeks ago. Well, on Monday, Kerry said it would be "irresponsible" and "morally very difficult" not to support the Kurds fighting the Islamic State in Kobani and also to allow Kobani to fall.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Let me just say, very, very respectfully, to our allies, the Turks, that we understand fully the fundamentals of their opposition, and ours, to any kind of terrorist group, and particularly, obviously, the challenges they face with respect to the PKK. We talked with Turkish authorities—I did, the president did—to make it very, very clear this is not a shift in policy by the United States. It is a crisis moment, an emergency, where we clearly do not want to see Kobani become a horrible example of the unwillingness of people to be able to help those who are fighting ISIL.
AARON MATÉ: Kerry was speaking in Indonesia. So you go from it’s not a strategic objective to then the most intense bombardment of the U.S. bombing of Syria so far. What happened here?
RICHARD FALK: It’s hard to say. I mean, it seems to me that the U.S. government felt that it couldn’t just stand by as a spectator while this humanitarian catastrophe in Kobani was unfolding, and probably had recollections of what happened in Srebrenica in 1995 when the U.N. peacekeepers watched the massacre occur and didn’t try to intervene to stop it. So, my sense is that they don’t have a very clear sense of what their strategic objectives are, and therefore there’s bound to be inconsistencies in the implementation of it.
One of the mysteries here, seems to me, is how this ISIS emerged as such an effective military force. After the U.S. has failed to train the Iraqi military for a decade and spent billions to do that, suddenly this ISIS emerges as the most powerful, most effective military operating force in the region. How did this happen? Nobody really has given a satisfactory answer to that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Saudi Arabia has something to do with it?
RICHARD FALK: Well, I think they had funding, but Saudi Arabia’s own military capability is very dysfunctional. So what made this military capability so potent so quickly? And it probably has something to do with the politics of the region, where there was such a dissatisfaction with the Shia attempt to oppress the peoples in northern Iraq that there was a receptivity to ISIS, and they were able to create this image of almost invulnerability. It’s hard to understand.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, whether the U.S. is meeting directly with Iran—and behind the scenes, there’s probably a lot of communication—Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi met with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, in Tehran today. Rouhani says Iran will continue to provide Baghdad with military advisers and weapons.
RICHARD FALK: Yes, but that’s not the key issue. The key issue seems to me to bring Iran in as a major political player in the region and see if one can get some kind of compromise in Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Richard Falk, who just completed a six-year term as United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. He’s just back, actually, from Turkey. We’ll come back with him to talk about what’s happening in Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories in a moment.
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Pennsylvania Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is set to sign into law a bill critics say will trample the free speech rights of prisoners. Last week, lawmakers openly said they passed the legislation as a way to target one of the state’s most well-known prisoners: journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted in 1982 of killing of a Philadelphia police officer, but has long maintained his innocence. During a late night vote last Tuesday, the Pennsylvania House unanimously approved the "Revictimization Relief Act," which authorizes the censoring of public addresses of prisoners or former offenders if judges agree that allowing them to speak would cause "mental anguish" to the victim. The measure was introduced after Abu-Jamal delivered a pretaped commencement address for graduating students at Vermont’s Goddard College earlier this month. We air Abu-Jamal’s response to the bill and speak to Noelle Hanrahan, founder of Prison Radio, which has been recording and distributing Abu-Jamal’s commentaries from prison since 1992.
Image Credit: FreeMumia.com
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We turn now to Pennsylvania, where today Governor Tom Corbett is set to sign into law a bill critics say will trample the free speech rights of prisoners. Last week, lawmakers openly said they passed the bill as a way to target one of the state’s most well-known prisoners: journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. He was convicted in 1982 of killing of a Philadelphia police officer, has maintained for a long time his innocence. The bill comes as Corbett and other lawmakers face stiff competition as they run for re-election.
AMY GOODMAN: During a late-night vote last Tuesday, the Pennsylvania House unanimously approved the so-called "Revictimization Relief Act," which authorizes the censoring of public addresses of prisoners or former offenders if judges agree that allowing them to speak would cause "mental anguish" to the victim. The measure was introduced after Mumia Abu-Jamal delivered a pretaped commencement address for graduating students at Vermont’s Goddard College earlier this month. The speech was opposed by the widow of Daniel Faulkner, the police officer whom Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett expressed his support earlier this month for the new law that could prevent similar speeches in the future.
GOV. TOM CORBETT: While law-abiding citizens are entitled to an array of rights, from free travel to free speech, convicted felons in prison are in prison because they abused and surrendered their rights. And nobody has a right to continually taunt the victims of their violent crimes in the public square.
AARON MATÉ: The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania has criticized the new Pennsylvania measure, calling it, quote, "overbroad and vague," and unable to "pass constitutional muster under the First Amendment." But that has not stopped Governor Corbett from saying he will sign [it into law] this afternoon.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, Mumia Abu-Jamal spoke with Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio Project about the passage of the so-called Revictimization Relief Act, in what could be one of his final media interviews for some time.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: It’s amazing, when you think about it, because—on two fronts, I should say. Of course, the first front is constitutional. I mean, this is a blatant, naked violation of Article I, Section 7, of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which specifically grants the right of free speech to all people in the commonwealth, and, of course, the Constitution of the United States, which fairly recently, in the Snyder v. Phelps case—you remember? The preacher who went around to funerals? Well, he caused, I think, a great deal of emotional distress to veterans’ families. This is what the U.S. Supreme Court said in Snyder. They said that the First Amendment trumps emotional distress. That’s recently, and that was an eight-to-one decision. Look it up. But what’s more important to me is this, that during their discussions, right?—that I’ve heard about; I didn’t hear it, I don’t have access to a computer—members of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania said they did not hear the speech, did not know what the speech was, but, in any event, it was for a judge to determine whether it was unconstitutional. These are people who took an oath of office to protect and defend and uphold the Pennsylvania Constitution and the Constitution of the United States blatantly acting unconstitutionally in office. That’s one point.
Here’s the second point. This is theoretically or reportedly based on emotional distress. Think about being a student at Goddard College when police, by the hundreds and—and threatening these students at their graduation with rape, murder, assault, attacks. These are police writing emails, calling on phones, threatening administrators and students. How about their emotional distress? And all they wanted was to hear from one of their alumni. I went to that college. I’m a part of that college. I spent years at that college as a student. And when I went back and graduated, I am a part of that college forever. And they wanted to hear from me. They called and asked and wrote to me and said they wanted to hear from me. So, I think those things should be a part of your considerations.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mumia Abu-Jamal speaking from prison in a phone interview recorded Monday by our guest, Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio, who we’ll talk to in a moment. This is another clip from their conversation, when Mumia Abu-Jamal expresses concern that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett would sign the so-called Revictimization Relief Act in order to benefit politically.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: The press ignores prisoners, as a rule. Most of what happens in prisons are never or rarely reported in the press. I would say this. If you wish, read Live from Death Row, and find out—this book that was written years ago—find out how true it was, how accurate it was, how many of the states that began this hellacious mass incarceration are now decarcerating because their budgets are busted.
You know, we’re talking about a bill—again, let me kind of rephrase this—this is a bill that is signed into law by unconstitutional Tom Corbett, probably the least popular governor—Republican governor, I might add—in the United States, who is facing a virtually unknown opponent who has 20 to 25 points on him, right? At last count. This is a political stunt by a failing politician who is seeking support by using fear. Right? Politicians do it all the time. But this is unconstitutional Tom’s latest attempt to stroke and build up his political campaign, his failing political campaign.
When you asked about the press, for most of the press, prisons don’t exist, right? Silence reigns in states all across the United States. But I went to court. I was forced to go to court by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And I won, in a case called Abu-Jamal v. Price, which gives me the right to write. Now they’re trying to take away my right to read my own writings. How unconstitutional is that?
AMY GOODMAN: That was Mumia Abu-Jamal in what could be one of his final media interviews for some time. He was a resident on Pennsylvania’s death row for 29 years before his sentence was overturned in 2011, award-winning journalist whose writing from his prison cell has reached a worldwide audience both through Prison Radio commentaries and through his nine books. We had hoped to have him on with us today. That interview was recorded by Noelle Hanrahan yesterday. But though it was all set up, we have not been able to reach him yet. He would have to call us. We’re joined, though, now in Philadelphia by Noelle Hanrahan, the investigative journalist and founder and producer of Prison Radio, which has been recording and distributing Mumia Abu-Jamal’s commentaries from prison since 1992, for more than 20 years.
The significance of what we expect Governor Corbett to do today, Noelle Hanrahan, and what it means not only for Mumia Abu-Jamal, but for prisoners around the state?
NOELLE HANRAHAN: This is about Mumia Abu-Jamal, but it’s really about all prisoners and what the journalists have to know from inside prisons. Our society really has this incredible incarceration addiction. And we need to know, as journalists, what’s going on inside. So it affects Robert "Saleem" Holbrook, a juvenile lifer who’s in Pennsylvania. It affects Bryant Arroyo, who’s a jailhouse environmentalist and lawyer inside Frackville prison in Pennsylvania. It affects our ability as a community to get the information that we need to make decisions.
And as you know, around Mumia’s case, he’s been censored before. Mumia was one of the main ways in which the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections shut down prisons to journalists. Prisoners cannot have visits by journalists with cameras and equipment. They can only have in-person visits not even with a paper and a pencil. So this is another attempt for the Fraternal Order of Police and the Department of Corrections and Tom Corbett to really silence what we, as a community, need to know and the information we need to get as journalists, and the voices and the First Amendment rights of prisoners.
AARON MATÉ: Noelle, this bill is framed as one that’s protecting the rights of victims, but your response to that? And on the issue of the First Amendment, which you raise, is there a plan for a legal challenge?
NOELLE HANRAHAN: I think that the Fraternal Order of Police is motivating this bill and that Corbett is using it for political advantage. But also, this is not about crime victims. It’s really about reframing the narrative that the Fraternal Order of Police need to reframe. So it’s shifting the narrative after the wake of Ferguson—
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
NOELLE HANRAHAN: —to really pose them as the victims, when we all know, many of the people who deal with the criminal justice system, hey, one in 46 people in this country are going to do jail time and prison time, one in three black men. It’s really killing black men. It’s really affecting our culture. We spend more money on preschools—more money on prisons than preschools. So, it’s reframing it in their way.
AMY GOODMAN: Noelle Hanrahan, we’re going to have to leave it there, investigative journalist with Prison Radio. That does it for our show. I’ll be speaking in Purchase tonight.
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On Monday, the Israeli government made a rare appearance before the United Nations Human Rights Committee, but its delegation refused to acknowledge responsibility for the conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel for nearly half a century. We speak to a legal expert who has just spent six years trying to hold Israel to account for its actions in the Occupied Territories. Richard Falk recently completed his term as special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights for the United Nations Human Rights Council. His writings about the Israel-Palestine issue and his experience as U.N. rapporteur are compiled in the new book, "Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AARON MATÉ: We turn now to Israel and the Occupied Territories. On Monday, the Israeli government made a rare appearance before the U.N. Human Rights Committee. Each member state is reviewed every four years for its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That task was especially significant coming just weeks after Israel ended an assault on Gaza that killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 500 children. Emi Palmor, the director-general of Israel’s Justice Ministry, pledged her government’s "sincere approach" to the panel’s mandate.
EMI PALMOR: We decided to bring along the highest-ranking experts on the issues that we are supposed to answer. And indeed, you can see that for the first time the director-general, myself, is heading the delegation. The deputy attorney general, Dr. Schöndorf, is second on the delegation, and the others as were presented during the session. And we believe that this shows our seriousness, the sincere approach of Israel to these issues.
AARON MATÉ: That’s Emi Palmor, head of the Israeli delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Committee. But as the session got underway, a key problem emerged: Israel would not be answering for conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the territory it’s occupied for nearly half a century. While Israel provided a written report for human rights within its own borders, it did not agree the covenant applies to its actions in the Occupied Territories. In response, two U.N. panelists expressed their frustration.
CORNELIS FLINTERMAN: We have that information about the doubling, the recent announcement in Israel of further expansion of the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and in East Jerusalem. So, that was the reason that I raised the question. It seemed that no attention had been given whatsoever to our earlier recommendation.
NIGEL RODLEY: Of course, they’re not responsible for the violations that may be committed by Hamas. Of course they’re not. But they are responsible for any violations that may be their own responsibility. It’s not an issue of legal jurisdiction one way or the other; it’s an issue of who has control.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Nigel Rodley from Britain and, before that, Cornelis Flinterman. As it turned out, the assault on Gaza did not receive the scrutiny that had been expected. As The Jerusalem Post reported at day’s end, Israel’s Emi Palmor, quote, "said she was relieved that the delegation had not been extensively quizzed about the IDF’s military actions in Gaza this summer under Operation Protective Edge. Israel had imagined that committee members would focus on that issue," The Jerusalem Post said.
Well, we’re still joined by a legal expert who’s just spent six years trying to hold Israel to account for its actions in the Occupied Territories. Richard Falk has just completed his term as special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights for the United Nations Human Rights Council. His writings about the Israel-Palestine issue and his experience as U.N. rapporteur are compiled in a new book. It’s out today. It’s called Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope. Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and research professor in the global studies department at UC Santa Barbara. He presented the Edward Said Memorial Lecture last night at Columbia University.
Can you talk about, well, just that, this latest news on what is happening right now with Israel and Gaza?
RICHARD FALK: Well, as far as their cooperation with the U.N. is concerned, this report that you just showed your audience is very misleading. They have refused to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry in—that the Human Rights Council appointed to look into the allegations of war crimes associated with the attack on Gaza in July and August. And they refused to cooperate with my successor, an Indonesian diplomat who they favored, actually, and they persuaded the president of the Human Rights Council to appoint, with the expectation that they would cooperate with him. But as I’ve said all along, you only have to be 10 percent objective to come to the same critical conclusions that I came to in relation to Israel’s violation of fundamental human rights in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, the three segments of occupied territory.
AMY GOODMAN: What is that conclusion that you came to?
RICHARD FALK: Well, the conclusion is flagrant violations that are official policy—it’s not deviations—from the extension of the settlements as a violation of international humanitarian law, not disallowing transfer of the occupying country’s population to the occupied society, the imposition of a regime of collective punishment on the whole civilian population of Gaza. And locking that civilian population into the combat zone during Protective Edge is a distinctive atrocity, where women and children were not allowed to become refugees, and there was no opportunity to be an internally displaced person. As horrible as things were for civilians in Syria and in Iraq in recent years, they always had—the civilian population always could leave the combat zone. Here, they’re literally locked into the combat zone, and only those Gazans with foreign passports were allowed to leave. That involved 800 people out of 1,800,000. So it is a very extreme situation that is not treated as an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe for geopolitical reasons. The U.S. has a geopolitical veto over what the U.N. can do in relation to a situation of this kind. We react to Kobani, as we spoke earlier, but we ignore what is happening day by day in Gaza, particularly, but to a lesser extent, in the West Bank.
AARON MATÉ: Well, you mentioned the U.S. Can you talk about the obstacles that you faced as you tried to raise these issues over these past six years as the top U.N. investigator in the territories?
RICHARD FALK: Well, there were two main kinds of obstacles. I was very much attacked in a kind of defamatory way by UN Watch and other very extreme Zionist organizations, which tried—wherever I went, anywhere in the world, they would try to prevent me from speaking and mounted a kind of defamatory campaign, called me an anti-Semite, a leading anti-Semite. The Wiesenthal Center in L.A. listed me as the third most dangerous anti-Semite in the world, which was—made me feel I must be doing something right in this role. And the only two people that were more dangerous than I was the supreme leader of Iran and the prime minister of Turkey, Erdogan. And other—
AMY GOODMAN: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power called you, as you were leaving your U.N. post, a—talked about your "relentless anti-Israeli bias."
RICHARD FALK: Well, it certainly has been a consistent anti-Israeli critical narrative, because that’s what the reality is. I mean, if you take international law seriously and, as I said, you’re 10 percent objective, you have to come to these conclusions. And that’s why this Indonesian, who was determined to please Israel—he told me that—it turned out that they—
AMY GOODMAN: Makarim Wibisono.
RICHARD FALK: Yes. It turned he’s already angered Israel, because you can’t—you can’t look at these realities without coming to these conclusions, unless you completely somehow blindfold yourself.
AARON MATÉ: Well, let’s talk about what Palestinians are trying to do now—the Palestinian Authority, at least. The PA has drafted a U.N. Security Council measure that would impose a three-year deadline for Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Speaking at the U.N. last month, Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi dismissed the threat of losing U.S. government support.
HANAN ASHRAWI: We will be seeking a Security Council resolution on ending the occupation within that specified date. And any solution must be based on international law, cannot violate international law and U.N. conventions and agreements. If the U.S. wants to isolate itself as a reaction to Palestinians joining the international community, then they are welcome to do that. The American funding is not that essential to Palestinian survival. Quite often, joining the international community, having the protection of the law and so on is much more important than getting some funding from Congress that is conditional.
AARON MATÉ: Hanan Ashrawi went on to say, quote, "Enough is enough. What has the U.S. done for us?" And, in fact, there was a report last week that Secretary of State John Kerry has asked the PA to delay its U.N. Security Council bid measure here, proposal, until after the midterm elections. Is the PA actually distancing itself from this whole U.S. process? And is that important?
RICHARD FALK: Well, it’s caught between the militancy of its own people and this kind of pragmatic adaptation to the power situation, and its economic dependence on funding that is controlled by Israel and the U.S. And also, its security forces have been—the PA’s security forces have been trained under U.S. authority. So it’s a—they’re in a very compromised position. So the Palestinian Authority leadership, in order to retain some modicum of legitimacy, has to appear to be reflecting the will of the Palestinian people. And they’ve been trying to walk this tightrope all along, and it becomes more and more difficult. And the recent polls show that Hamas, even on the West Bank, would now win an election if an election was held. And that’s not because there’s a shift toward an Islamic orientation. It’s because Hamas, for all its problems and failures, resists and is resilient and has maintained the spirit of resistance that’s so important to the political morale of the Palestinian movement.
AARON MATÉ: On the issue of resistance, you talked last night about the importance of defending the right to resist, but advocating peaceful resistance. Can you talk more about this vis-à-vis the Palestinian struggle?
RICHARD FALK: Well, I don’t purport to speak for the Palestinians. And one of the tragedies of the Palestinians, ever since the Balfour Declaration, is that others have decided what’s good for Palestine. And so, what I was—I was partly being descriptive. The Palestinians have failed with armed struggle. They failed, with the Arab neighbors, trying to liberate Palestine from Israeli control. They failed with the Oslo-type intergovernmental diplomacy. So what they’ve tried in the last several years, increasingly, is a combination of nonviolent resistance in various forms within the occupied territory and this growing global solidarity movement that has centered on the BDS campaign.
I think that’s—and I don’t say—I wouldn’t judge their desire to or their feeling that the only effective form of resistance is to defend themselves violently. I mean, that’s a decision that I don’t think it’s appropriate for someone outside the context of oppression to make. Hamas, which is accused of being a terrorist organization, of course, has limited its violence since its political election in 2006 to responding to Israeli provocations. It hasn’t used violence as a way of promoting the empowerment of a Palestinian movement of liberation. In fact, its politics have been directed toward long-term peaceful coexistence with Israel, if Israel withdraws to the '67 borders. It's offered a 50-year plan of peaceful coexistence.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end where you begin, and that’s the title of your book, Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope. Richard Falk, what do you mean by "the legitimacy of hope"?
RICHARD FALK: What I mean is that if you look at the way in which conflicts have been resolved since the end of World War II, particularly involving foreign domination or foreign rule in a Third World country, the decisive factor in their resolution has been gaining the high ground of international morality and international law. And not having—military superiority has not produced political outcomes favorable to the intervening or the more powerful side. And so, the hope comes from this pattern of gaining legitimacy, in what I call "legitimacy war," being more significant politically than being able to control the results on a battlefield. And that’s a profound change in the whole structure of power in the world that hasn’t been absorbed by either Israel or the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Richard Falk, we want to thank you for being with us, just completed his six-year term as United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, a prolific writer. His book, Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, has just been published today. Professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and research professor in the global studies department at UC Santa Barbara, he presented the Edward Said Memorial Lecture last night at Columbia University.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Mumia Abu-Jamal in his own words. Stay with us.
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Cuba Sends 91 More Health Workers to West Africa, Offers to Work with U.S. on Ebola
Cuba is sending 91 additional medical staff to West Africa to help combat a record outbreak of Ebola. The teams of doctors and nurses are departing today for Liberia and Guinea. Cuba has already dispatched 165 health workers to Sierra Leone. That brings the country’s total contribution in the three hardest-hit countries to 256 people, more than a third of all foreign medical staff there. Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean gathered for an Ebola summit in Havana on Monday. Speaking at the summit, Cuban President Raúl Castro offered to work with the United States.
President Raúl Castro: "We believe that any the politicization of this grave problem should be avoided. It diverts us from the fundamental objective, which is the help to face this epidemic in Africa and prevention in other regions. Following from what the secretary-general of the United Nations said last September 5, we have advised our representatives who participate in events held at the World Health Organization and the United Nations, confirming that Cuba is willing to work closely with all countries, including the United States."
Ebola has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa, including 239 health workers.
CDC Unveils New Health Worker Protocols for Ebola
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has unveiled new protocols for healthcare workers treating patients with Ebola. The guidelines include training for staff and supervision for workers as they remove their protective gear. The steps come after two nurses became infected with Ebola while treating a patient in Dallas. On Monday, 43 people who had been in contact with the initial patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, were cleared from Ebola monitoring after the 21-day incubation period. About 75 healthcare workers involved in Duncan’s care are still being monitored.
U.S. Continues Bombardment of ISIS Near Kobani
The United States has continued its bombardment of Islamic State forces near the Syrian city of Kobani along the Turkish border. According to U.S. Central Command, U.S. military forces conducted six airstrikes near Kobani on Sunday and Monday. In a bid to hold off the ISIS advance on Kobani, the United States has begun dropping air supplies of weapons and aid to the Syrian Kurds, while Turkey, under heavy U.S. pressure, is now allowing Iraqi Kurdish forces to cross over into Syria to join the fight. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized Kobani’s importance.
John Kerry: "We talked with Turkish authorities — I did, the president did — to make it very, very clear this is not a shift in policy by the United States. It is a crisis moment, an emergency, where we clearly do not want to see Kobani become a horrible example of the unwillingness of people to be able to help those who are fighting ISIL."
The Obama administration had previously said Kobani was not a part of its "strategic objective." We’ll have more on that story with former U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Falk later in the broadcast.
Indonesia Inaugurates Joko Widodo as President
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was among several prominents officials who attended the presidential inauguration of Joko Widodo in Indonesia. Known as "Jokowi," the former Jakarta governor defeated the U.S.-trained former army general Prabowo Subianto in this summer’s elections. The inauguration was celebrated with events including a parade, concert and the release of thousands of paper lanterns.
Australian Police Drop Probe into 1975 Murder of 5 Journalists by Indonesian Forces
In news from Indonesia, Australian authorities have announced they are dropping an investigation into the deaths of five Australian journalists killed in the lead-up to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. In 2009, an Indonesian officer admitted the military had killed the journalists in an attempt to hide its actions in East Timor. This is one of the journalists, Australian TV correspondent Greg Shackleton, in a report he sent the night before he was killed.
Greg Shackleton: "'Why,' they ask, 'are the Indonesians invading us?' 'Why,' they ask, 'if Indonesians believe that Fretilin is communist, do they not send a delegation to Dili to find out?' 'Why,' they ask, 'are the Australians not helping us? When the Japanese invaded, they did help us.' 'Why,' they ask, 'are the Portuguese not helping us? We're still a Portuguese colony.’ 'Who,' they ask, 'will pay for the terrible damage to our homes?'"
In 2007, an Australian coroner found Shackleton and the four other journalists were executed by Indonesian special forces in the town of Balibo. But today, the Australian Federal Police said there was "currently insufficient evidence to prove an offense."
Oscar Pistorius Sentenced to 5 Years for Girlfriend’s Killing, Likely to Serve 10 Months
South African Olympic and Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius has been sentenced to five years in prison for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius is expected to serve just 10 months before entering house arrest. Last month he was convicted of culpable homicide, a charge equivalent to manslaughter for shooting Steenkamp through a bathroom door. He claimed he mistook her for an intruder.
Reports: Ukraine Used Cluster Munitions in Donetsk in Possible War Crime
Two new reports accuse Ukrainian forces of using cluster munitions as part of their fight against pro-Russian rebels in the city of Donetsk. The New York Times reports the two attacks in early October wounded at least six people and killed a Red Cross employee. Cluster munitions contain dozens or even hundreds of smaller components which fan out indiscriminately over a wide area. Many do not explode right away, effectively becoming landmines. Human Rights Watch says Ukraine’s apparent use of cluster munitions in populated areas may amount to war crimes. The group said it suspects anti-government rebels have also used cluster munitions.
Philippines: After Murder of Transgender Woman, Protests Target U.S. Forces Agreement
Protests are continuing in the Philippines where a U.S. marine is suspected of murdering a transgender woman. Outrage has focused on the Visiting Forces Agreement, a decades-old deal between the United States and the Philippines, which critics say has been used to shield U.S. soldiers from punishment. Under the deal, U.S. Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton remains on board a U.S. Navy vessel while local authorities investigate the murder of Jennifer Laude. She was found in a motel bathroom where she was apparently drowned in the toilet. On Monday, Philippine President Benigno Aquino rejected calls to abandon the Visiting Forces Agreement. The murder came less than six months after the United States signed a 10-year agreement to revive its military presence in the Philippines, which is a former U.S. colony.
U.N. Warns of "Rampant" Sexual Violence in South Sudan
The United Nations warns sexual violence has become "rampant" in the civil war in South Sudan. Fighting erupted in December between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and supporters of his former deputy Riek Machar. More than 10,000 people have been killed, and more than 1.5 million have fled their homes. The U.N. special representative on sexual violence, Zainab Hawa Bangura, said sexual violence is taking place on both sides.
Zainab Hawa Bangura: "Survivors and healthcare workers told me heartbreaking stories of rape, gun rape, abduction, sexual slavery and forced marriage. Those who try to fight back against their attackers are often raped with objects instead. Some victims have even been raped to death. Victims include women, men, girls and boys. According to the statistics given to me by the Juba Hospital, 74 percent of victims are below the age of 18. The youngest victim they had treated is two years old."
Man Suspected of Killing 7 Women in Indiana
In Indiana, police have arrested an alleged serial killer accused of killing seven women. Police say Darren Vann confessed to killing a 19-year-old in a motel room and provided information that led to the discovery of six more bodies. At least two victims appear to have been prostitutes. Police suggested Vann may have murdered other women in crimes dating back 20 years.
WTO Rules Against U.S. Meat Labeling Requirements
The World Trade Organization has ruled against the United States in a multinational dispute over the labeling of meat. The United States requires the disclosure of a meat product’s country of origin. But Mexico and Canada have argued the rules harm their livestock exports. On Monday, the WTO found the latest U.S. requirements violate trade rules. U.S. consumer groups, including Food and Water Watch, have urged the Obama administration to appeal the WTO’s ruling, saying: "The WTO’s continued assault against commonsense food labels is just another example of how corporate-controlled trade policy undermines the basic protections that U.S. consumers deserve."
U.N. Officials Condemn Water Shutoffs in Detroit
Two U.N. officials have called for the city of Detroit to restore water to residents who cannot afford to pay their bills, saying the city’s mass shutoffs go against human rights standards and hurt its poorest residents. Detroit has shut off water to at least 27,000 households this year as part of a consolidation plan, which residents see as a step toward privatization. Water bills in Detroit cost nearly twice the national average, while the poverty rate is 40 percent. During a visit to Detroit, Catarina de Albuquerque, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation, and Leilani Farha, U.N. special rapporteur on adequate housing, met with residents and city officials.
Catarina de Albuquerque: "We met today with the mayor and city officials, and we are aware of measures that have been taken by the city in order to address the affordability, the water affordability issue. We are of the view that such initiatives are insufficient to ensure affordability of water and sanitation and adequate housing."
Leilani Farha: "We are concerned because African Americans who are living in Detroit and facing water shutoffs are being asked to make impossible choices. Imagine you’re choosing at times to either pay your rent or pay your water bill."
Two-thirds of households impacted by the water shutoffs are families with children; the children can be taken away by protective services if the house does not have water.
Report: U.S. Spent Millions on Social Security Benefits for Nazi War Crime Suspects
The United States has spent millions of dollars on Social Security benefits for suspected Nazi war criminals. An Associated Press investigation found the payments have continued under a legal loophole through which Nazis were persuaded to leave the United States in return for keeping their benefits. Surviving recipients of the taxpayer-funded benefits include Jakob Denzinger, a former Auschwitz guard now living in Croatia. On Monday, White House spokesperson Eric Schultz said the White House opposes the payments, but he did not outline any plans for ending them.
Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard Indicted for Corruption
Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard has been arrested and indicted on 23 charges of corruption. Hubbard led a Republican takeover of the Alabama House in 2010. He is accused of using his position as speaker and his previous post as head of Alabama’s Republican Party to funnel business contracts and investments to his own companies.
NOAA: 2014 Poised to Be Hottest Year on Record
This year is poised to become the hottest year ever recorded. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2014 is on pace to either tie or surpass the current global record. Last month was the hottest September on record worldwide. Before that, both August and the entire summer of 2014 were also the hottest ever recorded.
Climate Change Whistleblower Rick Piltz Dies After Cancer Battle
The climate change whistleblower Rick Piltz has died. Piltz resigned from the U.S. Global Change Research Program in 2005 and provided documents which revealed how the George W. Bush administration was editing government climate reports to downplay the threat of climate change. Just days after the story broke in The New York Times, Philip Cooney, the White House official who made the edits, resigned to return to his former job as an oil industry lobbyist. Piltz later started the Climate Science Watch blog at the Government Accountability Project. This is Piltz speaking in a video made by GAP.
Rick Piltz: "Working with GAP in late 2005, I started the Climate Science Watch project watchdogging the federal government on how it’s dealing with the climate change problem. You need people on the inside who will say, 'Yes, this is what we were told.' They all need a watchdog."
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