A Deep Dive Into The Israeli-Hamas War. Steve Williamson and Gary LaMaster look at the history of the conflict, the conditions that led to the most recent outbreak of violence, the crimes committed by both sides, and Israel’s influence in the U.S.
The current war began when Hamas militants crossed the Israeli-Gaza border and committed obvious war crimes by murdering more than 1,200 Israelis, committing horrific acts of sexual violence, and taking about 250 people hostage. Unfortunately, Israel has committed its own war crimes in response by indiscriminately bombing Gaza resulting in more than 20,000 Palestinian deaths – 61 percent of which are women and children.
The situation is made even more controversial by the United States’ ongoing military aid to Israel and the denunciation of Israel’s actions by many in the U.S. and internationally.
Year In Review. On New Year’s Eve, Steve Williamson, Karen McClelland and Gary LaMaster review some of the biggest news stories of 2023, including Trump’s legal problems, the Israeli-Hamas war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bidenomics, and more. They also try to make a few predictions for 2024.
A Legacy Of Problem-Solving And Service. Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome Matt Ryan retiring Coconino County Supervisor to the show. Ryan has been a supervisor for 27 years representing the north and eastern portion of the Sedona area as well as portions of Flagstaff and the city of Williams, AZ.
“I’ve been through three redistrictings, so it’s changed a little bit. Initially I came in and I represented the whole southern end of the county…It’s been wonderful. Every time I go out, it’s just so beautiful wherever I go.”
Coconino is the second-largest County in the lower 48. As such, the Board of Supervisors has had to forge strong partnerships with many other governing bodies, including city staffs, Native American tribal governments, and neighboring county boards.
During Ryan’s seven terms in office, he’s addressed everything from housing to transportation to the pandemic to wildfires to floods and much, much more.
The “Think Tanks” That Control The Republican Party. Steve Williamson and Gary LaMaster examine the rightwing organizations that hold sway over the GOP by creating policies, selecting judges, and funding candidates.
Since the 1970s, these so-called think tanks have grown in power to such an extent that it’s increasingly unlikely that a Republican candidate can be elected to office without their consent and support.
For example, the Federalist Society helped Donald J. Trump reshape federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. Project Veritas has acted as a hit squad to attack progressive organizations on the Party’s behalf. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has written much of the legislation that has passed in Republican controlled states. And The Heritage Foundation, which has been called the “Mothership of Conservatism” was the source of the Trump administration’s most extreme staff members and policies.
Worst of all, by creating Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation has created a road map to authoritarianism for the next Republican president.
The Rise Of Christian Nationalism In The US. Following the election of Christian Nationalist MAGA Mike Johnson to Speaker of the House, Steve Williamson, Karen McClelland and Gary LaMaster look at the growth of the Christian Nationalist Movement in the US, aka Christo-Fascism, and what it could mean to the future of our nation.
Despite the separation clause in the First Amendment of the Constitution which states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”, some believe that the US is and always has been a Christian nation, and that its laws should be based on Christian values and the Bible.
Indeed, a recent study by PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) and Brookings found that more than half of Republicans support Christian Nationalism. And, increasingly, churches are playing a greater role in politics.
But, as we point out, the movement is less about religion than it is power.
Identifying The Root Causes Of The Israeli-Gaza War. Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome Alice Rothchild to discuss Gaza and its war with Israel. Rothchild is a physician, author, activist, and filmmaker who has devoted decades to understanding and writing about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and its relationship to US foreign policy.
Beginning with Hamas, she says that it’s an organization with a long and complicated history. As for the attacks of October 7th she says, “I think you have to always think of things in context. I mean I’m not a supporter of Hamas and I’m not a supporter of violence. But Hamas – the more militant aspects of Hamas – rose in response to the level of aggression that the Israeli military has put on people in Gaza and the Palestinians in general. So, you know, I think it’s a little dangerous to talk about Hamas as a terrorist organization and not mention the fact that the Israeli policies of the government and of the military have been incredibly aggressive and destructive to Palestinians living in the occupied territories.”
Rothchild continues, “I think it’s important to examine what it’s like to live under a severe occupation and more recently a siege.”
As a result of the attacks, the two sides are now engaged in an asymmetrical war that Rothchild claims has been devastating for Gaza civilians. “We had a population that was already under severe stress and then a massive bombing that has resulted in almost 15,000 people killed, including 6,000 children and 4,000 women and a huge amount of injuries. And half the housing stock has been destroyed. Northern Gaza has been pretty much flattened. I mean the level of destruction of infrastructure of wastewater infrastructure, of water treatment plants, all those things that are necessary for a healthy society have basically been carpet bombed.”
She adds the facts on the ground do not support Israeli rhetoric.
“We have to ask: What is the Israeli government’s end game here?” she says. “Personally, I don’t think they have a well worked out end game. They keep saying they want to destroy Hamas. Hamas is an ideology, it’s a resistance movement with a military wing that did some very, very horrific things. But you’re not going to destroy a resistance movement unless you deal with the root causes.”
She calls for a permanent ceasefire and a reexamination of the U.S. relationship with Israel.
U.S. Middle East Policy: A Lack Of Imagination? Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome Andrew Bacevich, Jr., retired Army colonel and Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University.
Asked to speculate on what goals Hamas hoped to achieve by its terrorist attack on Israel, Bacevich says, “My guess is that nobody in Hamas ever imagined that Hamas could defeat IDF in any meaningful sense.” However, since the horrific attack, he says, “The amount of sympathetic attention given to the Palestine cause has gone through the roof. And that is accentuated, I think, by the humanitarian consequences of the ongoing war.”
Asked to predict the outcome of the war, Bacevich responds it’s impossible to say. “My general view of war is that one should be very careful predicting the course of any war or predicting the outcome of any war.” He notes that it does not appear that Israeli leaders had a clear conception of what political outcome they were seeking at the beginning of the conflict. Now he says, “It has become more urgent for Israel, for the United States and for other actors to be able to say, ‘This is what we intend the outcome to be.’”
And despite President Biden’s call for a two-state solution, Bacevich remarks, “I would argue that the two-state solution is as dead as a doornail.”
So, what should the U.S. do? “We need to be more imaginative,” says Bacevich. He stresses the importance of the upcoming presidential election saying, “We need to have a very serious national conversation about what America’s role in the world ought to be given our own strengths and weaknesses, given the way the international order has changed in many respects, given the emergence of new threats such as climate change. And I’m worried that we won’t have that kind of serious discussion or debate…I fear the election will end up being a missed opportunity.”
Prosecuting Hate. Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome Attorney Mik Jordahl and special guest, Judge Camille Bibles to discuss her experiences in international criminal law. Currently a federal magistrate judge, Bibles previously prosecuted war criminals as a trial attorney at The Hague.
After describing the various types of charges that come before the International Criminal Court, she notes, “The offenses that I prosecuted were genocide, crimes against humanities, and, really, war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.”
Some of those cases involved the massacre at Srebrenica – the genocidal killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys during the Bosnian War following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. “It was a brutal, brutal, brutal offense and spanned over…the killing machine operated over a series of days in July of 1995.”
The cases resulted in many convictions of Serbian commanders and the individuals involved including their leader, Ratko Mladic.
Asked how seeing evidence of the horrors presented during the trials had impacted her personally, she says, “Many, many things were difficult for all of us, and I think we all get hit differently. For me, the first time that I had a refugee in who had been sent back into his area – the idea was we were going to repopulate the areas where Bosnian Muslims and others had been driven out of – when he started crying, begging me to take him back to the United States, and described to me what it was like every night being there. And really talking to the witnesses – people who had been severely traumatized, people who had survived massacres – is extremely difficult. People who lost everything. It is work that takes a toll on the people engaged in it.”
The Republican Plans To Destroy America. In this show, we look at Agenda 47, the 2025 Project, and Trump’s own words to determine what to expect should Trump or another Republican win the presidency in 2024.
In a new Republican administration, the first order of business is to create a new category of “Schedule F” civil servants that can be fired and replaced by the president and his senior political staff. It would, in effect, allow the president to clear out more than 50,000 thousand government employees and replace them with MAGA loyalists. (The Conservative Partnership led by The Heritage Foundation has already identified thousands of such willing foot soldiers.)
One of the goals of such a move is to weaponize the Department of Justice and the FBI to exact revenge on MAGA political enemies, including Biden, Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Michael Cohen, John Kelly, Bill Barr, Mark Milley, Ty Cobb, and all the prosecutors behind the 91 criminal indictments against Donald J. Trump.
Almost immediately following the inauguration, the president would invoke the Insurrection Act in order to authorize the deployment of the U.S. military to control and punish any public demonstrations.
The plans also call for drastically shrinking or eliminating numerous federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency. the Department of Energy’s renewable energy office, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, and the FBI.
Of course, another priority would be to again cut taxes on corporations and the very wealthy.
And that’s just for starters.
In essence, under current plans, a new Republican administration would, in Trump’s words, call for “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
A Real Fright. On Halloween Eve, host Steve Williamson and contributor Gary LaMaster discuss the scariest development in Washington DC this year – the selection of MAGA Mike Johnson as the 56th Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
In short, this relatively unknown backbencher was personally chosen by the twice-impeached, insurrection-leading, state and federally indicted, convicted sexual assaulter: Donald J. Trump.
So, who is MAGA Mike?
He served as a member of Trump’s legal defense team during Trump’s two Senate impeachment trials, and he was an architect of the legal challenges to the results of the 2020 election. Even more worrying, he’s an ultraconservative evangelical Southern Baptist who says his religion guides his political views.
For instance, Johnson doesn’t believe in evolution or separation of church and state. He likens homosexuality to bestiality. He is vehemently opposed to abortion having stated in a House hearing that if women were forced to have more children, i.e., future “able-bodied workers” we could solve our labor shortage.
Johnson has consistently voted against any measures intended to mitigate climate change, while accepting large campaign donations from the gas and oil industry. He also received illegal donations from a company controlled by Russian oligarchs. (Perhaps that’s why he opposes more aid to Ukraine.)
And he has called cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid his number one priority.
