Image by duncan c via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on June 5, 2021
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Richard Falk about the inner workings of the power elite and the institutions that do its bidding. Falk is professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, and the former United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Israeli-Occupied Territories.
Falks’ new memoir Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim documents how he confronted entrenched political, military and economic power, especially after visiting Hanoi in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War. During his tenure from 2008 to 2014 as the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories he often clashed with Israeli officials and the Israel lobby in his efforts to document and condemn Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians. He compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. In 2008 Israel refused Falk, who is Jewish, entry into the country and deported him.
Falk has also denounced what he calls “the global legalization of rogue behavior embedded in the UN Charter” which vests a right of veto in the five permanent members of the Security Council, the only organ within the UN system with the authority to reach binding decisions.
From the archives:
Larry Wilkerson: The US Should End Support For Israel and Saudi Arabia
The Spotlight on Israeli Apartheid Must Not Fade, by Kenn Orphan
John Pilger: Palestine Has The Right to Resist!
Dear President Biden: End Your Co-Belligerent Backing of Israeli War Crimes, by Ralph Nader
Apartheid Does Not Have the Right To Defend Itself, Or To Exist, by Jim Kavanagh
Abby Martin: Debunking Israel’s “Human Shield” Defense in Gaza Massacre
Abby Martin: Israeli War Crimes
There is No Getting Around It: This Is Apartheid, by Kenn Orphan
Chris Hedge’s ‘throw-away’ line @22:33ff speaks critical volumes “…because.you have intellectual honesty, which most of these others don’t…”
Yes, excellent one. Thanks for watching, too, David.