I recently spoke with former Israeli diplomat Alon Liel and former Palestinian politician Ziad AbuZayyad on my podcast about the case of imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. Liel discusses the background of Marwan`s imprisonment, but more importantly, where the focus needs to be now - on what Marwan Barghouti can do for the Palestinians, and for peace.
Listen now; link in bio.
My next podcast guest on Tuesday, September 1, at 10:00am EDT is Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Founding Director of the Center for Governance and Markets and a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public & International Affairs. She is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Distinguished Fellow of Peace and International Cooperation at the Institute for Humane Studies.
Listeners can register for the live podcast recording with Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili on Zoom; link in bio.
Archived episodes will be released the following day, on Wednesdays at noon. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, including Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and Spotify, to be sure to always get the latest episodes.
Russian authorities have banned at least nine LGBT support organizations as “extremist,” escalating an unprecedented crackdown on human rights, free expression, and civil society. As authoritarianism deepens, human rights defenders warn that Russia’s campaign is not only against LGBT communities, it is against fundamental freedoms and human dignity.
Today I am joined on the podcast by Alon Liel and Ziad AbuZayyad. Alon Liel is a veteran of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, serving in various positions, including as Director General of the Foreign Ministry. He is one of the instigators of an Israeli campaign to advance recognition of a Palestinian state by European parliaments and governments.
Ziad AbuZayyad is a Palestinian lawyer, journalist, and politician. He is the co-founder and editor of the Palestine Israel Journal, and former Minister of State in the Palestinian Authority. AbuZayyad also served as an advisor to various Palestinian negotiating teams.
In this episode, we assess the prospects for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian political leader who has been imprisoned since 2002. We discuss Barghouti’s political and peace efforts both prior to his imprisonment and while in prison, the perception of him as a widely uniting figure among the Palestinians, and what conditions in Israel will be necessary to allow for his release.
Listen now; link in bio.
I recently spoke with former Israeli diplomat Alon Liel and former Palestinian politician Ziad AbuZayyad on my podcast about the case of imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. Liel discusses the background of Marwan's imprisonment, but more importantly, where the focus needs to be now - on what Marwan Barghouti can do for the Palestinians, and for peace.
Listen now: youtu.be/G0lYoCfVD84?si=6jZZhWVWDdPRYwsl
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Environmental defenders around the world are increasingly facing threats, violence, arrests, and criminalization for protecting their land and communities. Human Rights Watch documents abuses against Indigenous people, climate activists, and land defenders from Brazil and Indonesia to Uganda and Europe. In some countries, peaceful protesters are prosecuted, civil society organizations are targeted, and activists are branded as criminals simply for opposing environmental destruction. As climate change intensifies, these voices are more important than ever. Governments must protect environmental defenders, investigate attacks against them, and guarantee their rights to peaceful assembly, association, and expression. Defending our planet is not a crime.
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What can be considered the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1714. 310 years ago, and after that it took some time to be widely used. So NOT all time record heat. Coincidentally, the modern thermometer was invented during the Little Ice Age, which ended after the 1850's, so yes it has been getting warmer after centuries of Global Cooling had come to an end.
Turkey has criminalized thought itself. Journalists are seized in dawn raids for a single sentence; academics who signed a peace petition were purged from their classrooms; Kurdish politicians who won elections sit in cells instead of parliament. Osman Kavala remains imprisoned years after the European Court of Human Rights ordered his release, and Selahattin Demirtaş's detention was likewise ruled political and never undone. Families describe deaths in custody, suspicious "suicides," and torture allegations that no prosecutor will touch. Each unimplemented Strasbourg judgment is not a technicality; it is a state announcing that its citizens have no protector above it. A NATO member is dismantling the rule of law while Western capitals praise its usefulness. Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while its own court's rulings are treated as suggestions.
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Toward Moscow, the man who bullies allies becomes solicitous. Trump speaks of mutual respect with Putin and offers to help him strike a deal on Ukraine, announces theatrical three-day ceasefires, and meets him as a peer while withdrawing much of the support keeping Ukraine alive. Kyiv is presented with terms rather than consulted; Zelensky learns of his country's future from press conferences. This is not diplomacy, which requires leverage; it is deference, which invites more. A war launched to erase a nation's existence is treated as a real-estate dispute between great men, and the victim is asked to pay the settlement. Rewarding conquest guarantees the next one, in the Baltics or the Black Sea. The clearest signal any aggressor has received in a generation is that patience and brutality pay.
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