KPFA - CounterSpin

This week on CounterSpin: The website of the Kairos Democracy Project has a quote from John Lewis, reminding us, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act.” Our guest Tanya Clay House is board chair at Kairos and a longtime advocate for the multiracial democracy that the Trump White House seeks to denounce and derail — in part by erasing the history of Black people in this country. As part of that, she's part of an ongoing project called Freedom to Learn and its present campaign, called #HandsOffOurHistory. Corporate news media evince lofty principles about the First Amendment, but when people actually use it, the response is more telling. When USA Today covered activism in Seattle around the WTO, it reported that, “Little noticed by the public, the upcoming World Trade Organization summit has energized protesters around the world.” You see how that works: If you're the little-noticing “public,” you're cool; but if you band together with other people and speak out, well, now you're a “protester,” and that's different — and marginal. Whatever they say in their Martin Luther King Day editorials, elite media's day-to-day message is, “Normal people don't protest.” In 2025, there's an ominous addendum: “Or else.” We hear from Danaka Katovich, co-director of the feminist grassroots anti-war organization CODEPINK, currently, but not for the first time, at the sharp end of state efforts to silence activists and activism.   The post Tanya Clay House on Freedom to Learn / Danaka Katovich on Attacks on Activists appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Elon Musk reportedly told Tesla investors that he'll be amping down his role with the Department of Government Efficiency to, one guesses, bring his big brain back into their service. Like the “War on Terror,” “DOGE” is a thing that was in part spoken into normalcy by the corporate press. Media seem ready to, if not embrace, to make respectful space for whatever hot nonsense is proffered — if it fits within their political template. In this case, it's a thing — not officially a new Cabinet-level department, but acting like one — wildly powerful, yet utterly opaque and run by an unelected billionaire. DOGE sparked lawsuits about its legality from day one, but today's news is about, legal or not, what it's doing and how we can respond. The Revolving Door Project is tracking all of that; we hear from executive director Jeff Hauser. There's no reason you need to know that Selena Chandler-Scott is a 24-year-old woman from Georgia who had a miscarriage last month; pregnant people lose those pregnancies routinely. You should know that Chandler-Scott was sent to jail for her miscarriage, and though later released, she won't be the last. “Fetal personhood” may sound abstract or legalistic; but this case brings home vividly how granting legal rights to embryos and fetuses doesn't “potentially” “open the door to,” but concretely means undermining the rights of people who carry pregnancies, leaving them open to surveillance, suspicion, and prosecution. U.S. media seem uninterested in Chandler-Scott's story and its implications, but we hear from Karen Thompson, legal director at Pregnancy Justice. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of Pope Francis.   The post Jeff Hauser on DOGE / Karen Thompson on “Fetal Personhood” appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: CBS News on April 14 said: We're following new violence in the Middle East. Israeli strikes hit a major hospital in northern Gaza. At least 21 people were reportedly killed. The emergency room is badly damaged. Israel accused Hamas of using the hospital to hide its fighters. Meanwhile, Houthi militants in Yemen said they fired two ballistic missiles at Israel. The Israeli military initially said two missiles were launched and one was intercepted, but later said only one missile had been fired. There's information in there, if you can parse it; but the takeaway for most will be that framing: “violence in the Middle East,” which suggests that whatever happened today is just the latest round in a perennial battle between warring parties, where you and I have no role except that of sad bystander. When it comes to Yemen, elite media's repeated reference to “Iran-backed Houthi rebels” not only obscures the current fighting's political origins and recent timeline, it erases the Yemeni people, who are paying the price both for the fighting and for the distortions around it, from political elites and their media amplifiers. We get some grounding from Khury Petersen-Smith; he's the Michael Ratner Middle East fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Plus Janine Jackson takes a look back at some recent press coverage of fossil fuel companies and climate change.   The post Khury Petersen-Smith on Yemen Distortions appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: We're learning from Jonah Valdez at the Intercept that the Trump administration is now revoking visas and the immigration status of hundreds of international students under the Student Exchange and Visitor Program — not just those active in pro-Palestinian advocacy or those with criminal records of any sort. It is, says one immigration attorney, “a concerted effort to go after people who are from countries and religions that the Trump administration wants to get out of the country.” Dara Lind is senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. She joins us this week on the show. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at coverage of the Hands Off! protests.   The post Dara Lind on Criminalizing Immigrants appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: When Robert Kennedy Jr. was just a famously named man about town, we heard about how he dumped a bear carcass in Central Park for fun, believes that children's gender is shaped by chemicals in the water, and asserts that Covid-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” while leaving “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” immune. But once you become RFK Jr., secretary of health and human services in a White House whose anger must not be drawn, those previously unacceptable ideas become, as a recent New York Times piece has it, “unorthodox.” Kennedy's unorthodox ideas may get us all killed while media whistle. We hear from Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, about that. For many years, social justice advocates rather discounted the Federal Communications Commission. Unlike the Federal Trade Commission or the Food and Drug Administration, whose actions had visible impacts on your life, the FCC didn't seem like a player. That changed over recent years, as we've seen the role the federal government plays in regulating the power of media corporations to control the flow of information. As the late, great media scholar Bob McChesney explained, “When the government grants free monopoly rights to TV spectrum … it is not setting the terms of competition; it is picking the winner.” We'll talk about the FCC under Trump with Jessica González, co-CEO of the group McChesney co-founded, Free Press.     The post Paul Offit on RFK Jr. and Measles / Jessica González on Trump's FCC appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Israel has abandoned the ceasefire agreement and restarted its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza — a war that has destroyed the region and killed tens of thousands of human beings. The ceasefire, as Gaza-based writer Hassan Abo Qamar, among others, reminds us, still allowed Israel to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of “food, water, medical care, education and freedom of movement.” But it wasn't enough and, as Belén Fernández writes for FAIR.org, Israel's U.S.-endorsed resumption of all-out genocide killed at least 404 Palestinians right off the bat but was reported in, for instance, the New York Times as “Israel Tries to Pressure Hamas to Free More Hostages.” We know that elite media will tell us someday that the whole world was horrified by the genocide of Palestinians, and that journalists decried it. But someday is not today. We need reporters who aren't not afraid they will be targeted but who may be afraid and are nevertheless bearing witness. Reporters like Hossam Shabat, 23-year-old Palestinian correspondent for Al Jazeera and Drop Site News, targeted and killed March 24, and not even the first Israeli journalist assassination for the day: hours earlier, Palestine Today reporter Mohammad Mansour was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in southern Gaza. We talk about this with reporter Michael Arria, U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss and the force behind their new feature called “Power & Pushback.” Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of transphobia and remembers FAIR board member Robert McChesney.   The post Michael Arria on Gaza Pushback appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: News site Popular Information alerted us to new Social Security Administration policy effectively requiring tens of thousands of recipients, by the agency's own estimation, to travel to a field office to verify their ID. An internal memo predicts the shift will create “service disruption,” “operational strain,” and “budget shortfalls” — unsurprising, given concurrent staffing cuts and field office closures. The inevitable harms will no doubt be declared part of a necessary attempt to purge “fraud” from the system that has disbursed earned benefits to elderly and disabled people for generations. Journalists have choices. They can, as did the Record-Journal of Meriden, Connecticut, report that the cuts derive from repeated claims of fraud from Elon Musk that are “without evidence,” that Trump echoes Musk's “unfounded statements,” and then quote a retiree advocate noting that accusations of loads of dead folks collecting benefits are “baseless,” and put the words “fact sheet” in appropriate irony quotes when describing a missive from the White House. Or you can go the route of the Arizona Republic, and lead with the notion that the interference in Social Security is most importantly part of Musk's “implementing … measures to trim costs throughout the government.” Mention that the actions have “stirred a range of emotions, from cautious hope that the federal government might finally bring its deficit spending under control, to frantic fears that benefit cuts could undermine the financial or health security of millions of Americans” go on to ask, earnestly, “Where does Trump stand on Social Security and other benefits?” and begin with a White House statement “reiterating that the president supports these programs.” In paragraph 19, you might throw in that public polling shows that “most Americans would favor revenue increases rather than benefit cuts to Social Security,” which would include “requiring high-income individuals to pay taxes on more of their earnings.” In short, easily verified facts, along with “most Americans,” can be centered or tangential in your reporting on the drastic, opaque changes aimed at the program that keeps the wolf from the door for millions of people but for Musk/Trump represents yet another pile of money they feel belongs to them and theirs. All that's in the balance are human lives and health, and the ability of working people to plan for our futures. We'll talk about the new, yet also old, attacks on Social Security with Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent media coverage of Mahmoud Khalil, deportations and the FTC.   The post Nancy Altman on Social Security Attacks appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: In early February, when Representative Maxwell Frost tweeted that he and Representative Maxine Waters were denied access to the Department of Education, Elon Musk responded on the platform he owns: “What is this ‘Department of Education' you keep talking about? I just checked and it doesn't exist.” That, we understand, was the shadow president skating where the puck's gonna be, as they say; a month later, we learned that indeed newly appointed Education Secretary Linda McMahon is tasked not with running but with erasing the department. Elite media have talked about the political machinations, how this was expected, how it fits with Trump/Musk's grand schemes. When it comes to what will happen to the under-resourced schools, and the students with disabilities for whom the DoE supported access and recourse for discrimination? Media seem happy with McMahon's handwaving about how that stuff might be better off in a different agency. The impacts of policy on people with disabilities are overwhelmingly an afterthought for corporate media, even though it's a large community, and one anyone can join at any moment. We talked, on March 5, with journalist and historian David Perry about the threats McMahon and MAGA pose to people — including students — with disabilities. You wouldn't know it from what comes out of the mouths of today's “leaders,” but there has long been a widely shared view in this country that people with disabilities deserve full human rights, but don't have them. July 2023 marked the 33rd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And, as happens every year, a dismaying amount of the anniversary coverage was about buildings or spaces coming into compliance with the ADA — as though complying with a decades-old law was a feel-good story and despite the relative absence of feel-bad stories about decades of noncompliance. CounterSpin spoke at the time with Kehsi Iman Wilson, co-founder of New Disabled South, about what's lost when the public conversation around disability justice revolves around abiding by a baseline law, rather than a bigger vision of a world we can all live in. We revisit that conversation this week on CounterSpin.   The post David Perry on MAGA and Disability / Kehsi Iman Wilson on ADA (2023) appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: A NASA official warned workers to maybe think about not wearing their badges in public, to protect themselves from harassment against people identifiable as federal workers by MAGA randos who feel deputized by Trump and Musk to do whatever it is Trump and Musk suggest. It's early days of the Trump/Musk federal smash and grab, and the harms are already piling up. But so too is the resistance. And federal workers, presumed to be easy targets — based in part on years of corporate media coverage telling us government is fat and lazy and the private sector does everything better — are also on the front lines of the fightback. We talk about the power of workers — with or without a union — with labor activist and organizer Eric Blanc. He's assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and author of the new book We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Trump's congressional speech, “DOGE” and town hall repression.   The post Eric Blanc on Worker-to-Worker Organizing appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Just because we might witness the daylight robbery of the social benefits we've been paying for and counting on for the entirety of our working lives, and just because Black people are no longer officially allowed to even mentor Black people coming in to fields they've been historically excluded from, and just because any program receiving public funding will now have to pretend there are “two genders” — doesn't mean the environment isn't still in immediate peril. It is. But the lawsuits of deep-pocketed fossil fuel corporations against any and everyone who dares challenge their profiteering destruction are really also about our ability as non-billionaires to use our voice to speak out about anything. Not speaking out is increasingly a non-option. So where are we? We'll learn about a case that is “weaponizing the legal system” against anyone who wants a livable future from Kirk Herbertson, U.S. director for advocacy and campaigns at EarthRights International. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of the FCC, the Washington Post, and Medicaid.   The post Kirk Herbertson on Big Oil's Lawsuit Against Environmentalism appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Donald Trump has declared that the U.S. is going to “take over” the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians who live there will be “permanently” exiled. Asked whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza under his scheme, Trump said “no.” But even those corporate media who aren't actually endorsing this illegal, inhumane plan still can't seem to find it in themselves to call it what it is: ethnic cleansing. Media critic, activist, and teacher Gregory Shupak has been looking into big media's systematic refusal to use appropriate language about the human rights crimes unfolding before our eyes in Palestine. He teaches English and media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto and author of the book The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, from OR Books. There is a deep, if muddled, sense that the U.S. tax system is unfair. The little guy pays too much and rich folks and corporations find loopholes and offshore accounts. And then, on a different page, there's a story about how “we” as a country just don't have “enough resources” to allow school kids to eat lunch, because that would mean the dreaded higher taxes! Media outlets that fail to make meaningful connections — between those clever offshore accounts and the supposed inability to fund school lunch; between cutting funding for the IRS and doubling down on people who use the Earned Income Tax Credit — are certainly not the ones to look to for an understanding of the racial impacts of supposedly neutral tax policy and practices, however demonstrable those impacts may be. We'll talk about that with Portia Allen-Kyle, interim executive director at Color of Change and author of the report Preying Preparers.   The post Gregory Shupak on Palestine Ethnic Cleansing / Portia Allen-Kyle on Tax Unfairness appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: A number of federal agencies rushed to make clear they would be scrubbing activities and events that “celebrate cultural awareness” in an effort to stay on the good side of the weird new White House. Trump and his abettors' anti-anti-discrimination agenda is as subtle as a sledgehammer. “DEI hire,” for instance, is super-complicated code for the idea that if a person who isn't white, cis, and male got a job, that can only mean a better qualified white cis man was unfairly denied it. That's just, Trump says, “common sense.” The irony is not lost that history itself is seen as being manipulated for political purpose when it comes to Black History Month — because we know that history is constantly invoked, if implicitly, as a way of justifying present-day unfairness. White supremacy can be presented as natural if white people invented everything, discovered everything, created all the wealth, and defined civilization. What people try to silence tells us what they fear. So what is so scary about everyone, not just Black people, acknowledging the particular circumstances, and responses to those circumstances, of Black people in these United States — our experience, challenges, accomplishments? Is it that history — real history, and not comforting tall tales — connects the past with the present in ways that are powerful, grounding, and inspiring? In March 2021, a hitherto no-name right-wing activist openly declared an intention to mislead around racism and to vilify any questioning of enduring racial inequities: “The goal,” wrote Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo, “is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory'.” He bragged that he had “successfully frozen” the “brand” of critical race theory, and was “steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.” A self-respecting press corps would have taken that as a shot across the bow. The corporate news media we have dutifully signed on to present a campaign openly defined as uninterested in truth or humanity and concerned only with rolling back the clock on racial equity as a totally valid, “grassroots” perspective, deserving respectful inclusion in national conversation. That was a jumping-off point for our conversation with law professor Luke Charles Harris, co-founder with Kimberle Crenshaw of the African American Policy Forum. We hear that important conversation again this week. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Venezuela, Elon Musk, and ICE.   The post Luke Charles Harris on Critical Race Theory (2021) appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: We know that once corporate news label something “controversial,” we're in for reporting with a static “some say / others differ” frame — even if one “side” of the “controversy” is a relatively small group of people who don't believe in science or human rights or democracy. As the Trump White House comes out fast and furious against transgender people, their weird hatefulness lands in a public arena that generally rejects discrimination, but also in an elite media climate in which the very lives of transgender people have long been deemed “subject to debate.” We'll hear about the current state of things from civil rights attorney Ezra Young. When the New York Times reported Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s revelation that parasites have eaten part of his brain, Kennedy, running for president at the time, offered to “eat five more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.” We're reminded of such “jokes” now, as Kennedy looks likely to be head of Health and Human Services, along with his claims that vaccines cause autism and chicken soup cures measles. But to resist Kennedy, we need to understand what fuels those who, even if they don't like him, believe he might be a force for good in their lives. Anne Sosin is a public health researcher and practitioner based at Dartmouth College, who encourages looking around RFK Jr. to the communities that imagine he's speaking for them.   The post Ezra Young on Trans Rights Law / Anne Sosin on RFK Jr. and Rural Health appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: You may remember the testimony: former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz pouting to a Senate hearing on the company's union-busting in which he was referred to as a billionaire that using that “moniker constantly is unfair”: “Yes, I have billions of dollars — I earned it. No one gave it to me. And I've shared it constantly with the people of Starbucks.” The delusion that a billionaire “earned” every penny of it, or that it is shared equitably with workers, may be special to billionaires, but the broader notion — that “the government only helps some people; other people do it on their own” is conveyed throughout corporate media's narrative, even as it's corrosive to an understanding of democracy, much less the fight for it. The increasing influence of not merely the rich, but the super rich, on the politics and policy we all have to live with is an urgent story, if not a new one. Yet somehow, elite media seem less and less interested in it. We'll talk with David Kass, executive director of the Americans for Tax Fairness campaign, about that on this week's show. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at some recent press coverage of Trump's illegal funding freeze, immigration raids and the Gaza death toll.   The post David Kass on Billionaire Election-Buying appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Those with a beating heart can see the horror of Trump's plans to deputize wannabe vigilantes to denounce community members they suspect “don't belong here,” to send ICE into schools and churches to round folks up — police records or no — and ship them to detention centers, to ride roughshod over time-honored concepts of sanctuary. But on immigration, as on other things, corporate news media have shaped their narrative around right-wing frames, such that immigration itself is now not a human rights story, or even an economic one, but yet another story about “their” crimes and “our” safety. Horrible crimes attachable to brown and Black people? You don't have to ask the press corps twice! It was bad enough when the narrative was about distinguishing “good” immigrants from “bad” immigrants; we've now gone beyond that to “all immigrants” vs. “everyone else” — and if MAGA is now driving that train, elite media have been fueling it up for years. We'll talk about the attack on immigrants — and about the resistance to it — with Silky Shah, executive director at Detention Watch Network. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of oligarchs and the Washington Post‘s new mission statement.   The post Silky Shah on the Attack on Immigrants appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: While the New York Times rolls out claptrap about how both “the left and the right” have ideas about causes behind the devastating Los Angeles wildfires — the right blame DEI hires, while the left blame climate change — many people have moved beyond that sort of stultifying nonsense to work that directly confronts the fossil fuel companies, and their political enablers, for the obvious role that fossil fuels play in climate disruption, and that climate disruption plays in extreme weather events. Many are also now calling out insurance companies that take folks' money but then hinder their ability to come out from under when these predictable and predicted crises occur. Would you be surprised to hear that these powerful industries — fossil fuels and insurers — are intertwined? We talked about it last year with writer and historian Derek Seidman. Did you see the coverage of how people with disabilities are dealing with the California fires' impact? Probably not, given that the place of people with disabilities in elite media coverage ranges roughly from afterthought to absent. We talked about that last year with disability rights advocate and policy analyst Ariel Adelman, in the wake of a Supreme Court case that considered dismantling civil rights protections for people with disabilities by criminalizing the ways that we learn about whether those protections are actually real. We'll hear that too.   The post Derek Seidman on Insurance and Climate (2024) / Ariel Adelman on Disability Civil Rights (2024) appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's December 17 piece, headlined “How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve US-China Relations,” contained some choice Friedmanisms, like: “More Americans might get a better feel for what is going on there if they simply went and ordered room service at their hotel.” We'll talk about China trade policy with Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at press coverage of Luigi Mangione.   The post Dean Baker on China Trade Policy appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Among many other things, 2024 was a series of reminders that corporate news media, tasked primarily with enriching the rich and shoring up entrenched institutions, will not, today or ever, do the liberatory, illuminating work of independent journalism — that boldly speaks truth to power, that stands up for the societally voiceless, that provides space for the debates and discussions we need to move society forward — for those of us who believe that U.S. society needs to change. New calendar years are symbolic, but they can also offer a fresh start. Why not see 2025 as a much needed opportunity to acknowledge, support, create, and grow independent journalism? We talk about that this week with two people who are and have been doing not just critical, dissident, uplifting journalism, but the thinking and advocating around why we need it: Sonali Kolhatkar, from Rising Up! With Sonali, and Laura Flanders from Laura Flanders and Friends.   The post Sonali Kolhatkar and Laura Flanders on Independent Media and the Year Ahead appeared first on KPFA.

This is the time of year when we listen back to some of the conversations from the past year that have helped us clarify the events that bombard us — in part by showing how elite media are clouding them. It's not to say Big Media always get the facts wrong; but that what facts they point us toward, day after day, whose interpretation of those facts they suggest we credit, what responses we're told are worth pursuing — all of that serves media's corporate owners' and sponsors' bottom line, at the expense of all of our lives and our futures. An important part of the work we do — as producers and as listeners — is to help create and support different ways to inform ourselves and stay in conversation. Guests featured on this year's Best of CounterSpin include Chip Gibbons, Svante Myrick, Monifa Bandele, Aron Thorn, Evlondo Cooper, Joe Torres, Colette Watson, Greg Shupak and FAIR's Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas. As always, we are deeply thankful to all of the activists, researchers, reporters, and advocates who appear on the show.   The post The Best of CounterSpin 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Writing for a DC court of appeals, Douglas Ginsburg said yes, banning the wildly popular platform TikTok does raise concerns about First Amendment freedoms; but it's still good, because in pushing for the ban, the U.S. government “acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation.” If that's clear as mud to you, join the club. We'll get an update on the proposed ban on TikTok — in the service of free speech — from Yanni Chen, policy counsel at the group Free Press. We're all familiar with the “if it bleeds, it leads” credo of, especially but not only, local TV news. But just because we're aware of it, doesn't mean the phenomenon isn't still impacting our lives in negative ways. Richard Mendel is senior research fellow for youth justice at the Sentencing Project. He joins us to talk about new research showing how news media coverage actively harms young people of color, as well as our understanding and policy-making around youth and crime.   The post Yanni Chen on TikTok Ban, Richard Mendel on Youth and Crime appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: The New York Times says that Amnesty International recently became “the first major international human rights organization to accuse Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza.” That makes sense if you ignore the other human rights groups and international bodies that have said Israel's actions in the wake of Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 meet that definition. The Times account notes that genocide is hard to prove because it involves showing the specific intent to destroy a group, “in whole or in part” — something that, they say, Israeli leaders have persistently denied is their intent in Gaza. Declarations like that by Israeli President Isaac Herzog that “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible” appear nowhere in the piece. The Times tells readers that Amnesty's “contention” and “similar allegations” have been “at the heart of difficult debates about the war around the world.” So far, 14 countries have joined or signaled they will join South Africa's genocide case against Israel in the World Court. Gallup polling from March found that the majority of the U.S. public — 55%, up from 45% last November — say they disapprove of Israel's siege of Gaza. And that support for Israel is dropping among all political affiliations. A May survey from a private Israeli think tank says nearly a third of Jewish people in the U.S. agree with the charge of “genocide,” and 34% view college campus protests as anti-war and pro-peace, compared with 28% who see them as primarily “anti-Israel.” More recently, the Israel Democracy Institute reports its survey from late November, finding that the majority of Jews in Israel — 52% — oppose settlement in Gaza, while 42% express support. There is absolutely debate around the world about Israel's actions; outlets like the Times make that debate more “difficult” by misrepresenting it. While not the first to ask us to see the assault on Palestinians as genocide, Amnesty's report offers an opening, for those journalists who are interested, to ask why some are so invested in saying it isn't. Iman Abid is the director of advocacy and organizing at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR). We talk with her today. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the minimum wage.   The post Iman Abid on Israeli Genocide appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Few corporations have changed the U.S. business and consumer model more than Amazon. So when that corporate behemoth buys one of the country's national newspapers — it's a conflict writ large as can or should be. But things as they are, reporting on Amazon has in general looked more like representing that conflict than confronting it. Good Jobs First monitors megacompanies like Amazon and their impact on our lives. Their database, Violation Tracker Global, notes more than $2.4 billion in misconduct penalties for Amazon since 2010. The most expensive of those fines have been connected to the company's anti-competitive practices; the most frequent offenses are related to cheating workers out of wages and jeopardizing workers' health and safety. Arlene Martinez is deputy executive director and communications director at Good Jobs First. We'll talk to her about the effort to #MakeAmazonPay. A few years back, Amazon, like it does, dangled the prospect of locating a headquarters in New York City. And the city, like it does, eagerly offered some $3 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to entice the wildly profitable company to bring its anti-union, environmentally exploitative self to town. The deal fell through for several reasons, one of which was informed community pushback. We talk about it with journalist Neil deMause, co-author of the book Field of Schemes. The post Arlene Martinez on Amazon Misconduct / Neil deMause (2019) on Amazon HQ Fight appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: It wasn't the horrific abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, but rather, the pictures of it that forced public and official acknowledgment. The Defense Department vehemently resisted the pictures' release, with good reason. Yet when, after the initial round, Australian TV put out new images, Washington Post executive editor Len Downie said they were “so shocking and in such bad taste, especially the extensive nudity, that they are not publishable in our newspaper.” The notion that acts of torture by the U.S. military and its privately contracted cat's paws are, above all, distasteful may help explain corporate media's inattentiveness to the efforts of victims of Abu Ghraib to find some measure of justice. But a federal jury has just found defense contractor CACI responsible for its part in that abuse, in a ruling being called “exceptional in every sense of the term.” The Center for Constitutional Rights has been behind the case, Al Shimari v. CACI, through its long roller coaster ride through the courts — which isn't over yet. We hear about it from CCR senior staff attorney Katherine Gallagher. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the ICC's Israel warrants.   The post Katherine Gallagher on Abu Ghraib Verdict appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Passed by a whisker in Missouri on November 5, legal sports gambling is the apple of the eye of many corporate and private state actors — but how does it affect states, communities, people? Journalist Amos Barshad wrote in-depth on the question ahead of the election. He is senior enterprise reporter for the Lever and author of the book No One Man Should Have All That Power: How Rasputins Manipulate the World, from Abrams Press. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Trump's nominees and a Nazi march.   The post Amos Barshad on Legalized Sports Betting appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: We revisit the conversation we had in August 2017 in the wake of the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Writer and podcaster Adam Johnson had thoughts about the way so-called “mainstream” news media responded to a straight-up celebration of white supremacy. If we're to believe the chest-thumping, high on Trump's agenda will be the enforced criminalization of immigration. We talked about that in July 2018 with Jacinta Gonzalez, senior campaign organizer at Mijente. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at some recent press about Chris Matthews's “morning after,” the New York Times‘ promoting white resentment, and Israel's assassination of journalists.   The post Adam Johnson on Charlottesville March (2017) / Jacinta Gonzalez on Criminalizing Immigration (2018) appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: We talk about what just happened, and corporate media's role in it, with Julie Hollar, senior analyst at the media watch group FAIR, and FAIR's editor Jim Naureckas. We also hear some of an important conversation we had with political scientist Dorothee Benz the day after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at non-presidential election results.   The post Julie Hollar and Jim Naureckas on Placing Blame for Trump appeared first on KPFA.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week's major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). The post CounterSpin – November 3, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Dropped by her law firm after being exposed as an advisor on the post-2020 election call where Donald Trump told Georgia officials to “find” him some votes, Cleta Mitchell has leaned in on the brand of “election integrity.” Platformed on right-wing talk radio, she's now saying that Democrats are “literally getting people to lie” to exploit laws that allow overseas citizens to vote, so she's bringing lawsuits. Does she have evidence? No. Is evidence the point? Also no. We speak this week with media law attorney and reporter Shawn Musgrave, who serves as counsel to the Intercept, about how Trump's “Big Lie” attorneys are not so much returning to the field, but actually never left. In 2018, elite media had apparently moved beyond the kneejerk reportorial pairing of documentation of voter suppression with hypothetical claims of voter fraud. But they were still doing faux-naive reporting of those fraud claims as something other than themselves a deliberate suppression campaign. Then, the shiny object was Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach trying to change registration laws in the state. We return to our talk with Orion Danjuma, staff attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program.   The post Shawn Musgrave and Orion Danjuma: Vote Fraud Hoax as Voter Suppression appeared first on KPFA.

The official death toll in Gaza is now roughly 43,000 people, very conservatively. As the Lancet and others remind, armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence, including deaths from causes such as reproductive, communicable and non-communicable diseases. In Palestine, the death toll is exacerbated by displacement; destroyed healthcare infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water and shelter; the inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNWRWA), one of very few humanitarian organizations working in the region. A real accounting will also include not just those we don't yet know are dead but the maimed, the orphaned, the starved, the homeless. Democracy Now! recently spoke with a doctor from Gaza who said  he wishes “Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs. I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.” As media critics, we look to Palestinians to represent Palestinian views, but it's crucial that we not see the present moment as something happening to Other People, Somewhere Else. The repression of simple anti-genocide calls, the censorship, the firings, the disinformation, the malforming of concepts like “antisemitism” — these are problems for all of us, about all of us, that will influence all of us forever. Defending Rights & Dissent has started a project called the Gaza First Amendment Alert, which is going to come out every other Wednesday. Chip Gibbons is policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, a journalist, a researcher and a longtime activist. He led a successful campaign to defeat a proposed unconstitutional anti-boycott bill in Maryland.   The post Chip Gibbons on Gaza First Amendment Alert appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: For many people and for media, the idea of “racial discrimination in housing” invokes an image of individual landlords refusing to rent or sell homes to black and brown people. But that understanding is so incomplete as to be harmful. A new book doesn't just illuminate the thicket of effects of systemic racism as it affects where people live; it reframes the understanding of the role of housing — connecting housing injustice with health inequities and wealth disparities, as well as lifting up work that connects those “mutually constitutive” elements of what the author calls an “unjust, destructive and even deadly racial order.” George Lipsitz is research professor emeritus of Black studies and sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He's author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness and How Racism Takes Place, among other titles. He joins us to talk about his new book, The Danger Zone Is Everywhere: How Housing Discrimination Harms Health and Steals Wealth. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent coverage of the port strike.   The post George Lipsitz on the Impacts of Housing Discrimination appeared first on KPFA.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week's major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). The post CounterSpin – October 6, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: On September 17, thousands of handheld pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria. The next day, it was hundreds of walkie-talkies — part of an Israeli attack, intended for Hezbollah, that Israel's defense minister called “the start of a new phase in the war.” Media dutifully reported the emerging toll of dead and wounded, including many civilians, including children. Harder to capture is the life-altering impact of such a terror attack on those it doesn't kill. As every day brings news of new carnage, U.S. citizens have a duty not to look away, given our government's critical role in arming Israel and ignoring its crimes, and in misleading us about what they know and intend. Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, a journalism professor at New York University, and former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. He joins us to talk about the latest events and media response. Plus, Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Rashida Tlaib, banned books, and deportation.   The post Mohamad Bazzi on Israeli Terror Attacks appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Springfield, Ohio schools are facing bomb threats because some people believe that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating dogs and cats. According to candidates for the country's highest offices, and the KKK flyers showing up around town, this means that these legal immigrants should be pushed out of the country — or, in the minds of inspired vigilantes, much worse. We spoke with filmmaker, activist and author Jen Senko in April 2023. The Brainwashing of My Dad — Jen Senko's film and the book based on it — are an effort to engage the effects of that yelling, punching down, reactionary media. We hear that conversation with her this week.   The post Jen Senko on The Brainwashing of My Dad appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Corporate U.S. news media continue to report things like Israel's recent strike on the Gaza Strip, which killed at least 19 people in an area designated a “refuge” for Palestinians, and to include warnings of a possible wider war in the region. But there's little sense of urgency, of something horrible happening that U.S. citizens could have a role in preventing. We'll talk about that with media critic, activist, and teacher Gregory Shupak. U.S. corporate media have a similar “another day, another tragedy” outlook on gun violence. It happens, we're told, but all reporters need to do is quote people saying it's bad yet oddly unavoidable, and they're done. We'll hear from Robert Spitzer, a historian of gun regulation and gun rights, about some spurious reasons behind the impasse on gun violence. That studied lack of urgent concern about human life — is that journalism? Why do the press corps need a constitutional amendment to protect their ability to speak if all they're going to say is, “oh well”?   The post Gregory Shupak on Palestinian Genocide / Robert Spitzer on Gun Rights and Rules appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Corporate economic news can be so abstract that it's disinforming even when it's true. The big idea is that there's something called “the U.S. economy” that can be doing well or poorly, which obscures the reality that we are differently situated, and good news for the stock market, say, may mean nothing, or worse, for me. A people-centered press corps would spell out the meaning of economic “indicators,” not just in terms of their impact on different communities, but in relation to where we want to go as a society that has yet to address deep historical and structural harms. A new report on the current state of the Black economy takes up these questions. We hear from its co-authors: Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Algernon Austin is director of the Race and Economic Justice program at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.     The post Dedrick Asante-Muhammad & Algernon Austin on the Black Economy appeared first on KPFA.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week's major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). The post CounterSpin – September 1, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: One of many things wrong with corporate news media is the way they hammer home the idea that the current system is the only system. If you don't see yourself and your interests reflected in either of the two dominant parties, the problem is you. On the other hand, independent media gives us new questions to ask. For example, How do we acknowledge the fact that many people's opinions are shaped by messages that are created and paid for by folks who work hard to hide their identity and their interests? If we're in an open debate about what's best for all of us, why can't we see who pays you? We'll talk about “dark money” with Steve Macek. He's professor and chair of communication and media studies at North Central College in Illinois. His recent piece “Dark Money Uncovered” appeared on TheProgressive.org. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Phil Donahue.   The post Steve Macek on Dark Money appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Climate disruption is outpacing many scientists' understanding of it, and it's undeniably driving many harms we are facing: extreme heat, extreme cold, devastating hurricanes and tornadoes. News media are giving up pretending that these extreme weather events are just weird and not provably driven by the continued use of fossil fuels. But fossil fuel companies are among the most powerful players in terms of telling lawmakers how to make the laws they want to see — public interest be damned. We'll hear about what you are very definitely not supposed to hear from reporter Emily Sanders from ExxonKnews. Not everyone is lying down and accepting that we're going to die from a climate crisis that is avoidable, but since companies don't want to talk about it, let's not. A county in Oregon is saying, deaths from high heat are in fact directly connected to conscious corporate decision-making. We'll hear about that potentially emblematic story from Victoria St. Martin, longtime journalist and journalism educator, now reporting on health and environmental justice at Inside Climate News.   The post Emily Sanders on Criminalizing Pipeline Protest / Victoria St. Martin on Suing Fossil Fuel Companies appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: You don't hear the phrase “free market capitalism” so much anymore, but the idea still tacitly undergirds much of what you do hear about why products and services are the way they are. We all know about corruption and cronyism, but we still accept that the company that “wins” — “cornering the market” — does so because people simply prefer what they sell. The anti-monopoly ruling against Google challenges that idea of how things work. We hear about it from Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. A recent news report offered the familiar construction that the attacks of September 11, 2001 “plunged the U.S.” into decades of war. Of course that's not right: choices were made, unpopular choices, about how to respond to the attacks. Choices were made to not bring assailants to trial for the crime, but instead to detain people without charge and hold them indefinitely in a prison designed to be outside U.S. law. Now the Defense secretary has stepped in to overturn plea agreements that, while they wouldn't have closed Guantánamo, would've brought some measure of closure to the cases against the alleged directors of the September 11 attacks. We get an update from Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Plus, Janine Jackson takes a look at recent press coverage of Sinclair Broadcasting.   The post Lee Hepner on Google Monopoly / Shayana Kadidal on Guantanamo Plea Deal appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Dog whistles are supposed to be silent except for those they're intended to reach. But as listeners know, the right wing has gotten much more overt and loud about their intention to defeat the prospect of multiracial democracy. We unpack the latest weaponized trope — the “DEI hire” — with anti-racism educator and author Tim Wise. Trying to help unhoused people and trying to make them invisible are different things. Keith McHenry, cofounder of Food Not Bombs, joins us to talk about the recent Supreme Court ruling that gave state authorities more power to dismantle the encampments in which many people live, with no guarantee they will land anywhere more safe.   The post Tim Wise on ‘DEI Hires' / Keith McHenry on Criminalizing the Unhoused appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Donald Trump said, on Fox & Friends in 2020, that if voting access were expanded, meaning easing of barriers to voting for disabled people, poor people, rural people, working people … if voting were made easier, Trump said, “You'd never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Why wouldn't news media label that stance anti-democratic and shelve any so-called good-faith partisan debate? Call for the multiracial democracy we need? Illuminate the history that shows why we aren't there yet? Ari Berman has been tracking voter rights — and why “one person, one vote” is not the thing to memorize as a definition of U.S. democracy — for many years now. He's the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones. His new book, which we discuss, is called Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People — and the Fight to Resist It.   The post Ari Berman on Minority Rule appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: In March, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories concluded that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel's commission of genocide is met.” But as Greg Shupak writes, even as evidence accumulates, denial is becoming socially and journalistically acceptable. Soon after the UN special rapporteur on the right to food asserted that Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza was genocidal, Jonah Goldberg took to the LA Times to assure readers that Israel's actions do not “amount to genocide,” and such claims are based on “Soviet propaganda” and Holocaust denial. Years from now, we'll hear about how everyone saw the nightmare and everyone opposed it. But history is now, and the world is watching. We'll talk about real-time efforts to address the war on Palestinians with Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Plus, Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the shooting of Donald Trump.   The post Phyllis Bennis on Israel's War on Palestinians appeared first on KPFA.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week's major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting).   The post Counterspin : July 14, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: The power of the algorithm is ever clearer in our lives, even if we don't understand it. Algorithms don't just guess at what you might like to buy: sometimes they're determining whether you get a job, or keep it. Some 40 million people in the U.S. use online platforms to find work. The algorithms these platforms use create an environment where organizations enact rules for workers' behavior, reward and sanction them based on that, but never allow workers to see these accountancies that make their lives unpredictable, much less work with them to develop measurements that would be meaningful. Hatim Rahman has been working on this question. He's assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and he's author of a new book about it: Inside the Invisible Cage: How Algorithms Control Workers, forthcoming in August from University of California Press. Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of climate disruption.   The post Hatim Rahman on Algorithms' “Invisible Cage” appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Headlined “The Cash Monster Was Insatiable,” a 2022 New York Times piece reported insurance companies gaming Medicare Advantage, originally presented as a “low-cost” alternative to traditional Medicare. One company pressed doctors to add additional illnesses to the records of patients they hadn't seen for weeks: Dig up enough new diagnoses, and you could win a bottle of champagne. Some companies cherry-picked healthier seniors for enrollment. Such maneuvers don't lead to good health outcomes but serve the real goal: netting private insurers more money. Here to discuss new research on the problem and the response is David Himmelstein, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and co-author of this new analysis of Medicare Advantage. You may get the impression from media that marijuana is legal everywhere now, that it's moved from blight to business, if you will. It's not as simple as that, and many people harmed by decades of criminalization have yet to see any benefit from decriminalization. Our guest Tauhid Chappell has tracked the issue for years now; he teaches the country's first graduate-level course on equity movements in the cannabis industry, at Thomas Jefferson University. But first, Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Julian Assange.   The post David Himmelstein on Medicare Dis-Advantage / Tauhid Chappell on Cannabis Equity appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote dozens of pages justifying his decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, stating the Constitution does not confer the right to determine whether or when to give birth. None of those pages mention his intention to make the United States “a place of godliness,” or his belief that there can be no compromise on such concerns, because “one side or the other is going to win.” Yet those are thoughts Alito freely expressed with a woman he thought was just a stranger at a public event. Will elite news media now suggest we just go back to considering the Supreme Court a neutral body, deserving of life terms because they're above the fray of politics? Jim Naureckas is editor of FAIR.org and the newsletter Extra!. We talk to him about this. The news that “the economy” is doing great on paper doesn't square with the tone-deaf messaging from food companies about mysteriously stubborn high prices. Nothing suggests a media universe that takes seriously the widespread struggle to meet basic needs. This may explain the failure to find the story in the upsurge in dollar stores, supposedly filling a void for low-income people, but actually just another avenue for ripping them off. We talk about that with Kennedy Smith from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.   The post Jim Naureckas on Secret Alito Tape / Kennedy Smith on Dollar Store Invasion appeared first on KPFA.

CounterSpin provides a critical examination of the each week's major news stories, and exposes what the mainstream media may have missed in their own coverage. Produced by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting). The post Saru Jayaraman on Taxing Tipped Wages appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Surprising no one, Donald Trump and his sycophants responded to his 34-count conviction on charges of lying in business records by claiming that the trial was “rigged,” the judge and jury corrupt, and that it was somehow Joe Biden's doing. We'll talk with Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, about press response to the trial and the verdict. For some people the violent police crackdown on peaceful college students protesting their schools' investments in Israel's war on Palestinians has been eye-opening. For others, it's one more example of the employment of law enforcement to brutally enforce corporate power. The fight led by Indigenous women against the Dakota Access pipeline is not long enough ago to have been forgotten. We'll hear a bit from an August 2017 interview with North Dakota organizer Kandi Mossett.   The post Matt Gertz on Trump Trial Verdict / Kandi Mossett on Dakota Access Struggle appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: In 2023, the California legislature passed legislation that said that big corporations doing business in the state have to tell the public how much pollution they're emitting throughout their supply chain. But this past January, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups challenged those laws, claiming that making companies disclose the impact of their actions — in this case, their emissions — would force them to publicly express a “speculative, noncommercial, controversial and politically charged message.” That supposedly would make the laws a “pressure campaign” aimed at shaping company behavior. Unfortunately, some courts are indulging this notion that regulation should be illegal because it forces companies to say stuff they'd rather not say. Fortunately, other courts are calling this self-serving nonsense self-serving nonsense. Public information, our right to know, is on the line here. Katherine Li addresses this issue in a recent piece for the Lever, where she is an editorial fellow.   The post Katherine Li on Corporations' First Amendment Dodge appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: As an historic catastrophe, the deep and myriad impacts of Israel's assault on Palestinians will not be fully understood until years from now, if then. That only adds urgency to present-day resistance to the collateral assault — on the ability to witness, to record, and to remember. When we spoke with historian Ellen Schrecker in 2017, she noted that the power of the movement associated with Joseph McCarthy was not the man himself but the “collaboration of the employers, of the mainstream media, of the legal system, you name it, to go along with this anti-Communist purge.” And while many people feel comforted that McCarthy the man was eventually censured by the Senate, the truth is, “the American political spectrum narrowed [and] a whole bunch of ideas and causes kind of disappeared from American political discourse and American political life.” We hear again today from historian and author Ellen Schrecker, co-editor of the new book The Right to Learn: Resisting the Ring-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom, from Beacon Press.   The post Ellen Schrecker on the Attack on Academic Freedom appeared first on KPFA.

This week on CounterSpin: Steven Rosenfeld reports on election transparency, among other electoral issues, for Voting Booth. We hear from him about kinds of election interference we ignore at our peril. Some elite media-designated “smart people” have determined, “Citizens United, what? It's folks who give ten bucks to a candidate that are really messing up the system.” We explore that notion with Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel for the Elections & Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.   The post Steven Rosenfeld on Election Transparency / Ian Vandewalker on Small Donors appeared first on KPFA.