Media Roots Radio – Abby Goes to Palestine

Recently I traveled for a month through the West Bank in Palestine. Despite all the things I’ve read and seen, nothing could have prepared me for what it was like on the ground.

The entire West Bank is under martial law style occupation, where Israeli forces brutalize and harass Palestinians on a daily basis. For just traveling with Palestinians we had M16s pointed in our faces several times. A man almost got executed just feet from us. It’s a war zone–except only one side has military might. 

One of the most underreported realities is that Israel is becoming a fascist theocracy, with every administration becoming more fanatical than the last. From life inside the refugee camps to under occupation and settler terror, I give a first-hand account of the real Israel/Palestine on a special two hour edition of Media Roots Radio.

Watch the first segment of The Empire Files’ Palestine series that covers the history of Zionism and brutally honest root of what is behind the so-called “Israel-Palestine conflict.”

Listen to all previous episodes of Media Roots Radio on soundcloud.

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Chevron vs. the Amazon – Full Documentary

ChevronThumnbailFullDoc2Abby Martin launches a deep investigation into Chevron Texaco’s intentional spilling of 19 billion gallons of oil and waste in Ecuador’s pristine Amazon rainforest, and the 25-year-long legal battle that followed.

Featuring interviews with victims, expert witnesses and Ecuadorean heads of state, this three-part documentary reveals the full breadth of Chevron’s crimes, blatant corruption in the biggest environmental trial of the century, and outrageous acts against its victims ever since.

 

Chevron vs. the Amazon – Full Documentary

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Short clip from Chevron vs. the Amazon exposing Chevron Texaco’s scandalous history—from supporting Nazis to backing war crimes—all while attacking its victims.

 

Chevron Texaco’s Dirty History

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Abby Martin Interviews President Rafael Correa on Empire & the Environment

ABBY AND CORREA

After touring Chevron’s oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon, Abby Martin sits down for an exclusive interview with Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, about the legal battle against the corporation and push to decolonize the country from Western powers.

They discuss Ecuador’s new constitution that grants legal rights to nature for the first time in history, the country’s proposed ban against individuals using tax havens holding public office, and his administration’s dismantling of neoliberalism, stressing that the world order must shift, so that people come before capital.

Despite its diplomatic relationship with the United States, Correa comments on how Ecuador remains the subject of ongoing regime change efforts and democratic subversion on behalf of the U.S. government through NGOs like USAID. However, Correa is determined that being in the crosshairs of U.S. Empire will only embolden their fight for independence.

When asked about whether Trump or Clinton would be better for the future of Latin America, Correa’s response is surprising. He says Trump’s crudeness would be better to “revitalize the left” in Latin America, but that Hillary would be better for the sake of people in the U.S.

 

Abby Martin Interviews Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa 

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Inside the Global Fight Against Corporate Impunity

The-TPPAmong the many terrible features of the Trans Pacific Partnership, twelve countries are crafting something that would give corporations unprecedented power: a secret court for capitalist enterprises to sue any country that infringes on profits.

As it stands, with investment treaties skewed in their favor, multinational corporations enjoy the freedom to pillage developing countries–when people suffer disease, death and environmental devastation as a result, they simply claim there is no jurisdiction where they can be made to answer to a court.

Despite many international human rights treaties that countries must follow, there are none that apply to corporations–despite the fact that 37 of the top 100 economies in the world are corporations. 

But while the corporate elite flex their power across the planet, one small country has been leading a fight to hold them accountable for their crimes against humanity. Ecuador has been spearheading a project in the United Nations to create a binding legal instrument that, for the first time, would hold corporations accountable for human rights violations in the countries they extract profits from.

Leading this bold initiative Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s permanent representative to the UN; also having served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and of National Defense under President Correa. She joined Abby Martin at the TeleSUR studios in Quito to discuss this historic venture, and how Ecuador ended up on the forefront of this fight.

 

Inside the UN Fight Against Corporate Impunity with Maria Espinosa

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NYT’s James Risen on Fighting Censorship, Endless War

JAMES RISENFew journalists know the cruelty of government censorship as well as James Risen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, targeted for several major stories implicating criminality by the US war machine and its national security state.

Risen was not only relentlessly attacked under the Bush administration for his coverage of warrantless wiretapping but was subpoenaed by the Obama administration over his expose on a botched CIA sabotage operation in Iran.

He went rogue and published the story in his book after the US government got the New York Times to kill it. Threatened with jail time from the government, Risen went through seven years of legal battles to protect his source. In the face of this repression, He never compromised their identity.

Abby Martin sits down with Risen at the NYT DC bureau to talk about his experience being targeted, and what he’s exposed that’s put him in the crosshairs of the US Empire. 

 

NYT’s James Risen on Fighting Censorship and Endless War

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