Arkansas Anti-BDS Law; NASA DART Mission; UK Citizenship Bill

Anti-BDS Laws meet resistance in the US. Will we see a more robust defense of the 1st amendment against these measures?

Richard Becker, author of "Palestine, Israel and the U.S. Empire" joins us to discuss the ongoing campaign against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which saw a local newspaper in Arkansas threatened with a withdrawal of advertising from a local company due to a state law that asks businesses to pledge not to support any boycotts of Israel. We talk about the pervasiveness of such laws, with 30 states having laws similar to the one Arkansas passed in 2017, and whether we are starting to see some resistance to knee-jerk support for Israel.

Katherine Rahill, Senior Scientist for the Office of the Chief Scientist of NASA's Human Research Program (HRP) at Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, joins us to talk about the news of NASA’s DART mission attempting to manually alter the course of an asteroid by smashing a spacecraft into it at high speeds to test a defense mechanism against wayward asteroids that may threaten Earth. We also discuss the prospects of the mission’s success and whether we will see a planetary defense system in the future.

Mohamed Elmaazi, journalist and contributor to numerous outlets including Jacobin, The Canary, The Grayzone, and The Real News, talks to us about the dangerous implications of a new Nationality and Borders bill currently moving through the British House of Commons, which would allow the government to remove a person’s citizenship without having to give them notice so long as it is deemed in the public interest or the interests of national security. We discuss the impact this bill could have not only on naturalized immigrants, but citizens born in the UK as well.

Esther Iverem, multidisciplinary author and independent journalist, host of "On The Ground: Voices of Resistance From the Nation’s Capital" on Pacifica Radio, and founding member of DC Poets Against the War, joins hosts Michelle Witte and Bob Schlehuber to talk about a jury awarding $26 million in the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally civil case, the latest developments in Ethiopia, and two examples of how American society and our judicial system are not designed to rehabilitate people.

We'd love to get your feedback at [e-mail]