GRIFTER IN CHIEF

Investors plead guilty to insider trading in Trump Media deal

Brad Reed
April 3, 2024 

RAW STORY

Truth Social (Shutterstock)

Two investors have pleaded guilty to an insider trading scheme related to the recent merger involving Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company behind former President Donald Trump's Truth Social media platform.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Wednesday that Michael Shvartsman and Gerald Shvartsman have each pleaded guilty to a single round of securities fraud related to a scheme they concocted to benefit from the merger between Digital World Acquisition Corporation and Trump Media.

"Michael and Gerald Shvartsman admitted in court that they received confidential, inside information about an upcoming merger between DWAC and Trump Media and used that information to make profitable, but illegal, open-market trades," said Williams in a prepared statement. "Insider trading is cheating, plain and simple, and today’s convictions should remind anyone who may be tempted to corrupt the integrity of the stock market that it will earn them a ticket to prison."

According to the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the two men "bought millions of dollars of DWAC securities on the open market before the news of the Trump Media business combination was public" and even "tipped others about the upcoming merger, inducing further trades in DWAC securities on the basis of the MNPI they had obtained subject to their non-disclosure agreement and through their associate’s board seat."

Per CNN, "There was no allegation in the indictment that Trump himself had any involvement in the alleged insider trading scheme."

Trump Media first went public last week and sparked a wave of speculative investment that saw the firm's market cap rise to over $8 billion before its shares crashed on Monday when it released a financial report showing that the company lost $58 million over the last fiscal year on revenues of just over $4 million.

More than 13,000 say Trump should be investigated for Truth Social stock fraud

M.L. Nestel
April 3, 2024 

RAW STORY

(Photo illustration by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Trump's Truth Social Nasdaq run so far has been topsy turvy — having suffered a nearly $4 billion hit since last week's money monsoon debut — and now a petition has amassed 13,000 digital signatures to push for former President Donald Trump to be investigated for fraud.

"Just days after it went public, and its stock price placed its value in the billions, Donald Trump's 'Truth Social' crashed back to Earth, with that same stock dropping like a rock," reads the petition launched by a progressive organization known as Left Action, and first reported by Newsweek.

Their pitch continued by asking where the blame should be cast for letting the $50 million profit from 2022 pruned into a $58 million loss the following year, with trickling revenue of $4 million.

The numbers are hard to hide.

Truth Social boasts "far fewer users than any other social network that has gone public," PBS' William Brangham reported. "The tech research firm SimilarWeb estimates TRUTH Social had about five million users last month. That's compared to more than three billion on Facebook and two billion on TikTok."

The downturn in the stock fueled Left Action's fraud probe call.

"In short, it was a disastrous performance," the petition states, adding, "but the numbers weren't revealed until after the stock went public, meaning those buying the stock were left in the dark until it was too late — and their investments had collapsed in value."

The petition throws up two scenarios: the rollercoaster stock, bearing Trump's initials "DJT" was all happenstance and "legit" or "maybe critical information was withheld in order to keep the true state of the company out of the spotlight."

The stock for the Truth Social platform came out of the gate last Monday going for $49.90 per share. It shot up to a high of $79.38 on March 26, CBS News reported.

Then the fall on earnings and losses took it down 21% on Monday, closing at $48.66 and suffering a $3.8 billion bite, the outlet reported.

As of Wednesday's close, the stock was $48.81.

The source of its shaky start on the public stage has Left Action pointing all fingers at the 45th president.

"No doubt, anyone foolish enough to buy into Trump's promises was probably someone who would lose their money on some idiotic venture soon enough," according to the petition. "But fraud is fraud, and there are laws, and Donald Trump is not above them."

Meet the Secretive Rich Funding Efforts to Keep Others Poor


With both millionaires and homelessness on the rise in the U.S., right-wing donors are bankrolling a nationally coordinated move to end experiments in basic income.


A person carries a mattress from a tent during a sweep of encampments from a street block in "The Zone," a vast homeless encampment where hundreds of people reside, during a record heatwave in Phoenix, Arizona, on July 19, 2023.
(Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)


SAM PIZZIGATI
Apr 03, 2024

Inequality.Org

America, a new report details, is minting millionaires at a record pace. Some 37% of the world’s millionaires, analysts at the wealth advisory firm Henley & Partners calculate, now call the United States home.

And these analysts are talking real millionaires, not those Americans who rate as “millionaires” only because they’re living in homes that have wildly appreciated in value since their purchase decades ago. Those appreciations have left typical 50-something American homeowners, the latest Federal Reserve stats show, with personal net worths a bit over $1 million.

The researchers from Henley and their partners at New World Wealth don’t count these house-rich homeowners as millionaires. They only rate as millionaires those households with over $1 million in investible assets—and the United States, their research finds, hosts far, far more of these honest-to-goodness millionaires than any other nation on Earth.

In February, lawmakers in Arizona, home to the nation’s fourth-highest homeless rate, passed a bill that bans “any program where persons are provided with regular, periodic cash payments” they can use “for any purpose.”

The numbers: Over 5.5 million Americans now hold liquid assets worth over $1 million. That total has soared 62% over the past decade, “well above,” observesCNBC analyst Robert Frank, the overall global real-millionaire increase of a mere 38%.

Rich people-friendly observers of America’s economic scene, naturally enough, see stats like these as cause for nothing but celebration. The wealthier our wealthiest become, they postulate, the more jobs—and wealth—these rich create for everyone else. A rising tide, as they like to quip, lifts all boats.

But we are, in fact, seeing no significant rising of any sort for America’s working families. We are witnessing instead stunning increases in what America’s rich are spending on themselves. One revealing recent stat: Our U.S. well-to-do, researchers at Art Basel and the banking giant UBS report, now account for 42% of global fine art sales, well above China’s 19% second-place share.

Another reflection of America’s luxury-spending dominance: The world’s top premium luxury brands—think glamorous retailers like Cartier, Bergdorf Goodman, and Gucci—all have flagship stores in Manhattan. Just this past December, the luxury powerhouse Prada announced plans to spend $835 million buying up the building that hosts its current Fifth Avenue flagship and the building next door.

For America’s poorest, meanwhile, “luxury” has come to mean keeping a roof over your head.

The number of Americans chronically homeless, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported out this past December, has been climbing since 2016—in what Jeff Olivet, the director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, likens to a “game of really vicious musical chairs.” The United States, he explains, has “an incredible deficit of affordable housing units,” with only one unit available for every three extremely low-income renters.

And “if someone has a medical condition, a mental health disability, a substance use disorder,” Olivet adds, “it makes it all that much more complex for someone to exit homelessness.”

The solution to this growing housing squeeze? America’s most conservative lawmakers have one. Let’s simply do our best, these lawmakers are proposing, to keep our nation’s homeless out of sight.

In Florida, that approach has actually become law. Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh off his go-nowhere campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, has just signed into law legislation that makes it illegal for local municipalities to let homeless people camp or sleep on public property after this October 1.

“Florida,” DeSantis declared upon the bill’s signing, “will not allow homeless encampments to intrude on its citizens or undermine their quality of life like we see in states like New York and California.”

The new Florida law requires local governments without enough bed capacity for unhoused families to set up homeless camps far from parks and other public facilities—and the act also penalizes localities that wink at rough sleeping outside these new hidden-away camps.

Diana Stanley, a top exec in Palm Beach charity circles, considers Florida’s new approach “a statement that we’ve stopped caring about our brothers and sisters.” The main message Stanley takes from the state’s new homelessness legislation: “If we can’t see them, then we don’t have to help them.”

Florida’s latest homeless legislation, Stanley stresses, “does absolutely nothing to address the root cause of homelessness, the lack of affordable housing.” The state’s focus, agrees University of Central Florida sociologist Amy Donley, ought to be on “helping people into housing, not encampments.”

Measures that would help do just that, meanwhile, have come under intense fire from right-wing lawmakers in other states. Those lawmakers are particularly aiming that fire at state and local experiments in providing low-income families with guaranteed, no-strings basic incomes.

In Iowa, one GOP state legislator is calling such basic-income efforts “socialism on steroids.” The sponsor of another move to ban basic incomes, South Dakota’s John Wiik, is charging that basic-income plans amount to “a one-way ticket to government dependency.” In February, lawmakers in Arizona, home to the nation’s fourth-highest homeless rate, passed a bill that bans “any program where persons are provided with regular, periodic cash payments” they can use “for any purpose.”

As of the end of February, lawmakers in some four other states had introduced bills with similar bans.

Who’s driving this nationally coordinated move to end experiments in basic income? Some of America’s most secretive wealthy, charges a recent analysis by Scott Santens, the founder and president of the Income To Support All Foundation.

These wealthy, Santens notes, have been bankrolling an outfit that calls itself the Foundation for Government Accountability, “a lobbying group with a billionaire-fueled junk science record every American should know about.”

Among the Foundation’s prime funders: the hard-right billionaires Richard and Liz Uihlein, the nation’s fourth-largest contributors to political campaigns. The Uihleins have pumped almost $18 million into the machinations of the Foundation for Government Accountability. Almost that much has come from the Donors Trust network, a powerhouse that has become what Mother Jonescalls “the dark-money ATM of the right.”

Other major Foundation for Government Accountability funders include assorted deep-pocket entities with a history, notes Climate Investigations Center director Kert Davies, of “hating regulation and trying to stop any progress on things like climate change because they see it as almost a step toward communism.”

The billionaires underwriting all these entities, Income To Support All Foundation.’s Scott Santens believes, share a common fundamental outlook. They fear “a world where things are a bit less unequal,” a world without so many average people “having no power to say anything but yes.”

May those rich see emerge that new world they so fear. Soon.

MAGA congressional candidate: Michelle Obama might be a man, bring back Aunt Jemima

THIS SLANDER BEGAN WITH THE TEA PARTY

Mark Alesia, Investigative Reporter
April 3, 2024 
RAW STORY

Photo of congressional candidate Derrick Evans of West Virginia during the Jan. 6 riot. Evans pleaded guilty to a felony and served three months in federal prison.

 (Source: Federal court document)

There is MAGA and then there is Derrick Evans, a candidate for the Republican nomination in West Virginia’s 1st Congressional District.

Raw Story recently documented how the once-remorseful Jan. 6 admitted felon has, since a plea bargain that landed him in prison, become more than just a fire-breathing, election-denying Trump acolyte.

Of particular note, he has made his status as a Jan. 6 “prisoner” his political brand as he attempts to defeat incumbent Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) in a Republican primary, then win the general election in this conservative congressional district.

In doing so, Evans, who on Tuesday earned the endorsement of Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, has treated the bounds of decency as he did police barriers when he charged into the Capitol.

Raw Story requested comment from Evans two days prior to publication of its story on March 22. Evans responded a day after publication. Raw Story requested a phone interview, which he declined. But Evans agreed to answer written questions.

Below is a transcript of Raw Story’s email exchange with Evans:


Raw Story: Prosecutors wrote to the judge before your sentencing that you were keeping a “low profile”: “This distinguishes Evans from some rioters with significant public profiles who have used their platforms after January 6 to brag about their conduct or to continue to promote the myth that the presidential election was stolen, justifying the incursion into the Capitol.”

Evans: Any nation that tries to disallow the accused from using their notoriety to raise funds for their legal defense is Stalinist and Totalitarian by definition.

Raw Story: You are now doing exactly what the prosecutors praised you for avoiding. Why did you become loudly defiant (calling yourself a “hostage” and “political prisoner,” promoting your status as a Jan 6 prisoner, etc.) only after presenting yourself in court as remorseful?

Evans: Since the evidence clearly shows that the J6 operation run by [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [former Vice President] Mike Pence was a Reichstag Fire type event designed to explode the overreach of the police state — as evidenced by the fact that there are political prisoners still sitting in prison — I've decided to use my voice, since they're not able to use their voices, to fight against this violent brand of authoritarianism.

Raw Story: You said you were in solitary confinement in prison for several days? You served your time in a minimum security facility. Do you have any proof that you were held in solitary confinement for refusing the COVID vaccine?



Evans: When you are rewarded with the job of warden at your own gulag, you can make sure all the prisoners have paperwork proving they were put into solitary for refusing the BioWeapon.


Raw Story: Do you regret saying on social media, “Who thinks Michelle Obama is really a man?” What did you mean? Why did you post that?

Evans: Since there are no photos of Michelle Obama during either of her pregnancies, I think it is a fair question to ask whether Big Mike has had some sort of elective surgery to accommodate Barack's true wishes. (Note: "Big Mike" is a derogatory name used by some far-right activists to identify former first lady Michelle Obama.)

Raw Story: In social media posts, you have invoked “replacement theory” and said, “Put Aunt Jemima back on the syrup bottle.” How are these not racist statements?



Evans: Since Democrats are clearly the racists for taking Aunt Jemima off the syrup bottle, I thought I'd advocate returning her to the bottle.

Raw Story: You posted about the use of “Christian tax dollars.” Are there also Muslim tax dollars? Atheist tax dollars? Agnostic tax dollars?

Evans: Given that there are no-go zones in Muslim areas like Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis, and Muslim [Keith] Ellison is the attorney general in Minnesota, it stands to reason that there absolutely is such a thing as Muslim, Atheist, and Agnostic tax dollars.



Source: Twitter

Raw Story: A fundraising page on your website said that when you get to Congress, “we will turn the tables and the hunters will become the hunted.” What do you mean by that? How will you become a “hunter” and what will you do to the “hunted”? Is “hunter”

and “hunted” appropriate rhetoric for a Congressional candidate, especially one who served time in prison as an admitted felon because of the violence of January 6?

Evans: Since the Biden Department of Justice is hunting President Trump, and is STILL arresting and using January 6 protestors like political footballs to try to steal another illegitimate election this November, I find it hard to believe you don't know what hunted means.

* * *

Matthew Donnellan, chief of staff for Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV), Evans’ opponent in the Republican primary, responded to Raw Story’s request for reaction to several of Evans’ comments.

“Aunt Jemima? The maple syrup?” he said. “Congresswoman Miller is more of a bacon & eggs person than a pancakes/waffles person. But frankly she's more concerned about ending Bidenflation and getting the price of everything from breakfast to energy under control than any of the unimportant distractions.”

Amid Federal Layoffs, Biden Rule Protects Civil Servants From Political Firings

"President Biden's predecessor and other conservatives have made clear they would support stripping hundreds of thousands of federal employees of their civil service rights and protections," said one union leader.


President Joe Biden delivers remarks regarding lowering health care costs during an event in the Indian Treaty Room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, Wednesday, April 3, 2024.
(Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

THOR BENSON
Apr 04, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Approximately 90,000 people across the United States lost their jobs in March, and roughly a third were in the federal government, making last month the worst for job losses since January 2023.

However, a new rule introduced by the Biden administration aims at protecting the jobs of civil servants in the federal government, which goes against the plans former President Donald Trump has should he return to office.

"Career federal employees deliver critical services for Americans in every community," said U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Kiran Ahuja. "This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty."



Trump intends to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants in the federal government and replace them with loyalists if he returns to the White House—part of the far-right initiative Project 2025, aimed at consolidating Trump's power and avoiding any obstacles to the goals which he hopes to accomplish.

"President Biden's action reinforces and clarifies federal employees' due process rights and civil service protections, strengthening the apolitical civil service and hampering efforts to return the government to a corrupt spoils system," said American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelle.

"President Biden's predecessor and other conservatives have made clear," added Kelle. "They would support stripping hundreds of thousands of federal employees of their civil service rights and protections and turning them into at-will workers who could be hired or fired at any time for political reasons."

How the UN General Assembly Could Hold Israel Accountable: an Interview With Francis Boyle

BY DENNIS BERNSTEIN

 APRIL 5, 2024
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Francis Boyle has been Professor of Law at University of Illinois College of Law since 1978.

Dennis Bernstein: Joining me is distinguished professor and international law scholar Francis Boyle.  He’ll discuss how the UN General Assembly could institute what’s called Uniting for Peace Laws that empower it under the Geneva Convention to stop Israel’s assault.  Boyle was the prosecutor for an international tribunal organized in Malaysia which found George W. Bush and Tony Blair guilty of crimes against humanity.  

International condemnation and calls for an urgent investigation are mounting after an Israeli air attack killed seven aid workers, six foreign nationals and a Palestinian in Gaza.  US-based aid group World Central Kitchen says the foreign aid workers killed in the targeted Israeli strike were nationals from Australia, Poland and the UK, as well as, a US/Canadian citizen. Israel’s Prime Minister, you know him, admits the Israeli Army is responsible for the strike.

Professor Boyle, it’s good to have you back with us.  In one moment, I want to jump into this power that the UN General Assembly might have in terms of trying to restrain Israel.  But I want to just ask you to respond to this latest targeted kill.   The folks at the organization say that they shared extensive information with the Israelis .  The Israelis knew exactly where they were, when they were, when they were coming and when they were going.

Francis Boyle:   Well, thank you  Dennis.  It’s clear it was reported today both in the Israeli press and now Al Jazeera just had a big documentary.  This was deliberate targeting by the Israeli army.  There were three SUVs traveling in a convoy, and all three were subsequently targeted.  So, it was done on purpose.  It wasn’t an accident.  It’s clear it’s had its intended effect.  Not only have World Central Kitchen stopped providing food, but the other humanitarian agencies have also stopped providing food.  There is now famine in Gaza, and this fits in what we’ve discussed before.

Israel’s act of genocide, Article 2, Paragraph C, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.  So, they are using starvation to accomplish genocide and to do that, they had to make the attack and then scare away all the other humanitarian agencies from feeding the starving people of Gaza.

Dennis Bernstein: Can you give us a  general update where is this case of genocide brought courageously by the South Africans.  I guess, you don’t feel it’s been handled that well or righteously, but give us an update.  Where are we in that case?   Is it moving forward?  Is anybody able to sort of—to move it forward in the context of Israel’s renegade nature?

Francis Boyle: Right, Dennis.  Well, certainly South Africa is courageous here for taking on Israel, and especially because they know the United States government is beyond Israel, and as you know today, members of Congress are introducing legislation to cut off favorable trade legislation that we have with South Africa.  That being said, South Africa won an order of provisional measures of protection against Israel to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against the Palestinians.  Then when Israel did not comply, they had a month to produce a report.  The report was completely inadequate.

South Africa then filed another request for provisional measures of protection.  They didn’t get it.  But they did get a decision, specifically with respect to RAFA, reiterating the previous measures of provisional protection for RAFA.  And then, Israel continued its campaign of genocide against the Palestinians.  So, South Africa filed a third request for provisional measures of protection and on Friday they got an order, not just a decision, but another order, which is remarkable.

I was the first person ever to get two orders from the International Court of Justice in a genocide case that I filed through the Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia.  That was the first time the World Court had ever issued two orders in one case.  And now this becomes the second time.

But unfortunately, the World Court, despite massive violations of their first order and their decision, did not give South Africa what they were asking for.  If you looked at the request that South Africa made the second time, they specified precisely what they needed to try to stop the genocide, including a ceasefire, an order for a ceasefire.

And at the end of their second—well, their third request for provisional measures of protection, they cited me in the Bosnia genocide case, saying quote, to this end, the Court is reminded the application for additional provisional measures made by Bosnia in 1993, saying, quote, this is me, they quoted, “Make no mistake about it, this will be the last opportunity that this Court shall have to save both the people in the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina from extermination and annihilation by means of genocide by the respondent.  God will record your response to our request for the rest of eternity.”

Then South Africa pointed out that since the Court did not give me what I asked for the second time, the massacre of Srebrenica followed, where about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were taken out and slaughtered.  So, South Africa said to the World Court, you don’t want this to happen again.  Give us what we asked for.  Unfortunately, the Court did not give South Africa what they asked for in the order they got Friday.  And now what do we have?

Well, we have the massacre at Shifa Hospital that you just mentioned.  Best report is maybe 400 Palestinians were executed, that’s the Euro Med Health Agency.  And now, we have this attack on the World Health Kitchen, killing seven people that was deliberate.  South Africa pointed this out, you had to give us what we asked for in order to stop this, and the Court did not.  The Court did not give them a demand for a ceasefire.  They could have easily done that.

The Security Council last week passed a resolution for a ceasefire.  The United States government abstained.  It passed.  It demanded a ceasefire until the end of Ramadan which would be the beginning of next week.  The Court could’ve easily ordered Israel to obey the Security Council ceasefire, pointing out it is binding under Article 25 of the UN Charter, and it didn’t say that at all.

And as a matter of fact, as you know, the US government then publicly lied and said that the ceasefire resolution by the Security Council was not binding as a matter of international law.  Well, that’s just nonsense.  Article 25 of the UN Charter says quite clearly it is binding.  Also, the World Court ruled in the Namibia Advisory Opinion that all Security Council resolutions are binding under Article 25, whether adopted under Chapter 6 of the UN Charter or Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.

So, the US government lied, and then Kirby, right after that, said, well, the Security Council resolution is not going to change anything.  And as the Washington Post pointed out, we’re escalating our supply of weapons, equipment, and supplies to Israel, including bunker-buster bombs, 2,000 pound bombs, 500 pound bombs, to be used on the people of Gaza.

The ICJ, in its latest order, also refused to trigger the obligation of the other parties to the Genocide Convention to “prevent” genocide, as Article I of the Genocide Convention clearly requires.  And in doing that, they then had the audacity to quote from their order, denying me a similar request that I had made, that they would not give me and South Africa had already pointed out, resulted in the Srebrenica massacre.

So, the–and then the order they did give, they said, well, there they were just dealing with the humanitarian relief supplies.  They said, well, Israel has to give more humanitarian relief supplies, but they can’t do it in a manner that would commit acts of genocide.  Well, that’s preposterous.  We just saw it here.  They just–Israel just attacked the seven relief workers and killed them.  Everyone knew Israel would not pay any attention to that.

So, the World Court completely failed the people of Gaza, and now we have the Shifa massacre, we have the seven dead humanitarians.  My opinion, the blood of all these people is on the hands of the World Court.  That being said, on Monday, Nicaragua, courageous Nicaragua, will be suing Germany for aiding and abetting genocide by Israel against the Palestinians.  There’ll be two days of hearing, Monday and Tuesday.  Nicaragua goes Monday.  Germany tries to defend itself on Tuesday.

I do not know precisely what the outcome will be here.  The first World Court order I had predicted, this one, the only lawyer who’s tried something like this is me, which I did for the Bosnians.  I sued the United Kingdom for aiding and abetting genocide by Yugoslavia against the Bosnians.  The first time such a lawsuit had been threatened.  What happened there was that it took me two weeks to get all those papers together, which I had promised President Izetbegović I could do, but just before the filing, the British threatened the Bosnians with starvation in the middle of the winter.  I had been negotiating with the Court for a hearing before Christmas.

So, we’ll see what, if anything, the Court gives to Nicaragua.  The problem is it will probably take them another two weeks.  Who knows how many Bosnian, sorry, Palestinians will be killed and that is my recommendation.  We need to go to the UN General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace Resolution and have the UN General Assembly adopt sanctions against Israel because the World Court isn’t going to do it.

Dennis Bernstein: Well, let’s actually talk about that.  I would really like to.  I want to let people know we’re speaking with Professor Francis Boyle.  Professor Boyle teaches International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, author of many books and has successfully taken countries to the international courts to hold them accountable. 

Now, let’s talk about the General Assembly represents the entire world.  And I understand that they have the power under this Uniting for Peace Law or structure within the Geneva Convention to hold Israel accountable.  How would that be?  How does that work?

Francis Boyle:  Right.  To overcome the Soviet veto at the Security Council during the Korean War, it was the idea of the United States of America to give the General Assembly the authority to act against threats to international peace and security when there is a veto at the Security Council.  And that became the Uniting for Peace Resolution.

To give you an example, I don’t support the current genocidal sanctions against North Korea, but they all go back to a Uniting for Peace Resolution adopted at the very beginning of the procedure.  What the UN General Assembly can do now against Israel, which I have recommended to the Palestinians, the South Africans, and the Nicaraguans in interviews I’ve given all over the Arab world, both in English and Arabic translation.  One, the General Assembly has the authority to deny Israel participation in the activities of the General Assembly and all of its specialized agencies and affiliated organizations.  This is exactly what the General Assembly did to the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa, and also to my former adversary, the genocidal Yugoslavia.  So, it seems to me the General Assembly can act on both grounds, both residents here, apartheid by Israel and genocide by Israel.

Second, I’ve recommended an international criminal tribunal for Israel, organized along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where I was the attorney of record for the mothers of Srebrenica and Padrina, and got Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic indicted and tried for almost every crime in the ICTY statute, including two counts of genocide.  One, Bosnian general, the second genocide at Srebrenica in particular.

The UN General Assembly can set this up, as I call it ICTI, as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly under Article 22.  As a matter of fact, I worked very hard to get Malaysia and Iran to sponsor the International Criminal Tribunal for Israel in the UN General Assembly.  It took off like wildfire with a lot of support from Arab and Muslim states, and then it was sabotaged.  I’d leave it to your imagination to figure out who did that.

In any event, I would hope they could revisit this and my proposal and set up the tribunal and start prosecuting some of the highest level officials here, including Netanyahu, Gallant, Gantz, and Smotrich, Ben-Gavir, and others for these war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and that very well might have a role to play in stopping the genocide going on right now if the General Assembly were to set this thing up and order it into immediate operation.  All they have to do is take the ICTY statute, revise it a little bit, and adopt it immediately.

Third, the General Assembly can recommend all UN member states sever diplomatic relations with Israel.  I don’t know, why have the Arab states that have diplomatic relations with Israel not severed relations already?  Why haven’t the European states outright genocide?  They haven’t done anything.  The General Assembly can also adopt economic sanctions against it, well, recommend economic sanctions against Israel, like they did a generation ago against North Korea, which are still there.  I don’t support them under the current circumstances, but this can be done.

And then finally, the General Assembly can admit Palestine as a full-fledged UN member state.  Right now, Palestine is a UN observer state along the lines of Switzerland before it became a full-fledged UN member state.  The US previously has vetoed Palestine’s admission to the UN.  The votes are there.  The Palestinians are going to try again next week for full-fledged admission to the UN member state.  If the United States vetoes, again, it could go to the General Assembly, and the General Assembly can admit them by a two-thirds vote.

They have, the Palestinians have the votes already.  I’ve been on the floor of the UN with the Palestinian delegation.  They have a lot of support.  And this is important because historically no UN member state has ever been destroyed.  Some have dissolved, like the Soviet Union and my adversary, the former Yugoslavia, but they haven’t been destroyed.  And clearly Netanyahu, Gallant, Gantz, Smotrich, Ben-Gurion, they want to destroy Palestine and the Palestinians.  That’s what all this is about.  They need this protection of UN member statehood.

I found this out in the work I did for the Bosnians at the Owen Stoltenberg negotiations in Geneva at UN headquarters there.  The great powers of the world, the European Union, its member states, and the Clinton administration and the UN tried to rob the Bosnians of their UN membership in order to wipe them out.  I stopped that from happening.  It never happened.  And Bosnia is still there today.  It is a state.  It has its UN membership.  Obviously it’s in very difficult circumstances.  I’m doing the best I can to help them out.  But if the UN and the EU and the Americans had had their way, and of course Yugoslavia, all the Bosnians would have been wiped out.  The UN membership kept them alive.  And I recommend the same must be done for the Palestinians.

Dennis Bernstein: We are just about out of time, but I have to ask you this question.  Iran now is vowing revenge against the Israeli attack on its Consulate building in Syria, in Damascus.  Could you–what is the right, do these states have the right under international law, do the Palestinians have the right under international law to resist to strike back?  What’s the deal there?  Where does the law come in there?  The law of the world? 

Francis Boyle: All right.  Well, that’s got you’ve asked me to two questions there, Dennis.  First, on the attack on the Consulate.  I don’t know, you know, that was clearly illegal and violated the UN Charter, the territorial sovereignty of Syria.  It violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, and probably the UN New York Convention protecting diplomats.

The general press has reported that this is attacking Iranian soil, that is incorrect legally, and I’m not trying to justify what Israel did, but a state does not have sovereignty over its embassy complex.  This remained Syrian territory, not Iranian territory, but that territorial compound is supposed to have absolute immunity.  That’s what it means.

As for the Palestinians, and also, I would say, Hezbollah as well, you know, as you know, everyone’s saying they’re a terrorist organization, and this terrorist organization, and that.  Well, that isn’t the case.  Under international humanitarian law, and in particular, additional protocol one to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which I think over 170 states are party to, Israel and the United States are not, but the definition of a national liberation organization is as follows: “Armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.”  Well, that’s both Hamas and that is Hezbollah.

And under the UN General Assembly resolutions, national liberation movements like Hamas, like Hezbollah, have a right to seek and receive military support from other states in support of their national liberation activities.  So again, this is completely misrepresented, not surprisingly, by the mainstream news media here in the United States.  I’m not here to justify any attacks upon innocent civilians, but the categories of these two organizations as terrorists is not supported by international law, not supported by international humanitarian law.

Dennis Bernstein:  All right, we’re going to have to leave it right there.  Really, thank you again, Professor Francis Boyle, always generous with your time and the information and your experience is absolutely invaluable.   And we appreciate you.