Background Briefing (5am)

Thanassis Cambanis / Jonathan Weiler / Pamela Yates

The UN Warns Israel it is in Breach of Humanitarian Law For IDF Attacks on UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon

We begin with the UN’s warning that Israel is in breach of humanitarian law following attacks on UNIFIL UN peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon by the IDF in which two Indonesian soldiers were injured when an Israeli tank shot up a UN watchtower. Joining us is Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and Director of the Center for International Research and Policy. Until recently, he was worked as a journalist based in Lebanon and his books include A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel, Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, and most recently, Shia Power Comes of Age: The Transformation of Islamist Politics in Iraq, 2003-2023.

The Impact of Hurricane Helene and Trump/Vance’s Lies on Harris’s Prospects of Winning North Carolina

Then we assess the impact of hurricane Helene on North Carolina in terms of how it will affect Kamala Harris’s chances of winning the state, as well as the firehose of lies and disinformation coming from Trump and Vance about FEMA and Democrats geoengineering the weather. Joining us is Jonathan Weiler, a professor in Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics;his latest book, co-authored with Marc Hetherington, is Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide. He writes regularly at jonathanweiler.substack.com, where his latest article is “The Pathological Endgame.”

A New Film Exposes the Border Industrial Complex and the Profitable Business of Immigration

Then finally, we will look into the border-industrial complex and the profitable business of immigration, as well as its human cost, and speak with Pamela Yates, an award-winning film director and the co-founder of Skylight, a not-for-profit media organization that for over 35 years has combined cinematic arts with the quest for justice to inspire the defense of human rights. Among her films are “When the Mountains Tremble,” winner of a 1984 special jury award at the Sundance Film Festival; “Teatro”; “State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism”; “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator”, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship; “Disruption”; and “500 Years.” She executive produced the Academy Award winning documentary short subject “Witness to War” and her latest film now opening across the country is “Borderland – The Line Within.”