(cc photo: Fahd Sadi)
This week on CounterSpin: A UN panel has just announced that the US could be deemed complicit in war crimes being carried out in Yemen. “Third state” parties, including the US, that supply weapons and other support “[perpetuate] the conflict,” the panel said, and contribute to the immiseration of Yemen, where a near-incomprehensible 80% of the population require humanitarian aid. US media bring images of Yemen’s suffering, but you could think it was happening on Mars, if the dots are not connected between the bombs and the hunger and the cholera, and elected US congressmembers voting again and again to be part of it. We’ll talk about how to change that with Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative representative for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Transcript: ‘Yemen Was Called the Forgotten War, but Activists Are Refusing to Forget’
David Portnoy (cc photo: Grudengrinder)
Also on the show: When Dave Portnoy, who runs the sports website Barstool, heard that another site’s workers were looking to unionize, he shared an article on Twitter in which he wrote of a similar effort at Gawker, “I can’t tell you how much I want them to unionize. Just so I can smash their little union to smithereens.” Rafi Letzter, who works at the site Live Science, covered by Writers Guild East, tweeted that any Barstool workers who wanted to talk about unionizing should get in touch with him, to which Portnoy tweeted, “If you work for barstoolsports and DM this man I will fire you on the spot.” You could say Portnoy doesn’t understand labor law; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the AFL-CIO were among those reminding him that firing workers for wanting a union is a violation. Or you could say he does understand the law, but also sees how hard the current National Labor Relations Board is fighting to undermine and undo it. It’s a fight that everyone has a stake in. We’ll talk with Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research and senior lecturer at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, about the state of play.
Transcript: ‘Under the Trump Administration, the [NLRB] Appointees Have Been Extremists’
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Brazil’s fires.
