Amy Goodman's Blog, page 12

William Worthy & Vincent Harding: Thank You and Goodbye

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

The world lost two remarkable men in May, two African-Americans who helped shape modern history, yet whose names and achievements remain too little known. William Worthy, a journalist, died at the age of 92. Civil-rights activist Vincent Harding was 82. Each was a witness to some of the most pivotal events of the latter half of the 20th century. They led their lives speaking truth to power, working for a better world.

William Worthy became a journalist, working for both CBS News and the Baltimore Afro-American. He reported from the Soviet Union and would go to North Vietnam. As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, he ignored a U.S. ban on traveling to communist China. As a result, the State Department refused to renew Worthy’s passport. He would later travel to Cuba after the revolution there, where he interviewed Fidel Castro. Upon his return, he was charged with entering the U.S. without a passport. He challenged the charges and was eventually cleared. The federal appeals court opinion stated, “It is inherent in the concept of citizenship that the citizen ... has a right to return, again to set foot on its soil.” U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy chose not to appeal to the Supreme Court, Worthy said, because “he and his brother [President John F. Kennedy] were sick and tired of the case. They had had enough embarrassment over it.” He was represented by a young ACLU lawyer named William Kunstler, who later noted that the victory in this case inspired him to continue in his path as a pioneering constitutional attorney.

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Wheelering and Dealing at the FCC

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

Michael Powell is the son of Gen. Colin Powell. The elder Powell knows a thing or two about war. He famously presented the case for invading Iraq to the United Nations, on Feb. 5, 2003, based on faulty evidence of weapons of mass destruction. He calls that speech a painful “blot” on his record. So it is especially surprising when his son threatens “World War III” on the Obama administration.

Michael Powell is the president of the NCTA, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which is the cable industry’s largest lobbying group. He is also the former chairperson of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. His target: net neutrality. The battleground is in Washington, D.C., inside the FCC’s nondescript headquarters. The largest Internet service providers — companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T and Verizon — are joining forces to kill net neutrality. Millions of citizens, along with thousands of organizations, companies, artists and investors, are trying to save it.

What is net neutrality? It’s the fundamental notion that anyone on the Web can reach anyone else, that users can just as easily access a small website launched in a garage as they can access major Internet portals like Google or Yahoo. Net neutrality is the Internet’s protection against discrimination. So why would these giant Internet Service Providers want to eliminate such a good thing? Greed. The largest ISPs make massive profits already. But if they are allowed to create a multitiered Internet, with some content providers paying extra to have their websites or Web applications load faster, then they can squeeze out extra profit. Remember, the users are already paying for Internet access. Now companies like Comcast want to charge people at the other end of the Internet connection, raking in billions of dollars from both the Internet user and the Internet content provider.

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"Solitary Confinement Is Not the Answer"

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

There has been much attention, and rightly so, on the CIA’s extensive use of torture, which the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is said to have documented in its still-classified 6,000-page report. The use of torture is not limited to the CIA, however. It is all too common across the United States. Solitary confinement is torture, and it is used routinely in jails, prisons and immigration detention facilities here at home. Grass-roots movements that have been pressuring for change are beginning to yield significant results. The coalitions include prisoners, their families, a broad swath of legal and social-justice groups and, increasingly, prison guards and officials themselves.

One official who worked to reduce the use of solitary confinement was Tom Clements. The executive director of Colorado’s Department of Corrections, Clements was at home on March 19, 2013, when his doorbell rang. As he opened the door, he was gunned down, murdered by Evan Ebel, who had been released from solitary confinement directly to the street less than two months earlier. The small, nonprofit Colorado Independent was the only outlet to link the murder to the psychological damage that Ebel suffered in solitary confinement. Another ex-prisoner who corresponded with Ebel disclosed text messages with him, shortly before Ebel killed Clements. One text read, “im just feeling peculiar & the only way i know i know to remedy that is via use of ‘violence.’”

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When Cruel and Unusual Punishment Becomes Usual

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

The state of Oklahoma tortured a man to death this week. On Tuesday, April 29, Clayton Lockett was strapped to a gurney in the state’s execution chamber. At 6:23 p.m., before a room of witnesses that included 12 members of the media, the first of three drugs was injected into his veins. Ziva Branstetter, enterprise editor at Tulsa World, was among the reporters who watched. She later reported Lockett’s ordeal, minute by minute:

“6:29 p.m. Lockett’s eyes are closed and his mouth is open slightly.

“6:31 p.m. The doctor checks Lockett’s pupils and places his hand on the inmate’s chest, shaking him slightly. ‘Mr. Lockett is not unconscious,’ [Oklahoma State Penitentiary Warden Anita] Trammell states.”

Branstetter’s detailed eyewitness account goes on:

“6:38 p.m. Lockett is grimacing, grunting and lifting his head and shoulders entirely up from the gurney. ... He appears to be in pain.”

Suddenly, the blinds were lowered, concealing the grim activity in the execution chamber. The reporters were told to exit. Lockett was pronounced dead at 7:06 pm. Branstetter said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, “We were told by the Department of Corrections last night that they haven’t even determined that this qualified as an execution, because he died of a heart attack 43 minutes later.” Most Oklahoma executions last about six minutes. Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton later explained, “His vein exploded.”

Oklahoma had never used this particular “lethal cocktail” before: midazolam, a sedative; vecuronium bromide, to stop respiration; and potassium chloride, to stop the heart. Charles Warner was scheduled to be killed on the same day as Lockett. After the horrifically botched execution of Lockett, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin issued a 14-day stay of execution for Warner. Announcing a review of lethal injections, Fallin said on Wednesday that “the state needs to be certain of its protocols and procedures for executions and that they work.” While the review she has ordered will include an autopsy of Lockett by an independent pathologist, the overall review is being conducted by a member of her cabinet, so its independence is being questioned.

Lockett and Warner had sued Oklahoma, claiming that the secrecy surrounding the source of the drugs and the execution cocktail violated their constitutional rights. One Oklahoma judge agreed and issued a stay last month. Justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately agreed and issued their own stay of execution on April 21. On April 22, Gov. Fallin, claiming the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction, ignored the stays and rescheduled the executions to April 29. The next day, the Supreme Court rescinded its stay, stating that the inmates do not, in fact, have the right to know the chemicals to be used in their execution.

“After weeks of Oklahoma refusing to disclose basic information about the drugs for tonight’s lethal-injection procedures, tonight, Clayton Lockett was tortured to death,” said Madeline Cohen, attorney for the other condemned man, Charles Warner. “The state must disclose complete information about the drugs, including their purity, efficacy, source and the results of any testing. Until much more is known about tonight’s failed experiment of an execution, no execution can be permitted in Oklahoma.”

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Race Matters: Resegregation and the Rollback of Affirmative Action

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

“I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” So proclaimed Alabama Gov. George Wallace more than a half-century ago. His proudly racist rhetoric was matched by heinous actions: Murders, lynchings and systemic violence, often endorsed or organized by state and local governments, were inflicted on African Americans and their allies struggling for civil rights. Despite that, those fighting for equality prevailed. Among the successes were the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, affirmative action and court-ordered integration of schools. But with this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision supporting Michigan’s ban against affirmative action in state university admissions, and with the increasing resegregation of schools, it seems like Wallace’s dream of “segregation forever” may be alive and all too well.

Nikole Hannah-Jones is an investigative journalist with the nonprofit news organization ProPublica, which has just published her yearlong, 9,000-word piece on the resegregation of public schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This remarkable report, “Segregation Now,” notes that “In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.” The Brown decision, issued in May of 1954, covered several pending court cases (all organized by the NAACP) challenging school segregation. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren authored the unanimous decision, writing, “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

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The Grand American Tradition of Violent White Supremacy

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

Another U.S. shooting spree has left bullet-riddled bodies in its wake, and refocused attention on violent, right-wing extremists. Frazier Glenn Miller, a former leader of a wing of the Ku Klux Klan, is accused of killing three people outside two Jewish community centers outside Kansas City, Kan. As he was hauled away in a police car, he shouted “Heil Hitler!” Unlike Islamic groups that U.S. agencies spend tens of billions of dollars targeting, domestic white supremacist groups enjoy relative freedom to spew their hatred and promote racist ideology. Too often, their murderous rampages are viewed as acts of deranged “lone wolf” attackers. These seemingly fringe groups are actually well-organized, interconnected and are enjoying renewed popularity.

In April 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a study on right-wing extremists in the United States. The 10-page report included findings like “The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.” It controversially suggested military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan could potentially be recruited to join hate groups. The report provoked a firestorm of criticism, especially from veterans groups. The Obama administration was just months old, and newly appointed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano withdrew the report, apologizing for it during a congressional budget hearing.

Mark Potok is a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been tracking right-wing hate groups and Frazier Glenn Miller for years. Potok said on Democracy Now! about that report, “a real problem with the Department of Homeland Security ... ever since a particular report on the right wing was leaked to the press in April of 2009, DHS has sort of cowered. They essentially gutted their non-Islamic domestic terrorism unit.”

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From Kabul to Cairo, the Killing and Jailing of Journalists Continues

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

Journalism is not a crime. This is the rallying cry in demanding the release of four Al-Jazeera journalists imprisoned in Egypt. Three of them — Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed — have just passed their hundredth day of incarceration. The fourth, Abdullah al-Shami, has been in jail for more than six months. They have been charged with “spreading lies harmful to state security and joining a terrorist organization.” Of course, the only thing they were doing was their job.

Anja Niedringhaus also was doing her job as a photographer for The Associated Press when she was murdered last week in Khost, Afghanistan. She was covering the preparations for Afghanistan’s national election, and was sitting in her car with AP reporter Kathy Gannon when an Afghan police officer opened fire, killing Niedringhaus and wounding Gannon.

Niedringhaus’ work captured the brutality of war, and the hope of humanity. She began her career as a teenager, photographing the fall of the Berlin Wall in her native Germany. She went on to work for the European Pressphoto Agency, where she covered the war in the Balkans, the aftermath of Sept. 11 in New York City, and then on to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. In 2002, she moved on to the AP, where she covered Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as major international sporting events like the World Cup and Wimbledon. When scrolling through the images of our times that she left behind, you are struck by the courage, the talent and the ability to capture and transmit an instant in time charged with the full weight of history.

Niedringhaus is one of too many journalists killed while performing a critical public service: journalism.

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Climate Science’s Dire Warning: Humans Are Baking the Planet

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

The majority of the world is convinced that humans are changing the climate, for the worse. Now, evidence is mounting that paints just how grim a future we are making for ourselves and the planet. We will experience more extreme weather events, including hurricanes and droughts, mass extinctions and severe food shortages globally. The world’s leading group of climate-change experts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has issued its most recent report after a five-day meeting last week in Yokohama, Japan. The IPCC, over 1,800 scientists from around the world, collects, analyzes and synthesizes the best, solid science on climate and related fields. The prognosis is not good.

At the news conference announcing the report, IPCC chairperson Rajendra Pachauri warned, “If the world doesn’t do anything about mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases and the extent of climate change continues to increase, then the very social stability of human systems could be at stake.” Pachauri speaks with the discipline of a scientist and the reserve of a diplomat. The latest report, though, states clearly: “Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts in the form of civil war and inter-group violence.” It stresses how the world food supply, already experiencing stress, will be impacted, and those who are most vulnerable will be the first to go hungry. But the problem is even larger.

The IPCC’s previous comprehensive report came out in 2007. Since that time, the amount of scientific findings has doubled, making human-induced climate change an irrefutable fact. But there are still powerful deniers, funded by the fossil-fuel industry. Oxfam, a global anti-hunger campaign organization, also is challenging the deniers with a report released last week called “Hot and hungry—how to stop climate change derailing the fight against hunger.” Oxfam’s Tim Gore says that “corporations like Exxon, the powerful economic interests that are currently profiting from our high-carbon economic model ... stand to lose the most from a transition to a low-carbon, fair alternative.” Undaunted, ExxonMobil issued its own report following the IPCC’s this week, asserting that climate policies are “highly unlikely” to stop it from producing and selling fossil fuels in the near future.

Fossil-fuel corporations like ExxonMobil exert enormous influence over climate-change policy, especially in the United States. The U.S. House of Representatives this week passed a measure that would effectively force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and related bodies to ignore climate change, focusing instead on forecasting severe weather, but not its likely causes. Meanwhile, at the state level, the Tennessee Senate passed a bill banning investment in certain forms of public transit. According to ThinkProgress, the measure received critical funding from the billionaire Republican oil barons Charles and David Koch. The political influence of people like the Kochs will likely become more direct, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate personal contribution caps to candidates in its ruling in the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.

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Barack Obama: The Least Transparent President in History

By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” So wrote President Barack Obama, back on Jan. 29, 2009, just days into his presidency. “Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” Now, six years into the Obama administration, his promise of “a new era of open Government” seems just another grand promise, cynically broken.

As the news industry observed its annual “Sunshine Week” in mid-March, The Associated Press reported that “[m]ore often than ever, the administration censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act [FOIA].” The AP report continued, “The government’s efforts to be more open about its activities last year were their worst since President Barack Obama took office.”

This comes as no surprise to Ryan Shapiro, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who just filed a federal lawsuit against the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency, seeking public records pertaining to the U.S. role in the 1962 arrest of Nelson Mandela, which would land him in prison for 27 years. When his FOIA requests on Mandela were denied, he sued. “I’m pursuing these records,” he explained to me, “mostly because I’m interested in knowing why the U.S. intelligence community viewed Mandela as a threat to American security and what role the U.S. intelligence community played in thwarting Mandela’s struggle for racial justice and democracy in South Africa.”

Shapiro filed a FOIA request with the NSA, seeking details on the arrest of Mandela over 50 years ago. The NSA wrote in reply, “To the extent that you are seeking intelligence information on Nelson Mandela, we have determined that the fact of the existence or non-existence of the materials you request is a currently and properly classified matter.” Half a century later?

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U.S. Sailors and Marines Allege Fukushima Radiation Sickness

Three years have passed since the earthquake and tsunami that caused the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The tsunami’s immediate death toll was more than 15,000, with close to 3,000 still missing. Casualties are still mounting, though, both in Japan and much farther away. The impact of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown on health and the environment is severe, compounded daily as radioactive pollution continues to pour from the site, owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company, TEPCO.

In an unusual development, more than 100 U.S. Marines and Navy sailors have joined a class action suit, charging TEPCO with lying about the severity of the disaster as they were rushing to the scene to provide humanitarian assistance. They were aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other vessels traveling with the Reagan, engaged in humanitarian response to the disaster. The response was dubbed “Operation Tomodachi,” meaning “Operation Friendship.”

Lt. Steve Simmons is one of the plaintiffs. Before Fukushima, he was physically robust. Eight months later, he suffered inexplicable health problems. He said on the “Democracy Now!” news hour, that, while driving to work: “I blacked out and drove my truck up on a curb. Following that, I started coming down with what maybe I thought was just maybe a flu, started running fevers. I dropped about 20 to 25 pounds unexpectedly and then started experiencing night sweats, difficulty sleeping.” He was hospitalized three times. Doctors dismissed his concerns about possible radiation poisoning. “Three days later, after I was discharged, I was back in the hospital because my lymph nodes started swelling, and still running constant fevers as high as 102.9.” In April 2012, his legs buckled under him while he was hospitalized. He has relied on a wheelchair ever since. He will be allowed to “medically retire” this coming April.

This is the second attempt to sue TEPCO on behalf of these sailors and Marines. The first lawsuit had eight plaintiffs and was dismissed for technical reasons based on the court’s lack of jurisdiction. “By June of 2013, we had 51 sailors and Marines who had contacted us with various illnesses,” lead attorney Charles Bonner explained, “including thyroid cancers, testicular cancers, brain cancers, unusual uterine problems, excessive uterine bleeding, all kinds of gynecological problems, problems that you do not see in a population of 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds, 23-year-olds, even 35-year-olds. ... So, now we have filed a class action for approximately a hundred sailors.” As news of the lawsuit spreads, many more will likely join in. The USS Reagan had at least 5,500 people on board when off the coast of Japan.

You might wonder why the group doesn’t sue their employer, the U.S. Navy, as well. “The responsible party for these young sailors’ injury is the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the fourth-largest power company in the world,” Bonner explained. “Tokyo Electric Power Company failed to tell the public, including the Navy, that they were in an active meltdown. They had a triple meltdown following the earthquake and the tsunami. They didn’t have batteries. They didn’t have backup power. They didn’t have any kind of auxiliary water supply to cool these reactors down.”

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