Democracy Now! Daily Digest - A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Friday, March 7, 2014

Democracy Now! Daily Digest - A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Friday, March 7, 2014 democracynow.org
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Roundtable: As Crimea Threatens Secession, Does East-West Split Hasten Ukraine's Political Divide?
Russian President Vladimir Putin is rebuffing warnings from the U.S. and European Union as the crisis in Ukraine threatens one of the worst east-west standoffs since the Cold War. The pro-Russian Crimean Parliament has voted to hold a referendum on splitting off from Ukraine and joining Russia. But the vote’s legitimacy has been called into question after the installation of a pro-Russian government in Crimea just last week. We host a roundtable discussion with three guests: Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian citizen and researcher at the University College London specializing in far-right movements; Jonathan Steele, former Moscow correspondent for The Guardian and author of "Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy"; and Keith Gessen, an editor at n+1 magazine who covered the 2010 Ukraine elections for The New Yorker.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The pro-Russian Crimean Parliament has voted to hold a referendum on splitting off from Ukraine and joining Russia. But the vote’s legitimacy has been called into question after the installation of a pro-Russian government in Crimea just last week.
This comes as President Obama and his European allies have unveiled a coordinated set of sanctions to punish Russia for occupying Crimea. In what some are calling the worst east-west crisis since the Cold War, Obama called Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday to urge him to seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis, emphasizing that Russia’s actions in Crimea were a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. During a telephone conversation between the two leaders, Putin reportedly said ties between their two countries should not suffer because of disagreements over Ukraine. Now NATO has said it will suspend cooperation with Russia, including a joint mission destroying Syria’s chemical stockpile.
Obama outlined the punitive measures being taken by his administration and said Secretary of State John Kerry will continue to hold talks with all relevant parties, including Russia and Ukraine.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This morning, I signed an executive order that authorizes sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine or for stealing the assets of the Ukrainian people. According to my guidance, the State Department has also put in place restrictions on the travel of certain individuals and officials. These decisions continue our efforts to impose a cost on Russia and those responsible for the situation in Crimea, and they also give us the flexibility to adjust our response going forward based on Russia’s actions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Meanwhile, Ukraine’s former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, has ruled out talks with Russia and urged Europe to take tough action on Crimea. Speaking on Thursday, she said the referendum is being held at "gunpoint."
YULIA TYMOSHENKO: [translated] Today, there are well-armed Russian troops in Crimea. I want to put forward to you: What type of referendum can be fair at the gunpoint of an automatic Kalashnikov? How can this referendum shed any light? Who will count the votes? Who will give a guarantee that the will of the people is not dictated by what Russia says about a territory that today is under occupation? This is why this so-called referendum is illegitimate and it violates Ukraine’s constitution. Any such referendum that affects the future of a territory must include the whole of the Ukrainian nation.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ukraine’s former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, speaking Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Paralympic team is set to decide whether it’s participating in the Sochi Winter Paralympics, which open in the Russian Black Sea resort later today. Many foreign dignitaries have already boycotted the games.
For more on the crisis unfolding in the region, we host a discussion. In London, we’re joined by two guests. Anton Shekhovtsov is a Ukrainian citizen who was in Kiev and Sevastapol in January. He’s a researcher at University College London, specializing in far-right movements. WIth him, Jonathan Steele, former Moscow correspondent for The Guardian. He recently wrote a piece called "The Ukraine Crisis: John Kerry and NATO Must Calm Down and Back Off." He’s the author of Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy.
Here in New York, we’re joined by Keith Gessen, editor at n+1 magazine. His latest co-authored editorial is called "Ukraine, Putin, and the West." He covered the 2010 Ukraine elections for The New Yorker magazine.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Anton. The significance of the Crimean Parliament voting to hold a referendum on whether to secede from Ukraine?
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: Yes, thank you for the invitation.
I would agree with the commentators, like former Prime Minister Tymoshenko and also President Barack Obama, that this referendum is absolutely illegitimate, for three reasons. First of all, it’s against the Ukrainian constitution to hold a referendum in an Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Second, it is not possible to hold a free and fair referendum in this situation, when Crimea is now invaded by the Russian troops and pro-Russian separatists. And third, it is not possible to hold a referendum, in technical terms, because the Central Commission of Ukraine has blocked the database of the voters, so the Crimean authorities, they don’t have access to the voter base in the Crimea, so they can’t really compose lists of the voters, of people who would take part in the referendum.
And this referendum, it will not be recognized by either the U.S. or Canada or the European Union. And Crimean Tatars are not—who are a native people in the Crimea, who were there even before the Russians and Ukrainians settled, they are not going to recognize this referendum. And this may provoke a dramatic standoff between the pro-Russian separatists and Russian troops, on one hand, and the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians, on the other hand. And some ethnic Russians will also join this standoff on the side of pro-Ukrainian forces.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Keith Gessen, what about this issue of the referendum and the fact that you have also a central government here which itself—its legitimacy is still in question, because there was a duly elected president that was ousted in the process of these protests?
KEITH GESSEN: That’s certainly the Russian case, that Yanukovych—say what you will about him, and there’s lots of bad things to be said about him which are true—he was elected. The process of getting him out of office was a revolution. Everybody’s been calling it that. I think that’s correct. The Rada held a vote. It was held under excited circumstances, and the Russians are refusing to acknowledge that that was legitimate. The State Department, with some justice, says, "Well, the Rada did vote. They did vote Yanukovych out of office and the new government into office." But the Russians are using this confusion and excitement to say, "Well, actually, things are indetermined yet. So, we can do what we want."
AMY GOODMAN: Jonathan Steele, what do you think should be the response to this planned vote? You’re saying that the West should cool out.
JONATHAN STEELE: Well, I don’t think the vote is terribly important, and it’s not at all clear that even if the vote went ahead and the majority said they wanted to join Russia, that Putin would accept that. At the moment he’s saying that he doesn’t want Crimea to join Russia. So, I think it’s a bit of a sideshow.
I think the crucial issue is what’s happening in Kiev. And I agree with what Keith says, that the whole issue is the legitimacy and the viability and the representative nature of the government in Kiev. The Russians, as Keith’s pointing out, is saying it was an unconstitutional coup, and there’s a lot of evidence to say that was correct. It was a kind of insurrection by armed people. And you’ve also pointed out in Democracy Now! over the last few hours, 24 hours or so, that there were—there’s a lot of evidence now that the snipers came from the protest side rather than from the government side, people who killed police and civilians.
The crucial thing, I think, is to try and get a representative government in the Ukraine that will not frighten people in the eastern areas and the south. Literally, out of the 19 members of—ministers, rather, in that government, only two come from the east, none come from the south. The government also initially started to say that Russian would not be allowed anymore as an official language in the eastern and southern parts of the Ukraine. They’ve not acted on that; they’ve rescinded that. But still, it sent a terrible signal, psychological and political signal. And there are some efforts in Western Ukraine to ban and to make illegal the Party of the Regions, the old party of Yanukovych, which, of course, does represent a lot of people. So, there are a lot of very anti-democratic moves going on in Kiev, and I think that’s where the focus should be, trying to sort that out and get agreement between the West and Moscow on that.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Our guests in London are Jonathan Steele, Moscow correspondent for The Guardian; Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian citizen, University College London, researching far-right movements; and in New York with us, Keith Gessen, editor at n+1 magazine. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute on Ukraine.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Razom Nas Bahato," "Together We are Many, We Cannot Be Defeated," by the Ukrainian hip-hop group GreenJolly. That song became the unofficial anthem of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I am Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Our guests, Jonathan Steele, former Moscow correspondent for The Guardian, he’s with us from London; Anton Shekhovtsov is a Ukrainian citizen from the University College London, researching far-right movements; and here in New York, Keith Gessen, editor at n+1 magazine. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jonathan Steele, I’d like to ask you—you mentioned about this leaked phone call. During the protests that ousted the elected president, there were obviously not only protesters killed, but police killed, as well, and this leaked tape that has come out has bolstered claims that anti-government forces were behind sniper attacks on protesters in Kiev last month. Both sides of Ukraine’s political divide blamed the other when dozens of people were killed by gunfire in the weeks before the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych. But in an intercepted phone call between Estonia’s foreign minister, Urmas Paet, and the European Union policy chief, Catherine Ashton, Paet says the sniper fire came from the opposition.
URMAS PAET: All the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.
CATHERINE ASHTON: Well, that’s—yeah.
URMAS PAET: So that—and then she also showed me some photos. She said that, as medical doctor, she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets. And it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened, so that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jonathan Steele, what about this whole issue of the democratic forces that ousted Yanukovych?
JONATHAN STEELE: Well, I think it was a huge coalition that was in the street, in the Maidan Square, for several weeks. I mean, of course, there were a lot of ordinary people one could call civilians, who were in favor of joining the EU and having the EU agreement, which Yanukovych refused to sign. But then I think there were professional demonstrators, if you like, people who are very experienced in, you know, setting up the tents, providing equipment, providing heating, providing water, food and so on. And then I think there were people who were insurrectionists, who were armed—in fact, some of them might even be called terrorists.
I mean, I always thought that it was quite possible that the snipers were coming from the opposition side, because the first day when there was killing, out of the 28 people dead, nine were police. I mean, it’s not normal in these demonstrations, when one side opens fire, and it’s usually the police, but nine of their own people die. So one was always suspicious, at the beginning.
But from this phone call that you just played, it seems that almost all the snipers were from the opposition side, which is a terrible indictment of their behavior, and also of the—most of the foreign media, which have completely suppressed this phone call, and of Western governments, who have made no reference to it. I mean, to their credit, the new authorities in Kiev claim that they’re going to have an investigation of the sniper issue, but I’ve not heard John Kerry or David Cameron coming out publicly and saying, "That’s a very good idea, and these are very disturbing suggestions."
AMY GOODMAN: Anton Shekhovtsov, your response to that and the call?
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: Well, I wouldn’t really pay too much emphasis on this call. First of all, none of the—none of the—neither Catherine Ashton nor Estonian minister have really investigated what happened in Ukraine at that period. And their views are their personal views. It’s not based on evidence. It’s not based on investigation. There were rumors during the Ukrainian revolution that there was a third force who was very much interested in escalation of the conflict, and maybe a representative of that third force was shooting at protesters and at police. So we must not exclude this possibility. And again, Ashton’s and Estonian minister’s views are their own views; they’re subjective views and are not based on the investigation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Keith Gessen, I’d like to ask you about this whole issue of Crimea itself, because obviously it’s at the center now of this—of this conflict, and neither Russians nor Ukrainians have historical roots in Crimea. Could you talk about the history of that region and how it is that it became a majority-Russian-speaking area?
KEITH GESSEN: Well, initially, going back to a few centuries, it was a Tatar region. So you have the Crimean Tatars who was there. There was a khanate of the Tatars. It was colonized by Russia back in the early 18th century, so Russia has been there for a fairly long time. Then it was transferred into Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev. The Soviets drew these borders. They never really thought the Soviet Union was going to fall apart, so they didn’t really care what went where. And now, of course, it’s become a very problematic area. It’s been—since the beginning of Ukrainian independence, Crimea has been the most restive, the most separatist, the area that has given the country the most problems.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the protesters, Keith, overall? How would you characterize what’s going on right now in Ukraine?
KEITH GESSEN: I think it’s important to understand that—there’s been a lot of debate, especially on the left, about the presence of nationalists and ultra-right people in the protests. I think they’re definitely there. They’re in Parliament. Leftist activists from Russia who go down to Kiev, they tell stories about being beaten up. It’s a real—it’s been, for a few years now, a pretty tense situation. The trouble in Ukraine is, there is no left. There isn’t—it’s not Greece. It’s not Italy. There isn’t a left movement that the protests could really express. So, if you’re a young person who, you know, is very oppositional, is anti-government, you’re going to gravitate toward the right. There is no left. So, the coalition of the protests was a coalition of liberals, who want to be part of Europe, who don’t really want to have too much to do with Russia, which has become a very ugly, authoritarian regime, and these ultra-right ultra-nationalists. And it was a coalition which we see—you know, we saw this also in the Russian protests a couple years ago against Putin. It was the same sort of coalition of the right wing and liberals.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jonathan Steele, I’d like to ask you about the role of the United States and the European Union in this conflict. You’ve been urging the U.S. to back off in some of your writings. Could you speak about that particular role, the United States’ role here?
JONATHAN STEELE: Well, I think it goes back to the expansion of NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union, which a lot of people—you know, former Russian ambassadors of the West, of U.S., like Jack Matlock, and people in Britain who had served in Moscow—realized would be a damaging move. And there was a bit of an argument, I think, over whether or not to expand NATO, but the hawks won out in the Clinton administration, so Poland and Hungary were brought in, and then came the former Soviet republics, the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. And then there’s always been the idea in NATO that they could expand even further to Georgia, particularly, and Ukraine. And Ukraine is so strategically important to Russia, one can understand why they feel very angry about that and upset. And this EU agreement that Yanukovych refused to sign would have been possibly a kind of backdoor towards NATO membership, because it does say that Ukraine would be part of the common security and foreign policy of the EU, which is of course linked to NATO, as well. So, I can understand why the Russians were very unhappy about that. And they liked Yanukovych because he was the first president, out of the four they’ve had since independence, who, in his election campaign, said, "We will not join NATO." And he was elected partly on that basis, because all opinion polls have shown the majority of Ukrainians are against NATO membership.
But then, in the more recent, you know, events of the last few days, I think Kerry and Obama have overreacted, because they should recognize, as I said before, that this is a very dubious government in Kiev, and whether or not it’s constitutional or not is—can be argued, but it’s certainly not popular to people in the east, the Russian-speaking majority of the country in the east and the south. And they should try and get a more democratic government, but instead of that, Kerry just ignores that. And he’s been pressing Lavrov, in the two meetings they’ve held this week in Paris and in Rome, to recognize, as he put it, the legitimacy of the government in Ukraine. Well, that should be a matter for discussion and negotiation, not something that they just say to the Russians: "Basically, you have to accept this government, come what may." And that’s where they’ve—the West at the moment is making a huge mistake.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, appeared on Fox News. He said Putin is trying to expand Russia’s territory in the region.
JOHN BOLTON: He gave us notice of his strategy seven or eight years ago, when he said, in what is now one of the most frequently repeated quotes from his leadership in Russia—when he said the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. It’s clear he wants to re-establish Russian hegemony within the space of the former Soviet Union. Ukraine is the biggest prize. That’s what he’s after. The occupation of the Crimea is a step in that direction. It shows now how Putin will negotiate with the interim government in Kiev: He’ll negotiate with it with his foot on Ukraine’s neck.
AMY GOODMAN: Jonathan Steele, do you think that’s a fair assessment? And then I want to get Anton’s response.
JONATHAN STEELE: No, I think that’s a gross overreaction and exaggeration. Putin is trying to set up something called the Eurasian Union, a kind of customs union, and he’s got Belarus and Kazakhstan to show interest in that. And he wanted Ukraine to join, too. But, I mean, the real problem is that Ukraine is divided between people who are Russian-speaking in the east and the western side, which is part of it, which was never even under the tsarist empire of Russia. So it’s a very divided country. You have to have, perhaps, eventually, a federation to prevent it breaking apart, but in the meantime, a proper national government of national unity. And I see no sense that this crisis has been created by Putin. He’s reacting to events, and one has to look at those events and not assume he’s on some forward march. We heard all this in the Soviet period: the Russians always on the expansionist march and so on. I mean, you have to look at the facts, and not just fit them into some kind of ideological, anti-Russian sort of matrix.
AMY GOODMAN: Anton Shekhovtsov, would you agree?
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: No, I don’t agree with Mr. Steele. Well, first of all, this is the interim government. This is the first post-revolutionary government. And it is very important to understand that in May Ukrainians will have presidential elections, and shortly after that, perhaps in autumn, Ukrainians will have early parliamentary elections in order to renew the legitimacy of the power relations in Ukraine.
As for Putin and his expansionist ideas, they’re very clear that Putin is not going to stop with occupying Crimea. He will go further. Putin himself may be a strategist or still holding those KGB views, but the ideology behind Putin and his advisers is called Eurasianism, and Eurasianism is about not only restoring the Soviet Union in its former borders, but going beyond that. And if you know Russian history, if you know contemporary Russian politics, you will see that his advisers, they are urging him to go westwards and not only defend Russian-speaking population in the Crimea—and I am, myself, ethnic Russian. I am, myself, Russian-speaking. I had to learn Ukrainian to speak it. And I oppose the Russian invasion in the Crimea. Maybe then he will try to defend Russian speaking in the Baltics, and there are around a million of them living in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. And maybe then he could go even further.
Putin is now destroying the whole security system of post-war Europe. He’s challenging the West, and he’s trying to undermine all the attempts at nuclear disarmament, because in 1994 Ukraine has—Ukraine voluntarily got rid of the world’s third-largest stock of nuclear weapons, and Ukraine was promised territorial integrity and sovereignty by Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. And now Russia violated that agreement. And then, the situation in the world—if the West fails to protect Ukraine and protect its territorial integrity, then a nuclear weapon, a nuclear bomb, will be the only tool and instrument for protecting territorial integrity and sovereignty in the whole world, and a new nuclear arms race will commence. And that would be a horrible, horrible development that would put the whole world in danger.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to raise the issue of the European Union role. And, Keith Gessen, maybe you can respond to this. On Thursday, European Union leaders agreed to suspend visa and investment talks with Russia. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy told a news conference that the EU leaders would also freeze Russian assets and withdraw from a G8 summit, if Russia does not back down.
HERMAN VAN ROMPUY: In the absence of results, the European Union will decide on additional measures, such as travel bans, asset freezes and a cancellation of the EU-Russia summit. Any further steps by the Russian Federation to destabilize the situation in Ukraine would lead to severe and far-reaching consequences for relations between European Union and its member states, on the one hand, and the Russian Federation, on the other hand, which will include a broad range of economic areas.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. But the reality is that Europe is very, very reliant on Russia for much of its natural gas and other resources. Could you talk about the gamble here being played between the European Union and Russia, as well?
KEITH GESSEN: Well, I mean, I would also say that, you know, that gas goes through Ukraine. One of the largest companies in Ukraine is Naftogaz, which takes care of the pipeline that takes the gas from Europe into Russia. So everybody is sort of tied together in these knots that are going to be very difficult to untie.
I think one of the things that gets lost in these discussions of the standoff between Russia and the EU, and the U.S. and Russia, is Ukraine. Right? Ukraine is being turned into a battleground for the aspirations, on the one hand, of the EU, and on the other hand, of Russia. This is not good for Ukraine. And part of the problem is that, you know, this process started in 2004 with the Orange Revolution, which brought to the government, to the presidency, Viktor Yushchenko, who was strongly nationalist, also very strongly anti-Russian. He had a very anti-Russian presidency. Relations between the two countries were very bad. And part of the reason that Yanukovych was legitimately elected in 2010 was that people were very tired of this standoff with Russia. It wasn’t good for Ukraine. A lot of people have family ties to Russia. And economically and culturally and historically, Ukraine is tied to Russia. However, the Russian regime is terrible. It’s really awful. It has—it is less democratic, by a pretty wide margin, than the Ukrainian regime. So, you have this situation where Ukraine has this natural ally and natural neighbor; unfortunately, that natural ally, natural neighbor, is Russia.
AMY GOODMAN: Just to wrap up, Anton Shekhovtsov, and then Jonathan Steele, finally, what do you think needs to happen now?
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: I would—I would really support all the efforts that the U.S., under leadership of President Barack Obama, and the EU are doing right now. Nobody wants a war. So I think that the West should act firmly, but try to—try all the diplomatic measures possible, including, of course, political, economic, military, but without—without any military conflict, introduce some sanctions, like visa bans and investigations about the money laundering in the West by the Russian oligarchs. So, the more diplomatic measures are introduced, the better. So, I think that Russia, it is already suffering economically, and I don’t think that people in Russia, Russian citizens, will be really interested in a situation where—when their economy declines.
AMY GOODMAN: Jonathan Steele, your final—
ANTON SHEKHOVTSOV: So, I think—
AMY GOODMAN: Since we’re going to have to wrap, your final comment?
JONATHAN STEELE: Well, I think there has to—there has to be agreement between the West and Moscow on this. I think they should try and find a common economic package in which both sides contribute, because the economy is really the major problem facing Ukraine. I think Putin will back off on Crimea if he feels he’s got reassurances, for example, that there will be no issue of joining either the Eurasian Union, the Moscow-led union, or the EU, the Western-led union, for the time being, that that’s all put on ice, and the character of the government in Kiev is enlarged and broadened to reassure people in eastern and southern Ukraine that they’re not going to be humiliated and discriminated against in the future. So, negotiations is the way out; compromise is the way out.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us, Jonathan Steele, former Moscow correspondent for The Guardian; Anton Shekhovtsov is a Ukrainian citizen with the University College London; Keith Gessen, editor at n+1 magazine.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go south to Venezuela. Two protesters were killed overnight. Who were the protesters? What’s happening there? Stay with us.
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Debate: Do Venezuelan Protests Reflect Popular Discontent or the Old Qualms of a Divided Elite?
The ongoing protests in Venezuela have left at least 20 people dead since breaking out last month. Both sides have staged massive rallies, with opponents accusing President Nicolás Maduro of authoritarianism and mishandling the economy and supporters backing his continuation of Hugo Chávez’s legacy of social welfare. Maduro has bristled at outside attempts to intervene. We host a debate on who is protesting in Venezuela, and why, with two guests: Margarita López Maya, a Venezuelan historian and political analyst with the Center for Development Studies at the Central University of Venezuela, and Roberto Lovato, a writer with New American Media who recently returned from reporting in Caracas.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Venezuela, which has this week marked the one-year anniversary of the death of longtime president Hugo Chávez. This comes as his successor, President Nicolás Maduro, has faced a month of violent demonstrations. The protests began in the city of San Cristóbal in western Táchira state, near the Colombia border, and then spread to the capital, Caracas, where thousands of opposition protesters have held regular marches, often clashing with police. At least 20 people have been killed since the protests began. Overnight, a Venezuelan soldier and a motorcyclist dies in a melee sparked by the opposition’s barricading of a Caracas street. This is the commander of the Venezuelan National Guard.
MAJ. GEN. JUSTO NOGUERA PIETRI: [translated] We here continue to follow orders from the commander-in-chief. We are here to keep internal order and guard public order, give the citizens the security they need. And if it is necessary to lay down our lives here, we will do so, because order needs to be restored here. Enough already with these fascist groups. Enough already with the violence that is unjustly hurting the people.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A group of U.N.-appointed human rights experts has asked Venezuela about allegations of abuse against the opposition. They’ve cited reports that some detainees had been beaten and tortured. President Maduro has bristled at outside attempts to intervene in the unrest. He announced Thursday he was breaking off diplomatic and commercial ties with Panama after it called for the Organization of American States to convene and discuss the protests.
PRESIDENT NICOLÁS MADURO: [translated] I say to Insulza, "Be quiet, sir, and don’t meddle with someone who didn’t call you." Venezuela has not solicited a debate within the Organization of American States about its internal situation. We haven’t solicited their intervention into Venezuela. We would be crazy to do that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that expressed support for democracy in Venezuela. The measure passed by a vote of 393 to one. It was proposed by a Republican congresswoman from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN: In the face of a determined autocrat who disregards expectations of right conduct and who is willing to use violence to impose his will on free citizens, well, Mr. Speaker, words are just not nearly enough. We must act, and we must act now. We must support those who are pleading for respect for democratic principles, for human rights in Venezuela.
AMY GOODMAN: We host a debate right now on the situation in Venezuela. Joining us from Caracas, Margarita López Maya, a Venezuelan historian and political analyst, professor with the Center for Development Studies at the Central University of Venezuela, and in Berkeley, California, Roberto Lovato, writer with the New American Media who recently returned from reporting in Caracas. His latest piece for Al Jazeera is "Venezuela’s Opposition is United Against Maduro, But Internally Divided."
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Roberto, what you found, just coming back from Venezuela.
ROBERTO LOVATO: What I found, Amy, was a people’s movement in Venezuela that’s pretty much completely absent—people like Carlos Borola and the people in the mercado in an area called Chacao. You don’t hear these voices, you don’t see these voices, you don’t feel these voices, because your media isn’t telling you about what’s happening to the poor. OK, I went and I interviewed people in all the—in different protest areas, like Altamira and Chacao, which is one of the wealthiest areas in all of Latin America. And in all my years reporting and engaging with oppositional and revolutionary movements, I’ve never seen a protest movement, an "opposition movement," quote-unquote, with so many Nike tennis shoes, high-end Nikes, fashion jeans and dogs whose collars cost more than a week’s salary in the minimum wage.
So, you have a Venezuelan right that’s deeply divided right now, that’s lost 18 out of the 19 elections in the last—since 1995. They lost in the most recent municipal elections; 70 percent of all municipalities went to the PSUV, the Chavistas, basically. And, you know, it’s a movement in search of—not money, because the USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, have given them hundreds of millions of dollars, including the student groups like the JVAS, the Juventud de Acción en Venezuela Activa, and so—Unida.
And so, you know, you have an opposition that’s in search of a new way, and so has gone the violent route, has gone the kind of radical route, that has included killing people, like somebody you haven’t heard about in your media, who is Elvis [de la Rosa], a 29-year-old motorcyclist who was beheaded by barbed wire that these "peaceful" students that everybody’s telling you about put up on the advice of a general who tweeted a message to basically hurt and kill and maim people on motorcycles, and they succeeded in that in more than one case. And there was a woman, there was a mother, who died like that. And so, try to find these stories in your mainstream media. You won’t. The media, just finally yesterday, reported that two people—by the way, what you mentioned, Juan, was—they weren’t protesters. Those were innocent people that were killed by the "peaceful" protesters again last night in Los Ruices, another pretty upwardly mobile area. So, what’s happening is a right wing that’s divided because the oligarchs are—many of them are actually in a peace process with Maduro and the PSUV, so—and the government. So, that’s what I found.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Margarita López Maya, I would like to bring you into the conversation. Talk to us about these issues that Roberto Lovato is raising and your perspective on who the protesters are and whether the opposition is as divided as Roberto is claiming.
MARGARITA LÓPEZ MAYA: Yes, well, hello. Hello. How are you? I’m here in Caracas. The protests had a full month now, and it did start in the city of San Cristóbal in the state of Táchira. And why it started there, the state of Táchira, which is the border with Colombia, is because in Táchira the hardships are like—kind of add to all the hardships of the Venezuelan people today. We have been going through a very heavy economic crisis, but in the state of Táchira, that is worse, because Táchira, being a border with Colombia, has suffered from militarization, paramilitaries, [inaudible], insecurity, smuggling, drug trafficking—you name it, they’ve got it.
And so, in the beginning of February, there was a protest, a student protest, because one of the girls was robbed and about to be raped. They started a protest. They were very severely repressed. Two boys went to jail. They were thrown into jail that night. They were beaten. They were kicked. They were harassed. And the response? They kept on protesting. And the response of the government was that this was some kind of a complot, a plotting from the CIA, the youth of right, etc., etc. So this sparkled the whole protest that has been going on in Venezuela since then. It began on February the 4th. Today we are in March already, and it doesn’t stop. It has taken most of the big cities of the country, not only San Cristóbal, Caracas, Barquisimeto, Valencia, Maracaibo, Maracay, Cumaná—you name them, all big and middle cities have been having these protests.
The protests—the leader of the protests has been the student movement. There was—they called for a big concentration on February the 12th. This concentration was joined by civil society, was joined by some groups of the opposition, namely by a party that’s called Voluntad Popular. And the response was—of the government, was severe repression. The two first deaths in Venezuela were coming from what we call the political police—that is, the intelligence service, the National Bolivarian Intelligence Service, the SEBIN. The videos, the photos are there. National Guard has been accused. They had been thrown—they have been gone—arrested—two deaths, two or three deaths. And then we have the other phenomenon which is very severe, very concerning. That is those armed paramilitary groups that join in with the National Guard and with the intelligence service in order to repress civil protests in the streets.
The protests happen—it is true, it happens mainly in the municipalities of the middle and upper classes. Why is this so? Among other reasons, because, for example, in Caracas—and this happens in most other cities of the country—this is a very, very stark, polarized society. In the municipalities where the lower classes live, it is mainly in control of the government. And they do not give permits for protests in those municipalities. They do not allow it. They bring in not only the National Guard. This is a country that has been very militarized and has been getting starker, this militarization, during the President Maduro’s government, but also because there are territories in the cities that are controlled by these armed groups, these groups that have been armed by the government and that control territory in the poor sectors.
AMY GOODMAN: Roberto Lovato, we have very little time left. I just want to—
MARGARITA LÓPEZ MAYA: So being—if you are—if you’re in the opposition—
AMY GOODMAN: I just want to ask Roberto Lovato where you see these protests going. We only have a minute left.
ROBERTO LOVATO: I see them going the way of desperation and failure, at the end of the day. You don’t have the popular support. You didn’t hear anything except really great excuses of why poor people, the poor majority, the black majority, the Afro-descended majority, the poor areas, are participating. So, history shows you can’t really overthrow governments in Venezuela or anywhere else in Latin America unless you, you know, have the poor. And these protests have gone the way of opposite of most of Latin America, which is against U.S. policy. These protests get money, hundreds of millions of dollars, from U.S. policy. So, you’re just going to have more U.S. and its allies and the oligarchs trying to destabilize a legitimately elected government and failing, probably, again.
AMY GOODMAN: Roberto Lovato and Margarita López Maya, we want to thank you both for being with us—Margarita López Maya, professor with the Center for Development Studies; Roberto Lovato, with New American Media.
That does it for our broadcast. We’re on the road on Tuesday. We’ll be in Amherst, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, March 11th at 7:00 p.m. On Thursday the 13th in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona University at the Cline Library at 7:00. Friday, March 14th, at Santa Fe at the Lensic. And on Saturday, March 15th, in Denver, Colorado. Then to St. Louis on March 29th. You can go to our website for details at democracynow.org.
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Headlines:
Putin Rejects U.S.-EU on Ukraine; Crimea Sets Referendum for Secession
Russian President Vladimir Putin is rebuffing warnings from the U.S. and European Union as the crisis in Ukraine threatens one of the worst east-west standoffs since the Cold War. Putin held a one-hour phone call with President Obama on Thursday but continued to reject calls to withdraw his forces from Crimea. Also Thursday, the pro-Russian Crimean Parliament voted to hold a referendum on splitting off from Ukraine and joining Russia. But the vote’s legitimacy has been called into question after the installation of a pro-Russian government in Crimea just last week. In Washington, President Obama said the separation of Crimea would violate international law.
President Obama: "The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the Ukrainian constitution and violate international law. Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine. In 2014, we are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders."
Obama spoke hours after issuing visa bans on Russian and Ukrainian officials linked to the Crimean occupation. Russia claims it’s protecting Russian-speaking residents in the aftermath of the ouster of Ukraine’s elected government last month. We’ll have more on the crisis in Ukraine after headlines.
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Senate Rejects Independent Oversight of Sexual Assault
The Senate has rejected a measure that would have moved the handling of military sexual assault cases outside the chain of command. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had led a campaign to strip military commanders of authority over sexual assault cases in favor of an independent military prosecutor. But 10 Democrats joined with Republicans to defeat Gillibrand’s proposal. The military has faced increased calls to reform oversight following a report showing around 26,000 sex crimes within the ranks in 2012. After Thursday’s defeat, Senator Gillibrand paid tribute to the military sexual assault victims who came forward to lobby Congress.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: "Many of them may not ever wear the uniform again, but they believe so strongly in these reforms that for a full year now they have come to us to meet with senators and members of Congress to tell those stories of what they endured and why the system is so broken. Tragically, today the Senate failed them."
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Top Army Prosecutor Suspended for Alleged Sexual Assault; General Pleads Guilty to Lesser Charges
Thursday’s vote came just as the U.S. Army’s top prosecutor for sexual assault cases was suspended for alleged sexual assault. Lt. Col. Joseph Morse is accused of groping and trying to kiss a colleague at a legal conference on sexual assault in 2012. Morse is the latest in a series of Army officials involved in sexual assault oversight accused of committing some of the very same crimes they’re tasked with punishing. Meanwhile, an Army general accused of sexual assault has pleaded guilty to three lesser charges. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair has admitted to adultery, asking junior female officers for nude photos and possessing pornography while deployed in Afghanistan. Sinclair will continue to fight assault charges and says he wants to face his accuser in court.
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FBI Probing Senate Panel for Seizing Classified CIA Docs on Torture
A second probe has been confirmed in the dispute between the CIA and a Senate panel over a report on the agency’s torture and rendition program. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee say CIA officials illegally monitored their staffers’ work as they compiled the panel’s exhaustive report on CIA torture. The report has yet to be released but reportedly documents extensive abuses and a cover-up by CIA officials to Congress. The CIA inspector general is already investigating whether agency officials monitored computers that Senate aides used while conducting research at CIA headquarters. Now the FBI has launched a probe of the Senate staffers for potentially removing classified material from the CIA during their investigation. The documents in question reportedly included an internal CIA review that sided with the Senate’s finding that the CIA committed widespread torture while yielding little in valuable intelligence.
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"Deporter-in-Chief" Obama Faces Pressure to Issue New Reprieve for Undocumented Immigrants
President Obama is facing increasing calls to stop his record deportations of undocumented immigrants. Obama granted a reprieve in 2012 to undocumented youths who came to the U.S. as young children, but critics want that extended to their parents and all those who would be spared under the proposed immigration reform Obama has endorsed. In statements this week, three Democratic senators who helped draft the bipartisan immigration reform bill — Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Chuck Schumer of New York — have called on Obama to stop the deportations. Speaking at the group’s annual gala, the head of the National Council of La Raza, Janet Murguía, called Obama the nation’s "deporter-in-chief."
Janet Murguía: "For us, this president has been the deporter-in-chief. Any day now, any day now, this administration will reach the two million mark for deportations. It’s a staggering number that far outstrips any of his predecessors and leaves behind it a wake of devastation for families across America. … The president says his administration does not have the authority to act on its own. All we hear is no—no from Congress, no from the administration. But here’s the thing: We won’t take no for an answer."
Responding at a town hall event on Thursday, Obama called himself the "champion-in-chief" of comprehensive immigration reform and repeated his claim to have done all he can within the confines of the law. House Republicans have all but ruled out an immigration reform vote until after the mid-term elections. Obama also came under criticism from immigration advocates this week over priorities in his 2015 budget. The request seeks funding for speedier deportations, expanding immigration courts, and the controversial "Secure Communities" program involving local law enforcement in deportations. In a statement, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said: "The administration cannot hide its own record behind Republican extremism when it continues to propose funding for extremely cruel enforcement."
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Duke Energy Ordered to Stop Pollution at N.C. Coal Plants
The energy giant Duke Energy has been ordered to stop groundwater pollution at its 14 coal-fired plants in North Carolina. On Thursday, a state judge reversed a North Carolina Environmental Management Commission ruling that left Duke off the hook for immediately cleaning up contaminated groundwater. The decision comes just weeks after Duke spilled over 35 million gallons of coal ash into the Dan River, one of the worst such spills in U.S. history. A coalition of environmental groups had brought the case to challenge what they called lackluster state oversight. In a statement, the Waterkeeper Alliance said: "If the state had exercised its authority to require cleanup of those ponds previously, the catastrophic coal ash spill could have been prevented. The time to use this authority to require cleanup at other plants around the state is now, before another disaster occurs."
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Mall Shooting Wounds 1 in Tennessee; Idaho Approves Concealed Guns on College Campuses
A shooting at a crowded Tennessee mall has left one victim critically wounded. Four people have been detained. Meanwhile in Idaho, state lawmakers have approved a measure that would allow concealed weapons on college campuses. If signed into law as expected, Idaho will become the seventh state to allow guns at state schools.
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Colorado Prisoner Avoids Death Penalty with Backing of Victim’s Father
A Colorado prisoner has avoided the death penalty in a case that drew attention over the efforts of his victim’s father to spare his life. Edward Montour was facing execution in a new murder trial for the 2002 killing of prison guard Eric Autobee. But on Thursday, Montour entered a plea deal that will sentence him to life in prison, instead of to death. Eric Autobee’s father, Bob Autobee, had sought to enter a victim’s statement asking the jury not to impose the death penalty, saying he opposes capital punishment.
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Rep. Ryan: Lunch Programs Yield "Full Stomach, Empty Soul"
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, kicked off Thursday in Washington, D.C. The conference brings together activists, pundits and politicians for one of the largest right-wing events of the year. In his opening speech, Republican Congressmember Paul Ryan suggested children who receive school lunches are not cared for by their low-income families.
Rep. Paul Ryan: "What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul. The American people want more than that. You know, this reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the Cabinet of my buddy, Gov. Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch; he wanted his own lunch, one in a brown paper bag, just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown paper bag had someone who cared for him."
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Mumia Abu-Jamal Criticizes Senate Rejection of Justice Dept. Nominee
The former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal has weighed in on the Senate’s rejection of 
Debo Adegbile, President Obama’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Adegbile’s nomination was voted down after a confirmation fight that focused almost solely on his ties to Abu-Jamal’s legal defense. He was part of a team at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that successfully argued the trial judge’s jury instructions violated Abu-Jamal’s rights in his conviction for killing a Philadelphia police officer. In a recording from prison, Abu-Jamal sharply criticized the Senate’s vote.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: "It is bitter irony that the man nominated for the nation’s highest civil rights post was himself denied the civil right of due process and the human right of self-defense. And this is so, simply because he dared to do what defense lawyers are legally and constitutionally required to do: defend their clients. For this, he was spat upon by vile men. For this, he was denied by a raft of lies."

Critics have warned the Senate’s rejection of Debo Adegbile could set a dangerous precedent where legal nominees are judged based on who they’ve defended in court. The lawmakers who voted in opposition are also being accused of racist double standards: Chief Justice John Roberts was confirmed to the Supreme Court despite defending a Florida mass murderer who killed eight people.
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