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After a seven-year legal battle, the diary of a prisoner held at Guantánamo Bay has just been published and has become a surprise best-seller. Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s diary details his experience with rendition, torture and being imprisoned without charge. Slahi has been held at the prison for more than 12 years. He was ordered released in 2010 but is still being held. "The cell — better, the box — was cooled down so that I was shaking most of the time," he writes. "I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day. Every once in a while they gave me a rec time in the night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. I was living literally in terror. I don’t remember having slept one night quietly; for the next 70 days to come I wouldn’t know the sweetness of sleeping. Interrogation for 24 hours, three and sometimes four shifts a day. I rarely got a day off." We air a clip of a Guardian video about Slahi’s case, which features actors Colin Firth and Dominic West reading from his diary. We speak with three guests: Slahi’s lawyer, Nancy Hollander; book editor, Larry Siems; and Col. Morris Davis, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay, who says Slahi is "no more a terrorist than Forrest Gump."
Image Credit: International Committee of the Red Cross
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: After a seven-year legal battle, the diary of a prisoner held at Guantánamo Bay has just been published and has become a surprise best-seller. The diary was written by a Mauritanian man named Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who has been held at the base for more than 12 years. He was ordered released in 2010 but is still being held. Later in the show, we’ll be joined by his lawyer, Nancy Hollander, and Larry Siems, who edited the diary.
AMY GOODMAN: But first, let’s turn to a new video produced by The Guardian. It features interviews with Nancy Hollander, Siems and Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s brother, Yahid. It begins with the actor Dominic West, best known for his role as Detective Jimmy McNulty in the TV show The Wire, reading the diary writings of Mohamedou Ould Slahi.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: [read by Dominic West] The cell—better, the box—was cooled down to the point that I was shaking most of the time. For the next 70 days, I wouldn’t know the sweetness of sleeping: interrogation 24 hours a day. I was living literally in terror.
NANCY HOLLANDER: There is no reason for Mohamedou to be in Guantánamo. Mohamedou has never been charged with a crime. He’s been in Guantánamo now 14 years. It’s not that they haven’t found the evidence against him; there isn’t any evidence against him. Mohamedou started writing in 2005. He had prepared 90 pages in a notebook that the guards had given him. That was the beginning of this manuscript.
LARRY SIEMS: For a number of years, his attorneys conduct litigation and negotiations to get that manuscript declassified.
NANCY HOLLANDER: Mohamedou is somewhat of a modern Renaissance man. He is from the country of Mauritania. He’s from a very poor family, but he won a scholarship to study in Germany as a very young man.
LARRY SIEMS: Mohamedou had joined al-Qaeda in the early 1990s. Like many young men, he had gone to Afghanistan as a student to join the fight against the communist government of Afghanistan. And to join the fight, you had to train at an al-Qaeda camp. And he had trained, and he had sworn loyalty to them. But, as he’s said repeatedly, he broke all ties; after the communist government collapsed and the various mujahideen factions started shooting each other, Mohamedou essentially said, "I’m out."
NANCY HOLLANDER: Mohamedou was at his mother’s house in November of 2001. And he gets a call from the police to come and be interviewed. And he literally, I’m sure, told his mother, "I’ll be right back." And he disappeared. And his family has never seen him again to this day.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: [read by Dominic West] There were four of them when I stepped outside the door with my mom and my aunt. Both kept their eyes staring at me. It is the taste of helplessness when you see your beloved fading away like a dream and you cannot help him.
NANCY HOLLANDER: He realized he wasn’t going home when he got on an airplane, was stripped of his clothes. In August of 2002, he landed in Cuba, in Guantánamo. His family, of course, had no idea what had happened to him.
LARRY SIEMS: And it was only when Yahid, Mohamedou’s younger brother, who lives in Germany, picked up Der Spiegel and saw an article in October of 2002 that Mohamedou was in Guantánamo, did the family know where he had been held.
YAHID OULD SLAHI: [translated] We were all speechless. How can a government lie to us for so long and play such dirty games with us? We were all completely disheartened.
NANCY HOLLANDER: They were trying to frighten him so that he would tell them what they wanted to hear.
LARRY SIEMS: They would come to him, essentially, and say, "Well, we know what you did. We just need you to tell us."
NANCY HOLLANDER: "We know you were involved in 9/11. We know you know these people."
LARRY SIEMS: And they were on this kind of endless fishing expedition.
NANCY HOLLANDER: And there was no truth to tell them, but that’s what they kept saying.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: [read by Dominic West] "I’m going to do everything I’m allowed to to break you. You will never see your family again." My answer was always: "Do what you got to do. I have done nothing." And as soon as I spit my words, he went wildly crazy, as if he wanted to devour me alive.
NANCY HOLLANDER: Mohamedou was subjected to a whole list of torture techniques that had been approved by the secretary of defense.
YAHID OULD SLAHI: [translated] They told him they had taken my mother from Mauritania and put her in a single cell in Guantánamo. And if he didn’t give officials the information they expected, she would be severely tortured.
NANCY HOLLANDER: Significantly, they included what in Guantánamo was known as the "frequent flyer program." And they called it that because they wouldn’t let people sleep. And they proceeded to torture him.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: [read by Dominic West] "Blindfold the [expletive] if he tries to look." One of them hit me hard across the face, and quickly put the goggles on my eyes, ear muffs on my ears, and a small bag over my head. They tightened the chains around my ankles and my wrists; afterwards, I started to bleed. I thought they were going to execute me.
LARRY SIEMS: Just as Mohamedou had this remarkable journey, his manuscript has a fairly remarkable journey. He writes it in 2005.
NANCY HOLLANDER: We would get the book in bits and pieces.
YAHID OULD SLAHI: [translated] He started the book as a diary, and over the years the book became more detailed.
LARRY SIEMS: Every utterance of a Guantánamo prisoner is deemed classified from the moment of its creation.
NANCY HOLLANDER: What you have to do is send it back to what’s called a "privilege team." And they read it and decide what can be made unclassified.
LARRY SIEMS: What I got in the summer of 2012 was the version of the manuscript that was cleared for public release, that had had these, you know, layers of censorship grafted onto it. You know, the physical impression of a page full of redactions is a brick wall. The amazing thing about Mohamedou and his writing is he has an incredibly strong, clear voice.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: [read by Dominic West] They brought me a chessboard so I could play against myself. When the guards noticed my chessboard, they all wanted to play me. And when they started to play me, they always won. The strongest among the guards taught me how to control the center. After that, the guards had no chance to defeat me.
NANCY HOLLANDER: He just hopes that someday he’ll be released. He’s in what I would consider a horrible legal limbo, and it’s just tragic. He needs to go home. If he gets out, he could come live with me. I would be happy to have Mohamedou in my house. He is just such a good, warm, caring human being. And somehow that strength keeps him going.
LARRY SIEMS: What’s remarkable about Mohamedou’s book is that we have a voice that’s come out of this void, and that it’s such a remarkable, humane and, I think, ultimately, forgiving voice. It’s a wonder.
YAHID OULD SLAHI: [translated] Sadly, this has taken so long. But we have never, and will never, lose hope. Never.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: [read by Dominic West] A Mauritanian folktale tells us about a roosterphobe, who would almost lose his mind whenever he encountered a rooster. "Why are you so afraid of the rooster?" the psychiatrist asked him. "The rooster thinks I’m corn." "You’re not corn. You’re a very big man. Nobody can mistake you for a tiny ear of corn," the psychiatrist said. "I know that, Doctor. But the rooster doesn’t." For years, I’ve been trying to convince the U.S. government that I am not corn.
AMY GOODMAN: The actor Dominic West reading the diary of Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi. That video was produced by The Guardian. When we come back, we’ll be joined by Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s attorney, Nancy Hollander; the editor of the prison diary, the Guantánamo Diary, Larry Siems; and Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay. Back in a minute.
[break]
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We continue to look at the case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian man who’s been held at Guantánamo for 12 years without charge. His writings were published this week as the book Guantánamo Diary. Slahi’s 466-page handwritten manuscript was initially classified by the U.S. government and heavily redacted before publication.
AMY GOODMAN: It was held for more than seven years before it’s been released. We’re joined now by three guests. Nancy Hollander is Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s lead lawyer. Larry Siems is editor of Guantánamo Diary. And Colonel Morris Davis is the former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay. He resigned in 2007, shortly shortly after he met with Mohamedou Ould Slahi.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Colonel Morris Davis, talk about who Mohamedou was, how you met him there. And did your resignation have anything to do with him?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Yeah, I met him early in 2007. As we were preparing, you know, the prosecution of the military commission cases at Guantánamo, we were interested in potentially finding a detainee or detainees who would be cooperating witnesses. And I was told that Slahi and his partner, Tariq al-Sawah—they lived in a compound of their own—that the two of them were candidates, potential candidates, to cooperate with the prosecution. So I met with Mr. Slahi probably three or four times over a course of several months and got to know him probably as well as any of the detainees that I had contact with at Guantánamo.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was your impression of him? How did he affect you?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Well, it was really an interesting contrast. He and Tariq al-Sawah lived together in a compound of their own. You know, at the time, back in 2007, Guantánamo was supposed to be this super-secret facility that you couldn’t really talk about, but you could go on Google Earth, and if you knew what you were looking for, you could drill down and see their compound where they lived and their vegetable garden that was between their two huts where they lived. They were a sharp contrast. Mr. Slahi is maybe five-foot-six and weighs about 110 pounds last time I saw him, and Mr. Sawah was probably six feet tall and weighed over 350 pounds. So just their physical appearance was like the odd couple. And personality-wise, as well. Mr. Sawah was polite and would—if you ask him something, he would respond, but he didn’t carry a conversation, where with Mr. Slahi the problem was—wasn’t getting him to talk, it was getting him to stop, because he was very, very gregarious. As you can see from the diary, he’s very articulate, very bright.
And, you know, it was always a pleasure to meet with him. I mean, every time I went—I mentioned in the article I wrote for The Guardian that every time I went, he had to make tea, using mint leaf from the garden. And, you know, Guantánamo was always hot and humid, and I was in uniform, and I’m not a tea drinker to begin with, but I’d have to sit and drink hot tea and sweat in the sun and chat with Mr. Slahi.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Nancy Hollander, you’ve been Slahi’s legal representative since he’s been allowed legal representation—that is, since 2005. Can you tell us how you came to work on this case and how it is that he’s been held for 12 years and has yet to be charged with anything?
NANCY HOLLANDER: I came to work on this case because a lawyer in France, a lawyer named Emmanuel Altit, sent me an email saying that he had heard from a lawyer in Mauritania, Mr. Ebety, that the family of Mohamedou thought he was in Guantánamo, and that now that the prisoners could have lawyers, would I consider seeing if I could represent him. I found him. I found that he had been assigned to another lawyer by the Center for Constitutional Rights. That lawyer was Sylvia Royce. And although Sylvia left the team later on, at the beginning the two of us made arrangements to go to Guantánamo.
And our first visit was perhaps the one that sticks in my head the most. We went. It was our very first visit to Guantánamo for both of us. We walked into the hut. The guards opened the door, and there was Mohamedou. And he stood up, and he smiled, and he put his arms out as though to walk up to embrace us. But he didn’t move. And we stood there for a moment, and then I realized, to my horror, that he was chained to the floor, with chains around his ankle, and couldn’t move. So he could just stand there and smile. And we walked into his embrace, and he hugged us. I think we were the first people he had hugged in several years. And then he gave us these first 90 pages as a way for us to know about him, to know something about him and what had happened to him. And that’s how—that’s how this book began. And we encouraged him to keep writing, and then he continued to write.
AMY GOODMAN: Nancy Hollander—
NANCY HOLLANDER: He has never been charged with—I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: He’s never—you were saying he’s never been charged with a crime. Nancy Hollander, can you describe what happened to him when the U.S. detained him, first before Guantánamo and then at Guantánamo? In Guantánamo Diary, Slahi’s book, he says one of the interrogators said, quote, "I know I can go to hell for what I do to you."
NANCY HOLLANDER: Well, what that guard was referring to was specifically not letting him pray. One of the things that was on the list of special interrogation techniques that the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, approved specifically for Mohamedou was that he not be allowed to pray. He was also put in what they called their "frequent flyer program," which meant he was not allowed to sleep. He was interrogated around the clock, and maybe he would get an hour or two of sleep, and then they would wake him up. So this went on for almost two months, or maybe even longer.
They dragged him out on a boat. First they came into his cell with a dog, terrified him, put a hood over him, put goggles on, put ear muffs on, dragged him. We were able to learn from his medical records that he complained that his ribs were broken, and in fact they were broken, on that, when they beat him. And they took him out, and he was, as he says in the book, afraid that they were going to dump him in the ocean or take him to some other place. For a long, long time, they did not tell him he was back in Guantánamo. They beat him. They terrified him. They put ice down his clothes. They kept him in cold rooms, then they kept him in hot rooms. They knew that he had a back issue from a previous injury and that the doctor in Guantánamo had ordered that he not have to stay in certain positions, and they used that. And those were the positions they put him in, precisely what they knew he was not supposed to be in. The litany goes on and on of what they did to him.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But, Nancy, even before Slahi got to Guantánamo, he had been detained for almost a year. He was picked up on his way from—I believe from Canada to Mauritania, he was picked up in Senegal. Then he was detained in Mauritania, then sent to Jordan, under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, for seven-and-a-half months, then from there to Bagram, and from Bagram to Guantánamo. Can you describe what happened in the course of his going to Guantánamo?
NANCY HOLLANDER: Well, he was picked up twice, first in Senegal, when he left—when he left Montreal, he flew to Senegal, and that’s where his family was going to meet him to drive home to Nouakchott in Mauritania. He was detained there. Then later, he was detained again in Mauritania. And then, finally, he was at his mother’s house—and this was the third time—and he got another call from the police station, then the police chief. And they said, "Would you come and talk to us? And bring your own car. We’re sure you won’t be staying long." And he never went back.
They took him to Jordan. He was there for seven-and-a-half or eight months. He was interrogated there. He was not tortured in the same way, but he was put in a cell where he could hear other people screaming and crying, and was terrified every moment that he was there.
And then, suddenly, another plane comes. He thinks he’s going home. And in fact he ends up in Afghanistan for a couple of weeks and then goes to Guantánamo. And at that time, the government was claiming that it was taking people from the battlefield in Afghanistan, which of course wasn’t true—only about 5 percent of the people in Guantánamo were ever actually on a battlefield—but he came from Afghanistan in a harrowing airplane ride to Guantánamo and was interrogated as soon as he got there, and then was interrogated and tortured. And even after he agreed to tell them whatever they wanted to hear, they continued with their—what he called "the recipe of torture."
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to—
NANCY HOLLANDER: But he was never charged, ever charged with any crime.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a comment from Slahi’s brother, Yahid Ould Slahi. He spoke to the BBC and said he was most upset with the Mauritanian government about what happened to his brother.
YAHID OULD SLAHI: [translated] I think they sold him to the Americans, and they lied the whole time to us. They told us that Mohamedou was still in prison in Mauritania, while he was being tortured in Guantánamo Bay. I read the news in Der Spiegel magazine whilst I was at university in Germany, and I couldn’t believe it. My mother had been taking money and food to the jail every day in Mauritania, because they told her that Mohamedou was in there. I called my family, and I told them that my brother was actually in Guantánamo Bay, but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe me until 2002, when they got a letter from my brother from the prison in Guantánamo.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Yahid Ould Slahi, the brother of Mohamedou, who is still in prison at Guantánamo, over 12 years without charge. Colonel Morris Davis, you have referred to Slahi as a kind of Forrest Gump. What do you mean?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Well, as was mentioned earlier, you know, he was a—went to Germany. He was in and around Hamburg. You know, the Hamburg cell of al-Qaeda was affiliated with 9/11. You heard, I think, Nancy mention that he was in Montreal, which was in and around Ressam and the millennium bombing plot. So, he turned up in places where there were significant events related to terrorism that were taking place, kind of like Forrest Gump. You know, anytime there’s a historical event, somewhere in the picture you’d see him in the background. And Slahi was kind of the same way. He showed up at the right time in the right places.
But when we were looking at him potentially being a cooperating witness, myself and some other members of the prosecution team went out to the National Counterterrorism Center with a group of other people, and we had a briefing from the agents that had spent years investigating Slahi’s case. And we went through the whole litany of, you know, where he’d shown up. But their conclusion was that there was a lot of smoke and no fire, that there are odd circumstances where he showed up in places, but there was absolutely no evidence that he had ever engaged in any acts of hostility towards the United States. And the conclusion was there was simply nothing that we could charge him with.
And as you said, you know, for more than a dozen years now, he’s been sitting at Guantánamo. And one of the real ironies is, there have been six men that have been convicted of war crimes at Guantánamo in the military commission. Five of those six are back home in their home countries. So it’s a sad commentary on America, where you’re better being a convicted war criminal than someone who’s never been charged at all.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Colonel Morris Davis, could you explain how it is that he was initially—Slahi was initially considered a high-value target, but then when it came to the point where an attempt was made to charge him or to prosecute him, as you point out, there wasn’t sufficient evidence? Could you talk specifically about the role of Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch and his role in this?
COL. MORRIS DAVIS: Right, yeah, I became the chief prosecutor in September of 2005. I was the third chief prosecutor. They’re currently up to the sixth chief prosecutor. But at the time I came on board, Lieutenant Colonel Couch had been a member of the prosecution team for a year or two before I got there. And one of the cases that he’d been assigned was the Slahi case. And after reviewing the evidence, you know, he was convinced that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, and he was also convinced that Slahi had been tortured. So, for both reasons, he had concluded it was a case that couldn’t be prosecuted.
And when I came on board, you know, he briefed me on the case, and I came to the same conclusion. And that was just reinforced later, as I said, when we got the briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center and all of the agencies involved agreed that there just wasn’t a case to be had against Slahi. But again, he showed up at places, like Hamburg and Montreal, where there were significant events, and I think that’s what led to the suspicion that he had to be a high-value detainee, that he was in and around these places where significant events that took place, and if only we could torture him, and, you know, he would spill the beans, and we’d find bin Laden, and everything would work out fine. And that just simply wasn’t the case.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s just astounding. You quit eight years ago as the chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo, having decided not to bring charges against him, and he is still there, actually there for more than 12 years, which brings us to Larry Siems, who is the editor of this astonishing book called Guantánamo Diary. You know, sometimes we get on the air, we say a book has just come out to rave reviews, it’s a best-seller, and we interview the author. We cannot interview the author, because he’s at Guantánamo. But we can talk to you, who worked on the text. The cover of Guantánamo Diary, you see his handwriting behind it. It’s in English. Where did Mohamedou learn English?
LARRY SIEMS: English is Mohamedou’s fourth language. He—born in Nouakchott in Mauritania, he spoke Arabic and French. He studied in Germany, and so he was fluent in German. He learned English in U.S. captivity. This is a language that he learned from the United States, from his captors.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Larry, on the back of the book, John le Carré describes this work as, quote, "A vision of hell, beyond Orwell, beyond Kafka." So, could you explain how you first came across his writing and what made you decide to work on this text?
LARRY SIEMS: Sure. I actually came to Mohamedou’s story through another set of documents entirely, which was the U.S. government’s own documents. From 2009 to 2012, I worked with the ACLU on this project called "The Torture Report." The ACLU had managed to excavate 100,000 pages of formerly classified government documents about the abuse of detainees in Guantánamo, in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the CIA black sites. But it was kind of—it was just raw data. And my job was to try to sort of go through that and find stories, weave together stories of individual characters, to find the human beings that were, you know, involved in these documents.
And one of the people that emerged most clearly was Mohamedou Ould Slahi, because Mohamedou, as we’ve said, was one of the most abused prisoners in Guantánamo. He was one of two prisoners designated for this special project interrogation by defense intelligence agents. That interrogation, the plan of which was signed, as Nancy said, by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself, that plan was written, revised, meticulously. It involved everything that Nancy described—extreme isolation, sleep deprivation, cold rooms, loud music, strobe lights, death threats, threats—ultimately, a threat to his mother. They came to him—his chief interrogator came to him posing as a Navy captain who was an emissary from the White House, handing him a letter that said, "Mohamedou, we have your mother. We’re bringing her to Guantánamo. She’ll be the first woman in Guantánamo, and you can imagine what will happen to her in Guantánamo."
All of those things were calculated and written out ahead of time in government documents, and then, of course, meticulously detailed, as torturers are perversely prone to do, in all of the daily reports from those interrogations. We had all those documents by 2008, 2009, mostly because of two large government investigations, one by the Justice Department that was prompted by FBI agents inside of Guantánamo complaining about the treatment that the Pentagon interrogators were starting to mete out in Guantánamo, patterned on the CIA’s black site enhanced interrogations, and then from a Senate Armed Services Committee report. Both of those reports have many pages about Guantánamo—about Mohamedou’s story, so I knew the broad outlines of it.
I also had, in those—from those documents, little hints of his voice. And it’s very, very—you realize how absolute the censorship is around Guantánamo. And one of those things is—part of the reason is to keep us from hearing those voices. But in those documents, there were two in particular that were transcripts from his hearings before review boards in Guantánamo. And one of them was from 2005, his Administrative Review Board hearing. He’s quite a humorous guy. He makes a couple of good jokes in there. And then he tells the presiding officer, he said, "Oh, by the way, I’ve written a book. You know, they sent the book to Washington. You know, it’s classified, but it will be cleared for release. And when it’s cleared, you should read it. It’s a really interesting book, I think." He says this in 2005. As Nancy said, it’s held for seven years. And then, finally, after this process of—you know, of litigation and negotiation that Nancy’s team carried out, in 2012, after I had finished this torture report, I got a call from them, saying, "We have this manuscript. Would you like to see it?" And I said, "Yes, please."
AMY GOODMAN: And you take it from there. How much of it was redacted? Was he able to see the final edited version?
LARRY SIEMS: There are about 2,600 black bar redactions in the book, varying from one word to many pages. I was not able to communicate with him. I sent him a letter, at one point, introducing myself and saying that I had been asked to work on this and I hoped we could correspond, and I never heard anything. I have no idea whether he received that letter.
When I had finished my draft of an edit of the manuscript, I officially—I, you know, petitioned the Pentagon to be allowed to visit him just once, using—you know, according to whatever security protocols they wanted, just so I could sit with him and sort of go through and make sure that he approved of the shape of the final manuscript, because I think it’s a dead basic right, as Mohamedou would say, of any writer to have the final say about how his words appear in print. I had, for years, worked as the free expression director at PEN American Center, and I am, above all, a free expression advocate. So I thought he would have that right to do that. The Pentagon refused to allow me to visit him, citing, as they have done for every journalist and writer who’s tried to visit a detainee—citing, quite ironically, the Geneva Convention’s prohibition on making detainees into public curiosities. That was their basis for denying me the right to visit him.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohamedou’s mother died in 2013. Nancy, can you talk about Mohamedou’s reaction and what he tried to do to see his mother?
NANCY HOLLANDER: It was really tragic, because we found out from his lawyer in Mauritania that his mother had died, and his family was really afraid to tell him that she had died. They were afraid of how—he was very close to his mother. Of course, that’s what the government knew, and that’s why they came up with this fake letter in the beginning. And they were afraid to tell him. We actually had the responsibility of telling him. We arranged for a phone call. To arrange for a phone call from counsel, you have to have an emergency, and then it takes about 15 days to get the call. We were able to make a call to him. It was a call with someone from the government on the line, so it was not a privileged call, attorney-client privilege. But we actually told him about his mother.
He was very upset. He was upset both, of course, that she had died and that his family had not told him. And they were so conflicted. They were so afraid that it would take him over the edge to know she had died. And as you can see, he dedicated this book to her, which I assumed he would want to do. And, you know, it’s really important to see that even though he wrote the book in 2005, if you read the little afterword, he wrote that in 2014 and gave it to another member of our team, Linda Moreno, when she went to visit him. And he’s still a forgiving person. He still wants to sit down and have a cup of tea with the people who are mentioned in this book. It’s so incredible that he is so compassionate even to this day. And I think that humanity in him is what keeps him going.
AMY GOODMAN: His relationship with his torturers, Larry. Joe Nocera of The New York Times review of books—in the New York Times’ review of his book, said he "come[s] across as fair to all, even [to] his torturers." And yet, you’ve described him as one of the most abused prisoners at Guantánamo.
LARRY SIEMS: I think that’s one of the most extraordinary things about this book. If you hear that you’re going to read a diary by one of the most abused prisoners in Guantánamo, you’re braced for a lot of darkness. No question about it. And the story that Mohamedou tells is very, very dark. But his personality is the opposite. He is an optimistic person. He’s a curious person. He’s constantly pulled out of himself by his surroundings, by the people he interacts with. He likes people. He has a fundamental ethic of treating everybody as an individual, no matter who they are or what team they’re supposedly playing for. He says, you know, he understands human beings are made up of a combination of good and evil—everybody is—it’s just a question of what percentage, you know?
And his interactions with—you know, the amazing thing about this book is how it gives us the human drama of Guantánamo. And it’s a very, very human drama. And for me, I think the revelation of the book is that this is our drama, as well. And the characters in this book are American servicemen and American servicewomen and intelligence officers whose voices we’ve never heard before, who are put in these positions, you know? And his portraits of our brothers and sisters and sons and daughters, you know, are remarkable. And you realize how much we’ve put on them and how much they must be suffering for what we’ve asked them to do.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go back to Mohamedou Ould Slahi in his own words. This is the Oscar-winning British actor Colin Firth reading an excerpt from Guantánamo Diary.
MOHAMEDOU OULD SLAHI: [read by Colin Firth] So has the American democracy passed the test it was subjected to with the 2001 terrorist attacks? I leave this judgment to the reader. As I am writing this, though, the United States and its people are still facing the dilemma of the Cuban detainees.
In the beginning, the U.S. government was happy with its secret operations, since it thought it had managed to gather all the evils of the world in GTMO, and had circumvented U.S. law and international treaties so that it could perform its revenge. But then it realised, after a lot of painful work, that it had gathered a bunch of non-combatants. Now the U.S. government is stuck with the problem, but it is not willing to be forthcoming and disclose the truth about the whole operation.
Everybody makes mistakes. I believe the U.S. government owes it to the American people to tell them the truth about what is happening in Guantánamo. So far, I have personally cost the American taxpayer at least one million dollars, and the counter is ticking higher every day. The other detainees are costing more or less the same. Under these circumstances, Americans need and have the right to know what the hell is going on.
Many of my brothers here are losing their minds, especially the younger detainees, because of the conditions of detention. As I write these words, many brothers are hunger-striking and are determined to carry on, no matter what. I am very worried about these brothers I am helplessly watching, who are practically dying and who are sure to suffer irreparable damage even if they eventually decide to eat. It is not the first time we have had a hunger strike; I personally participated in the hunger strike in September 2002, but the government did not seem to be impressed. And so the brothers keep striking, for the same old, and new, reasons. And there seems to be no solution in the air. The government expects the U.S. forces in GTMO to pull magic solutions out of their sleeves. But the U.S. forces in GTMO understand the situation here more than any bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., and they know that the only solution is for the government to be forthcoming and release people.
What do the American people think? I am eager to know. I would like to believe the majority of Americans want to see justice done, and they are not interested in financing the detention of innocent people. I know there is a small extremist minority that believes that everybody in this Cuban prison is evil, and that we are treated better than we deserve. But this opinion has no basis but ignorance. I am amazed that somebody can build such an incriminating opinion about people he or she doesn’t even know.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Oscar-winning British actor Colin Firth reading an excerpt from Guantánamo Diary. I wanted to end with Nancy Hollander. In 2010, Nancy, The Washington Post wrote, "Sawah, now 52, and Slahi, now 39, have become two of the most significant informants ever to be held at Guantanamo. Today, they are housed in a little fenced-in compound at the military prison, where they live a life of relative privilege—gardening, writing and painting—separated from other detainees in a cocoon designed to reward and protect." Can you explain that?
NANCY HOLLANDER: Well, I’m really not at liberty to talk about Mohamedou’s living conditions. I can tell you that when he was tortured and when they finally brought him this fake letter from his mother, he said, "I’ll tell you anything you want." And then he told them anything they wanted to hear. But it was really information they fed him. "You did this, didn’t you? You did this, did you? We just need you to tell us that you did it." So he said, "I did it." And it was all lies, because he hadn’t done any of it. He lives in Guantánamo in a prison, in a prison cell every single day of his life. And since 2010, since the day that Judge Robertson ordered him to be released, he should have been released. And the government of the United States should stop fighting against that release and release him now.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Nancy Hollander, before we conclude, very quickly, what seems to be at issue then? Is it the case that the U.S. government still says that he has maintained his links to al-Qaeda, whereas he says he has severed them? How is it that he is still detained years after a judge has said he—a U.S. judge has said he should be released, or that there’s nothing to charge him?
NANCY HOLLANDER: Well, you’re correct that the government maintains that when he swore allegiance to fight in Afghanistan in 1990, which, I might add, the United States supported that fight financially and militarily, he—that that was it, that he still maintains—the government still maintains that he’s part of al-Qaeda. And the court of appeals has made the test so broad and so loose that it’s almost impossible to fight against that. And the government keeps forcing that standard to be looser and looser. So, it’s really the government, it’s the Obama administration and the military, that need to step up and stop fighting these habeas cases, particularly in Mohamedou’s case, where the district judge found that in 2010, after he had already been held for many years, the government had already gathered all the evidence it was ever going to gather, that it didn’t have the evidence to even object to this habeas, which is a very low standard. So, the government needs to step up and release him.
AMY GOODMAN: Last seconds, Larry Siems?
LARRY SIEMS: I mean, for me, the most disturbing question is: To what extent has he been held all this time, simply that he’s not able—so he’s not able to tell the story of what happened to him? You know, Guantánamo is a story about secrecy. It’s created in secrecy. It was created in order to allow abuse to happen. Then it was perpetuated in order to cover up that those abuses had happened. It’s being prolonged, I think, finally, to prevent accountability for those abuses. And all that time, we’re perpetuating and prolonging grievous mistakes, and it needs to stop.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. Larry Siems is the editor of Guantánamo Diary. We hope soon to be speaking with the author; he is Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Larry Siems is the former director of the Freedom to Write and International programs at PEN American Center. Nancy Hollander, thanks so much for joining us, Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s lead lawyer. And thank you so much to Colonel Morris Davis, retired Air Force colonel, former chief military prosecutor at Guantánamo Bay. He resigned in 2007, shortly after he met with Mohamedou Ould Slahi.
This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute with what some are calling the Guantánamo Bay in the Pacific. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Shaker Aamer," a song written for another longtime Guantánamo prisoner by British musician PJ Harvey. Shaker Aamer has been held since 2001 without trial or charge, despite being cleared for release by President Bush in 2007 and President Obama in 2009. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.→
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"Guantánamo of the Pacific": Australian Asylum Seekers Wage Hunger Strike at Offshore Detention Site
A massive hunger strike is underway at what some are calling "the Guantánamo Bay of the Pacific." The Manus Island detention center is paid for by the Australian government and run by an Australian contractor, Transfield Services, but located offshore on Papua New Guinea’s soil. The inmates are not accused of any crimes — they are asylum seekers from war-ravaged countries who are waiting indefinitely for their refugee status determinations. They are asking the United Nations to intervene against the Australian federal government’s plan to resettle them in Papua New Guinea, where they say they could face persecution. Some have barricaded themselves behind the detention center’s high wire fences; others have resorted to increasingly drastic measures such as drinking washing detergent, swallowing razor blades, and even sewing their mouths shut to protest their confinement. We speak with Australian human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Alex Kelly, a social justice filmmaker who organized a New York City vigil in solidarity with the Manus Island detainees.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A massive hunger strike is underway at what some are calling "the Guantánamo Bay of the Pacific." The Manus Island detention center is paid for by the Australian government and run by an Australian contractor, Transfield Services, but located offshore on Papua New Guinea’s soil. The inmates are not accused of any crimes; they are asylum seekers from war-ravaged countries who are waiting indefinitely for their refugee status determinations.
Eighty detainees recently signed a letter to the Australian government, saying, in part, quote, "Here a disaster is about to happen, please prevent this disaster." They are asking the United Nations to intervene against the Australian federal government’s plan to resettle them in Papua New Guinea, where they say they could face persecution. Some have barricaded themselves behind the detention center’s high wire fences; others have resorted to increasingly drastic measures, such as drinking washing detergent, swallowing razor blades, and even sewing their mouths shut to protest their confinement.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. Alex Kelly, a social justice filmmaker, on Wednesday she organized a protest outside the Australian Consulate here in New York City. And Jennifer Robinson is with us, an Australian human rights lawyer, director of legal advocacy for the Bertha Foundation, also co-founder of International Lawyers for West Papua.
Alex and Jennifer, we welcome you to Democracy Now! Jennifer, explain why you were outside the Australian Consulate last night and what’s going on, for what many in the United States may never have heard of, at Manus Island.
JENNIFER ROBINSON: Well, the description that this is the Pacific’s Guantánamo is apt. As an Australian, I feel a moral obligation to stand up and say, "Not in my name." The Australian government is indefinitely detaining asylum seekers, sending them to conditions that the U.N. has found to amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, in breach of our international obligations. Consecutive Australian governments on both sides of the political divide have continued this practice. And it’s time that Australians stand up and say, "Enough. This is enough."
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But could you explain, what is the status of Manus Island? Why are they—why does Australia keep potential asylum seekers in detention there?
JENNIFER ROBINSON: Australia intercepts people arriving by boat seeking asylum in Australia. They are insisting on their international right to seek asylum. Australia is concerned about the number of asylum seekers coming to Australia, and is therefore intercepting them, sending them to PNG for process and resettlement there so they’ll never get to Australia. This is in clear breach of our international obligations.
AMY GOODMAN: Alex, explain who these asylum seekers are, how many are packed into this prison, and what’s the response in Australia.
ALEX KELLY: There’s over a thousand people currently being detained at the Manus Island detention center. We’ve got people there from Syria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia. And these people have been in there—some people have been in there for up to 18 months. It’s indefinite detention. They don’t know when they’re going to be processed. In fact, there’s been no one that’s been processed and resettled.
So this latest protest is in response to the idea that they’re going to be resettled in Papua New Guinea. Among some of the detainees, we know that there are people who are homosexual, who have actually fled their home countries because of persecution, and now they’re very frightened of being resettled in Papua New Guinea, where homosexuality is illegal. There’s been huge conflicts between PNG locals and detainees. And we’re just seeing that it’s been ongoing violence, a huge number of incidents of self-harm, hunger-striking—
AMY GOODMAN: How long are people held?
ALEX KELLY: It’s indefinite. In some detention centers in Australia—we have some other offshore and onshore detention centers—there’s people who have been in there for up to four years.
AMY GOODMAN: And evidence of the hunger strike going on?
ALEX KELLY: The hunger strike is still continuing. The Australian government is saying that the hunger strike is over, but we’ve been seeing images today, and I’ve had messages from advocates and people inside today saying it’s continuing within the compounds.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Alex, you mentioned the conflict between the locals, PNG locals, and the detainees. Could you explain what happened? There have been two detainees who have been killed or who died within that detention facility at Manus Island. What happened to Reza Berati, his name is?
ALEX KELLY: Yes. There’s been ongoing tensions since the detention center was established. Manus Island, a lot of the community there are living in poverty. And it appears that there’s been a lot of incitement over tensions from people operating the center, so spreading rumors within and without about the tensions. But last February, there was a tragic incident where there was—guards attacked detainees, and there was one detainee who died. We still haven’t actually seen any prosecutions in response to the death of Reza Berati. There’s been two people arrested, but there’s allegations that Australians were involved.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Robinson, you’re an international human rights attorney. What’s the law here? You’ve been to PNG. You’ve been to this area.
JENNIFER ROBINSON: I’ve been to PNG, and I’ve spent times in West Papuan refugee settlement camps, so I can speak with first-hand experience that PNG is not a state that is capable of accepting our asylum seekers and refugees. Ninety percent of these people who come by boat to Australia have been determined to be refugees in the past. The conditions in PNG are terrible. Australia is—it is unlawful for Australia to be continuing to send asylum seekers to conditions the U.N. has found to amount to inhuman, degrading treatment. We are in breach of our international obligations.
The problem is enforcement. Australia’s domestic law—the High Court of Australia has continually found that offshore detention is permitted under the terms of Australian law. When we had the Malaysian Solution under the Gillard government, it was challenged before the High Court and found to be inappropriate, because we had a provision in our law that you couldn’t send asylum seekers to a country that didn’t meet certain human rights standards. In response to that, the Australian government amended that to remove that from our domestic law, which means we are no longer constrained, and they upheld the constitutionality of offshore processing. This is a clear breach of our international obligations, but what we can do as a matter of law within Australia’s courts is limited.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Very quickly, Jennifer, what are the implications of the fact that this detention facility is run by an Australian company or private contractor?
AMY GOODMAN: You have five seconds.
JENNIFER ROBINSON: Australia is clearly liable, as is its corporation, for the human rights obligations taking place.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Robinson and Alex Kelly, thank you so much.
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Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson Will Avoid Civil Rights Charges
The Justice Department is poised to announce it will not bring civil rights charges against police officer Darren Wilson for shooting unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The New York Times reports Attorney General Eric Holder will have the final say, but will almost certainly side with investigators who are recommending no charges. A wider Justice Department probe into Ferguson police over reports of racial profiling in traffic stops and use of excessive force remains underway. Meanwhile, a judge has rejected an NAACP Legal Defense Fund request for a new grand jury to consider criminal charges against Wilson. The group raised concerns over the actions of prosecutor Bob McCulloch, including his decision to let a witness provide false testimony.
Video: New Jersey Police Fatally Shot Man Who Had His Hands Up
Newly released video from a police dashboard camera shows officers in New Jersey shot and killed an African-American man who had his hands in the air. The video from December 30 shows Bridgeton police officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley pulling over a car. After apparently removing a gun from the car’s glove compartment, Officer Days warns the passenger, Jerame Reid, not to move, saying, "I’m going to shoot you," and "If you reach for something, you’re going to be (expletive) dead." Reid appears to say, "I’m getting out and getting on the ground," before standing up with both hands raised in apparent surrender. Both police officers then open fire, shooting at least six times.
Braheme Days: "You reach for something, you’re going to be (expletive) dead. I’m telling you!"
Jerame Reid: "I ain’t even reaching for nothing, bro. I ain’t got no reason to reach" —
Days: "I’m telling you! Keep your (expletive) hands right there! Hey Jerome, you reach for something, you’re gonna be (expletive) dead!"
Reid: "I ain’t reaching."
Days: "He’s reaching! He’s reaching!"
Reid: "I ain’t reaching."
Days: "Show me your (expletive) hands."
Reid: "I’m getting out and getting on the ground."
Roger Worley: "Yo!"
Reid: "I’m getting out and getting on the ground."
Days: "No, you’re not. No, you’re not."
Worley: "Don’t get out of the car!"
Reid: "I’m getting out."
Days: "No, you’re not. Don’t (expletive) move!"
Reid: "I’m getting out."
Days: "Don’t you" — (Officers open fire.)
Both officers have been placed on paid leave amid a probe.
Donetsk Bus Blast Kills 13 as Ukrainian Forces Retreat from Airport
In eastern Ukraine, a mortar blast on board a bus has killed up to 13 people in the pro-Russian rebel stronghold of Donetsk. Each side in the conflict has accused the other. The bombing comes after Ukrainian forces announced they had surrendered the Donetsk airport to the rebels.
Yemen: Houthi Rebels Remain at President’s Home After Reported Deal
In Yemen, Shiite Houthi rebels have reportedly reached a deal to retreat from key positions including the president’s home in return for increased political power. But witnesses say the rebels still surround the residence of U.S.-backed President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Germany: Pegida Leader Resigns After Photo Shows Him Posing as Hitler
The head of Germany’s anti-Islam Pegida movement has stepped down after a controversy over a photo that showed him posing as Adolf Hitler. Lutz Bachmann had also come under fire for his messages on social media referring to immigrants as "scumbags" and "trash."
Files from Late Prosecutor’s Probe Show Argentina Offered to Shield Iran in Bid for Oil
Newly unveiled documents show an elaborate plot between Argentina and Iran to shield Iranian officials accused in a 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, in exchange for Iranian oil. The transcripts of secret communications are part of the probe by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was found dead of a gunshot wound Sunday, hours before he was due to testify on his findings. Officials have called his death a suicide amid initial claims his apartment was locked from inside. But a locksmith who was called to the scene says the service door was easily opened, and there are reports of a third entrance through a neighboring apartment.
In Breach of Protocol, Boehner Invites Netanyahu to Speak on Iran
In what the White House has called a departure from diplomatic protocol, Republican House Speaker John Boehner has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on Iran. Boehner’s announcement comes one day after President Obama vowed in his State of the Union address to veto any new sanctions on Iran. Boehner acknowledged he did not tell the White House before inviting Netanyahu.
House Speaker John Boehner: "I did not consult with the White House. The Congress can make this decision on its own. I don’t believe I’m poking anyone in the eye. There is a serious threat that exists in the world, and the president, last night, kind of papered over it. And the fact is, is that there needs to be a more serious conversation in America about how serious the threat is from radical Islamic jihadists and the threat posed by Iran."
Protesters Interrupt Supreme Court on Citizens United Anniversary
Protesters interrupted a U.S. Supreme Court hearing Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the court’s decision in Citizens United, which opened the floodgates for unlimited political spending. Seven people were arrested after rising to their feet one by one, shouting "Overturn Citizens United" and "One person, one vote."
Republicans Drop Vote on 20-Week Abortion Ban After GOP Women Dissent
House Republicans have dropped plans to vote today on a bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks, following dissent from women within their own party. Republican leaders planned to vote on the measure today on the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, but women lawmakers reportedly raised concerns in closed-door talks, particularly over a requirement that rape and incest survivors seeking an exemption to the ban report to police first.
Half of Senate Refuses to Formally Acknowledge Man-Made Climate Change
Half of the United States Senate has refused to formally acknowledge the existence of man-made climate change. Forty-nine Republicans voted against a measure noting "human activity significantly contributes to climate change." The Senate did overwhelmingly approve a resolution acknowledging that climate change is not a hoax; just one person voted against it — Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker.
North Dakota: Pipeline Leaks 3 Million Gallons of Brine from Oil Drilling
In North Dakota, nearly three million gallons of saltwater created as a byproduct of oil drilling have leaked from a pipeline. According to the Associated Press, the spill is the largest since the state’s oil boom began and nearly three times worse than the previous record. This comes after up to 50,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Yellowstone River in eastern Montana, where residents of Glendive and the surrounding area have been told not to drink their water.
New Senate Intel Committee Chair Seeks Return of CIA Torture Report
The new Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the Obama administration to return all copies of the Senate’s landmark report on CIA torture. Sen. Richard Burr has also indicated he will return a secret CIA internal report, known as the Panetta Review, which found the agency inflated the importance of information gained through torture.
Guantánamo Naval Commander Fired After Suspicious Death of His Wife’s Alleged Lover
The commanding officer in charge of the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay has been fired due to a "loss of confidence in his ability to command." Unnamed officials told the AP Captain John R. Nettleton is under investigation in connection with the mysterious death of a man whose wife Nettleton was having an affair with.
New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver Arrested for Corruption
The New York Times is reporting New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will be arrested today on charges of corruption. Silver has been speaker for over 20 years. [Update: Silver was arrested shortly after this broadcast.]
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"Imagine Something Different" by Amy Goodman
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“Imagine if we did something different.”
Those were just six words out of close to 7,000 that President Barack Obama spoke during his State of the Union address. He was addressing both houses of Congress, which are controlled by his bitter foes. Most importantly, though, he was addressing the country. Obama employed characteristically soaring rhetoric to deliver his message of bipartisanship. “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong,” he assured us.
From whose lives has the shadow of crisis passed? And for whom is this Union strong?
“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?” Obama asked. “Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”
Oxfam, the international anti-poverty organization, weighed in on the question, releasing a report the day before the speech called “Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More.” Oxfam analyzed data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014 and the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires to determine some shocking facts about global inequality.
First, it found that, as of 2014, the 80 richest individuals in the world are wealthier than the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. This bears repeating: The 80 wealthiest people, a group that could fit on a bus, control more wealth than 3.5 billion people. The wealthy are not only accumulating more wealth, but they are getting it faster. Between 2009 and 2014, Oxfam reports, the wealth of those 80 richest people in the world doubled. This, while the rest of the world was mired in the Great Recession, with rampant unemployment and people’s life savings wiped out. If current trends continue, Oxfam notes, by 2016 the richest 1 percent of the world’s population will control more wealth than the bottom 99 percent.
One way the wealthy manage to increase their wealth, Oxfam reports, is through lobbying. The report identifies two industries, finance/insurance and pharmaceutical/health care, as major sources of wealth for the richest, and as principal founts of political contributions. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by these industries annually to shape public policy and safeguard profits.
“For far too long, lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight,” President Obama said in his State of the Union. “They’ve riddled it with giveaways the super-rich don’t need, denying a break to middle-class families who do.”
Obama has proposed increasing taxes on the very rich: “Let’s close the loopholes that lead to inequality by allowing the top 1 percent to avoid paying taxes on their accumulated wealth.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston is an expert on taxes. We spoke to him on the “Democracy Now!” news hour soon after the State of the Union. “The idea that we shouldn’t adjust the tax rates for people at the top and doing so is somehow class warfare is absurd,” he said. “The president is proposing that for those people in the top one-half of 1 percent—and almost all the money would be paid by the top tenth of 1 percent, people who make over $2 million—that their capital-gains tax rate be at the Ronald Reagan rate of 28 percent,” Johnston summarized. “And Republicans are saying that that’s outrageous. Well, I’m sorry, they’re always telling us Ronald Reagan is a saint.”
What would these taxes pay for? Among other things, Obama pledged to make child care more affordable. He promised free community-college education. These are genuine, good ideas. After his address, Republicans repeatedly said he was for the “redistribution of wealth,” code for socialism. But wealth IS being redistributed by the government—upward, from the poor to the rich—through policies promoted by both major parties, from tax loopholes to “free trade” deals that protect corporate profits over workers’ rights.
And who is promulgating these laws? The Center for Responsive Politics, a political contribution watchdog group, reports that, for the first time ever, more than half of the members of Congress are millionaires. The group states that this “represents a watershed moment at a time when lawmakers are debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources, as well as considering an overhaul of the tax code.”
As President Obama said in his State of the Union, “To everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it.”
Growing economic inequality not only hurts the poor, and the working and middle class, but destabilizes society overall. Yes, we must “imagine if we did something different.” Everyone must have a stake in the state of the union.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
Those were just six words out of close to 7,000 that President Barack Obama spoke during his State of the Union address. He was addressing both houses of Congress, which are controlled by his bitter foes. Most importantly, though, he was addressing the country. Obama employed characteristically soaring rhetoric to deliver his message of bipartisanship. “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong,” he assured us.
From whose lives has the shadow of crisis passed? And for whom is this Union strong?
“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?” Obama asked. “Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”
Oxfam, the international anti-poverty organization, weighed in on the question, releasing a report the day before the speech called “Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More.” Oxfam analyzed data from the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014 and the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires to determine some shocking facts about global inequality.
First, it found that, as of 2014, the 80 richest individuals in the world are wealthier than the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population. This bears repeating: The 80 wealthiest people, a group that could fit on a bus, control more wealth than 3.5 billion people. The wealthy are not only accumulating more wealth, but they are getting it faster. Between 2009 and 2014, Oxfam reports, the wealth of those 80 richest people in the world doubled. This, while the rest of the world was mired in the Great Recession, with rampant unemployment and people’s life savings wiped out. If current trends continue, Oxfam notes, by 2016 the richest 1 percent of the world’s population will control more wealth than the bottom 99 percent.
One way the wealthy manage to increase their wealth, Oxfam reports, is through lobbying. The report identifies two industries, finance/insurance and pharmaceutical/health care, as major sources of wealth for the richest, and as principal founts of political contributions. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by these industries annually to shape public policy and safeguard profits.
“For far too long, lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight,” President Obama said in his State of the Union. “They’ve riddled it with giveaways the super-rich don’t need, denying a break to middle-class families who do.”
Obama has proposed increasing taxes on the very rich: “Let’s close the loopholes that lead to inequality by allowing the top 1 percent to avoid paying taxes on their accumulated wealth.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston is an expert on taxes. We spoke to him on the “Democracy Now!” news hour soon after the State of the Union. “The idea that we shouldn’t adjust the tax rates for people at the top and doing so is somehow class warfare is absurd,” he said. “The president is proposing that for those people in the top one-half of 1 percent—and almost all the money would be paid by the top tenth of 1 percent, people who make over $2 million—that their capital-gains tax rate be at the Ronald Reagan rate of 28 percent,” Johnston summarized. “And Republicans are saying that that’s outrageous. Well, I’m sorry, they’re always telling us Ronald Reagan is a saint.”
What would these taxes pay for? Among other things, Obama pledged to make child care more affordable. He promised free community-college education. These are genuine, good ideas. After his address, Republicans repeatedly said he was for the “redistribution of wealth,” code for socialism. But wealth IS being redistributed by the government—upward, from the poor to the rich—through policies promoted by both major parties, from tax loopholes to “free trade” deals that protect corporate profits over workers’ rights.
And who is promulgating these laws? The Center for Responsive Politics, a political contribution watchdog group, reports that, for the first time ever, more than half of the members of Congress are millionaires. The group states that this “represents a watershed moment at a time when lawmakers are debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources, as well as considering an overhaul of the tax code.”
As President Obama said in his State of the Union, “To everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it.”
Growing economic inequality not only hurts the poor, and the working and middle class, but destabilizes society overall. Yes, we must “imagine if we did something different.” Everyone must have a stake in the state of the union.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
207 W 25th Street, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10001 United States
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