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French police have surrounded a building in a northern town near Charles de Gaulle Airport as part of a massive manhunt for the two men accused of carrying out the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Police say they believe the suspects, Said and Chérif Kouachi, are holed up in a small printing business where they have taken a hostage. Meanwhile, French officials are now saying there is a link between the two brothers accused of the Charlie Hebdo attack and the heavily armed man who shot dead a French policewoman on Thursday. That man is now holding five hostages, including women and children, at a kosher supermarket in Paris. Sources told Reuters the three men were all members of the same Paris cell that a decade ago sent young French volunteers to Iraq to fight U.S. forces. Chérif Kouachi served 18 months in prison for his role in the group. At the time, he told the court that he had been motivated to travel to Iraq by images of atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib prison. We speak to Lebanese-French academic Gilbert Achcar, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: French police have surrounded a building in a northern town near Charles de Gaulle Airport as part of a massive manhunt for the two men accused of carrying out the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine. Police say the suspects, Said and Chérif Kouachi, are holed up in a small printing business where they have taken a hostage. The brothers reportedly told police they wanted to die as martyrs. Earlier today, shots were fired as police chased a car believed to contain the suspects. The two brothers have been accused of carrying out Wednesday’s attack on the office of the satirical magazine, killing eight journalists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a visitor. Eleven people were also wounded, four of them seriously.
Meanwhile, French officials are now saying there is a link between the two brothers accused of the Charlie Hebdo attack and the heavily armed man who shot dead a French policewoman on Thursday. That man is reportedly now holding five hostages, including women and children, at a kosher supermarket in Paris.
AMY GOODMAN: Sources told Reuters the three men were all members of the same Paris cell that a decade ago sent young French volunteers to Iraq to fight U.S. forces. Chérif Kouachi served 18 months in prison for his role in the group. At the time, he told the court he had been motivated to travel to Iraq by images of atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib prison. Said Kouachi was reportedly in Yemen in 2011 for several months training with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. government sources told Reuters the two brothers were listed in two U.S. security databases—a highly classified database containing information on 1.2 million possible counterterrorism suspects called TIDE and the much smaller no-fly list maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center.
Vigils are continuing to take place across France to remember those killed. Last night, the lights on the Eiffel Tower were turned off as a mark of respect.
For more on the attacks, we are joined again by Lebanese-French academic Gilbert Achcar. He’s a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. His most recent books are Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism and The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising. The French newspaper Le Monde has described him as "one of the best analysts of the contemporary Arab world."
Gilbert Achcar, thanks so much for joining us again today on Democracy Now! So the situation is thousands of French police have surrounded this printing press right near Charles de Gaulle Airport. They are saying that the two brothers are inside, that they’ve got a hostage with them. Police say that they have made contact with the men, that they say they want to die as martyrs. That’s according to the police. Can you just talk about the developments of the last few days, from the attack on the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, to where we stand today?
GILBERT ACHCAR: Thank you, Amy. Well, I mean, the obvious thing—and it should be said to avoid any misunderstanding—is that, of course, this was an appalling attack and a really barbaric act to, you know, slaughter like this these journalists, whatever disagreement one may have with their kind of drawing and their kind of perspective. That, I should say, is the obvious.
Now, again, what we are seeing now unfolding is, unfortunately, something predictable, which is trying to blame Islam, actually, for this. And there are so many pronouncements in this direction now in Europe, in the West, and all that—of course, not official pronouncements, but you have a deluge of far-right and, let’s say, vulgar kind of racist attack on Muslims, in general. And that’s why I think it’s very important to put such events in context.
And, well, yesterday when we spoke, I tried to remind the viewers that, well, on the scale of rampage killing, this appalling killing in Paris comes, you know, after—I mean, beneath, I mean, on the list, the Islamophobic mass killing by the Norwegian, Breivik, if I remember his name correctly—
AMY GOODMAN: Anders Breivik.
GILBERT ACHCAR: Yes, and the—which, I mean, made something like over 75 people killed, young people in Norway—and the massacre perpetrated by also ultra-Zionist killer Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994, which made something like 29 or more people killed. Again, these are, I mean, appalling acts of what I described some years ago as a clash of barbarisms, because that’s what we are getting—the barbarism of the strong, of course, being the primary responsible in this awful dynamics. And it leads—it leads, you know, to a counterbarbarism on the side of those who see themselves as the downtrodden, the oppressed.
In the case of Iraq, this was—I mean, this is something that I said immediately after 9/11 and even before the invasion of Iraq, and what we saw in Iraq was the best illustration of that. You just mentioned how these killers, the French—the two French killers, or alleged killers, let’s say, had even been affected by these developments in Iraq and had fought or been connected with networks fighting in Iraq against U.S. troops. Well, what you had in Iraq is that the barbarism that—represented by the U.S. occupation of that country, which went actually beyond what even one could expect, with things like the torture in Abu Ghraib or the massacre in Fallujah, of course, bred a counterbarbarism represented by al-Qaeda. And the Bush administration invaded Iraq in the name of eradicating al-Qaeda, and it only managed to give al-Qaeda the largest territorial base they could ever have dreamt of in Iraq. And what we are seeing now in the name of the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is the continuation of al-Qaeda, of this same al-Qaeda that the Bush administration was supposed to eradicate. So that’s what you get, because this kind of actions by the United States in invading other countries and, of course, acting as an occupying force, with all what this means, leads, of course, to such extremism on the other side, as we have seen.
Moreover, I mean, we have to take into consideration that for decades the United States, in alliance with its best friend in the Middle East, which is the Saudi kingdom, the closest friend, even closer than Israel in that regard, the Saudi kingdom, has used their kind of ideology, the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, which is the most fanatical interpretation of Islam, even against other Islamic—other branches of Islam. It’s extremely offensive. They use this ideology in the fight against anything left-wing, anything progressive in the region. That was in the ’50s and the ’60s and the ’70s, and ultimately, I mean, of course, it peaked in the war in Afghanistan, where such ideologically inspired groups were used by the United States in the fight against the Soviet occupation of that country. And ultimately, well, a chicken came home to roost, as you know, and tragically, with the appalling massacre of 9/11, but that was a direct continuation of that. And every—I mean, everyone knowing about the whereabouts of all this knew that, I mean, at that time, and it was very much emphasized, although it was, of course, blurred in the public opinion by the kind of characterization that we heard from the Bush administration: "They hate us because of our freedom and our democracy." And, you know, we hear the same, the same kind of tune now, and this is quite misleading, I would say.
Let me also add another dimension concerning France, which was not part of the occupation of Iraq. But in France, I mean, the fact that you have had some young French citizen from Algerian background in the last few years behaving, I mean, in such extremist and fanatical forms, as we have seen, is something to be related also to the overall racism and Islamophobia that are quite, I would say, pervasive in French society, in French media. And this is a country that has not really cleared, you know, its memory—I mean, its past, the problem of its past, its colonial past. In France in 2005, the Parliament voted a law requiring that in the schools it should be taught—I mean, what should be taught is the positive role of colonialism in Africa, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Imagine. Imagine in the United States a law asking schools to teach the positive role of slavery. This is quite, I mean, unimaginable. One has to understand all this background, not of course as an excuse for these appalling murders—definitely not—and these guys belong to a completely crazy kind of ideological perspective. But one has to understand how, in a society which is supposed to be, you know, relatively wealthy and all that, you can have such hatred growing and coming to such extremes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gilbert Achcar, I wanted to follow up on that, asking about, now that we have gotten these reports that the two attacks—not only the attack on the magazine, but also the shooting of the policewoman—were individuals that had apparently had ties together, what’s your sense of the extent of support for jihadist perspectives and viewpoints within the Muslim community in France, a rather large Muslim community, and also your sense of the extent of these right-wing, Islamophobic movements within France?
GILBERT ACHCAR: Well, there are definitely much more Islamophobic-minded persons and militants in France than supporters of such appalling act as the one, this attack on Charlie Hebdo. And I would say, fortunately, that those who identify with this kind of jihadist perspective may be in the hundreds, out of a community of several—I mean, a community or a—let’s say, out of several millions of people in France of Muslim background. So, we are speaking here of a tiny minority.
But nevertheless, the risk is that the kind of victimization of Muslims in general, the kind of the targeting of Islam, the finger pointed at Muslims, requiring from them that they should condemn all that as if it were their problem and their specific problem, and not seeing that this is a problem of the French society and the French state in the first place, all this, you know, creates the risk of people finally identifying even with these two crazy guys, you know, as a kind of—I mean, think of what you had in the United States turning Bonnie and Clyde into heroes, you know? Although, I mean, if you look at the record, it’s not exactly a humanistic record. So, I mean, there is here a real danger, a real problem, of getting this dynamics of what I call the clash of barbarism going further, developing and all that.
AMY GOODMAN: Gilbert, we have to break, but we’re going to come back to this discussion, and we’ll be joined by a young French-Arab student who’s here in the United States. Also, the latest news is that in these two standoffs that are taking place, one near Charles de Gaulle Airport with the brothers holding a hostage, the other at a kosher supermarket—that one, it looks like two hostages have been killed. We’ll keep you updated throughout this show. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
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Muslims across France are fearing a backlash after Wednesday’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine. Several mosques have been attacked. A bomb exploded at a kebab shop in Paris. We speak to Muhammad El Khaoua, a graduate student in international relations at the Paris Institute for Political Science. He grew up in the outskirts of Paris where he was involved with different grassroots associations, including Salaam, a student association dedicated to promoting interfaith dialogue and a better understanding of Islam. Also joining is Lebanese-French academic Gilbert Achcar, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we continue to look at the breaking news from France. Agence France-Presse is reporting two people died after a gunman took five people hostage at a kosher grocery store. The gunman is reportedly the same man who shot a Paris policewoman dead on Thursday. Meanwhile, French police have surrounded a building in a northern town near Charles de Gaulle Airport as part of a massive manhunt for the two men accused of carrying out the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine. Police say the suspects, Said and Chérif Kouachi, are holed up in a small printing business, where they have taken a hostage. Still with us in London is Gilbert Achcar.
AMY GOODMAN: Also with us here in New York is Muhammad El Khaoua. He is a graduate student in international relations at the Paris Institute for Political Science. He grew up in the outskirts of Paris, where he was involved with different grassroots associations, including Salaam, a student association dedicated to promoting interfaith dialogue and a better understanding of Islam.
Before we go back to Gilbert Achcar, Muhammad, talk about the climate in Paris. And you hear the horror right now. You’ve got the two brothers. They’re holed up near the airport. They’ve got a hostage. Another man, not clear what their connection is, if there’s a direct connection, though they may have been years ago together, is—has killed two hostages, or two hostages have been killed in a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
MUHAMMAD EL KHAOUA: Yeah, I mean, this is a political nightmare for the entire French society, but particularly for the French Muslims, because those who killed those individuals really create a space, create a great opportunity for the most destructive Islamophobic, racist forces in France, which are already using this tragedy, this catastrophe, to justify more repression against the Muslims. So it’s a political suicide that they basically did in the name of Islam. And again, the condemnation has been really clear: This goes against the, really, foundation of Islam.
But I think we have also to be clear on this: We should not always expect Muslims to condemn as Muslims. I think they should condemn as French citizens, or as human beings. When, as Gilbert Achcar mentioned, this Norwegian individual, Breivik, killed those 77 individuals in Norway, he was not portrayed as a Christian, white Christian individual. He was not even portrayed as a terrorist. So it seems like when a Muslim commits a terrorist act, he is referred as a terrorist, but when a non-Muslim does the same, there is a double standard.
And it reminds me that I was watching NBC, and there was a former CIA official who was on the show, and he said that this terrorist attack was the most serious one in France since the—in Europe since the killing of this Norwegian individual by Breivik. But he forget that actually it’s not the case, because he didn’t include the killing of these Norwegian people, as if this individual is not a terrorist. So, there is a kind of identity politics here which is a bit disturbing for me.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole issue of the, for now, for 30, 40 years, the uneasy situation of the Muslim—the growing Muslim population within France vis-à-vis the old established French white citizenry, what do you see—I mean, clearly this is a setback for those relations, but what has been the relationship now over the last several decades?
MUHAMMAD EL KHAOUA: Well, as you may know, France has a largest Muslim population in western Europe, and the history of the Muslim presence in France is deeply connected with the history of French colonialism. Most of the Muslims come from the countries which have been colonized by France, namely North African and West African countries.
AMY GOODMAN: Where is your family originally from?
MUHAMMAD EL KHAOUA: From Morocco and Nigeria. So, to understand the treatment of the French Muslims in today’s French society, we need to look at the colonial legacy, which I believe continues to shape, influence the way France deals with Islam and Muslims.
AMY GOODMAN: Gilbert Achcar, can you comment on what Muhammad is saying?
GILBERT ACHCAR: Yes. I mean, I think—well, I agree with what he is saying. Until now, I can’t see any disagreement. I mean, he is exactly pointing to this problem of the double standard in reacting to such events when they come from Muslims nowadays compared to any other religion, because, after all, this wave of extremism and fundamentalism is affecting everywhere, you know. I mean, we mentioned this Norwegian crazy guy, and you have these appalling demonstrations of the far right in Germany, of all places, that’s really frightening. You had—you have Jewish fundamentalist extremists in Israel killing regularly, actually, and no one is saying Judaism is the source of all these killings. You have Hindu fundamentalists doing all sorts of appalling things, and again, no one is saying this is the problem of Hinduism. But when it comes to Islam, Islam is finger-pointed immediately. And that’s really here an issue of double standard in dealing with that.
And again, I mean, the freedom of speech is something, and I’m fully for the real freedom of speech, actually, which France is not a real country of freedom of speech, where you have a lot of laws hindering the real freedom of speech in France. It’s nothing like the First Amendment in the United States. But even in these limitations to the freedom of speech, you find double standards also.
And as I said, I mean, for instance, France, of course, the sense of guilt—for very good reason, which is actually an awful historical reason—about the Jewish genocide is not equalled by any sense of guilt with regard to the colonial past of France. And Algeria, for instance, is one of the most appalling episodes in the history of colonialism. You know, I mean, there are few worse cases, like the Congo, with the Belgians in the Congo, and such, but the history of French presence in Algeria, which lasted until 1962—that’s not that long ago, you know—is just appalling. And there is no—no real—I mean, at the level of the whole French society and the French media, this is not really integrated. And you have this kind of secularist arrogance towards Islam, which is a continuation of the kind of arrogance and colonial spirit that existed at the time of direct colonialism.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m going to just interrupt to say breaking news: The police have named two suspects wanted in connection with the second siege at the kosher supermarket in Paris: Amédy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumeddiene. Hayat is a woman. I want to turn to an imam of a mosque located in a Paris suburb, Drancy mosque. Imam Hassen Chalghoumi said France’s Muslim community fears a backlash in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack.
IMAM HASSEN CHALGHOUMI: [translated] We are also afraid of this twisting. That’s not to say we do not do our duty in renouncing this barbarism. No, we renounce it. We are one of the first victims. I am living 24 hours a day under police protection, faced with a minority. Unfortunately, all of the Muslim world are victims of 95 percent of terrorism. Currently, the acts of yesterday, there is also a wave of racism and insults that follow on the networks and on the Internet. We can understand the anger, but we cannot accept the hatred.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Imam Hassen Chalghoumi of the Drancy mosque in Paris, the French Muslim community fearing a major backlash in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack. In fact, the policeman that has become famous now, who was laying on the ground outside the offices of Charlie Hebdo, named Ahmed Merabet, was Muslim himself, when one of the two assassins came and shot him directly and killed him. And people are not only saying, "Je Suis Charlie," now, but they are saying, "Je Suis Ahmed." On Sunday, there will be a mass protest in France, a rally in Paris. But they will not have the National Party, which is Marine Le Pen’s party. If you could comment on this, Muhammad, and the organizing among the youth, people like you, groups like Indigène?
MUHAMMAD EL KHAOUA: Yeah, I would like to say a word about this hashtag, "Je Suis Charlie." I really understand the compassion, the natural compassion and respect and sentiment which the slogan represent, but I think Charlie—we need also to mention that Charlie Hebdo’s role in fostering this Islamophobic context has been very, very controversial, and especially since the early 2000s. They somehow recuperate—they use some of this rhetoric of the clash of civilization, and they apply it to the Muslims, who were always portrayed in the most degrading ways. So, we are very clear on the condemnation of these attacks, which are not—which cannot be justified in any way, shape or forms. But we also, as citizens, should be entitled to criticize the content of the newspaper and the shift in its editorial line since the early 2000s.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask you about that, because the way it’s been portrayed here, at least in the United States, is that the magazine was an equal opportunity satirist, attacking Christian—the Christian religion, Judaism, as well as Islam. But you think that that’s not quite so.
MUHAMMAD EL KHAOUA: No, I think when you target, you know, the weakest of the weak, when you target a population, a segment of the French population, which is already the target of institutionalized racism, this is not brave. I don’t think it’s courageous. Again, they have the right to do it, and it’s the law, so nobody puts into question the right to do so, but we should be also—without being, you know, afraid of being linked to this attack, question the responsibility of the newspaper and question their ethics in that matter.
AMY GOODMAN: The organizing of young people, like the groups Indigène, Indigenous, how people have been organizing in the past?
MUHAMMAD EL KHAOUA: You know, the Indigenous party, the Party of the Indigenous People of the Republic, as it is called, Parti des Indigènes de la République, has emerged in a very specific context, that which Gilbert Achcar mentioned, the 2005 propositions of law which would make obligatory for the French educational system to emphasize on the positive role of colonization—this law has now been passed—and also the 2005 riots, which have been—which are a very interesting case to understand the way Islam is dealt and perceived in France in the post-9/11 context. So, this is the context under which this movement, which is now a political party, has emerged. Basically, the idea of this movement is to say that, well, France has denied its colonial past, it refused to deal with it, it refused to recognize how this colonial legacy continues to shape its relation with Muslim and Islam. And I believe they make a point in this understanding, in this analysis of French society, which is a very racialized society, which pretends to be colorblind, which is really haunted by its colonial past.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but of course we’ll continue to follow this issue. Muhammad El Khaoua is a graduate student in international relations at the Paris Institute for Political Science, grew up in the outskirts of Paris, where he’s been involved with different grassroots associations, including Salaam, a student association dedicated to promoting interfaith dialogue and a better understanding of Islam. He heads back to Paris soon. And Gilbert Achcar, thanks so much for being with us, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS, at the University of London. His most recent books are Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism as well as The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, a bomb attack in Colorado Springs. Was it a terrorist attack against the NAACP? Stay with us.
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The FBI says a deliberate explosion outside a Colorado office of the NAACP may have been an act of domestic terrorism. An improvised explosive device was detonated on the NAACP building’s wall in Colorado Springs Tuesday morning. A gasoline can was placed nearby, but did not ignite. An FBI spokesperson says a hate crime is among the potential motives. Police have announced a person of interest in the case, a white male around the age of 40. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP has been the target of eight bombings since 1965, including three in 1993, when the last attacks occurred. We speak to Rosemary Harris Lytle, president of the NAACP Colorado, Montana, Wyoming State Conference, and former head of the Colorado Springs branch of the NAACP.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Colorado, where the FBI says a deliberate explosion outside a Colorado office of the NAACP may have been an act of domestic terrorism. An improvised explosive device was detonated on the NAACP’s building wall in Colorado Springs Tuesday morning. A gasoline can was placed nearby but did not ignite. An FBI spokesperson says a hate crime is among the potential motives. Police have announced a person of interest in the case, a white male around the age of 40.
The bombing of the building, the nation’s oldest civil rights group, has received almost no attention in the corporate media. According to the website ThinkProgress, a search of news coverage over a close to 24-hour period through Wednesday afternoon found just one mention on CNN and none on MSNBC and Fox News. MSNBC’s Al Sharpton and Chris Hayes did cover the explosion on their programs Wednesday evening.
AMY GOODMAN: According to the NAACP, the attack follows the shooting of a school bus that was traveling with the group’s 120-mile protest march in Missouri last month. On Wednesday, NAACP President Cornell Brooks posted a message in response to the explosion near the group’s Colorado Springs office.
CORNELL BROOKS: Thankfully, the NAACP family is safe. Whenever I think about the bombing in Colorado Springs, I’m reminded that, whenever threatened, the NAACP doubles down for justice.
AMY GOODMAN: According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP has been the target of eight bombings since 1965, including three in 1993, when the last attacks occurred. The FBI is expected to give a news conference this afternoon on the explosion in Colorado Springs, along with the BATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
For more, we go directly to Colorado Springs, where we’re joined by Rosemary Harris Lytle, the president of the NAACP Colorado, Montana, Wyoming State Conference, former head of the Colorado Springs branch of the NAACP.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you tell us what happened?
ROSEMARY HARRIS LYTLE: Well, good morning. What we do know, based on police reports and based on the reports of those who were in the NAACP office in Colorado Springs on Tuesday morning, that at approximately 10:45 there was an explosion, there was an improvised explosive devise that was placed against the exterior wall of the building, that it did cause an explosion that greatly disturbed the flow of community, the harmony of community. One described it as a shotgun blast directly to his ear, in its loudness. And we know that law enforcement authorities—FBI, local police and others—are now investigating and looking for that person of interest, and hopefully they, in their work, will help us know who did this and why.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Was there any indication beforehand of any threats against that particular branch of your organization or any reason why that would occur in Colorado Springs?
ROSEMARY HARRIS LYTLE: Well, I think that any time organizations are involved in the kind of work that the NAACP is involved in, any of its units can be placed into jeopardy as a backlash to that activism. We do have some anecdotal evidence of those who might have been disturbed by some of the activities of the NAACP, whether nationally or in the state or even locally at this branch office, but none of that has been verified as the precursor to the kind of criminal act that we saw on Tuesday.
AMY GOODMAN: The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok said several NAACP offices have been attacked since the '80s. He spoke on MSNBC's The Ed Show.
MARK POTOK: In 1981, for instance, an NAACP office was attacked. In 1989, an NAACP lawyer in Savannah was murdered with a letter bomb. There was an attack with a tear gas bomb on the Atlanta headquarters of the NAACP in the early '80s. And it really goes on and on. It's been quite something.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Mark Potok. Rosemary Lytle, if you could just wrap up in talking about your concerns right now and in this climate today, as we look at what happened in Ferguson, in Staten Island, the racial climate in the United States?
ROSEMARY HARRIS LYTLE: Well, as we think about the long history of racial division in this country, going back to the most racially divisive thing that might have happened on this planet—the forced importation of African slaves to this country—I think that knowing that we’ve never talked about that as a country, knowing that we’ve never had a national moment of truth and reconciliation, knowing that we typically have responses to events in this country, whether they were the bombing of four little girls in a church or a bomb being placed under the bed of an NAACP president and his wife on Christmas Eve in 1951, or even what we were talking about from the Southern Poverty Law Center just now, we know that at the heart of these problems is the lack of a conversation on race.
It also has not happened in Colorado Springs, an enormously beautiful place, full of people who, I believe—I’ve lived here for almost 20 years—are of good conscience, started by General William Jackson Palmer, who fought slavery in the North and founded this city as a place that would be completely inclusive, but very quickly became a place of restrictive covenants, became a sundown town, became a place that was inhabited by those from the South who could not accept that kind of complete equity and inclusion in public life, and is one of the reasons why the NAACP was born here in 1981—excuse me, in 1918, in 1918, when founder Mary White Ovington came to charter the NAACP Colorado Springs branch at the local church that had been started, the first bricks given by General Palmer, the Payne Chapel AME. So we know that the history of strife and division in this country, even in this pretty little place, Pikes Peak, a place that’s storied in its beauty, underneath that is an ugliness that we’ve talked about and that I, as a journalist, have written about since I’ve moved here.
AMY GOODMAN: Rosemary Harris Lytle, I want to thank you for being with us, and we’ll certainly continue to cover this story, president of the NAACP Colorado, Montana, Wyoming State Conference, former head of the Colorado Springs branch of the NAACP, speaking to us from Colorado Springs.
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We turn now to Vermont, where a sit-in demanding single-payer healthcare erupted during Gov. Peter Shumlin’s inaugural address on Thursday. This comes after Shumlin backed down in December on his promise to create a single-payer healthcare system in the state. During Thursday’s sit-in, protesters sang songs and expressed their disappointment as they called out their demands and were arrested. We speak to James Haslam, director of the Vermont Workers’ Center, which coordinates the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Vermont, where a sit-in demanding single-payer healthcare erupted during Governor Peter Shumlin’s State of the State address on Thursday following his inauguration. This comes after Shumlin backed down in December on his promise to create a single-payer healthcare system in the state. Shumlin first won election in 2010 with a pledge to make Vermont the first state in the country with a single-payer system. But in a report released at the end of December, he said the program would draw fewer federal funds than expected, and tax hikes needed to fund the system had proven too high.
GOV. PETER SHUMLIN: I’m not going to undermine the hope of achieving critically important healthcare reforms for this state by pushing prematurely for single-payer when it’s not the right time for Vermont. ... This is the greatest disappointment of my political life so far, that we couldn’t advance this ball as quickly as we had wished. But we shall persevere. We shall get it right. We shall push on.
AMY GOODMAN: During Thursday’s sit-in, protesters sang songs, expressed their disappointment, as they called out their demands and were arrested.
PROTESTERS: We, the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign, we demand the speaker of the House, Shap Smith, commits the Vermont Legislature to schedule a public hearing on Governor Shumlin’s financing proposal by January 29th. Healthcare! Human right! Healthcare! Human right!
AMY GOODMAN: Since no candidate for governor won more than 50 percent of the vote in November’s election, a provision in the Vermont Constitution required the Legislature to decide the race. The mainly Democratic Legislature chose incumbent Governor Peter Shumlin over his challenger Scott Milne, who earned just over 45 percent of the vote in November compared over 46 percent for Shumlin. So it was yesterday morning that the Legislature chose Shumlin as the governor and yesterday afternoon that the State of the State happened and these protests took place.
Well, we’re joined right now by one of the leaders of the protest, of the sit-in, who has been leading the push for single-payer healthcare since 2009. James Haslam is director of the Vermont Workers’ Center, which coordinates Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign, joining us by video stream.
Welcome to Democracy Now! A highly unusual day—people had not taken over the floor of the Vermont Legislature before in Montpelier, and Governor Shumlin chosen by the Legislature. James, talk about everything that took place yesterday.
JAMES HASLAM: Thanks, Amy and Juan. Yes, yesterday was an incredible day. We had hundreds of people come out on an incredibly cold day. You know, windchill factors were negative-30 in Vermont yesterday. And, you know, we started off the day right down the street from the State House in a church. We had a People’s State of the State address, a speak-out, where the Healthcare is a Human Right Campaign was joined by the folks from immigrant right organizations, climate justice organizations, disability rights organizations, unions—you know, an incredibly broad range of folks—to talk about a vision forward, which—including, obviously, focusing on universal healthcare, but how that is also connected to actually all of our human rights and having the kind of democracy and economy that works for all the people. And then we marched down to the State House through these cold temperatures and ended up packing the State House before the State of the State address, as you had said, and singing and ended up, you know, being there basically for many hours throughout the day.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, James, what about the governor’s claim that the taxes required to be raised would be far too onerous for the citizens of Vermont in terms of implementing single-payer? What’s your response?
AMY GOODMAN: Something like 11 percent on payroll, 9 percent on income tax.
JAMES HASLAM: Well, they just released a report. And the law that we passed in 2011 required the governor to develop a proposal how to finance it. And it was actually due two years ago as part of the law that we passed in 2011. And, you know, he waited until after the election. He said he had to wait to make sure he got it right. And his job was to come forth with a proposal that then the Legislature would determine whether we could do or not. And instead of doing that, he said that, you know, this is the best he could do, but he thinks that Vermont can’t afford it.
We’ve spent the last few days, and others have, including a lot of economists, who have dug into the report—some really good work was done in there, and it actually shows that Vermont can do this, that it actually benefits the majority of people, but it would require us raising taxes on—keeping high levels of taxes on large corporations and on wealthy folks. And that was, you know, a political choice that he said that we couldn’t afford. And what we say is, we can’t afford the current system. It’s a crisis in our communities, and we have to keep moving forward.
AMY GOODMAN: And to state legislators who supported single-payer, said you hurt the cause by sitting in and disrupting the inauguration?
JAMES HASLAM: Well, you know, we are coming to say, yesterday and all the days to come that we need to, that we are not going to stop. We’ve come way too far. We’re not turning back. Vermont has passed a law saying that healthcare is a public good, and that they have a job to take up this financing report and take it seriously.
AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there, James Haslam, director of the Vermont Workers’ Center.
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France: Hostages Taken in 2 Standoffs
French police have surrounded a building in a northern town near Charles de Gaulle Airport as part of a massive manhunt for the two men accused of carrying out the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Police say they believe the suspects, Said and Chérif Kouachi, are holed up in a small printing business where they have taken a hostage. Meanwhile, French officials are now saying there is a link between the two brothers and the heavily armed man who shot dead a French policewoman on Thursday. The suspect in that shooting has reportedly taken hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris. We will have more on this breaking news after headlines.
"Je Suis Ahmed" Hashtag Honors Slain Muslim Officer in Paris
People across France and around the world are paying tribute to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack, including Police Officer Ahmed Merabet, whose execution on a sidewalk outside the office was captured on video and shown around the world. Thousands have memorialized Merabet with the social media hashtag "Je Suis Ahmed," or "I am Ahmed," a take on the viral hashtag "Je Suis Charlie." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid tribute to Merabet as he called for unity.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "We now know that policeman’s name. He was Ahmed Merabet. He himself was a Muslim. This is yet another reminder of what we are facing together. It should never be seen as a war of religion, for religion or on religion. It is an assault on our common humanity, designed to terrify and incite."
Nigeria: Hundreds Feared Dead After Boko Haram Attack
In Nigeria, the militant group Boko Haram has laid siege to the northeastern town of Baga. The militants have reportedly decimated the town and attacked surrounding areas, leaving bodies strewn in the streets. The death toll is feared to be in the hundreds, with estimates from local officials ranging from more than 100 to as high as 2,000 people.
Sri Lanka Elects New President in Surprise Upset
The South Asian nation of Sri Lanka has elected a new president, dealing an unexpected defeat to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has ruled the country for nearly a decade. Rajapaksa is credited with defeating the Tamil Tigers in 2009 after a 26-year civil war, but accused of presiding over war crimes in the conflict’s final stages. His opponent, Maithripala Sirisena, who won the election, was acting defense minister in the bloody final days of the conflict.
Mexico: 13 Police Held over Journalist’s Disappearance
In the Mexican state of Veracruz, 13 local police have been detained over the disappearance of a journalist. Moisés Sánchez, who reported on drug-related violence and corruption, was kidnapped from his home in Medellín de Bravo earlier this month. The 13 officers detained constitute about a third of the municipal police force.
Saudi Arabia: Blogger Publicly Flogged for Insulting Islam
In Saudi Arabia, an imprisoned blogger and activist has been publicly flogged. Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes to be carried out at a rate of 50 per week for charges including insulting Islam. Amnesty International considers Badawi a prisoner of conscience who is being punished for creating an online forum for debate. U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki has urged Saudi Arabia to review the case and cancel the floggings. We’ll have more on Saudi Arabia and its close ties to the United States after headlines.
Honda Fined Record $70 Million for Failing to Report Crashes
The Obama administration has fined Honda a record $70 million for failing to report death and injury claims related to its vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced the fine after it was revealed the automaker failed to report more than 1,700 claims over more than a decade.
Obama Announces Plan for 2 Years of Free Community College
President Obama has announced a new proposal to make community college free for two years to students who maintain a certain grade-point average. Under the plan, the federal government would pay 75 percent of tuition, while states would need to pay the remaining 25 percent. In a video ahead of today’s formal announcement, Obama said the plan was part of a preview of policies outlined in his upcoming State of the Union address.
President Obama: "Put simply, what I’d like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everybody who’s willing to work for it. That’s right, free for everybody who’s willing to work for it. It’s something that we can accomplish, and it’s something that will train our workforce so that we can compete with anybody in the world."
Pentagon to Consolidate Forces in Europe, Keep Levels the Same
The Pentagon is consolidating its forces in Europe and returning 15 sites to their home countries in a purported cost-saving measure. But the plan will keep U.S. troop levels about the same, with increases in Italy and Germany, and plans to launch a new fleet of stealth fighter jets from a base in England.
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Keystone XL: "Congress Turning Its Back on Science"
U.S. lawmakers have advanced a measure to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline which would bring carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The newly Republican-led Senate Energy Committee approved the bill, which President Obama has vowed to veto. Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders denounced the measure.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: "I am very worried about the United States Congress turning its back on science, turning its back on those people who tell us that we have got to cut carbon emissions rather than give a green light for the exploration and the production of some of the dirtiest oil on this planet. I think, frankly, that is crazy."
Sen. Barbara Boxer to Retire in 2016
The vote on Keystone XL comes as one of the Senate’s leading voices on environmental protection, California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, has announced she will not run for re-election in 2016. Boxer, who was first elected in 1992, has supported reproductive rights and gun control and was one of the "Immortal 23" — the 23 senators who voted against authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Democratic Lawmakers Oppose Obama’s Push to Fast-Track Trade Deals
A coalition of Democratic lawmakers has joined with labor and environmental activists to oppose President Obama’s plan to fast-track approval of trade deals. The Obama administration has been quietly pressing for the authority to secretly negotiate trade pacts and then rush them through Congress with an up-or-down vote. The new powers could help Obama push through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive pact encompassing 40 percent of the global economy. On Thursday, Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro said trade deals merit debate and cannot be rushed.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro: "Trade deals go well beyond trade. They can compromise the quality of the food we eat. They can raise the prices that we pay for medicines. They can attack our environmental regulations, weaken our financial regulations, stop our government from supporting American businesses, and they do nothing to stop the injustice of currency manipulation."
Ohio to Delay Execution, Drop 2-Drug Cocktail
Ohio has announced it will drop a two-drug cocktail that was used during a botched 26-minute execution during which the prisoner gasped for air. The same two-drug combination was used in an execution in Arizona which lasted for nearly two hours. Ohio says it will delay at least one execution as it seeks a replacement anesthetic. But the anesthetics have been nearly impossible to obtain due to a refusal by European drug makers to sell them for executions.
Extended Tamir Rice Shooting Video Shows Police Failed to Provide Medical Aid, Tackled Sister
Newly released video from a fatal police shooting in Cleveland, Ohio, shows officers failed to provide medical help to 12-year-old Tamir Rice after they shot him, and knocked his sister to the ground when she ran to him. Previously released footage showed police shot Rice within two seconds of pulling up next to him in a park where he was playing with a toy gun. Following a battle with city officials, Northeast Ohio Media Group obtained a longer version, which shows Rice did not receive medical attention until four minutes after the shooting, when an FBI agent who was in the area came to his aid. About a minute after Rice was shot, his 14-year-old sister is seen rushing toward him as he lies behind a police cruiser. Police tackle her to the ground, then handcuff her and place her in the cruiser, feet from her dying brother. The footage matches what the sister, Tajai, told The Today Show last month.
Tajai Rice: "I ran to the gazebo, and I couldn’t get there all the way to him, because the officer attacked me, threw me on the ground, tackled me on the ground, put me in handcuffs, and put me in the back of the police car, right next to his body."
The video shows it took more than eight minutes for emergency medical personnel to arrive and more than 12 minutes for Tamir Rice to be taken away on a stretcher. He was pronounced dead hours later at a hospital.
Environmentalist Freed from Prison After 9 Years; Gov’t Admits Withholding Documents
An environmental activist sentenced to 19 years in prison for "ecoterrorism" in what his supporters say was a case of FBI entrapment has been released after serving nine years. Eric McDavid was convicted of plotting to bomb sites in California including the Nimbus Dam. But his attorneys say he was entrapped by a teenage informant who supplied him with food, housing and bomb-making instructions, and pressured him into illegal activity. As part of a settlement, federal prosecutors acknowledged withholding evidence in the case, including an FBI request for the informant to undergo a lie-detector test. McDavid was released after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge.
After 2-Year Wait, White House Responds to Petition to Fire Prosecutor in Aaron Swartz Case
The White House has responded to a petition calling for the firing of the federal prosecutor who led the case against Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz — two years after the petition was created. More than 60,000 people signed the petition on WhiteHouse.gov calling for the firing of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz for prosecutorial overreach against Swartz, who took his own life two years ago this Sunday, on January 11, 2013. Swartz’s suicide came just weeks before he was set to go on trial for downloading millions of academic articles with the intent of making them freely available. He faced decades in prison. The petition launched the day after Swartz’s death quickly passed the threshold of 25,000 signatures, which at the time was supposed to mandate a public response from the White House. Two years later, the White House has issued a statement refusing to "address agency personnel matters in a petition response." In a statement, David Segal, head of the group Demand Progress, which Swartz co-founded, said, "A White House that truly cared about protecting Internet freedom would recognize the chilling effects that actions like those of Carmen Ortiz have on activists and technologists, and see to it that they were put to an end."
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