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Despite Military Crackdown in Papua & Other Rights Abuses, Obama Hosts Indonesian President in D.C.
On Monday, President Obama met Indonesia’s new president, Joko Widodo, at the White House to discuss climate change, trade and strengthening U.S.-Indonesian ties. President Obama described Indonesia as one of the world’s largest democracies, but human rights groups paint a different story, citing the military’s ongoing repression in West Papua as well as discriminatory laws restricting the rights of religious minorities and women. Indonesia has also been criticized for attempting to silence any discussion about the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Indonesian genocide that left more than 1 million people dead. We speak to John Sifton of Human Rights Watch and journalist Allan Nairn, who has covered Indonesia for decades.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country. On Monday, President Obama met at the White House with Indonesia’s new president, Joko Widodo, who is also known as Jokowi, to discuss climate change, trade and strengthening U.S.-Indonesian ties.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Our partnership is very much in the interests of the United States, given Indonesia’s large population, its leadership in the region, its democratic traditions, the fact that it is a large Muslim country with a tradition of tolerance and moderation, and its role in trade and commerce and economic development.
AMY GOODMAN: During his visit to the White House, Indonesian President Jokowi announced Indonesia intends to join the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the United States has forged with 11 other nations.
PRESIDENT JOKO WIDODO: [translated] Indonesia is an open economy. And with the 250 million population, we are the largest economy in Southeast Asia. And Indonesia intends to join the TPP.
AMY GOODMAN: Indonesian President Jokowi was planning to head next to the West Coast but has decided to cut his U.S. trip short due to raging fires that have resulted in haze and toxic fumes covering much of Indonesia, as well as parts of Malaysia and Singapore—many of the fires illegally set in order to clear land for palm oil and paper plantations. The fires have been described as one of the biggest environmental crimes of the 21st century. According to the World Resource Institute, since September the fires have generated more carbon emissions than the entire U.S. economy.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s human rights record is also coming under criticism. On Monday, President Obama described Indonesia as one of the world’s largest democracies, but human rights groups paint a different story, citing the military’s ongoing repression in West Papua as well as discriminatory laws restricting the rights of religious minorities and women. Indonesia has also been criticized for attempting to silence any discussion about the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Indonesian genocide that left more than a million people dead. Last week, Indonesia’s largest writers festival, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, was forced to cancel a series of events tied to the anniversary of the massacre, including a screening of Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary, The Look of Silence.
To talk more about Indonesia, we’re joined by two guests. In Washington, John Sifton is with us, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. His new book is titled Violence All Around. Allan Nairn is also with us, journalist and activist who’s been reporting on Indonesia for decades. He’s joining us from Guatemala City.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! John Sifton, in this meeting that Jokowi is having, the Indonesian president is having, with President Obama, can you talk about the issues you feel President Obama needs to raise with the Indonesian president?
JOHN SIFTON: Well, it’s too late now, and President Obama already used the clichéd term of Indonesia as a tolerant Muslim democracy. We had hoped he would have talked about how Indonesia is going astray. It’s losing some of its tolerant qualities and principles, and starting to give too much power to Sunni extremist groups, which want to basically make Indonesia a place that’s unfriendly to Shia, to Christians, to Baha’i, to secularists and to women.
AMY GOODMAN: You consulted with the State Department, is that right, on this visit? What did you tell them?
JOHN SIFTON: Of course. Whenever there’s a world visit, you know, we talk to the State Department and to the White House. And in this instance, we said, "Please avoid this cliché." Unfortunately, President Obama didn’t. But did he raise issues of human rights behind the scenes in his bilateral meetings with President Jokowi? I’d like to hope so. He has expressed interest in the Papua issue in the east, a very problematic situation in the east which has been going on for years. In the past he’s raised that issue, and I would have hoped he would do so again.
But really, the more existential threat to Indonesia right now is this growing religious intolerance toward Sunnis—I mean, excuse me, toward Shia, towards Christians, towards others who are not Sunni extremists. It’s not really, you know, part of the Indonesian society, but there are fringe groups which are pushing this agenda and have exercised the heckler’s veto.
The worst problem, though, is the onerous new restrictions that are being placed on women at the local level, all kinds of little laws restricting their movements at night, making sure they have to wear a hijab, wear skirts of a certain length, prohibiting them from riding motorcycles, or, rather, straddling motorcycles—they can sit sideways, but not forwards. These little laws have a cumulative impact that are incredibly derogatory and discriminatory towards women and girls.
AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, can you talk about the significance of President Widodo’s visit to the United States? John Sifton just mentioned West Papua. And if you can place it, especially for viewers and listeners in the United States who may know very little about the Indonesian archipelago?
ALLAN NAIRN: West Papua is on the eastern end of the archipelago, and it’s legally, in the eyes of the U.N., considered part of Indonesia. But the Indonesian government—the army, the police, the intelligence—treat it as if it’s an occupied foreign land. They shoot demonstrators. They arrest anyone who speaks for independence or against the army, who raises a Papuan flag. A few years ago, I released a series of internal documents from Kopassus, the U.S.-trained special forces, which showed that they had a massive network of intelligence informants, modeled on that that Israel uses in the West Bank, and there’s this ongoing terror in Papua.
President Jokowi has indicated that he would like to pull back on a lot of this army and police and intel repression in Papua, but the security forces have resisted them—resisted him, and he has not been brave enough to overrule them. Obama could have, with one word, facilitated the pullout of the repression from Papua by saying that the U.S. would cut off all military aid unless they stop the terror in Papua. By doing that, he could have strengthened the hand of Jokowi and others in the government, because the government is divided on this, who want to rein in the army and the police. But apparently, Obama didn’t do that.
The U.S. has always maintained a separate channel to the army, from the days of the Suharto dictatorship, and even before, when the U.S. was trying to overthrow the founding president, Sukarno. And that strengthens the hand of the army—and the CIA works with the police—against an elected civilian president like Jokowi. It previously happened with Gus Dur, who was a Muslim cleric, a reformist president, who was undermined and, in effect, ousted by the army. And one of the key sources of army power is the fact that they had their separate channel to Washington. In fact, as Jokowi was meeting with Obama, Ash Carter, the secretary of defense, was welcoming General Ryamizard, the defense minister of Indonesia, who is the chief ideologist in favor of killing civilians. He said, previously, that anyone who dislikes the army is a legitimate target for killing. Reacting to a massacre of civilians, of children, in Aceh a number of years ago, he joked about it and said, "Well, children can be dangerous, too."
In terms of the religious intolerance, there is indeed a trend toward religious intolerance in Indonesia, as there is in Europe and the United States in this moment since the 9/11 attack, and then the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had set in spiral a series of events. And the main backer, the main outside backer, of this religious intolerance in Indonesia is Saudi Arabia. They’re going into the local mosques, spreading around a great deal of money, pushing this intolerant ideology. And also, I’ve seen, just talking to people over the past couple years, that one of the main things that gives credibility to a lot of these Saudi-funded extremists who go around urging people to abandon the Indonesian tradition of tolerance is when they see in the news the news of the Obama drone attacks against various Muslim countries and things like the Israeli invasion of Gaza. If Jokowi had stood up and said privately and publicly to Obama, "The U.S. should stop this, the U.S. should stop arming Israel," that would have been consistent with a lot of the pro-Palestinian rhetoric, hypocritical rhetoric, that one sees from politicians inside Indonesia. And it also would have had real impact, because the U.S. always likes to claim that the moderate Muslim nations are with Washington. Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation in the world. Usually, when the U.S. says "moderate Muslim nations," they mean radical dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. Indonesia isn’t like that, though. Indonesia is a quasi-democracy like the United States, and if Jokowi had spoken out in that way, it would have had a huge impact.
Also, there are other major issues on the table between Jokowi and Obama, Indonesia and the U.S. One is Freeport-McMoRan, the massive mining corporation, based largely in West Papua, which extracts huge amounts of gold and copper. They pay bribes to the Indonesian army and officials to be able to do that. They spoil the rivers. Many of the rivers there turn colors never seen in nature. They cut off the mountains. And the local Papuan population surrounding the mines often live with hunger and lack of clean water. The Freeport contract is up for renewal. There’s a big battle going on within the Indonesian government as to whether it will be renewed or whether Indonesia will take over the mine itself, as it has the technical capacity to do. But the U.S. and Obama have been pushing Indonesia to, yes, extend this contract. The U.S. has for years backed the repression in Papua in large part because of Freeport. The previous leader of Freeport, Jim Bob Moffett, used to be a golfing partner of the dictator, Suharto. Accounting records leaked would show that Freeport was paying massive bribes to the Kopassus special forces to repress the local population. Last year, I interviewed a former senior Indonesian official who told me that he had received two personal checks from Freeport worth hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars as bribes, although he said to me he didn’t cash the checks. This is a violation of local Indonesian law and also the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but neither the Indonesian or U.S. governments have dared to move against Freeport to try to stop this type of corruption. But this contract is on the table, and Indonesia could change things drastically by not renewing it, but Obama and the U.S. is twisting their arm to continue to give Freeport free rein in West Papua. ... Read More →
Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy
As presidential candidates spar over economic policies and Congress debates the TPP, one of the nation’s leading economists is calling for a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz has just published a new book called "Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, leading Democratic presidential contenders addressed the Iowa Democratic Party gathering known as the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. The high-profile party dinner has been a defining moment on the campaign calendar since ’75. This is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
HILLARY CLINTON: There is something wrong when the top 25 hedge fund managers earn more in a year than all the kindergarten teachers in America combined, or when top CEOs make 300 times what a typical worker does, or when corporate profits soar but employees don’t share in those profits, when it’s easy for a big corporation to get a tax break, but it’s still too hard for a small business to get a loan.
AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton. Well, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also spoke in Iowa over the weekend, calling for a raise in the minimum wage.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: When you see the middle class of this country disappearing, and when you see people you know working two or three jobs trying to cobble together some income and some healthcare, you don’t just shrug your shoulders and say, "That’s the way it is." You fight to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
AMY GOODMAN: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa, which has become the bellwether of Democratic support.
Well, as presidential candidates spar over economic policies, one of the nation’s leading economists is calling for a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia university professor Joseph Stiglitz has just published a new book; it’s called Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.
Joseph Stiglitz, it’s great to have you with us.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Nice to be here again.
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about these candidates and what they’re saying and what they actually do, what they support.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think we’re in a new moment in America, because I think we’ve had a third of a century of a—you might call, an experiment, a grand experiment, where, beginning with Reagan, we said, "Let’s lower the tax rates on the top. Let’s rip away the regulations. We’re going to free up the American economy. We’re going to incentivize it. The result will be the economy will grow so much—yes, the top will get a larger share, but everybody is going to get a bigger piece, and so everybody is going to be better off." Well, we’ve had a third of a century of this experiment, and it has failed. It has failed miserably. The fact is, the bottom 90 percent have seen their incomes stagnate. Median income today is as low as it was a quarter-century ago. Talking about the minimum wage, minimum wage is the level, adjusted for inflation, it was 45, 50 years ago. You know, if an economy can’t deliver for most of its citizens, it’s a failed economy. What’s so striking is, we’ve had technological change, we’ve had globalization—all the things that were supposed the economy perform better—and in fact it’s performed worse.
So, what the two candidates are saying is really echoing, I think, the basic message of this book, which is, something is wrong with the rules of the economy. It’s not the American workers. They’re working hard. Productivity has continued to grow. What’s striking is how that pie is being shared, not fairly. And in fact, the distortions in the economy, that Hillary was talking about, have actually impeded, made the economy perform more poorly than it otherwise would. You take those CEOs getting 300 times the amount of the typical worker. When you’re taking the corporate income, giving so much to the top, obviously, you’re going to have less either to give to the people at the bottom or you’re going to have less to invest in the corporation. And actually, both of those are happening. So, weaker investment, more inequality, weaker wages, and then you get a vicious cycle going, so the economy isn’t performing as well as it should be.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the candidates don’t actually agree. In fact, I think Hillary Clinton is getting rather nervous at the massive crowds that Bernie Sanders is drawing across the political spectrum. And so she has moved in on criticizing him. Speaking at that very same dinner, the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner Saturday, Hillary Clinton appeared to question Bernie Sanders’ electability.
HILLARY CLINTON: I know and you know it’s not enough just to rail against the Republicans or the billionaires. We actually have to win this election in order to rebuild the middle class and make a positive difference in people’s lives.
AMY GOODMAN: What is Bernie Sanders’ message? Why do you think it has resonated so strongly and actually, it seems like, forced Hillary Clinton to adopt some of the same language that he has been using?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah, I think the point is the American people have figured out that this model hasn’t worked, you know, the model that began a third of a century ago. So, they’re angry, and they want a change.
AMY GOODMAN: A third of a century ago, this is very important. What? Like 35 years ago?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s addressed as some kind of natural phenomenon that we cannot get in the way of: We have to allow capitalism to work. You’re saying this is a very new invention that has written rules, and these rules should be changed?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly. So, you know, take one example. Productivity of American workers has continued to grow pretty steadily. Historically, wages moved with productivity. You know, you do those two charts, they just move right together. Suddenly, around 1980, productivity continues to grow, but wages stagnate. This is really an unusual phenomenon. And that was one of the things that motivated writing the book. We said, "What’s going on?" And we said, what’s happened is, particularly in America, that we began to change the rules, rules of—labor rules, rules about the financial sector, rules about corporate governance, tax rules. You know, it wasn’t inevitable that you tax speculation at a lower rate than you tax people who are working for a living. That’s not inherent in a market economy. Actually, what we say is, this is a distortion of capitalism. This is a distortion of a market economy. And so—
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think most contributed to the inequality, in terms of the rules?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think, probably, if I had to say one thing—and I think it’s the whole package, but if one thing, it’s the financial sector. You know, the financial sector was about two-and-a-half percent of GDP. It went to as large as 8 percent of GDP. As it grew, you know, if it had led to the economy growing so much faster, you’d said, "Well, they’re getting their just desserts for helping all of us do better." But what they really were doing, you can’t see in the data at all—at all—any effect on economic growth. But what we do know is it led to this kind of greater volatility, the Great Recession of 2008, from which we still have not recovered. And what they were doing is figuring out how to seize a larger share of the national income pie in a whole variety of ways.
AMY GOODMAN: Where does the American labor movement fit into this?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, that’s another important piece, because, you know, you go back to the 1930s, we passed the Wagner Act, and the Wagner act said—made it easier for workers to bargain. What has happened in the last 35 years, we’ve made it more and more difficult for workers to bargain. Globalization has made that even more difficult, because you’re sitting there with 2 billion people around the world that have been brought into the labor market, and weakening the protection, strengthening the competition, inevitably has weakened the bargaining position of workers. And so you get results today, for instance, where America is almost unique among the advanced countries in not having family leave, sick leave. You know, we’re at the bottom. And, you know, to put another example, America has more inequality than any other of the advanced countries. Why is that? It’s because of the way we’ve written the rules. It’s a kind of choice that we’ve made. And one key part of that is the fact that unions have been made weaker.
AMY GOODMAN: Glass-Steagall?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Glass-Steagall is another important—
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what it is.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: So, Glass-Steagall was—again, after the Great Depression, we divided the banks into two groups: the commercial banks, that take your deposits, ordinary people, supposed to give money to small businesses to help grow the economy; and then you had the investment banks, taking money from rich people, investing it in more speculative activities. And we had a big fight during the Clinton administration over whether we should eliminate that division. I strongly opposed it. And when was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, it didn’t happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Under Clinton.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Under Clinton. But then, instead—you know, Citibank wanted to bring together these various financial institutions, and—
AMY GOODMAN: Who surround Clinton.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: And the result of that was that we repealed Glass-Steagall. And what I was worried about precisely happened. We wound up with bigger banks that became too big to fail. The culture of risk taking, that’s associated with the investment bank, spread to the whole banking system, and so all the banks became speculators, actually lending to small businesses lower than it was before the crisis. And the kinds of conflicts of interest that were rampant in the years before the Great Depression started to appear all over the place in our financial sector.
AMY GOODMAN: So Bernie Sanders has called for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. Hillary Clinton has not.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah, I hope that she will. But I think the fundamental issue here is, we have to tame the financial sector. And in our book, Rewriting the Rules, we describe how that can be done.
AMY GOODMAN: How, exactly?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, there are many things. Glass-Steagall is one approach that I’ve increasingly come to. We actually don’t talk about it in the book. There are some other ways that we do focus on, on things like curbing their excessive risk taking.
One of the important things that people haven’t realized is, every time they use their debit card, merchants pay a significant price for their use. It’s like a tax on every transaction. But it’s a tax that doesn’t go for public purpose; it goes to enrich the coffers of the credit card companies, the debit card companies. We were supposed to curtail the—one part of that in the debit card. It was called the Durbin Amendment to Dodd-Frank. But we delegated it to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve’s staff recommended a fee—that I thought was excessive—and then the Federal Reserve doubled the fee that they had recommended. So, it’s much better than it was before Dodd-Frank, but it’s still a tax on every transaction, a tax that winds up being paid for by everybody who buys any good in our economy. So that’s an example of how you transfer money from ordinary individuals to the financial sector. And it’s one of the reasons why the financial sector is making so much money and the rest of us are paying the price.
One other example that President Obama has emphasized is, you know, people have savings accounts, a variety—IRAs. And the question is, when you put your money in an IRA, does the person who’s supposed to manage that have a fiduciary responsibility? That is to say, can he manage it for his own interest, turning it over and getting a lot of commission, or does he have a responsibility, a fiduciary responsibility, to manage it in your interest? Now, you would say, obviously, he should have that fiduciary responsibility. But the banks are resisting imposing that as a condition. And the result of not having that is that the banks are making billions and billions, tens of billions of dollars every year more than they otherwise would.
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Joseph Stiglitz: Under TPP, Polluters Could Sue U.S. For Setting Carbon Emissions Limits
Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy ... Read More →
In Student Victory, U. of Mississippi Removes State Flag with Confederate Emblem
Early Monday morning, three campus police officers at the University of Mississippi removed the state flag with its Confederate emblem from the grounds of the school’s campus in Oxford. The move comes after the student government voted to remove the flag. Mississippi’s flag is the latest Confederate symbol to be targeted for removal from a public space since a white supremacist killed nine African-American worshipers in Charleston, South Carolina, four months ago. We speak to Dominique Scott, an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi and the secretary of the university’s chapter of the NAACP.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We will end today’s show in Mississippi. Early Monday morning, three campus police officers at the University of Mississippi in Oxford removed the state flag with its Confederate emblem from the grounds of the school’s campus. The move comes after the student government voted to remove the flag.
For more, we go directly to Oxford, to the University of Mississippi, where we’re joined by Dominique Scott, an undergraduate at the University of Mississippi and secretary of the university’s chapter of the NAACP.
Dominique, welcome back to Democracy Now! We just talked to you last week when the vote of the student Legislature, the student Senate, was about to take place. You voted to take the flag down, but that was just advisory. What happened?
DOMINIQUE SCOTT: Well, on Tuesday, the ASB elected to pass Resolution 15-3 to take down the Mississippi state flag, the current Mississippi state flag, from the university. It came as—I believe it was 33 to 15—33 in favor, 15 opposed and one abstained. Right after that, Staff Council passed their resolution in support. And on Thursday, Faculty Senate passed their resolution with 14 in favor and one opposing. And then the graduate school passed theirs. And yesterday morning, they took it down.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised?
DOMINIQUE SCOTT: I was very surprised. It was done in a very—it was very secret. Nobody really knew about it. I just woke up. I always check my email when I wake up. And so, when I woke up, and there was an email that said they took it down, and I was just like, "Wow!" And I checked my email actually before I even checked my text messages. So my text messages were booming with all my friends saying, "Oh, my gosh, they did it! They did it!"
AMY GOODMAN: So, Dominique Scott, the chancellor and the offices of the administration had originally said this isn’t about us taking it down, this is about the Mississippi flag having the Confederate flag within it. Are you moving on to the state flag, removing the Confederate symbol in it?
DOMINIQUE SCOTT: Well, in the resolution, there was an amendment made that said that the students would pursue pressuring the state to change the Mississippi state flag. The issue with the flag is the Confederate emblem, and it is not the state flag itself. It’s the current flag as it is.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you feel, having started a revolution in Mississippi?
DOMINIQUE SCOTT: I feel like it doesn’t stop here. I feel like we might be having some more conversations later on in the year, because we have a lot of things planned. You know, Angela Davis—I believe it was Angela Davis—said, "The revolution isn’t a one-time thing." So, there’s a lot of things going on on our campus. There’s a lot of issues. And, you know, I think it’s so awesome that students have built power. I’m so wonderfully proud of what we’ve done. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Dominique Scott, we’re going to have to leave it there today.
DOMINIQUE SCOTT: OK, awesome.
AMY GOODMAN: But we’ll be back talking to you on the campus of the University of Mississippi. Dominique Scott is the secretary of the local NAACP at the University of Mississippi. ... Read More →
Massive Indonesian Plantation Fires Create Environmental Catastrophe Spewing Haze & Carbon Emissions
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has decided to cut his U.S. trip short due to raging fires that have resulted in haze and toxic fumes covering much of the country as well as parts of Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the fires were illegally set in order to clear land for palm oil and paper plantations. The fires have been described as one of the biggest environmental crimes of the 21st century. According to the World Resource Institute, since September the fires have generated more carbon emissions than the entire U.S. economy.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
ALLAN NAIRN: Then there’s also the issue of the massive forest fires, as you mentioned. There have been more than 100,000 of them. These are deliberately set. The U.S. says they want—in order to fight climate change, they want to help Indonesia rein in these forest fires. And the U.S. has given some money to send firefighters in to try to douse the flames, to help. And Jokowi is in fact returning to Indonesia now; he’s cutting short his U.S. trip because of the crisis. And he is going to try to manage the evacuation of children and babies from parts of Kalimantan and Sumatra where the smoke is the worst. But in order to actually stop the fire problem, you have to change the way the economy works. And by Indonesia joining the TPP, which the U.S. was urging them to do, Indonesia will be losing much of the capacity they would need to regulate the corporations, because a lot of the burning takes place on corporate plantations to produce palm oil and other things, and the corporations, under TPP, if Indonesia tries to restrict them, will now be able to go to the TPP, say this is a restraint on trade, try to get these regulations knocked down. This setting of fires to clear the underbrush for plantations and farming is actually market-driven, because that’s the cheapest way to do it. It’s much cheaper than going in with machetes and trying to cut away the plants. You set a fire, that’s the cheapest, that’s the most economically efficient. So the only way to rein that in is through government action and regulation, and that’s precisely the kind of thing that the TPP enables corporations to annul. So presidents like Obama and Jokowi, by joining the TPP are, in effect, limiting their own power, their own ability as elected representatives of their people to counteract the power of international corporations.
AMY GOODMAN: John Sifton, you just returned from Malaysia, which is also suffering from these fires. Can you amplify this point of Allan Nairn’s? And do you agree that the TPP, in the leaked documents now that show that the—really raise questions about what the environmental protections are in the TPP, could be exacerbating these fires?
JOHN SIFTON: Well, a lot of the TPP is still secret. We’ve got to see it. But frankly, it’s such a flawed document from what we’ve seen so far, that really the only choice is to try to kill it in Congress and get the U.S. trade representative to go back and renegotiate at least some of the most loathsome parts of it.
Yes, I was in Malaysia. It was devastating. The entire country is living in a haze, at least near Kuala Lumpur and Penang. One of our researchers ended up in the hospital because of it. And that’s just one of my colleagues. Millions of people are living and breathing this air.
It’s absolutely true the Trans-Pacific Partnership limits the democratic governance capacities of countries. It puts into corporate hands the rights to stop democratic governments from taking measures to protect its own citizens, on healthcare, on environment, on a host of other issues. That’s why it’s important to try to kill it right now in Congress and get it to be renegotiated. There are some good things in the TPP, a few small good things like labor rights improvements. But stacked up against all the bad, it’s got to go.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. John Sifton, thanks so much for being with us, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. His book, Violence All Around. Allan Nairn, if you could stay with us, a journalist and activist. He’s actually speaking to us from Guatemala City, and the elections just took place on Sunday. We’ll talk about the significance of what has taken place, elections just after the past president of Guatemala has been imprisoned. Then we’ll be joined by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Stay with us. ... Read More →
With Military Backing, TV Comedian Wins in Guatemala in First Vote Since Jailing of Ex-President
In Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, a right-leaning former television comedian with no government experience, won the presidency after less than half of eligible voters cast ballots on Sunday. Morales received 67 percent of the votes — more than double the votes cast for his contender, ex-first lady Sandra Torres. The election comes after massive popular protests ousted former President Otto Pérez Molina in September. Pérez Molina is now in jail facing corruption charges. President-elect Jimmy Morales is well known for his starring role in a long-running sketch comedy show, which often featured lewd sketches that some have criticized as being homophobic and sexist. But little is known about Morales’ political platform, although he has unveiled a handful of eccentric proposals, such as tagging teachers with GPS trackers to ensure they attend classes. We speak to journalist and activist Allan Nairn in Guatemala City.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, a right-leaning former television comedian with no government experience, won the presidency after less than half of eligible voters cast ballots Sunday. Morales received 67 percent of the vote—more than double the votes cast for his contender, the ex-first lady Sandra Torres. The election comes after massive popular protests ousted former President Otto Pérez Molina in September. Pérez Molina is now in jail facing corruption charges.
President-elect Jimmy Morales is well known for his starring role in a long-running sketch comedy show which often featured lewd sketches that some have criticized as being homophobic and sexist. But little is known about Morales’s political platform, although he has unveiled a handful of eccentric proposals such as tagging teachers with GPS trackers to ensure they attend classes. He celebrated his victory Sunday.
PRESIDENT-ELECT JIMMY MORALES: [translated] We’ve been blessed today with a beautiful day. Let us do everything in our power so that the next few years will also be the best for Guatemala, because constructing Guatemala isn’t a job just for one man, nor two men. It’s a job for each and every citizen of this great nation.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Guatemala, where we’re going to continue our conversation with journalist Allan Nairn, who’s been covering Guatemala since the 1980s. He’s in Guatemala City right now.
Allan, what is most important to understand about what’s just taken place in Guatemala?
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Guatemala has been in the middle of a popular uprising, which brought down the former president, General Pérez Molina, who was an officer implicated in the massacres in the Altiplano. And in a sense, this election was just an interruption of that uprising, probably a temporary interruption. As many Guatemalans have said, they have a chance to vote, but not to choose, because if someone wanted to vote against the system, there was no option on the ballot. Both candidates came out of the oligarchy. One in particular, Sandra Torres, had special backing from the narcotics syndicates in the past.
Jimmy Morales had special backing from the army massacre officers. As he celebrated his victory, sitting next to him—sitting next to him was Colonel Ovalle Maldonado, who used to be at the Cobán military base, where they’ve so far discovered more than 500 corpses, many of them women and children, who were executed by the army, as Ovalle Maldonado and General Miranda Trejo and other of Jimmy’s key people were there. The founder of Jimmy’s political party, General Quilo Ayuso, said explicitly that the party was founded in order to protect officers from prosecution. And he also said, "I kill anyone I want." So the army is still in the palace, as they were under Pérez Molina. But now, in a sense, that palace is [now surrounded by the people, by a popular movement that has the capacity to challenge the army’s, the elite’s power].
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go, as we fix the video feed to Guatemala, to an interview from prison with the jailed ex-President Otto Pérez Molina claiming that Vice President Joe Biden threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Guatemala unless Molina allowed the corruption probe to continue.
OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] Vice President Biden didn’t just tell me that it was practically conditioned. The way he handled it was to convince the U.S. Congress that if we don’t have the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, support will not be forthcoming for the Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity.
AMY GOODMAN: President Pérez Molina, who went on to say that the U.S. ambassador had demanded he ask for a public resignation of Guatemala’s former vice president, Roxana Baldetti.
OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] I told the Guatemalan foreign minister, "Look, Foreign Minister, do me a favor and tell this gentleman, the U.S. ambassador in Guatemala, that he needs to understand what his job is here. He is an ambassador, not the country’s president." And their desire to put conditions, wanting to ask for ministers to change, asking that I publicly ask for the resignation of the vice president? I told him I wouldn’t do it.
AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Baldetti resigned amidst the corruption scandal in May. Allan Nairn, if you could comment on this?
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Pérez Molina was Washington’s man for decades. He was trained at the School of the Americas. He was on the CIA payroll when he ran the G2 military intelligence hit squad. The U.S. was telling him not to resign, as the people were in the streets demanding his resignation and as prosecutors were trying to indict him for corruption. Now in prison as a pariah, he’s trying to rebuild himself as a—suddenly, as a nationalist. And he’s become kind of a national joke of Guatemala, because everyone knows that he was Washington’s man, and suddenly now he’s trying to blame his plight on the U.S. He was basically asking Washington to step in and save him as he was about to be toppled, but that didn’t work out for him.
But the important point is that there’s this popular movement, and now the army is even more strongly in the palace. The most—the soldiers with the most—the officers with the most blood on their hands surround Jimmy Morales. These are the people who have been involved in massacres, like those of Cobán, Río Negro, Dos Erres, countless others. Jimmy should be willing, if he claims to be a new politician, to prosecute all these officers, to bring them to justice, and also to prosecute the U.S. CIA and military people who were working hand-in-glove with them. There’s a danger of increased repression now, especially in the countryside, against Guatemalan grassroots activists who were brave enough to standing up against the U.S. and Canadian mining companies and against environmental abuses by corrupt officials. A number of them have been murdered in recent years. And many of these murders have been done by private security corporations that are contracted to the oligarchs, to the foreign investors and to narcotics syndicates. And these are precisely the people that are now surrounding Jimmy Morales.
AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Allan, you interviewed Otto Pérez Molina before he was president, more than 20 years ago in the highlands of Guatemala, as you stood over dead bodies. You talk about him as being a massacre president. Will Jimmy Morales be open to the prosecution of these generals, many of whom you say support him?
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, probably not, because they’re his people. But many people thought, when they went to the polls, because that was his propaganda, and that’s what the Guatemalan corporate press let him get away with, that they were voting for someone who was a little newer. If he is in fact different than the previous, he should allow such prosecutions. But his money, his political backing, comes from the massacre—comes from the massacre officers. What people say in the street is, "Yeah, they’re all thieves, but at least Jimmy hasn’t had the chance to steal yet, so maybe that’s better than someone like Sandra," who was the other candidate, who had already been in office and had proven to be corrupt.
The popular movement, though, has two key weaknesses: One, they have yet to move beyond the issue of corruption to the issue of massacre, and, two, it has yet to broaden widely to the Mayan heartland. The Mayan population makes up half of the surviving Guatemalan population. The political elite of Guatemala, in particular the military and death squad elements who surround Jimmy, are viciously racist against the Mayan population. If the Mayan population becomes a part—an even larger part of the uprising and they go to the streets, this government, too, could be shaken. There was an extraordinary scene in one of the national TV debates sponsored by the corporate press between—a debate between Jimmy and Sandra, his opponent. The moderator asked both candidates, "If the people go to the streets [demanding your resignation, will you] resign?" Now, that question was an acknowledgment of the power and legitimacy of the movement, and it’s also the kind of question that would be inconceivable in, say, a U.S. presidential debate.
AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, I want to thank you for being with us, journalist and activist, reporting to us from Guatemala City. He’s been covering Guatemala since the 1980s. You can follow him on Twitter at @allannairn14 for the latest news.
This is Democracy Now! Later in the broadcast, we’re going to Oxford, Mississippi. The University of Mississippi has taken down the Confederate flag—well, it’s the Mississippi flag with a Confederate battle flag within it. Students protested, and the university has just complied. But first, we’ll be speaking with the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Stay with us. ... Read More →Headlines:
Report: Middle East to See "Intolerable" Heat by 2100
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The death toll from an earthquake centered in northern Afghanistan has topped 300, with the majority of the deaths in Pakistan. At least 2,000 people have been injured. The tremors from the 7.5-magnitude quake were felt as far away as India. The death toll is expected to climb, with the devastation in remote villages still unknown.
Obama, Congress Reach Tentative Budget Deal
After years of discord, the White House and Republican congressional leaders have struck a tentative budget deal to avert a looming default on the government’s debts. The deal reportedly raises spending by a relatively slim $80 billion over two years—not including an additional $32 billion in war funding. It includes cuts to Social Security disability benefits and Medicare payments to providers. New revenue would come from sales of U.S. strategic oil reserves and the use of public airwaves for telecommunications firms. The debt limit would be suspended until March 2017, after Obama leaves office. The budget still needs approval by the House and Senate.
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Indonesia to Join TPP Trade Deal
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has announced the world’s fourth largest country will join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, or TPP. He made the announcement during his visit to the White House Monday.
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The visit by Indonesia President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, comes amid raging forest fires in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil. Fires are often set on purpose to clear land for palm oil, but amid dry conditions and the strongest El Niño on record, thousands of fires have burned into national parks and other sensitive areas. Environmentalists warn the fires are threatening a third of the world’s remaining wild orangutans. The fires have created a dense haze across Malaysia and Singapore and are believed to be responsible for up to 500,000 respiratory infections. We’ll have more on the fires and President Obama’s meeting with Jokowi later in the broadcast.
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More than 30 academics from dozens of British universities have vowed to join the academic boycott of Israel. In a full-page ad in today’s Guardian, the scholars say they are "deeply disturbed by Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land" and "intolerable human rights violations." The scholars vow not to visit or take part in events organized or funded by Israeli institutions, but say they will still work with individual Israeli scholars. The move comes as violence continues in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israeli forces have killed about 60 Palestinians, many of whom have been accused of attacking Israelis. About 10 Israelis have been killed.
Palestinian Women in East Jerusalem Issue Call for Protection
Palestinian women in occupied East Jerusalem have issued a call to the international community for protection. The Jerusalemite Women’s Coalition said, "we feel displaced even at home, as the Israeli soldiers, armed settlers, border patrol and police invade our homes, attack our families, strip-search our bodies, and terrorize us all."
Colombia: ELN Rebels Kill 12 Security Personnel After Elections
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University of Mississippi Removes State Flag with Confederate Symbol
The University of Mississippi has removed the state flag with its Confederate emblem from the school’s grounds. The move comes after the student government voted to remove the flag, which is the only state flag in the country that continues to feature a Confederate symbol. It’s the latest Confederate symbol targeted for removal since a white supremacist who embraced the Confederate flag killed nine African-American worshipers in Charleston, South Carolina, in June. On Monday, University of Mississippi interim Chancellor Morris Stocks said in a statement, "Because the flag remains Mississippi’s official banner, this was a hard decision." We’ll have more with University of Mississippi student Dominique Scott later in the broadcast.
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FBI Director James Comey has acknowledged he does not have evidence to support his claim added scrutiny and criticism of police officers have fueled an increase in crime. Speaking to police officials at a conference in Chicago Monday, Comey said the so-called Ferguson effect is just "common sense." These are his remarks from Friday.
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The White House, meanwhile, disputed Comey’s claims about the supposed connection between increased crime and increased scrutiny of police, saying, "The evidence we have seen so far doesn’t support the contention that law enforcement officials are shirking their responsibilities."
WHO Analysis Links Processed Meat to Colon Cancer
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Among the food products pointed out by the WHO are bacon, sausage and hot dogs.
Vermont: 3 People Arrested After 3-Day Protest over Gas Pipeline
In news from the Vermont capital Montpelier, three people were arrested Monday at the end of a three-day protest against a natural gas pipeline. Hundreds of Vermonters descended on the state Capitol over the weekend, and a smaller number blockaded the Department of Public Service building for two days. Rising Tide Vermont has called on the department to revoke approval of a pipeline that will carry gas extracted through hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." Vermont banned fracking three years ago amid health and environmental concerns. (Video credit: Ned McEleney)
Report: U.S. Paid NGO to Act as Front for North Korea Spying
A new investigation has revealed the Pentagon used a humanitarian NGO as a front for spying on North Korea. The Intercept reports the Pentagon paid Humanitarian International Services Group millions of dollars to infiltrate North Korea and spy on its nuclear program. But none of the Christian missionaries, aid workers or smugglers who were hired to move equipment as part of the effort were aware they were part of the secret Pentagon operation.
SXSW Conference Cancels Panels on Gaming Harassment After Threats
And the conference South by Southwest Interactive has cancelled two panels about sexual harassment and the gaming industry following threats of violence. It’s the latest chapter in the rampant online harassment of women who critique sexism in video games. South by Southwest said it cancelled the panels after "numerous threats of on-site violence related to this programming."
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