Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Democracy Now! Daily Digest - A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Tuesday, 31 December 2013

Democracy Now! Daily Digest - A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Tuesday, 31 December 2013
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WikiLeaks' Julian Assange Calls on Computer Hackers to Unite Against NSA Surveillance
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressed a major gathering of computer experts Monday at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany, calling on them to join forces in resisting government intrusions on Internet freedom and privacy. We play highlights from Assange’s speech, as well as the one given by Sarah Harrison, the WikiLeaks member who accompanied Edward Snowden to Russia. We also hear from independent journalist and security expert Jacob Appelbaum, who reveals a spying tool used by the National Security Agency known as a "portable continuous wave generator." The remote-controlled device works in tandem with tiny electronic implants to bounce invisible waves of energy off keyboards and monitors to see what is being typed. It works even if the target computer is not connected to the Internet.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the Chaos Communication Congress, or CCC, in Hamburg, Germany. One of the speakers at the conference was WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison, who accompanied Edward Snowden to Russia and spent four months with him. Harrison addressed the audience after receiving a long standing ovation.
SARAH HARRISON: Together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, we filed a suit against the U.S. military, against the unprecedented secrecy applied to Chelsea Manning’s trial. Yet through these attacks, we have continued our publishing work. In April of this year, we launched the Public Library of US Diplomacy, the largest and most comprehensive searchable database of U.S. diplomatic cables in the world. This coincided with our release of 1.7 million U.S. cables from the Kissinger period. We launched our third Spy Files, 249 documents from 92 global intelligence contractors, exposing their technology, methods and contracts. We completed releasing the Global Intelligence Files, over five million emails from U.S. intelligence firm Stratfor, the revelations from which included documenting their spying on activists around the globe. We published the primary negotiating positions for 14 countries of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new international legal regime that would control 40 percent of the world’s GDP.
As well as getting Snowden asylum, we set up Mr. Snowden’s defense fund, part of a broader endeavor, the Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund, which aims to protect and fund sources in trouble. This will be an important fund for future sources, especially when we look at the U.S. crackdown on whistleblowers like Snowden and alleged WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced this year to 35 years in prison, and another alleged WikiLeaks source, Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison this November. These men, Snowden, Manning and Hammond, are prime examples of a politicized youth who have grown up with a free Internet and want to keep it that way. It is this class of people that we are here to discuss this evening, the powers they and we all have and can have.
AMY GOODMAN: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also addressed the Chaos Communication Congress via video. Speaking from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, Assange urged information technology specialists to join forces to resist government encroachments on Internet freedom.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Those high-tech workers, we are a particular class, and it’s time that we recognized that we are a class and looked back in history and understood that the great gains in human rights and education and so on that were gained through powerful industrial work as we formed the backbone of the economy of the 20th century, I think we have that same ability, but even more so, because of the greater interconnection that exists now, economically and politically, which is all underpinned by system administrators. And we should understand that system administrators are not just those people who administer one unique system or another; they are the people who administer systems. And the system that exists globally now is created by the interconnection of many individual systems. And we are all, or many of us, are part of administering that system, and have extraordinary power, in a way that is really an order of magnitude different to the power industrial workers had back in the 20th century.
And we can see that in the cases of the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations, that it’s possible now for even a single system administrator to have a very significant change to the—or rather, apply a very significant constraint, a constructive constraint, to the behavior of these organizations, not merely wrecking or disabling them, not merely going out on strikes to change policy, but rather shifting information from an information apartheid system, which we’re developing, from those with extraordinary power and extraordinary information, into the knowledge commons, where it can be used to—not only as a disciplining force, but it can be used to construct and understand the new world that we’re entering into.
Now, Hayden, the former director of the CIA and NSA, is terrified of this. In Cypherpunks, we called for this directly last year. But to give you an interesting quote from Hayden, possibly following up on those words of mine and others: "We need to recruit from Snowden’s generation," says Hayden. "We need to recruit from this group because they have the skills that we require. So the challenge is how to recruit this talent while also protecting ourselves from the small fraction of the population that has this romantic attachment to absolute transparency at all costs." And that’s us, right?
So, what we need to do is spread that message and go into all those organizations—in fact, deal with them. I’m not saying don’t join the CIA. No, go and join the CIA. Go in there. Go into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out—with the understanding, with the paranoia, that all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation, by an ideology that is spread across the Internet. And every young person is educated on the Internet. There will be no person that has not been exposed to this ideology of transparency and understanding of wanting to keep the Internet, which we were born into, free. This is the last free generation.
The coming together of the systems of governments, the new information apartheid across the world, the linking together, is such that none of us will be able to escape it in just a decade. Our identities will be coupled to it, the information sharing such that none of us will be able to escape it. We are all becoming part of the state, whether we like it or not, so our only hope is to determine what sort of state it is that we are going to become part of. And we can do that by looking and being inspired by some of the actions that produced human rights and free education and so on, by people recognizing that they were part of the state, recognizing their own power, and taking concrete and robust action to make sure they lived in the sort of society that they wanted to, and not in a hellhole dystopia.
AMY GOODMAN: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressing the Chaos Communication Congress that’s taking place in Hamburg, Germany. He, of course, was speaking from the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He fears if he steps foot outside that embassy, where he’s been for a year, that he will be arrested by British authorities, that he would be extradited to Sweden, and he most fears being extradited to the United States.
Another key speaker Monday was independent journalist and security expert Jacob Appelbaum, who has been on Democracy Now! In this clip, he shows a slide with a futuristic-sounding device described as a portable continuous wave generator. It’s a remote-controlled device that works in tandem with tiny electronic implants to bounce invisible waves of energy off keyboards and monitors to see what’s being typed. It works even if the target device isn’t connected to the Internet.
JACOB APPELBAUM: This is a continuous wave generator or continuous wave radar unit. You can detect its use because it’s used between one and two gigahertz, and its bandwidth is up to 45 megahertz, user-adjustable, two watts. Using an internal amplifier, external amplifier, makes it possible to go up to one kilowatt. I’m just going to let you take that in for a moment. Who’s crazy now? Now, I’m being told I only have one minute, so I’m going to have to go a little bit quicker. I’m sorry.
Here’s why they do it. This is an implant called RAGEMASTER, part of the angry neighbor family of tools, where they have a small device that they put in line with a cable in your monitor, and then they use this radar system to bounce a signal—this is not unlike the Great Seal bug that [Léon] Theremin designed for the KGB—so it’s good to know we’ve finally caught up with the KGB—but now with computers. They send the microwave transmission, the continuous wave. It reflects off of this chip, and then they use this device to see your monitor. Yep. So there’s the full life cycle. First they radiate you, then you die from cancer, then you win?
OK, so, here’s the same thing, but this time for keyboards, USB and PS/2 keyboards. So, the idea is that it’s a data retro-reflector. Here’s another thing, but this one, the TAWDRYYARD program, is a little bit different. It’s a beacon. So this is where, probably, then they kill you with a drone. That’s pretty scary stuff. They also have this for microphones to gather room bugs, for room audio. Notice the bottom. It says all components are common off the shelf and are so non-attributable to the NSA—unless you have this photograph and the product sheet.
AMY GOODMAN: That was independent journalist and security expert Jacob Appelbaum speaking in Hamburg, Germany, at the Chaos Communication Congress. We will link to his full speech at democracynow.org.
This is Democracy Now! And an update right now on the story in Egypt: One of the four Al Jazeera reporters has been released. Al Jazeera cameraman Mohamed Fawzy was released from detention. The three other journalists remain detained—correspondent Peter Greste and producers Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, what’s some of the good news of 2013? Stay with us.
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Crackdown on Brotherhood, Opposition Grows as Egypt Joins Ranks of Most Dangerous for Journalists
Egypt is facing a major escalation of a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and other critical voices. The military government has designated the Brotherhood a "terrorist organization" after a suicide bombing last week that killed 14 people. The announcement came even though the Brotherhood condemned the attack and an unrelated jihadist group claimed responsibility. Using the "terrorism" label, the Egyptian regime has arrested hundreds of Brotherhood members and seized their assets. It is the latest in a crackdown that began with the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in July following mass protests against his rule. The crackdown has also spread to opposition activists and journalists. Two leading figures behind the 2011 uprising, Alaa Abd El-Fattah and Ahmed Maher, remain behind bars following their arrests for opposing a new anti-protest law. El-Fattah is awaiting trial while Maher and two others have been sentenced to three years in prison. Meanwhile, four journalists with the news network Al Jazeera — correspondent Peter Greste, producers Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, and cameraman Mohamed Fawzy — were arrested in Cairo on accusations of "spreading false news" and holding meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood. Only Fawzy has been released so far. Egypt’s military government has repeatedly targeted Al Jazeera, raiding offices, ordering an affiliate’s closure and deporting several staffers. The arrests come as a new report details the dangerous conditions for journalists in Egypt and other troubled areas around the world. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, conditions in Egypt "deteriorated dramatically" in 2013, with six reporters killed, more than in any previous year. Egypt trailed only Iraq, where 10 journalists were killed, and Syria, where at least 29 journalists were killed. Overall, the Middle East accounted for two-thirds of at least 70 reporters’ deaths worldwide. We are joined by two guests: Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent and a fellow at The Nation Institute.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin in Egypt, which is facing a major escalation of a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and other critical voices. The military government has designated the Brotherhood a "terrorist organization" after a suicide bombing last week that killed 14 people. This came even though the Brotherhood condemned the attack and an unrelated jihadist group claimed responsibility. Using the "terrorism" label, the Egyptian regime has arrested hundreds of Brotherhood members and seized their assets. It’s the latest in a crackdown that began with the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi in July following mass protests against his rule. Since Morsi’s overthrow, the Brotherhood has been banned from political activity, hundreds of its members have been gunned down in the streets, and thousands more have been placed behind bars.
Meanwhile, the news network Al Jazeera is demanding the immediate release of four journalists who have been arrested in Cairo. Correspondent Peter Greste, producers Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, and cameraman Mohamed Fawzy were detained on accusations of "spreading false news" and holding meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt’s military government has repeatedly targeted Al Jazeera, raiding offices, ordering an affiliate’s closure and deporting several staffers.
The Al Jazeera arrests come as a new report details the dangerous conditions for journalists in Egypt and other troubled areas around the world. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, conditions in Egypt "deteriorated dramatically" this year, with six reporters killed, more than in any previous year. Egypt trailed only Iraq, where 10 journalists were killed, and Syria, where at least 29 journalists were killed. Overall, the Middle East accounted for two-thirds of at least 70 reporters’ deaths worldwide.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Sherif Mansour is with us here in New York, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. And joining us from Egypt, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, fellow at The Nation Institute.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Sharif, let’s begin with you in Egypt for the overall picture. Talk about the categorizing of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and then what’s come out of that.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, that designation, as you mentioned, came in the wake of a suicide bombing that—a car bomb that attacked a police headquarters in a Delta city north of Cairo, killed at least 15 people on December 24th, and really was the deadliest bombing on the Egyptian mainland, outside of Sinai, in nearly three years. And the Cabinet, in the wake of that, declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, despite providing no evidence, and even Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi later admitted he had no clear evidence linking the Muslim Brotherhood to the bombing. A Sinai militant group called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has claimed responsibility for the bombing. They have claimed responsibility for other high-profile attacks, including the assassination of a high-profile, high-ranking state security officer last month in Cairo. But despite that, the crackdown has really targeted the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Cabinet used that decision of the terrorism designation to freeze the assets of hundreds of charities linked to the group, including hospitals and health clinics. And this is part of a—as you mentioned, part of a widening crackdown on the group. Just this past Monday, just yesterday, a court in Cairo sentenced 138 pro-Morsi protesters to two years in prison on charges of rioting and vandalism, and we’ve seen thousands of people be thrown behind bars. Reports are now that even the doves of the group, people like Amr Darrag, who were prominent figures of the group who were not imprisoned, have now fled the country. And so, the political process, or if there was any left of it that could have included the Muslim Brotherhood, has all but been completely destroyed in 2013.
And really, we continue to see instability. The government, the military-backed Cabinet and the military and the police forces continue to say this is a war on terror, and they’re trying to provide stability. And Egypt is extremely unstable right now. We’re seeing increase in militancy, especially in Sinai. We’re seeing a huge number of protests that are centered a lot now on university campuses, with students, some linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, some not, protesting, and students have been killed. And this is all coming with a referendum on the constitution set to take place in just two weeks in the new year.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go to the journalists, three leading activists have been sentenced to three years in prison as part of an ongoing crackdown on dissent. Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma, Mohamed Adel helped lead the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in 2011. They were the first to be sentenced under a new law that effectively bans public protest by requiring seven different permits for rallies. After the sentencing, the three men chanted "Down with military rule" from their cage inside the courtroom. Democracy Now! spoke with one of the protesters, Ahmed Maher, when he was here in New York back in 2011.
AHMED MAHER: We must to keep struggle and keep fighting until we have a real democracy and a real country and a good regime and social justice. So, we think that will take more than five years in transition period, so we must keep fighting now, and didn’t look to our interests or political party or parliament elections or candidates. That’s our goal now, to finish or complete our revolution. Then we can think about political party.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, can you talk about the significance of these arrests and now the sentence of three years of Ahmed Maher and the others? He was here actually visiting Occupy in 2011, Occupy Wall Street.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. Well, this crackdown has extended beyond supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the ousted president, and beyond the Muslim Brotherhood to target now really a lot of the activists that really launched and sustained the revolution. April 6, the youth movement, was a major player in the revolution. Ahmed Maher was a key figure in that. He’s been charged, as you mentioned, three years in prison for breaking this draconian protest law. Another very prominent activist, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who’s been on Democracy Now! several times, along with 24 others, are—Alaa has been in prison now for over a month, awaiting charges, criminal charges, on breaking the protest law, as well. So, we’re seeing really the police state, a re-empowered police state, really flex its muscles now to try and clamp down on any outspoken dissent or any opposition to the military or to the government.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, I wanted to turn to Alaa Abd El-Fattah, the leading blogger, activist, charges now he faces to do with a call he allegedly made for protests against military trials of civilians. You interviewed him for Democracy Now! about youth organizing and the long-term goals of the Egyptian revolution back in 2011.
ALAA ABD EL-FATTAH: We are continuing the pressure because we want what happens next to be power to the people and to be through democratic Egypt that represents all of its people. We should also remember that the initial slogans were not just "Topple the regime" but were also [speaking in Arabic], which is "Bread! Freedom! Social justice!" And we will need a lot of pressure in order to achieve something like social justice, because that doesn’t just hit the interests of the regime, but, you know, broader interests, although the unity that you see here, the number of people representing all classes, I think it means that even the very rich—you know, the ones who didn’t flee the country—agree that the need for social justice and for bread and freedom is universal.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, his is a particularly interesting story because he was imprisoned under Mubarak—in fact, his baby born while he was in prison, and he, himself, was born when his father was in prison years ago.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, his sister was born while his father was in prison. And, yeah, I mean, he’s one of these activists, like Ahmed Maher, similar, and others before him, who have been jailed by these successive authoritarian regimes in Egypt, that have—and, you know, under Morsi, as well, he was targeted with an arrest warrant. And so—and, you know, it’s these people now that are also in prison. And it’s a very troubling time as we’re coming up to the third anniversary of the revolution, which began on January 25th, 2011, to see the state of where Egypt is three years later appearing to be in a more aggressive authoritarian order than the one the people rose up against. And the likelihood of any significant reform or change in the near future seems quite dim.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to the four Al Jazeera reporters now. Peter Greste is one of those four detained by the Egyptian government. This is a clip of one of the reports he filed just a few days ago from Al-Azhar University as clashes erupted between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and security forces.
PETER GRESTE: As you can see, that the protests, the clashes are still ongoing. We understand that the Muslim Brotherhood students or the pro-Muslim Brotherhood students entered the university in some of the exam halls. They tried to tear up some of the exam papers and enforce a boycott of the exams in protest at the government. We understand that the authorities, the police moved in and fired tear gas. And it was the heat from the tear gas canisters which apparently set fire to some of the exam papers. In a way, what we have there is an ongoing clash that really represents the broader divisions that we’re seeing, that we saw yesterday, where supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of the anti-coup alliance took to the streets in open defiance of the government’s ban on protests, and in particular challenging the government to arrest them and enforce this five-year prison sentence, which the government has been threatening to impose on anybody who is convicted of taking part in these demonstrations.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Peter Greste, one of the four Al Jazeera English reporters who have been arrested in Egypt. Sherif Mansour with us, as well as Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Sherif Mansour is Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. Talk about these reporters.
SHERIF MANSOUR: Well, they’re just reporters doing their work. They have been working with Al Jazeera reporting on ongoing protests. And they just use their hotel rooms to do what reporters do: interview different perspectives on ongoing events, including those who are considered to be on the opposition side. And in this case, they are the Muslim Brotherhood. They had in their custody some of the coverage of the Brotherhood protests, some of the material that was distributed in the protest. And the Egyptian government, the Egyptian authorities arrested them on Saturday night. And the next day, they issued a statement saying that they were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, they hosted Muslim Brotherhood, what’s now they want to cast as an act of terrorism, a promotion of terrorism. If a journalist is doing their work, for them, they want to consider that as part of the widening net to go after activists, go after media people, who would present any critical or independent view from the government position.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk, overall, about the situation for reporters in Egypt, and then extend to this—your year-end report, which talks about the Middle East as being the deadliest place for journalists in the world right now.
SHERIF MANSOUR: Well, Egypt this year has had a lot of precedence. For the first time, Egypt was ranked among the top 10 jailers of journalists in our annual census for imprisoned journalists this year. And recently, yesterday, we’ve issued our census for killed journalists, and Egypt was number three, the third, around the world, which is also unprecedented. We’ve been working on Egypt since 1992. We’ve documented 10 cases of killed journalists. Out of those 10, six happened this year, 2013, alone. So this is an unprecedented number for Egypt. In addition to that, we’ve been working on documenting a wide censorship effort by this interim government, that are backed by the military, that includes raiding TV stations, detaining dozens of journalists and also harassing them, portraying them as agents, spies for the outside world. So, Egypt has seen the most deteriorated we have documented since 1992 in the past year.
As part of our report, we also talk about other countries. On the top of the list, there is Syria. This year, 29 cases of journalists have been killed. That raises the total number of journalists who have been killed since the uprising against Bashar al-Assad to 63 journalists who were covering the events in Syria. Also, that—also, that doesn’t mean there is just killing. We have documented a lot of kidnapping cases. This has been the most worrying sign in Syria. We’ve seen 53 kidnapping cases happening this year, which also raises the total number of kidnapping to 76 since the uprising. We’ve seen more and more the opposition is engaging in anti-press tactics. They are more and more kidnapping journalists and also enforcing censorship on foreign reporter.
In addition, of course, Iraq is—the violence that has erupted in Iraq has also resulted in a lot of targeting for journalists there. For the first time, last year, in 2012, we haven’t documented any killed cases for journalists in Iraq, and it was the first year after 10 years of continuing attacks against journalists where Iraq has seen the most deadly environment for journalists with 155 journalists over 10 years since the occupation of Iraq. In 2012, there was none. And this year, we’ve seen for the first time a return to that era with 10 journalists being killed, and all of them throughout the last quarter of the year. And in one city, Mosul, most of those attacks happened, with seven journalists being killed in one city, a also unprecedented rate.
AMY GOODMAN: And what is the—what is the Committee to Protect Journalists calling for?
SHERIF MANSOUR: Well, we call for basically fighting impunity. We don’t want the perpetrators and those who violate and attack journalists get away with it. We tried as much as possible with media campaign, with advocacy, to pressure governments and use international organization like the U.N. to be a venue to have this discussion. And most recently, we’ve managed to, with the help of other organization and other governments, to pass a resolution in the General Assembly in the U.N. that supports the right of journalists in conflict zone. And also, for the first time, there will be a day in November every year where all the governments can fight impunity. There will be a lot of attacks will be happening. We’ve already, like, documented more than a thousand killed cases since 1992. And this year, we are up to 1,040. So those should not go unpunished. And we are following up with all the governments who do this every year.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us, the two Sharifs, Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent in Egypt. Sharif, stay safe in this new year.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to Hamburg, Germany, to the Chaos Communication Congress. We’ll hear from Julian Assange and Jacob Appelbaum. Stay with us.
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Looking Back: A Year of Struggles on Climate, Education & Marriage Equality Inspire Hope for 2014
On the last day of 2013, we look back on some of the many signs of hope that emerged on issues ranging from economic equality to LGBT rights to climate justice. With all the bad news that came this year, there were many encouraging displays of a shifting public consciousness and a willingness by ordinary people to mobilize for change. We are joined by Sarah van Gelder, co-founder and editor-in-chief of YES! Magazine, whose latest article is "10 Hopeful Things That Happened in 2013 to Get You Inspired for What’s to Come."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As 2013 winds down, we’ve compiled a list of the top 20 most viewed interviews this year on our website. Visit democracynow.org and look for a new blog post where you can watch those video highlights.
Well, yes, today is the last day of 2013. Tomorrow, on New Year’s Day, we’ll spend an hour looking back at the year that was. Tens of thousands were killed as Syria descended into one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades. A trove of leaked documents by Edward Snowden revealed a massive U.S.-run surveillance apparatus that spans the entire globe. Countries once again failed to reach a sweeping agreement on climate change as extreme weather caused havoc, including a typhoon that killed over 6,000 people in the Philippines.
But today we’re going to focus on some of the signs of hope that emerged in 2013, on issues from economic equality to LGBT rights to climate justice. With all the bad news that came in 2013, there were many encouraging signs of a shifting public consciousness and a willingness by ordinary people to mobilize for change.
Sarah van Gelder is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of YES! Magazine. She has just written a year-in-review article called "10 Hopeful Things That Happened in 2013 to Get You Inspired for What’s to Come."
Sarah van Gelder, welcome to Democracy Now! So, what should we be inspired by?
SARAH VAN GELDER: Well, I think we should be inspired by the fact that there are so many people in the United States and all over the world who are working for change, many of which are actually being successful.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about number one in your article, seeing a surprising new leadership on the climate issue.
SARAH VAN GELDER: Well, I think, ever since Copenhagen, the strategy of the big environmental groups and Democrats in Congress, which was to get some kind of cap and trade, to get some kind of global agreement, I think that has basically come to a standstill. So now the attention and the initiative and the leadership is shifting to the grassroots. There are students who are working on the divestment campaign. They’re succeeding in getting colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuel companies. There’s indigenous folks all over the world, and particularly we saw an uprising in 2012, 2013, of Idle No More. There are state and local governments—
AMY GOODMAN: Actually, Sarah, we want to go to Idle No More. This month, Foreign Policy magazine named the four founders of Idle No More—Jessica Gordon, Sylvia McAdam, Sheelah McLean and Nina Wilson—among its list of the 100 leading global thinkers of 2013. They were commended for demanding that Canada not leave its First Nations behind. One of the movement’s most high-profile supporters is Chief Theresa Spence, who went on a weeks-long hunger strike in a teepee just outside Ottawa’s Parliament at the end of 2012. She warned she would starve herself until she gets a meeting with Prime Minister Harper to discuss respect for historical treaties.
CHIEF THERESA SPENCE: We’re living in the Third World. And this shouldn’t be happening in this country, you know? They’re getting rich by our land. Everybody is using our traditional land except us. And all these mining companies and other forestries and other things that’s been happening in our community, there’s no benefits for us. It’s all going to the government.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah van Gelder, you interviewed the four women who founded Idle No More in the piece you wrote, "Why Canada’s Indigenous Uprising is About All of Us." Talk about their work and what’s happened this year since Chief Spence’s hunger strike.
SARAH VAN GELDER: Well, what’s extraordinary is that Prime Minister Harper thought he could sort of push through this major new fossil fuel extraction enterprise across Canada, just rolling over all the First Nations people and everyone else who has concerns about the air and water quality through his legislation, C-45. And he found out that he actually couldn’t do that quite that way. And one of the reasons he couldn’t is because, again, across Canada, First Nations groups formed local versions of Idle No More.
Idle No More is very much of a grassroots effort. These women were not major indigenous leaders. They were not people who were on the front page. They were people who were active in their own communities, but they came together and said, "We cannot acquiesce to this sort of pillage of our lands anymore, and we will be idle no more." And that inspired people across Canada, and then in the United States and elsewhere around the world. They did flash mob round dances, where they would basically do an occupation of intersections and public spaces. They had the fast that you mentioned. There have been blockades in places where there are efforts to get fracking going. There’s one going on right now in New Brunswick.
So, I think what we’re seeing is that a lot of the initiative now on the climate question is coming down to each local area. We have some of this going on in the Pacific Northwest, as well, where extreme oil and extreme energy is causing all sorts of local damage. I mean, the train wreck in North Dakota is an example of this going on right now also. People are standing up for their rights to have a clean environment where they are, but they’re also aware that this is very much linked to the climate crisis globally.
AMY GOODMAN: Sarah van Gelder, we’re speaking to you in Seattle. In your wrap-up of the hopeful things that happened in 2013, you write about the beginning of an education uprising. We covered parts of these developments in May, when teachers, students and parents in Seattle won their campaign to reject standardized tests in reading and math. Their protest began in January when teachers at Garfield High began a boycott of the test, saying it was wasteful and being used unfairly to assess their performance. I spoke with Jesse Hagopian, a high school history teacher and union rep at Garfield High School, just after their victory.
JESSE HAGOPIAN: We were celebrating the fact that our students will no longer have to sit in front of the dull glow of a computer screen, looking at questions that they were never prepared for because the test was not aligned to the state-mandated curriculum. And we were celebrating because our English-language learners will no longer have to be humiliated by a test that is linguistically and culturally inappropriate for them. Our special ed students will no longer have to take a test where their IEPs, or individual education plans, will no—are not respected.
And, you know, we were celebrating, I think, too, because Washington state ranks number one in the nation in high-stakes testing. And we spend over $100 million a year on these tests. And Garfield High School teachers and teachers around Seattle who have joined the boycott of the MAP test have said that we would rather spend that $100 million on reading coaches and on tutoring programs, things that can actually help elevate our students and get them where we know they need to be.
AMY GOODMAN: Jesse Hagopian, high school history teacher and union representative at Garfield High School. Sarah?
SARAH VAN GELDER: Yeah, we’re actually—our next issue of YES! Magazine is going to be on education, and we’re going to be telling that story from Garfield High School in some depth, partly because it’s an exciting example of something that happened in 2013, but also because we think this is going to be spreading. What we’ve seen around the country is austerity, which cuts back on the budgets of schools, including ones that are really struggling; the whole Race to the Top, which is a successor to No Child Left Behind, which is basically using high-stakes testing to punish schools that are struggling with—especially with students that are coming right out of poverty; the sort of punitive attitude towards teachers or students who are having a hard time—instead of supporting them in succeeding, we’re seeing this kind of punitive approach. And what we’re doing in this next issue of YES! is looking at how—what it will take to actually get these schools to succeed and what it will take to get this movement to spread, so that instead of punishing our schools, we’re supporting them and we’re preparing students for the kind of a world that they’re going to be inheriting, not the kind of world that will just slot them into low-wage jobs.
AMY GOODMAN: The LGBT movement won a historic victory in June when the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and paved the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California. In a five-to-four decision, the court ruled the 1996 DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, signed by President Clinton, was unconstitutional. This means that legally married same-sex couples entitled to claim the same 1,100 federal benefits as heterosexual couples. The lead plaintiff in the case, 84-year-old Edith Windsor, hailed the ruling.
EDITH WINDSOR: I’m honored and humbled and overjoyed to be here today to represent not only the thousands of Americans whose lives—whose lives have been adversely impacted by the Defense of Marriage Act, but those whose hopes and dreams have been constricted by the same discriminatory law. Children born today will grow up in a world without DOMA, and those same children who happen to be gay will be free to love and get married as Thea and I did, but with the same federal benefits, protections and dignity as everyone else.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Edie Windsor. Democracy Now! also spoke about the Supreme Court’s ruling that paved the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California. We interviewed Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis, who were two of the plaintiffs in the California marriage cases that established the freedom to marry before Prop 8 went into effect. This is Stuart Gaffney.
STUART GAFFNEY: You know, this is a sweet moment. Those of us married in 2008, before the passage of Proposition 8—and there are 18,000 couples just like us—we’re all celebrating our five-year anniversaries right now. And what an anniversary gift we have just received from the U.S. Supreme Court to know that now we’re not just the class of 2008, this sort of footnote in the history of marriage equality in this country, but instead we’re the beginning of an era that now continues of the freedom to marry in California, thanks to this decision yesterday. It’s really a happy day not just for the rights of all fair-minded Americans, but also for our friends who have been waiting for as long as five years to finally be able to legally say, "I do." You showed us the joy from the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, and I can tell you that in San Francisco City Hall, the joy was that much or even greater as we looked around and saw our friends begin to plan their wedding day.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Stuart Gaffney, and he was sitting next to John Lewis, his partner. Sarah van Gelder, the significance of this?
SARAH VAN GELDER: Well, I think we’ve really hit a tipping point on this issue, Amy. I think, you know, it used to be that a slight majority were opposed to same-sex marriages; now it’s turned, and a slight majority of Americans favor it. We now have about a third of the population of the United States living in states where marriage is allowed. The federal government now, after they refused to defend DOMA at the Supreme Court—and, of course, now that it’s been overturned—the federal government is now making benefits available to same-sex couples. So I think we’ve really hit a turning point. Even the state of Utah, of course, now allows gay marriage.
AMY GOODMAN: And then let’s turn to healthcare. In our coverage of "Obamacare" this year, we also covered how it’s fed interest into single-payer healthcare. In October, I spoke with Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the primary care physician and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, which has worked with the group Healthcare-NOW! to continue their push for single-payer both at the state level and at the national level.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Single-payer is also known as expanded and improved Medicare for all, also known as nonprofit national health insurance. It means you would get a card the day you’re born, and you’d keep it your entire life. It would entitle you to medical care, all needed medical care, without co-payments, without deductibles. And because it’s such a simple system, like Social Security, there would be very low administrative expenses. We would save about $400 billion, which would allow us to afford the system. I mean, I just want to remind you that when Medicare was rolled out in 1966, it was rolled out in six months using index cards. So if you have a simple system, you do not have to have all this expense and all this complexity and work.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, "index cards"?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: They didn’t have computers back in 1966, OK? So they expanded—went from zero to over 20 million people enrolled in Medicare in a period of six months. And because it was a simple system, based on the Social Security records, it was a tax-based system, you didn’t have hundreds of people programming the state of Oregon, thousands of different plans, tons of different co-payments, deductibles and restrictions—one single-payer plan, which is what we need for all Americans to give the Americans really the choice they want, which is not the choice between insurance company A or insurance company B. They want the choice of any doctor or hospital, like you get with traditional Medicare.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, primary care physician, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program. Sarah van Gelder, you’re editor-in-chief of YES! Magazine, wrote this piece, "10 Hopeful Things That Happened in 2013." How do you get from "Obamacare" to single-payer? So many people feel that what happened this year was so—well, somewhat catastrophic on many different levels.
SARAH VAN GELDER: Well, I’m not sure if we will right away, but I can tell you that in the state of Vermont they’re working on that, and that’s how Canada got single-payer healthcare. It started in one province, in the province of Saskatchewan, and it was such a success that all the other provinces wanted it. And even though the party that had put it into place in Saskatchewan only won an election long enough to put it into place and then were voted out of office, the conservatives and the other parties were never able to take it apart, because it’s been so successful. So, in the state of Vermont, they’re working on a single-payer healthcare system statewide right now. Whether or not they can pull it off, as just one state and a fairly small state, has yet to be seen, but they believe, just as the doctor was speaking of, that there’s so much savings to be gained by a far more efficient system of single-payer, without all the profits and all the bureaucracy that go along with having all these competing for-profit insurance companies. They believe they can get a better system, even just at one state.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Sarah van Gelder, we only have a few seconds, but it’s
hard to put Syria on the list of something hopeful that happened, but you managed to.
SARAH VAN GELDER: Well, I did, because I believe—back in the summer, I think many of us believed that we were going to war in Syria, and it was going to become yet another quagmire like Iraq and Afghanistan. And somehow, the combination of people power, perhaps some wisdom from the Obama administration—I think it was the American people rising up and just saying, "We’ve had enough." But somehow diplomacy won out, international law won out, and instead of the U.S. getting further involved and further making things even worse for the Syrian people, we’re now working with the international community on getting rid of those chemical weapons.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sarah van Gelder, I want to thank you very much for joining us, editor-in-chief of YES! Magazine. Her latest piece, "10 Hopeful Things That Happened in 2013 to Get You Inspired for What’s to Come." We’ll link to it at democracynow.org.
Tune in on New Year’s Day, on Wednesday, for our special year in review that looks back at 2013. You can also visit our website to see the top 20 most viewed interviews this year at democracynow.org.
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HEADLINES:
Iraq Violence Caps Deadliest Year Since 2008
Iraq is capping off its worst year of violence since the height of the U.S. occupation. According to the United Nations, more than 7,150 civilians and 950 security forces have been killed this year, the highest annual total since 2008. On Monday, at least 13 people were killed in clashes when Iraqi police raided a Sunni protest camp in Anbar province. Protesters had been camped out for a year to protest the marginalization of Sunnis by the Shiite-led government. More than 40 Sunni lawmakers announced their resignations following the raid. Separate attacks across Iraq killed at least 11 other people.
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Russian Police Detain Dozens After Volgograd Bombings
Police in Russia have rounded up dozens of people in the city of Volgograd following the twin bombings of a railway station and trolleybus. The toll from the attacks has risen to 34. No one has claimed responsibility, and it is unclear whether any of those detained today were involved. Russia is due to host the Winter Olympics in Sochi in just over a month.
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South Sudan Rebels Claim Control of Bor; Leader Agrees to Peace Talks
Rebels in South Sudan are claiming to have retaken the key town of Bor after a firece battle with government forces. Bor is considered a crucial point on the path to the capital Juba. Rebel leader Riek Machar has also reportedly agreed to enter peace talks with the South Sudanese government in Ethiopia. The news comes after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni raised the prospect of regional intervention against the rebels. Museveni said East African countries had agreed to take action last week if the rebels did not agree to a ceasefire by today. He spoke to reporters on Monday.
President Yoweri Museveni: "We gave Riek Machar some four days to respond, and if he doesn’t, we shall have to go for him, all of us. That’s what we agreed in Nairobi."
Reporter: "Mr. President, when you say you will go for him, what does that mean?"
President Yoweri Museveni: "To defeat him."
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U.N. Says 180,000 Displaced by South Sudan Violence
The violence in South Sudan has killed more than 1,000 people. Speaking on Monday, Gérard Araud, the U.N. Security Council president for this month, said 180,000 people have been displaced.
Gérard Araud: "The situation of the human rights is also pretty worrying. There are reports of torturing, killing, disappearance and on ethnically targeted violence, actually. So the human rights sector or component of the mission has been upgraded, and investigations and reporting have been upgraded, so there could be accountability at the end of this tragedy."
Congolese Troops Quash Series of Attacks; 100 Killed
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Troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo quashed a coordinated series of attacks on the airport, a military barracks, and the headquarters of the state television station Monday. In total, about 100 people were killed. The attackers were followers of a pastor who has accused the government of harassing his supporters.
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U.N. Says 15 Died from Hunger in Palestinian Area of Syria
The United Nations is urgently appealing for access to a Palestinian area of Damascus where people are dying from hunger. A U.N. official says some 20,000 Palestinians are trapped inside the Yarmouk district of Damascus amid fighting between the regime and rebels. Since the last delivery of U.N. aid in September, 15 people have died there from malnutrition, including five this past weekend.
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Chemical Weapons Team Misses Deadline in Syria
The watchdog tasked with overseeing the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons is set to miss its deadline to remove the deadliest materials from Syria. The organization had planned to transport the materials to the port of Latakia and ship them out of the country by today. But the group has cited roadblocks ranging from bad weather to logistical hurdles. The head of the effort, Sigrid Kaag, said security is a top concern.
Sigrid Kaag: "Security, I think all parties agree that this is, of course, a big concern, always, but it also impacts the safety of any convoy and the safety of any effort. So you need to plan to make everything as secure and safe as possible for the civilian population, for those who need to conduct the operation, and then the government needs to plan for any eventuality in the journey from different sites to Latakia and in Latakia itself."
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Lebanon Fires on Syrian Helicopters in Its Airspace
The Lebanese military says it fired on Syrian helicopters that entered its airspace on Monday, marking the first time it has done so during the Syrian conflict. The incident came a day after Lebanon announced it would receive $3 billion in military aid from Saudi Arabia.
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Israel Releases 26 Palestinian Prisoners amid Reports of New Settlement Plans
Israel has released a group of 26 Palestinian prisoners amid reports it will unveil plans for 1,400 new settlement homes in the West Bank. The prisoners are the third batch to be released since U.S.-brokered peace talks began in July. Both of the earlier prisoner releases were also accompanied by the announcement of new settlement plans. Palestinians have warned the settlements could derail the peace talks. Secretary of State John Kerry is returning to the region this week. Speaking Monday, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said Kerry will present a proposed framework for a peace deal.
Marie Harf: "During this trip, the secretary will discuss with both leaders the proposed framework for negotiations. As we’ve said, this framework would serve as guidelines for the permanent status negotiation and would address all the core issues. This is a detailed consultation with the leaders, continuing to work to bridge gaps between the parties, obviously continuing to encourage both sides to take constructive steps, as we said, including the prisoner release this evening in Israel, as well."
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Burma Releases Political Prisoners in Year-End Amnesty
Burma has begun releasing political prisoners after the government announced an end-of-year amnesty. Burmese President Thein Sein had vowed to release all political prisoners by the end of 2013. The amnesty is expected to include some 40 political prisoners and another 200 who are facing trial or investigation under laws designed to target activists. Among those released today was Yan Naing Tun, who was serving a seven-month sentence for leading a march without permission. He criticized the government after his release.
Yan Naing Tun: "Even though they (the government) said this is amnesty, this is not amnesty for us. They are trying to hide the weakness of the legislature by doing this. But I respect Mr. President since he kept his promise, because he had not ever kept his promise before."
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Federal Regulators Choose Drone Test Sites in U.S.
U.S. regulators have chosen six universities and other public entities to develop test sites for domestic drones. The approved test sites are located in at least 10 states ranging from New York and Massachusetts to Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada and Texas. The Federal Aviation Administration says the sites will "conduct critical research" on the requirements needed to "safely integrate [drones] into the national airspace over the next several years." Hundreds of entities, including law enforcement agencies, are already permitted to fly drones. The latest testing is part of a push to use drones for commercial purposes.
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Survey: Afghan War May Be Least Popular in U.S. History
A new survey finds more than 80 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan, making the occupation potentially the most unpopular in U.S. history. The poll by CNN and ORC International found just 17 percent of Americans support the war, a steep drop from 52 percent five years ago. CNN reports the disapproval numbers are higher than comparable data for both wars in Iraq and Vietnam. Only a quarter of Americans want U.S. troops to remain on the ground beyond 2014. But the Obama administration is currently pressuring Afghanistan to accept a deal to keep U.S. troops beyond that deadline. A new U.S. intelligence report predicted U.S. gains from the 12-year conflict will be eroded within three years without a large military presence.
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Report: At Least 70 Journalists Killed in 2013
A new report by the Committee to Project Journalists says at least 70 journalists died on the job in 2013. At least 29 journalists died covering the civil war in Syria. Another 10 were killed in Iraq. Egypt was the third most violent country for journalists with six killed for their work last year. The report came as four Al Jazeera journalists were interrogated by Egyptian prosecutors following their arrest Sunday evening. Cameraperson Mohamed Fawzy has been released, but the three others remain in custody.
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Mile-Long Train Carrying Crude Oil Derails in North Dakota
Residents of the small town of Casselton, North Dakota, have been urged to evacuate after a train carrying crude oil collided with another train, triggering a series of explosions. The BNSF Railway train stretched about a mile long and was carrying more than 100 oil-laden cars, about 10 of which caught fire. A plume of black smoke could be seen for miles. Authorities said shifting winds could raise the risk of health effects. No injuries have been reported.
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Report: 7,300-Mile Area Polluted with Mercury Around Alberta Tar Sands Oil Operations
In Canada, scientists say tar sands oil operations in Alberta are releasing mercury that is impacting an area of more than 7,300 square miles. According to Postmedia News, mercury levels in the area are up to 16 times higher than "background" levels for the region. Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin that can cause brain damage. The Alberta tar sands are the origin point for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring oil to the Texas Gulf Coast.
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Poll: Less Than Half of Republicans Accept Evolution
A new poll shows the number of Republicans who believe in evolution has dropped 11 percent since 2009. According to the Pew Research Center, just 43 percent of Republicans believe that human beings have evolved over time. By contrast, 67 percent of Democrats believe in evolution, a slight increase since 2009.
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Reproductive Justice Pioneer Dr. Kenneth Edelin Dies at 74
Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an abortion provider and key figure in the struggle for reproductive justice, has died at the age of 74. In 1975, Dr. Edelin, who was African American, was charged with manslaughter after performing a legal abortion in Massachusetts. An all-white, mostly male jury convicted him. He was later acquitted and became an outspoken advocate for the healthcare rights of women, particularly poor women of color. In a speech posted by Planned Parenthood in 2008, Dr. Edelin hailed the women’s movement.
Dr. Kenneth Edelin: "For all those women who marched, for all those women who lobbied, for all those women who died, we say to you today, your lives have always been our concern, your sacrifices our motivation. We will continue the fight, and our struggle will go on for as long as it must."
Edelin died from cancer on Monday in Sarasota, Florida.
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