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"There Will Be Justice": Mourners Speak Outside Michael Brown's Funeral in St. Louis
Thousands of people lined up to pay their respects at Michael Brown’s funeral on Monday in St. Louis, Missouri. The killing of the 18-year-old African American by a white police officer in Ferguson has sparked weeks of protest and conversations about race, both around the country and in the local community. Democracy Now!’s Aaron Maté was in St. Louis and spoke with mourners as they filed into the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church. "I know about Martin Luther King, I know about Emmett Till, but I am actually living something that should have stopped years and years ago," says local resident Anne Hamilton. "We just want, as African Americans, to be treated fairly and to be given the same advantages." St. Louis resident Elwood Harris responds to the protests, which have at times involved looting. "What else can we do? We took the Martin Luther King approach, protesting and peace, but there is no peace, and there is no justice," Harris says. "But there will be justice in this case, I really do believe."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: New evidence has emerged in the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old African-American teenager who was shot dead by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer on August 9th, sparking two weeks of protests. On Monday night, CNN aired an audiotape allegedly recording the moment Brown was shot. On the recording, at least 10 gunshots can be heard. A private autopsy had earlier shown Brown was shot at least six times, twice in the head. The new audio recording has not been independently verified. An unidentified resident of Ferguson gave the recording to the FBI. On the recording, you can hear the man video-chatting in a building near where Brown was killed. As he says, "You’re so pretty," six gunshots can be heard in the distance, then a pause, then four more shots. This is the audio. It lasts about 10 seconds. Focus on the gunshots in the background, not the conversation.
FERGUSON RESIDENT: You are pretty. [gunshots] You are so fine. Just going over some of your videos. [gunshots] How could I forget?
AMY GOODMAN: That, again, is audio of a video chat allegedly recorded at the same time that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown. CNN first played the tape Monday night, saying it had been handed over to the FBI by a Ferguson resident.
Earlier in the day, more than 2,500 people filled the sanctuary of Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis for Michael Brown’s funeral. Another 2,000 packed into overflow rooms. Hours before the service began, hundreds lined up outside to pay their respects. Democracy Now!’s Aaron Maté was there and brings us some of their voices.
MOURNERS: [singing] We shall overcome. We shall overcome some day. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome...
AARON MATÉ: We’re at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church for the funeral of Michael Brown. Just moments ago, the Brown family entering, Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden leading a large contingent of family members into this church for the funeral of their son. When we arrived, there was a crowd outside singing "We Shall Overcome," and we spoke to some of those who were waiting in line to pay their respects.
LOVELL: I’m Lovell. We’re here to support the Mike Brown family and the people, in general, just to, you know—
ST. LOUIS RESIDENT: All of the injustice.
LOVELL: And so that we can all get together, and we’re not letting just anything go down out here, you know? We stand for justice for the Mike Brown family.
CRYSTAL WILLIAMS: My name is Crystal Williams. What happened to my son here in Florissant, they was nine or 10 years old. I was living out there, and my son had got a ticket for a Snickers bar, and I didn’t know about it. Well, in that county, they issue a warrant. They kicked down my door. They put nine-millimeters on my kid’s head, and they weren’t nothing but nine, 10, 11 years old, with my nephews. That day, they took my kids, locked them up for 30 days. Thirty days over a Snickers bar, as well as putting nine-millimeters and kicking in my house. That day, my whole life changed. I had to relocate my life to Minnesota, because I knew then that my boys was going to die here. So it changed my whole life. So I knew, as well as I knew he killed him, they was going to kill my children.
AARON MATÉ: You felt as if the police here were a threat to your children?
CRYSTAL WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I knew. My mom had told me when I moved out there, that’s the KKK, but I didn’t listen. But it took them to put nine-millimeters on my son’s head at 10, 11 years old.
AARON MATÉ: So when you heard about Michael Brown’s killing, what was your reaction?
CRYSTAL WILLIAMS: What was my reaction? Immediately, the streets. Immediately. No second thought. I had to get out there. And if I have to die today, I will, for my grandchild. I’m not running from St. Louis no more. No more.
ELWOOD HARRIS: How are you doing? My name’s Edward Harris. I’m not going to lie. I was real angry, because I’m tired of seeing young black unarmed men—just people, period—getting killed by the police. Police are supposed to protect and serve. And, you know, if they can’t protect and serve us, then who can? We’ve got to stand up and protect ourselves, because they’re not going to do it. They’re going to gun us down. That’s how I feel.
UNIDENTIFIED: You could have used your taser. What is y’all tasers for?
ELWOOD HARRIS: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED: If you’re just pulling out your gun and shooting, that’s pointless. That makes you look bad, and, you know, people are going to go the wrong way. Like, I’m not against the frustration, but the looting and all that stuff, yeah, that makes sense, because people is mad. You don’t do stuff like that.
ELWOOD HARRIS: Our back’s against the wall, you know? It didn’t make it right with us looting and rioting, but, I mean, what else can we do? You know, we took the Martin Luther King approach—you know, protesting and peace—but there is no peace, and there’s no justice. But there will be justice in this case, I really do believe.
GEORGE FIELDS: I’m George Fields, and I’m here for Mike Brown, and mostly for all black men walking down the streets stuck here, not being able to go out in the county, seriously, sir, because we’re like—city is a little more lenient with ticket values and stuff, and we have just been ticketed over much over there, and then it leads to other crimes, you know. It’s just you can’t go past the county. You cannot go in the county. I’m fearful of the county. I’ve been stuck here in the city for six or seven years because the county has been that bad. My kids stay in the county. I can’t see them. I’ve got to sneak to see my kids. I have to sneak to see my kids, because my plate might be bad or something. You know, I’m poor, and I’m trying to drive around to get better. But, you know, they won’t ticket you; they just take your stuff, immediately. You know, if you take it, their tow thing is ready, you know, every time.
ANNE HAMILTON: My name is Anne Hamilton. This is something that I never thought that I’d live to see. I heard about different things that happened. I know about Martin Luther King. I know about Emmett Till. But I am actually living something that should have stopped years and years ago. They’re celebrating Ms. Frankie Freeman, the first civil rights lady, appointed by four presidents, this year, her 50th anniversary. And now we have to deal with this still happening in the city of St. Louis? Anywhere injustice is, injustice is everywhere. You know, if there is a rightful way—and there is, through the power of voting, through the power of getting involved. But we just want, as African Americans, to be treated fairly and to be given the same advantage. This is like we’re still in a one-room schoolhouse.
UNIDENTIFIED: They used to be** shoot and kill us. And they want all our young black man out of here. And that’s wrong. That’s wrong. And I’m sick of it, because I’ve been out here trying to help a change for us, as we’re human just like everybody else.
RITA SADIPO: My name is Rita Sadipo.
AARON MATÉ: Do you think things have changed since the killing?
RITA SADIPO: I think so, because even as I drive on the highway, I don’t feel as though—because I live all the way in O’Fallon now, but I grew up right here in this neighborhood. But I don’t feel as much stress. I don’t, because it would be times when I’m driving from O’Fallon—that’s a predominantly white area—and every time I would drive, I would see a lot of police officers pulling over black drivers. So I haven’t seen that since this incident.
AARON MATÉ: And what do you attribute that to?
RITA SADIPO: Us being vocal, letting people be aware, letting the world know the type of discrimination that we have here in St. Louis, Missouri.
AARON MATÉ: And you brought your son today?
RITA SADIPO: I did. He wanted to be a part of this, yes. I don’t know if he’s going to say anything, but, yes, he wanted to be a part of this, because that could have been my son. I have three sons. I have a 14-, a 17-, and a 22-year-old. That could have easily been my son—easily—because they discriminate against our black men all the time.
CORNELL HASSAN: My name is Cornell Hassan, and I’m here in support of Michael Brown’s family and the peace effort that they are trying to bring into being, and to bury this young man. It’s a culmination of a lot of problems here in St. Louis—no jobs, lack of education, the school system is falling apart. It’s a lot of problems here. And we see it as a systematic destruction of the black community.
SHEYANN: My name’s Sheyann, but I’m with an organization called the Lost Voices. Without us standing up for what we believe in, we’re going to keep going through this. It may go away temporarily, but we’re going to keep going through it and keep going through it. That’s why we’re standing on our grounds. We’re not going to let anyone make us feel like we can’t speak up or we don’t have our freedom of speech.
MATTHEW FOGG: Hi, my name is Matthew Fogg. I’m a retired chief deputy U.S. marshal. One of the things I’m here for is looking at this department and the disparities when you look at the number of police officers that are here that are white versus black. You look at an incident here that has occurred that has been sort of endemic to the country, really, when we look at things that have been going on around the country—the chokehold death of the young man in New York City, we go Trayvon Martin. And we could just go on and on and on talking about disparities. Why are these police tactical homicides taking place against—disproportionately against minorities? We see a young man that was shot down that was unarmed. And the questions are—the community has a right to ask these questions, civil unrest, disturbance, their concern. When I look at the militarization of the police department, I see the type of armored personnel carriers, the vehicles. I’ve done a lot of SWAT training. I know what these weapons will do. And when they bring in these types of weapons and machinery for something of this nature, it says to me it’s overkill.
PATRICIA ALEXANDER: Patricia Alexander to support Mike Brown’s parents.
AARON MATÉ: Do you know them?
PATRICIA ALEXANDER: No, I don’t personally know them, but as a mother of a victim, I wanted to show my support.
AARON MATÉ: What happened to your child?
PATRICIA ALEXANDER: My child was killed. He wasn’t killed by a police officer or nothing, but he was killed three years ago. And so I know that mother’s pain, so that’s why I’m here, to show my support for that mother and the rest of the family.
AARON MATÉ: Having lost a child, what message do you have for Michael Brown’s parents?
PATRICIA ALEXANDER: To just keep their trust in God. Just keep their trust in God. Hold their head up, because that void—she will never, never be able to replace that void in her life, but as long as she keeps asking God for strength, she’ll make it through. She’ll be able to get up every day and know that her son is always here. Can’t nobody ever take that away.
AMY GOODMAN: The voices of just a few of the mourners, among thousands who came to say goodbye to Michael Brown at his funeral on Monday. When we come back, we’ll hear highlights from the funeral, including Michael Brown’s cousin, the family’s lawyer Benjamin Crump and the Reverend Al Sharpton. Stay with us.
There's Something Wrong in America: Michael Brown's Funeral Sparks Calls for an Enduring Movement
More than 2,500 people filled the sanctuary of Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis for Michael Brown’s funeral. Another 2,000 packed into overflow rooms. Speakers included Rev. Al Sharpton, attorney Benjamin Crump and Brown’s cousin, Ty Pruitt. "America is going to have to come to terms with, there’s something wrong that we have money to give military equipment to police forces, but we don’t have money for training and money for public education and money to train our children," Sharpton said.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: "He Saw the Best in Me," one of the songs from Michael Brown’s funeral held Monday in St. Louis, Missouri. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York. Aaron Maté is in St. Louis, as we turn now to Michael Brown’s funeral held Monday in St. Louis, Missouri. Twenty-five hundred people filled the sanctuary of the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church to say goodbye. Another 2,000 filled overflow rooms. Michael Brown’s black-and-gold casket was topped with red roses, similar to the hundreds of roses laid in the street since he was killed, along with the red Cardinals baseball cap he wore as he was shot. Large photographs of Brown as a young boy and teenager stood on either side.
His parents were joined by hundreds of extended family members but did not speak. Michael Brown Sr.'s tribute in the funeral program read, quote, "I think of you day and night and just wish I was there to save you from harm. I always told you I would never let anything happen to you. And that's why it hurts sooooo much. I will never let you die in my heart," he wrote. Michael Brown’s mother Lesley McSpadden’s tribute read, quote, "I want you to know you were the purpose in my life. Out of everything I did, it was you that I did right," she wrote.
We begin with Michael Brown’s cousin, Ty Pruitt.
TY PRUITT: I feel honored to stand up here and speak for my family, because we’ve come so far. And that trail led us to God, and that’s who we walk with right now. And that’s what keeps us strong. And that’s what lets us know that one day, one day, we’re going to flood the streets with unity, and we’re going to talk about freedom, and we’re going to talk—and when they look out those windows, the colors that stand in the middle of the street going to be more beautiful than any rainbow they’ve ever seen! But not today. Then we’re going to hit the streets again, and we’re going to yell out for our freedom and our equality, and we’re going to yell out Mike’s name, and it’s going to shake the heavens from the thunder that we release. But not today. Today is for peace, peace and quiet. We will lay our son, brother, cousin, uncle, our family, young man, young black man, young human being. But we don’t say goodbye. We say, "Good journey, until we meet again."
REV. MICHAEL JONES: I’m here to bring this young man. And you know him. He was the lead attorney for Trayvon Martin’s family, and now he’s here in Ferguson as the lead attorney for the family of Michael Brown Jr. I want to bring to you attorney Benjamin Crump as he brings the Reverend Al Sharpton. Receive him, members.
BENJAMIN CRUMP: It was 162 years ago, about 10 miles, Pastor Jones, from this great building where we say our final respects to young Michael Brown Jr. Maxine Waters, they say that it’s still referred to as the old courthouse where the Missouri Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision, Reverend Jackson. And the substance, Reverend Al, of that decision was that a person of African descent could not, nor were they ever to be considered a citizen pursuant to the United States Constitution. Now, one could logically conclude, Bishop Jakes, that this follows the precedents set by the 1787 three-fifths amendment that said an African American was to be considered three-fifths of a man. But we declare here today, as we pay our final respects to Michael Brown Jr., that he was not three-fifths of a citizen. He was an American citizen. And we will not accept three-fifths justice. We will demand equal justice for Michael Brown Jr.! So with that legal reference, I bring to you one of the most influential civil rights leaders of our history, Reverend Al Sharpton.
REV. AL SHARPTON: This is about justice. This is about fairness. And America is going to have to come to terms with, there’s something wrong that we have money to give military equipment to police forces, but we don’t have money for training and money for public education and money to train our children. America, how do you think we look when the world can see you can’t come up with a police report, but you can find a video? How do you think we look when young people marched nonviolently asking for the land of the free and the home of the brave to hear their cry, and you put snipers on the roof and pointed guns at them? How do we look? How do we look when people that support the officer—and they have a right to do that and an obligation, if they feel that—but if they support him, they’re supporters, but if we come to support the family, we’re dividing the country? What does God require of us?
In three weeks, we saw Marlene Pinnock, a woman in Los Angeles, laid out on the freeway, Congresswoman Maxine Waters. A California Highway Patrolman hit her 15 times on video, with no weapon in her hand, nothing, no threat to her. Right after that, a man, they say that he had loosie cigarettes, and they put an illegal chokehold on him. Man videoed it. Eleven times, he said, "I couldn’t breathe." And the man, the policeman, wouldn’t let him go. Later that week, we see Michael laying on the ground. America, it’s time to deal with policing! We are not the haters; we’re the healers!
What does it require of us? We can’t have a fit. We’ve got to have a movement. A fit, you get mad and run out for a couple of nights. A movement means we’ve got to be here for the long haul and turn our chance into change, our demonstration into legislation. We have got to stay on this so we can stop this!
AMY GOODMAN: The Reverend Al Sharpton speaking Monday in St. Louis, Missouri, at the funeral for Michael Brown. Among the guests who attended the service were a number of congressmembers, Martin Luther King III, Reverend Jesse Jackson, the families of Trayvon Martin and Sean Bell, and celebrities like Spike Lee, Diddy and Snoop Dogg. We go back to Democracy Now!'s Aaron Maté in St. Louis, who was there as Michael Brown's casket was brought outside the church.
PROTESTERS: Hands up! Don’t shoot! Hands up! Don’t shoot!
AARON MATÉ: It’s just after the funeral service, and we’re waiting for the coffin of Mike Brown to be taken to the hearse right in front of us. The Reverend Al Sharpton just wrapped up the service and now has led a group of dignitaries to just outside. Michael Brown Sr. leaving the service, being greeted by the crowds that have assembled here outside of the church.
MOURNER 1: Everything said about him was wonderful. He said he was going to be a legacy, and he is. He did it. He didn’t know how, but he did it.
AARON MATÉ: What comes next, after he’s laid to rest today?
MOURNER 1: What comes next is we stand together as a unit, in unity. Stop, stop, please, the violence. Let’s stand up and do it the right way, the way Martin Luther King taught us to do it. And that’s what we need to do.
MOURNER 2: Mobley. The service was wonderful. I thought Reverend Sharpton did a terrific job in outlining the agenda and so forth, because it’s a shame that here in America people that’s supposed to protect you are shooting you down. This is just another Emmett Till situation that happened in the 1950s. In fact, it’s worse, though, because it’s done by the policeman. And that’s ridiculous. That’s all I got to say.
AARON MATÉ: In the scorching 100-degree heat, as we leave the church watching this motorcade bring Michael Brown to his final resting place, people are out in the streets, raising their arms and repeating that rallying cry that has defined this movement since the killing of Michael Brown: "Hands up! Don’t shoot!" Residents of this neighborhood right by the church have come out of their homes to send off the motorcade that will take Michael Brown to his final resting place.
MAYA JONES: Maya Jones. And I was just really touched. And it hits home, because I just sent my son away to school. It just really hits home, because I have an 18-year-old. So, to not be able to see your child go away, it really hits home. So I really feel for that family. I live right here, and this is—this is just an emotional breakdown. I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t grow up in the civil rights time, but I can definitely imagine walking in their shoes, fighting for a cause.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Brown’s parents requested that civilian motorcyclists, not police, escort the long funeral procession to their son’s grave. Special thanks to Democracy Now!’s Aaron Maté and Hany Massoud in St. Louis.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, Libya. Stay with us.
Vijay Prashad: 2011 NATO Bombing of Libya Led to Rise of Militias Now Fighting for Oil-Rich Land
Libya is experiencing its most intense fighting since the 2011 NATO-backed campaign to remove Muammar Gaddafi. On Monday, the Libyan Parliament that was replaced in an election in June reconvened and chose an Islamist-backed deputy as the new prime minister. This now leaves Libya with two rival leaders and assemblies, each backed by armed factions. Meanwhile, The New York Times has revealed Egypt and the United Arab Emirates launched airstrikes twice in the last week against Islamist-allied militias battling for control of Tripoli. Despite the strikes, the Islamist militants managed to solidify control of the capital of Tripoli by taking over the main airport. "[The U.S. and NATO] bombed the country and opened the door for the different militias to now compete against each other," says Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College. "So the day Gaddafi was killed, from then onwards, the militias have basically been at each other’s throats."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Libya, which is experiencing its most intense fighting since the 2011 U.S.-backed campaign to remove Muammar Gaddafi. On Monday, The New York Times revealed Egypt and the United Arab Emirates launched airstrikes twice in the last week against Islamist-allied militias battling for control of Tripoli.
On Monday, Democracy Now! spoke about the situation in Libya with Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College. He’s the author of several books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and, most recently, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. I began by asking him to explain what’s happening in Libya now.
VIJAY PRASHAD: Today in Cairo, ministers from North Africa are meeting, because the Libyan crisis has become so severe. I mean, Libya has a very long border with Egypt. It has a long border with Algeria. It has a border with Tunisia. These are the three countries that are most terrified about the spillover of the violence.
So, what is this violence? You know, it’s not that the violence began yesterday, so they have an emergency meeting. This violence has been ongoing since 2011. The way the war against Gaddafi had been prosecuted was that different—you know, firstly, I should explain something about Libya to understand the nature of the war. Libya is like Indonesia, except that in between the little island cities there is desert. There is very little countryside. You know, these are cities in an archipelago. So, what happened when Gaddafi, you know, felt the resistance against his rule in 2011 was that the archipelagos of Benghazi, of Ajdabiya, these cities immediately seceded. And what’s so interesting is that they seceded as cities, as Benghazi, not as a major Libyan uprising. You then saw uprising in Misurata, in Zintan. You know, each city had its own militia, and these urban militias had a certain political character. There was an attempt—brief attempt—by NATO to try to create a unified command, but they basically gave that up. They bombed the country and opened the door for the different militias to now compete against each other. So the day Gaddafi was killed, from then onwards, the militias have basically been at each other’s throats.
And interestingly, the government in Tripoli, which to some extent, you know, dominates the oil revenues, has been paying each of these militias—you know, it’s amazing. The government in Tripoli is paying the militia in Zintan and the militia in Misurata, and they’ve been both attacking the government in Tripoli. It is a very weird and peculiar situation.
AMY GOODMAN: Why paying?
VIJAY PRASHAD: That was part of the agreement to maintain the peace. You know, there was a long process where pressure was brought on the basically parachuted government that came into Tripoli. You know, these are people who had been financial advisers to the emir of Qatar. The first major leader of the National Transitional Council, Mr. Mahmoud Jibril, was the principal financial consultant for the then-emir of Qatar’s second wife, Sheikha Mozah. So, these people didn’t have a mass base. They flew in on a NATO aircraft, they arrived in Tripoli, and in order to keep the peace, they decided to pay off every one of the, you know, little urban militias. They’ve continued that.
Now these militias are basically at each other’s throats. And it’s an exaggeration, as well, to say, for instance, that the Zintan militia is secular—that’s the one that was holding the airport; the Misurata militia is Islamist or has a Muslim Brotherhood cast, which has now taken the airport and the city. These are true adjectives. It is an Islamist force. But it’s not that the Zintan militia is not an Islamist force. It’s just that they have very different backers. The militia that has now taken the city of Tripoli is largely a Muslim Brotherhood force.
Meanwhile, in the city of Benghazi, which was the origin of the revolt, there is a major and very bloody battle between two forces. One is Ansar al-Sharia, which was the group that is alleged to have attacked the U.S. Consulate and killed the American ambassador, against a man who one should be very familiar with—his name is General Khalifa Haftar—who is the man who was a major Gaddafi general until the Chad war, defected from Gaddafi in 1987, flew to Vienna, Virginia, to live 10 minutes from the CIA headquarters in Langley, and then, a few weeks into the rebellion in Benghazi, was flown back into Benghazi, with the American hope that he would take over unified command. As I said, that failed. General Haftar has twice over the last three years attempted to create a coup in Libya. It’s failed. This time, rather than attempt a coup in Tripoli, he’s decided to position himself as the great savior of Libya and has marched his military forces into Benghazi, where he’s directly confronting Ansar al-Sharia. Now, some people say this is at the behest of the Americans, because they want Ansar al-Sharia destroyed.
Whatever it may be, Amy, the point is that in the eastern side of Libya, in Benghazi, there is a murderous war being fought between Ansar al-Sharia, you know, a terrorist organization, and Khalifa Haftar. And in Tripoli, as well as other cities in western Libya, there is a murderous war being waged between two militias, the Zintan militia, the militia of the town of Zintan, which has now been defeated largely, and the Misurata militia, led by a man who really needs to see a doctor. His name is Salah Badi, who suffers terrible post-traumatic stress disorder.
AMY GOODMAN: And he suffers PTSD from what?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, partly from the nature of the conflict that he was on the front lines of. I mean, you know, the people who flew in on NATO planes and took positions of authority in Tripoli were not on the battlefield. The people on the battlefield were people like Salah Badi. But not only that, you know, they were people who had fought in the international jihad around the world. They are people who were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which had a major role in the 1990s inside Libya. They were defeated, they went abroad, they went to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, etc. They return, and many of them have been fighting in Chechnya, in Philippines, in Afghanistan. So these people have very severe mental problems. And unfortunately, when—
AMY GOODMAN: How do they express those mental problems?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, Mr. Salah Badi, for instance, if people disagree with him, he’s like a gang leader. I mean, last year he was angry with the Parliament, and he decided that they were not doing what he had said they were going to do, so he brought a group of fighters, and they stormed the Parliament building. Earlier this year, he threatened the government that if he’s not made the head of Libyan intelligence—I mean, it’s extraordinary—he is going to kill parliamentarians. I mean, the Libyan Parliament has decided now, most likely, they will meet on a cruise ship off the coast of Tripoli, because they are too scared. They cannot—they haven’t met in the Parliament building. They decided to meet in a five-star hotel, because the security is better. And now they, in fact, might move offshore. You can see the state of Libyan politics.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Vijay Prashad, you were opposed to the U.S. intervention in 2011, the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi. Can you talk about why?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Yes. There are two reasons why I was principally opposed to the use of American and NATO force. The first reason was I had a very clear sense of who was going to benefit from this. You know, countries take time to develop alternative leaderships. They take time to develop, you know, new forms of political power. If NATO was going to come in, bomb Tripoli, destroy the Libyan state immediately and allow these different archipelago militias to take power, it was going to lead to chaos. That was one of the principal reasons.
But the second reason I was opposed to U.S. and NATO force was that by the time the Americans started talking about intervening, a third of Libya was out of Mr. Gaddafi’s hands. And I’ll give you a sense of this. If you traveled to Libya, Egypt and Syria prior to the Arab Spring, you would find something interesting. In Libya, since 1987, the military has been a wreck. There’s no morale. You know, you could walk in and out of a base without being asked questions. In other words, their military was a shambles. When Gaddafi’s son visited Benghazi a week into the rebellion, he came running back to Tripoli and said, you know, "Papa, it’s over. We’ve lost Benghazi." You know, they essentially ceded that part of the country. Libya was going—Gaddafi’s rule was going to fall. There was no need for NATO intervention. In Egypt, the military is very powerful, but you will find something interesting. The soldiers have dark skin compared to the other Egyptians. They are recruited from upper Egypt. They are very disciplined, but they are not exactly with high morale. In Syria, the military has very high morale. You know, it has often been amazing to me. I keep wondering, why did the Turks and others believe that the Syrian regime was going to fall like the Libyan regime? They have completely different military structures, and the morale is completely different.
So, the second reason I opposed intervention in Libya was it was inevitable that Gaddafi was going to lose power. Let the process take its own way. Let them fight a little bit. Let there be a political dialogue within the rebellion. Let them create alternative structures of power. If you just give the Libyan people a destroyed country, how are they going to build a future? And that was the real danger of aerial bombardment of the style the Americans conduct. They level countries and then tell people, "Well, create a democracy." It doesn’t work like that. If the Libyans had been given three, four, eight months to fight against Gaddafi, already much weakened, I think a different outcome might have been possible.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think it’s critical for people to understand about the forces that support Libya right now and where you feel it will go?
VIJAY PRASHAD: I mean, who supports Libya right now? You know, let’s do the drumroll. The United States has withdrawn from Libya. The French and the English have withdrawn their embassies. You know, they have all essentially abandoned Libya. I haven’t seen much talk in these countries about the importance of Libya any longer. You know, all that noise about the massacre of people in Ajdabiya, "We have to go in responsibly to protect," etc.—all that stuff has vanished, you know? Now, what I hear from Samantha Power is the anodyne things: you know, "There needs to be a political process." Hello, that could have been the language in 2011. You know, there needs to be politics.
AMY GOODMAN: How much violence was there before 2011, and then when Gaddafi fell?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, you know, violence in Libya has been there for a long time. In the 1990s, the Libyan state was cracking down against the Islamists, brutally, inside the prison, killing 200 people inside a prison. At that time, the United States didn’t say very much. During the 2000s, when the United States was exporting prisoners to Gaddafi’s jails to be tortured, you know, nobody said a thing. You know, the United States used extraordinary rendition, brought in members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, including one senior fighter whose wife was, I think, several months pregnant. They were caught in Malaysia, brought to Tripoli. When they walked into Tripoli, the head of the security services says, "I’ve been expecting you." They were hand-delivered by a British plane. So, what we’re saying is that, you know, the violence has been there in Libya for a long time. What I question is these bursts of great humanitarian concern. They don’t come, it seems to me, authentically.
AMY GOODMAN: The whole controversy in the United States around Benghazi, the congressional committee that’s going to be investigating, how does that play into what’s happening in Libya right now?
VIJAY PRASHAD: It’s a bizarre thing. I mean, you know, when Americans say Benghazi, what they mean is Hillary Clinton’s attempt to become president. You know, I don’t think Americans really care anymore about what’s happening in Libya, to be honest with you. I think this is entirely about Hillary Clinton’s march to the White House and the Republicans’ attempt to stymie her move. I read her memoir, the section on Libya, in particular. I was very interested to see how she is trying to dodge all the potential bullets which will come from the right wing of the Republican party. So, I don’t really think people care about Libya. You know, important human rights activists have been assassinated in Benghazi. Senior figures of the government have been killed. Prime minister of Libya at one point, Mr. Ali Zeidan, had to flee the country, and he then went to Germany. You know, the prime minister of the country fled. Where was the excitement, you know? We know the word "Benghazi" only because of a very important event in the career of Hillary Clinton. And I think that tells you a great deal about the nature of American foreign policy making, that it’s so insular.
AMY GOODMAN: How does Libya, Professor Prashad, fit into the story of the Middle East right now, in the surge of ISIS, a group that you’ve been following for a long time?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, it’s fundamental to the entire story. You know, in a sense, people are saying that at any minute, Mr. Salah Badi of the great militia of Misurata might declare that he is an ISIS man. You know, I mean, these things are very possible. After all, if you look at Mali, if you look at other al-Qaeda manifestations, many times people opportunistically say, "We are al-Qaeda." You know, in Mali, so many al-Qaeda were previously human traffickers, who trafficked people across the Sahara. They were drugs traffickers, arms traffickers. It suited their purpose to suddenly become al-Qaeda, you know, to create an alliance with the Berber. So, it’s not improbable. Because of the gains of the Islamic State, its prestige has risen. This is a very dangerous phenomenon, because it creates new kinds of confidence and new kinds of sensibilities, that, you know, we are going to fight to win. We’re not just fighting to secure our town anymore; we’re going to take all of North Africa. That’s why the ministers are meeting in Cairo. The Egyptians are very afraid that this is going to spill directly into Egypt. And that’s a serious threat to them.
AMY GOODMAN: And where do the ministers, the government of Egypt stand on what’s happening in Libya?
VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, honestly, I think they just want to build a big wall, to prevent it entering, you know? The Egyptians have several times threatened that they could enter to stop any attempt at movement towards Egypt. So, there have been troop movements at the Egyptian-Libyan border. They have no ambitions to go into Libya. You know, everybody’s hoping—that is, the militaries are hoping that Mr. Haftar is going to level Ansar al-Sharia. You know, one of the interesting features of the Arab Spring, unspoken feature, is that I was speaking to a senior military officer in Egypt, and he said, "You know, all of you people, you report about people on the streets and what’s happening with the Muslim Brotherhood. What you don’t know is, right through all this, the militaries of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, etc., we have been in communication with each other." You know, they have active liaison, and they have a certain opinion about how things should run. So, for instance, I’ll give you an example of that. When Mr. Morsi, at a major rally in Cairo, gave a speech where he said to people of Egypt—
AMY GOODMAN: When he was president.
VIJAY PRASHAD: When he was president—said to people of Egypt, "Go and fight in Syria," and then, after he stepped down from the podium, a senior cleric spoke there and said, "The Shia are the great enemy." A few days later—you know, there’s hardly a Shia population in Egypt, but a major Shia figure was killed on the street, you know, was basically slaughtered on the street. The military decided to move, this man told me, against Mr. Morsi because of this gesture—"Go and fight in Egypt"—because, he said that, "Look, we are a proud Egyptian military. We don’t want to see a ragtag group of people. We don’t want to see Arabia, greater Arabia, turned into, you know, Afghanistan." So, the Egyptian military, despite the politics, had very close liaison with the Syrian military and, similarly, with the Libyan military. Now, the Libyan military has vastly collapsed. Mr. Khalifa Haftar, the general, is reclaiming the mantle of a united Libyan military. So, I am almost sure that he is the one in close touch with the Egyptian military. In other words, what I’m saying is there’s another nervous system in this region. It’s not just the globalization of people, the globalization of Muslim Brotherhood, the globalization of al-Qaeda. There’s also a kind of linkage of the military. And they have a certain view of how these states should function. And I think, therefore, they will support some of these initiatives. So I don’t think the Egyptians are going to cross the border. That would be suicidal.
AMY GOODMAN: Vijay Prashad, professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, author of several books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and, most recently, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. To see the rest of our interview, you can go to our website at democracynow.org.
"The Damage is Beyond Imagination in Gaza": Journalist Mohammed Omer on Ceasefire Deal & Rebuilding
Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to an indefinite ceasefire, ending Israel’s 50-day assault on the Gaza Strip. Palestinian health officials say 2,139 people, most of them civilians — including more than 490 children — were killed in the Israeli offensive. Israel’s death toll stood at 64 soldiers and six civilians. The ceasefire deal was mediated by Egyptian officials in Cairo and took effect on Tuesday evening. It calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities, an opening of Gaza’s blockaded crossings with Israel and Egypt, and a widening of the territory’s fishing zone in the Mediterranean. Live from Gaza City, we are joined by the award-winning Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer. "There are more and more people in the different parts of the Gaza Strip who are trying to resume their life and just bring it back to normal, but I must say that the damage is beyond imagination," Omer says. "We are talking about thousands of homes that have been completely and partially demolished, and over 130 mosques and over 140 schools."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to an indefinite ceasefire, ending Israel’s 50-day assault on the Gaza Strip. Palestinian health officials say 2,139 people, most of them civilians, including more than 490 children, were killed in the Israeli offensive. Israel’s death toll stood at 64 soldiers and six civilians. The ceasefire deal was mediated by Egyptian officials in Cairo and took effect Tuesday evening. It calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities, an opening of Gaza’s blockaded crossings with Israel and Egypt, and a widening of the territory’s fishing zone in the Mediterranean. This is Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev.
MARK REGEV: Israel has accepted the Egyptian ceasefire proposal. We hope that this time the ceasefire will stick. And I think now, as the dust will begin to clear, many people will be asking, "Why is it that today Hamas accepted the very same Egyptian framework that it rejected a month ago?" Ultimately, so much bloodshed could have been avoided.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said the people of Gaza have triumphed over Israeli oppression.
SAMI ABU ZUHRI: [translated] Today, this week, blockaded people have won over the destructive Israeli power. It has done the impossible. It has done what the Arab armies have failed to do combined. Today, the women, children and elderly of Gaza, in their resilience and resistance, through their mighty and legendary unity, have succeeded in recording this victory.
AMY GOODMAN: Several thornier issues remained unaddressed by the ceasefire and are expected to be raised during further talks next month. Hamas has demanded Israel release a number of its prisoners. The group has also asked for an airport and seaport in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel has called for the disarmament of Palestinian militant groups and the return of the remains of two of its soldiers killed in the fighting.
Well, for more, we go directly to Gaza City, where we’re joined by the award-winning Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer. He tweets at the handle @Mogaza.
Mohammed Omer, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the significance of this ceasefire and Israel saying, the spokesperson Mark Regev, that so many people didn’t have to die if Hamas had simply accepted this same—essentially same agreement over a month ago?
MOHAMMED OMER: Thank you very much, Amy. I guess Mark Regev, this is his job, really. This is his job to say these statements over and over, and he wants the international community to believe these statements.
In any case, the fighting is on hold at this moment. People are trying to get back to their homes in the east of Gaza City and the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The different parts of the Gaza Strip are now trying to come back slightly to life. People started to have confidence after President Mahmoud Abbas appeared on TV yesterday announcing this is a serious ceasefire and is going to be lasting for long.
There is a lot of wounds here that’s happening in the Gaza Strip, damages and destruction, and we’re talking about thousands of homes that have been demolished between completely and partially. We’re talking about a massive number of people who are killed and injured, just about 1,800 children who became orphans in the Gaza Strip as a result of targeting at least 145 families in the Gaza Strip over the past seven weeks. The massive destruction, you won’t believe. Just behind me, I don’t know if you can see that, but Al-Basha Tower, which is a residential area, apartment, which was completely destroyed by the Israeli F-16s. A number of these apartment buildings have been completely destroyed. The damages is beyond imagination in Gaza. I believe Gaza will need several years to fix or reconstruct the damages that are caused by the Israeli military.
We are also talking to different people in Gaza, and we are seeing that they’re trying to come back to their lives, they’re trying to rebuild their life. The resilience is still very high among the population in Gaza. We have seen also people in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, who are facing the Israeli watching towers, are just coming back to their homes to find massive destruction after several weeks of fighting. Gaza is still in very much bad need for humanitarian aid, which the population hope that it’s going to be coming anytime soon in the coming days. We’re talking also to some other health officials, who inform us that among the 11,000 people who were injured, there are about 3,000 children, and just one-third of them will become paralyzed for the rest of their life.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the agreement? What exactly does this ceasefire say?
MOHAMMED OMER: The ceasefire is a quite vague terminology. I have seen the document which the Egyptians have released. The term "ease the crossings" or "ease the blockade" is rather vague, and it’s a rather subjective term which I find very difficult to translate on the ground. If you go back a little bit, Amy, to May 2010, just after the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish attack—or, the attack on the Turkish flotilla, we do see how much Israel tried to get materials into the Gaza Strip, and "easing the blockade" back then was translated into allowing ketchup, shoelace, and even coriander to make falafel for the people of Gaza. I hope this is not going to be the case this time.
People are hopeful that this is going to be holding, but I am not quite confident that Israel is really willing to do that. If that’s the case, then we would be seeing all the commercial crossings and Rafah crossing will be open. But that has not been the case today. Palestinian fishermen are hoping to get inside further than the three miles that they have been restricted to by the Israeli military for the past period, but so far we haven’t heard any reports from the fishermen whether they were able to get inside further than six miles. So it’s all in the test mode, if you like, in the coming hours. We are trying to see how much of this is going to hold.
But the fact that it is really quite holding right now, that the ceasefire is still going on, and there is no fighting, which is a good chance for people to come back to their homes and to check on their relatives and to bury their loved ones and to go condolences. I have seen about—talking about condolences, there are hundreds of people who are running to mourning tents, from one to the other, and there are many people who don’t know who was lost. Some people who are living in the same neighborhood, who say, "Well, we don’t know that our neighbors have been killed, because we were under constant bombardment and attacks that we could not leave outside of our homes."
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer, on Tuesday, the U.N. spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, welcomed the ceasefire but warned that any lasting solution must address the root causes of the conflict. This is what he said.
STÉPHANE DUJARRIC: Any peace effort that does not tackle the root causes of the crisis will do little more then set the stage for the next cycle of violence. Gaza must be brought back under one legitimate Palestinian government, adhering to the PLO commitments. The blockade of Gaza must end. Israel’s legitimate security concerns must be addressed. The United Nations stands ready to support efforts to address the structural factors of conflict between Israel and Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: What does this position of the United Nations mean for the people of Gaza, Mohammed Omer?
MOHAMMED OMER: But this position is not new. If we are talking about eight years ago, this is the same position exactly. The United Nations have called on Israel to end the blockade in Gaza, to make life possible for the Palestinians. But now it’s really up to Israel. It’s Israel who will decide whether the Gaza Strip should be opened or not.
I mean, talking about six miles, this is not enough, when I talk to fishermen. This is absolutely not enough. Basically, Palestinians for the last few years have been fishing an area which is virtually fished out, in fact. So, people are fishing within three miles just for the last few years, and now they are extended another three miles. I’m sure they will be shot at in the coming days.
People say that this is going to be a quite shaky ceasefire, given that there is no guarantee. It’s only Egypt that guarantees all these issues. If you remember, in November 2012, the United States of America, they were on this agreement of ceasefire. President Morsi, back then, and several Arab states and European Union were supporting the ceasefire. And it did not really hold for more than two years. So what are we expecting, this ceasefire to hold for more than a year now? I’m quite doubting that.
But people wanted to get back to their life The people wanted to get back to normal. Hospitals are still flooded by people who are injured, who need to be treated. We are talking about people, for example, those who need treatment for thalassemia. They have been struggling in Gaza because of that. And they haven’t been given any chance to receive medical care, because the hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed.
People are hoping that Israel is going to abide by what it has agreed in Cairo. We will see in the coming days what will happen. I think the most critical point at this stage is basically to open the Rafah crossing. Opening the Rafah crossing will be the first step for ending the blockade on the Gaza Strip. But I have realized also that this is not one of the items that were discussed in the Cairo talk, because the Egyptian officials, they say this is a Palestinian-Egyptian matter that needs to be discussed between two sides without Israel. So, Palestinians have to negotiate with Israel indirectly through Egypt about the other crossings, but then the crossing which is the main crossing for the Gaza Strip, Rafah, is being negotiated between Palestinians and the Egyptian officials.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed—
MOHAMMED OMER: Now, there is hope that President Mahmoud Abbas would come—
AMY GOODMAN: A quick question. You’ve just written a piece about the Juda family. You were in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Can you tell us about Thaeer, this little boy that you met?
MOHAMMED OMER: Thaeer is the pain—he’s the pain of everybody. He’s the pain of every Palestinian. He’s one child, just a child who’s sitting just about five to 10 minutes from here at Shifa Hospital. He had lost four of his brothers. He did not know that he had lost them. He had lost his mother, Rawia, a 40-year-old woman. The mother was watching the children playing in the northern part of Gaza Strip in Jabaliya, as she was watching them, trying to have a moment of relief. The children wanted to play, as her husband was preparing a supper for the children. Unfortunately, they could not take the supper because all of them were hit by several Israeli airstrikes on the area, killing the children. The children’s bodies were not identifiable, and the mother also. This is one of the last family massacres that we witnessed in the Gaza Strip. I have been to the scene to see people. The only thing you can smell is explosives, damage and destruction that are caused to the families. The smell of just dead bodies and blood just remains a witness in this area in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Thaeer is traumatized.
AMY GOODMAN: Does Thaeer, the 10-year-old boy—
MOHAMMED OMER: I know he’s going to live.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed, does Thaeer, the 10-year-old who’s at Shifa—does he know that his brothers and mother were killed?
MOHAMMED OMER: Unfortunately, no, he doesn’t, not until—they are trying to bring it back to him, but he is semi-conscious, so he doesn’t know that he had missed his four brothers and his mother. And the house has been completely destroyed. I mean, Thaeer is not one—is not only one; there are thousands of people like Thaeer in hospitals across the Gaza Strip, who are really not aware of what happened to their families.
And now we are questioning: What’s going to happen to these children who became orphans? We are talking about 1,800 children in the Gaza Strip who became orphans. Now, Israel has destroyed over 35 organizations, and most of these organizations that have been destroyed are children organizations which offer either rehabilitation, like al-Wafa Hospital, which I’m sure you know that it was bombed by the Israeli missiles, or organizations that support orphan children and sponsorship children programs within the Gaza Strip and the outside world. So, what is going to happen to the future of those people?
It’s actually Israel who decided to end the life of those people. It’s Israel who decided not to allow them to get the patronage and care which they need from the outside world. But I say that the resilience of Gaza is quite strong. And in fact, it’s quite astonishing to see the people of Gaza are supporting as much as possible by taking those children who are killed and injured. Thaeer will remain. He does not know that his family have been killed. He will survive, but not with the ones that he would like to stay with for the rest of his life.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer, over the weekend, Hamas said it supports the push to bring the conflict before the International Criminal Court, a move that could expose both Hamas and Israel to probes into war crimes. Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said Israel has more to fear than Hamas. This is what he said.
MUSHIR AL-MASRI: [translated] There is nothing to fear. The Palestinian factions are leading a legitimate resistance in keeping with all international laws and standards. All the nations resisted occupation. We are in a state of self-defense.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer, can you talk about the significance of this, of Israel and Hamas being brought to the ICC, the International Criminal Court?
MOHAMMED OMER: Now, the Roman Charter have been actually signed by Hamas. Hamas have informed President Mahmoud Abbas that they officially agreed to join the International Criminal Court and actually agree that the Palestinian Authority join on behalf of all the Palestinians. Now, there are more calls from the population in Gaza. There are war crimes. People have been used as human shields. Human rights experts in Gaza are talking about war crimes against humanity, war crimes that have been committed against civilians. I’m sure you know about the cases of executions which happened in Khuza’a, the families who have been shot dead alive just from short distance by the Israeli soldiers. There are many of these cases that have been documented. I must say that Israel have prevented most of the international groups, talking mainly about the human rights groups on the outside of the Gaza Strip, to get inside the Gaza Strip. So, that has made a big problem on the population in Gaza. We don’t know what’s going to happen and what’s the prospect, but there is massive support for the Palestinian Authority to take Israel into international court.
Of course, Hamas is not fearing anything. There is the impression among Hamas leaders that they are not a state, therefore they won’t be as liable as the Israelis, a military state, and one of the most powerful, using the human shield—Palestinians as a human shield and bombing a whole area by constant Israeli bombardments and airstrikes and F-16s. The talk of human rights violations is increasing. Many of the people are now in the field. They are trying to connect information on war crimes and crimes against humanity. And the population is hoping that the only way to get Israel to listen to the international community is not actually the support from the Arab world or the international community itself, but bringing Israel into international courts with the claims of human rights violations and war crimes and crimes against humanity.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed, can you talk very quickly about the killing of the Hamas commanders, the significance of this, and also the outcry over the recent execution of—I think 18 Palestinians who were accused of collaborating with Israel, killed by Hamas?
MOHAMMED OMER: The number of people who have been executed by, I would say, not necessarily Hamas, because that was not the case—it’s a mistake most of the international media fall into. But according to the statement which we have seen is it was signed by a Palestinian resistance. We don’t know what’s Palestinian resistance.
There is a lot of people who support—people who support such move of execution, because they believe those people who have been killed have been actually passing accurate information about the whereabouts of resistance fighters, which killed the life—which destroyed the life of many people and killed and destroyed several homes. Now, that’s as far as the Palestinian street or the Palestinian public is concerned. But also among the Palestinian human rights groups, the issue have been quite criticized and condemned as a violation for the rights of those collaborators, or alleged collaborators, rather, to appeal to international courts and to go for a fair trial. No, they haven’t been going through a fair trial, at least many of them, so Hamas is being criticized now for that. And the other Islamic groups, including the PFLP and other factions, it’s a whole combination of Palestinian factions who have taken the decision jointly to kill the collaborators who have helped Israel to target people in the Gaza Strip. There is massive support for that, once again, but the human rights groups are thinking that this is not really what Hamas should have done.
Remember that Israel have used a lot of these collaborators. In the case of cancer patients, Israel put conditions on cancer patients. In order to get outside of the Gaza Strip for medical treatment, they have to collaborate with the Israeli military and the Israeli security establishment and bring information about Palestinian resistance in order to get outside. So, many of those people have been quite innocent. We don’t know about the cases. But Hamas has tried to hide, together with other factions, all the names of those people. They say that this is going to affect the social fabric of the Palestinian community in the Gaza Strip.
AMY GOODMAN: Last seconds, Mohammed Omer, to describe the scene on the ground right now, as we leave you in Gaza City.
MOHAMMED OMER: Well, in Gaza City, it’s quite a cheerful moment that people are trying to come back to their life. Many people have celebrated yesterday. It’s what they call a victory. What I believe is that Israel has failed in the war. The Palestinian resistance is not defeated. That’s what it is, basically, on the ground. But the Palestinians are now trying to come back to their life. Banks have just been opened. The Rafah crossing is still closed. There are more and more people in the different parts of the Gaza Strip who are trying to resume their life and just bring it back to normal.
But I must say that the damage is beyond imagination. We are talking about thousands of homes that have been completely and partially demolished, and over 130 mosques and over 140 schools in the different parts of the Gaza Strip. That’s going to affect the opening of the new year of school, which was supposed to start a few days ago, but it did not start. I doubt if it’s going to start, because there are still hundreds of thousands of people who are seeking shelter inside UNRWA schools after their homes have been demolished in different parts of Gaza. The situation as it is in Gaza, people are trying to return back to normality. I don’t know what’s normality after over 50 days of trauma and constant airstrikes. One thing which I know for sure, that the majority of people in Gaza, they need the psychological support to overcome the trauma sustained over the last seven weeks.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed Omer, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning Palestinian journalist, reporting to us from Gaza City. He tweets at the handle @Mogaza. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.
NSA Creates Google-Like Search Engine to Help Other Agencies Access Collected Phone, Email Records
A new report by The Intercept news site reveals the National Security Agency is secretly providing troves of data to nearly two dozen government agencies using a "Google-like" search engine. Documents from Edward Snowden provide proof that for years the NSA has made data directly available to domestic law enforcement agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI. The search tool, known as ICReach, contains information on both foreigners and millions of U.S. citizens who have not been accused of wrongdoing. It is designed to share more than 850 billion records — that is more than twice the number of stars in the Milky Way. We speak with Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept reporter who broke the story. We also ask Gallagher about his report on how the U.S. military has banned all employees from reading The Intercept and has begun blocking the website on work computers, purportedly because it has published classified material. "That kind of policy in the age of Manning, in the age of Snowden, just is totally archaic, and it doesn’t fit the modern world," Gallagher says. "You can have a situation where an intelligence analyst in the government with a top-secret security clearance is in a position that they can’t read public news reports."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: A new report by The Intercept news site reveals the National Security Agency is secretly providing troves of data to nearly two dozen government agencies using a "Google-like" search engine. Documents from Edward Snowden reveal that for years the NSA has made data directly available to domestic law enforcement agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI. The search tool, known as ICReach, contains information on both foreigners and millions of U.S. citizens who have not been accused of wrongdoing. It’s designed to share more than 850 billion phone, email and web records—that’s more than twice the number of stars in the Milky Way.
The report comes after The Intercept discovered that the U.S. military has banned all employees from visiting the news site and has begun blocking it on work computers, purportedly because it’s published classified material. Military employees reported being told it was "illegal and a violation of national security" to read The Intercept.
For more, we’re joined by Ryan Gallagher, reporter for The Intercept, author of their new story, "The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google."
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Ryan. Talk about what you found.
RYAN GALLAGHER: Hi, Amy. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so our new story is exposing what is worded in the NSA’s own secret documents as a kind of Google-like search tool to sift through hundreds of billions of communications records from phone calls, emails, Internet chats, location data from cellphones, and virtually every kind of metadata you can think of and more. And not only that, this information has been made accessible to almost two dozen agencies in the United States. Most of them are intelligence community agencies, but among those it includes, you know, domestic law enforcement like the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. So, the thing is, it is of a vast scope and, you know, is much larger than I think what a lot of people expected for the sort of degree of data sharing that’s been going on between different U.S. government agencies.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about General Alexander’s role in this.
RYAN GALLAGHER: Well, General Alexander was kind of the—well, we described him as the kind of mastermind, because he was the architect behind this thing. Fascinating details in these documents that go right back actually to the early '90s, but after 9/11, the NSA basically concluded that it had to bolster metadata sharing across the U.S. government, because there was a feeling that, after 9/11, there was intelligence failures that had failed to prevent that attack, and also they were getting slammed for the bad intelligence that led up to the Iraq invasion. And so, Alexander's solution was that how they could solve this was to build this gigantic new metadata search system and give analysts right across the government access to it so they can sift through people’s communications, obviously in a bid to identify certain threats and things like that. But obviously, when you open a system like that up with all these records to all the thousands of analysts, there’s quite a sort of concern there about the possibility for abuse of that.
AMY GOODMAN: What was most shocking to you, Ryan—I mean, you’ve been combing through these documents released by Edward Snowden for some time—when it comes to this creation of this secret Google search?
RYAN GALLAGHER: Yeah, well, I think, for me, I mean, there’s multiple things that are shocking about it, mostly just the vast scale of it and the scope of it and the kind of brazen way that it’s described in the documents. You know, there was no—it didn’t really seem like there was any intention to try and restrict or place limitations on it. It’s all about how much can you share. They want to share as much as possible. And again, this kind of feeds into what they described as their kind of collect-it-all mentality, where they just want more and more and more data. That’s what they think is the solution. And so, for me, yeah, I think that the scale was shocking and also the fact that domestic law enforcement are able to tap into this thing with very little oversight and few restrictions. So, yeah, I mean, the whole thing really is just quite striking.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gallagher, what are the laws around this?
RYAN GALLAGHER: Well, I mean, that’s a really important question, primarily because we’ve had it confirmed by the NSA that the data that’s swept up and stored on this database en masse is collected using this Reagan-era presidential order, which is called 12333. And this thing is subject to no court oversight from the secret foreign intelligence court and minimal congressional scrutiny. Indeed, Dianne Feinstein, who’s the chief of the Senate Intelligence Committee, even her, who—she’s usually quite a bit of a defender of the NSA—she has in the past said that this executive order isn’t subject to sufficient oversight. And so that’s the authority that’s being used to put all these records on this system, that are then being funneled across the U.S. intelligence community. So, there are huge legal questions about that, the restrictions on it, how it can be used potentially in domestic criminal investigations secretly by federal agents, and stuff like that. These are all questions that people are asking now and that we hope are going to be, you know, sufficiently addressed by the government in the weeks to come.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the precursor to this, CRISSCROSS, and how it was used and what it was?
RYAN GALLAGHER: Yeah. Well, this is another fascinating element to this, to me. In the early '90s, the CIA and the DEA, according to the documents, started this program called CRISSCROSS. And basically what they were doing was, you know, gathering as much information as they could about phone calls in Latin America and, it seems, pretty much anywhere, and using that information to go after drug targets, people involved in drug trafficking. But very quickly, the scope of this thing expanded, and by the sort of mid to late ’90s the NSA was involved in it, the FBI was involved in it, the Defense Intelligence Agency was involved in it. And they were scaling it up again, and they built a new system which they called PROTON to put on all kinds of new records, so it wasn't just your basic phone call stuff. It was location data and records from CIA reports, stuff about people’s visa applications when traveling overseas—you know, everything like that, billions of records. And so, that was the kind of precursor to the ICReach program, which again scaled the thing up massively. They talk about a 12-fold increase. It was something like, by the end of the—though PROTON, I believe, still exists today, but it had about 50 billion or so of these metadata records on it. ICReach was developed to contain 850 billion or more. So that’s like more than a 12-fold increase in capacity.
AMY GOODMAN: There is this graphic with your new story in The Intercept that compares how many records are now available via ICReach. It reads, in part, "People on Earth: 7 billion; Google searches per month: 100 billion; Estimated stars in the Milky Way: 400 billion. ... And estimated records available via ICReach: more than 850 billion."
RYAN GALLAGHER: Yeah, I mean, I think that it’s quite a kind of lighthearted graphic, but I think the intention there with that—we have some really good graphics guys who worked on this story and who’d done some of the art on it—the intention, I think, and the message it gets across is it just puts these sort of crazy numbers into context and into perspective, because often you hear, you know, 10 billion metadata records. You know, people think, "Well, what does that actually mean?" So, I think it’s quite helpful just to have that 850 billion number squared against these other ones that you mentioned, because it puts it into context, and you start to realize, well, you know, that is a huge amount of information that’s on there.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain parallel construction.
RYAN GALLAGHER: Well, parallel construction was—some excellent Reuters reporters revealed last year that some federal agents within the Drug Enforcement Administration were using data that had been obtained through covert surveillance and using it to initiate investigations against people inside the United States, American citizens. But they’re not disclosing in the—if there was a prosecution, say, not—basically covering up that evidence and inventing a false evidence trail, so that the way the surveillance data was obtained could never be challenged in the court, which to most, you know, ordinary people, that seems like a clear subversion of the basic principles of the justice system, which I think, and everyone else who’s looked at it agrees, seems to agree, as well. I believe the Justice Department is reviewing the whole thing. But one of the big issues with the story we have just put out is that it seems to be a huge part of the jigsaw puzzle in terms of showing where some of the data that is being used in this parallel construction technique by federal agents could be coming from. And indeed, the Reuters reporter who—one of the Reuters reporters who first revealed parallel construction contacted me to say he thinks this story that we’ve done is usually significant for that reason, because it is a huge piece of the puzzle that shows how NSA data is ending up in the hands of DEA agents in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan, you recently reported the U.S. military has banned The Intercept, the new site. You cite a portion of an email sent to staff last week at a U.S. Marine Corps base that directs employees not to read The Intercept. It reads, in part, quote, "We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information. Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands. Please do not go to any website entitled 'The Intercept' for it may very well contain classified material. ... Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues. This is considered a security violation." Your response, Ryan Gallagher?
RYAN GALLAGHER: Yeah, well, I mean, this is a continuation now of what’s happened to WikiLeaks in 2010 and then what happened to The Guardian last year, where the military has this completely absurd policy to just block any public news website that’s publishing stories based on classified information. And they’re, you know, issuing these kind of draconian warnings to their staff that if they dare to read these news reports, that they will have dire security consequences and all the rest of it. And, you know, we know for a fact that there’s people within the military who are disturbed by this. It’s based on an actual policy that the DOD has in place that says you can’t view classified information on an unclassified computer until the information is formally declassified. But, you know, that kind of policy, in the age of Manning, in the age of Snowden, just is totally archaic, and it doesn’t fit the modern world. They need to review it, because you can have a situation where an intelligence analyst in the government, with a top-secret security clearance, is in a position that they can’t read public news reports. Now, if that’s the case, how can that intelligence analyst, whose job is to make sense of the world from inside the government—how can they do that properly if they can’t even read news websites? So it just is a counterproductive policy that I think, personally, completely absurd.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Gallagher, reporter for The Intercept, the news website recently banned by the military, his latest report, "The Surveillance Engine: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google." We’ll link to it at democracynow.org.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we go to Saint Louis, Missouri. More on the Ferguson case. Stay with us.
Is Ferguson Feeding on the Poor? City Disproportionately Stops, Charges and Fines People of Color
As the police killing of Michael Brown has focused global attention on the racial divide in the counties in and surrounding St. Louis, Missouri, a new report may explain why residents’ mistrust of the police runs so deep. It shows how a large part of the revenue for these counties comes from fines paid by African-American residents who are disproportionately targeted for traffic stops and other low-level offenses. In Ferguson, the fines and fees are actually the city’s second-largest source of income, which is expected to generate $2.7 million in fiscal year 2014. We speak with Thomas Harvey, executive director of ArchCity Defenders and co-author of their new report, which has been widely cited — including in a stunning chart in Monday’s New York Times that shows how Ferguson issued on average nearly three warrants per household last year — the highest number of warrants in the state, relative to its size. "What my clients have told me since the first day I’ve ever represented anybody is, this is not about public safety, it’s about the money," Harvey says. We also hear about the impact of the police harassment and ticketing from George Fields, who was among the local residents lined up for Michael Brown’s funeral on Monday in St. Louis.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now back to Ferguson, where residents are continuing to demand the arrest of the white police officer who shot dead unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. The reaction to Brown’s death focused global attention on the racial divide in counties in and surrounding St. Louis, Missouri. Now a new report may help explain why residents’ mistrust of police runs so deep. It shows how a large part of the revenue for these counties comes from fines paid by black residents who are disproportionately targeted for traffic stops and other low-level offenses. In Ferguson, the fines are actually the city’s second-largest source of income. We’ll talk with the author of the report in a minute, but first, this is one of the St. Louis area residents Democracy Now! interviewed Monday, as he waited in line to attend Michael Brown’s funeral.
GEORGE FIELDS: I’m George Fields, and I’m here for Mike Brown, and mostly for all black men walking down the streets stuck here, not being able to go out in the county, seriously, sir, because we’re like—city is a little more lenient with ticket values and stuff, and we have just been ticketed over much over there, and then it leads to other crimes, you know. And a ticket costs you 50 cents—I mean, $50 a ticket, right? But you have to pay bond. You have to be in jail three days and stuff and like that. It’s just too much.
And in past Goodfellow city line, they tow your car automatically, you know. So they don’t have no leniency in the county with the county police at all, for real. If you check the records, everybody that pass Goodfellow here at the city line get pulled over automatically. And then it’s just a kind of push-off against—you know, systematically against blacks, for real. If you look at the statistics, it shows you. It’s just a little too much when you get pulled over for menial things. You have to go through too much to get out, and you lose your jobs and whatnot, you know, for a $50 ticket and pull-over.
You cannot go in the county. I’m fearful of the county. I’ve been stuck here in the city for six or seven years because the county has been that bad. My kids stay in the county. I can’t see them. I’ve got to sneak to see my kids. I have to sneak to see my kids, because my plate might be bad or something. You know, I’m poor, and I’m trying to drive around to get better. But, you know, they won’t ticket you; they just take your stuff, immediately. You know, if you take it, their tow thing is ready, you know, every time.
AARON MATÉ: This ticketing is a systemic targeting of African Americans.
GEORGE FIELDS: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. They know it, and the lord knows it, too. Yes, sir. That is correct. You said it out your mouth. That’s correct. You know, I can’t go nowhere past the city line, because the city works with me on paying. They don’t. They just cut you off automatically. I pray today a change. Amen.
AMY GOODMAN: That was George Fields, one of the St. Louis area residents who attended Michael Brown’s funeral, speaking with Democracy Now!’s Aaron Maté right before he stepped into the church to attend the funeral.
Well, on Tuesday, a group of attorneys with the group ArchCity Defenders attended a city council meeting in Ferguson and asked the mayor to grant clemency to residents with fines for low-level, nonviolent offenses. We’re joined now by Thomas Harvey, executive director of ArchCity Defenders and co-author of their new report, which has been widely cited, including a stunning chart in Monday’s New York Times that shows how Ferguson issued on average nearly three warrants per household last year, the highest number of warrants in the state relative to its size.
Thomas Harvey, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain what is happening in Ferguson.
THOMAS HARVEY: Good morning, Amy. Thank you for having me.
So, in Ferguson and the surrounding municipalities, there is a substantial amount of income that’s derived from these low-level ordinance violations. These are the least significant, lowest-level contact with the justice system. They are typically traffic tickets, moving violations. And as a system, as a structural problem, these—revenue from these municipal courts can represent either the second- or third-highest source of income for the municipality. Ferguson is $2.7 million a year. In neighboring Florissant, the adjacent municipality, it’s $3 million a year. It’s a line item on a budget, and enforcement of the laws and ticketing and fine amounts are in keeping with the expectation that that income is going to come in to fund the city.
And our clients believe that they are targeted initially because they’re black, and then they are harassed, and they are exploited because they are poor. And it has led to a level of distrust between the community and law enforcement, that you saw manifested in some of the protests in the last two weeks. I’m not trying to say that traffic tickets are the reason people are on the streets of Ferguson, but it’s certainly a contributing factor when you’ve got the tragedy with Michael Brown and the very same people that my clients believe are targeting them because they’re members of community of color and then exploiting them because they’re poor, are now asking them for patience and trust and promising to get to the right answer involving the shooting. And our clients are skeptical. And as the audio clip you just played reveals, it doesn’t take much for someone in this community to move to tell you that in St. Louis County this is a real problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Harvey, I want to hear from one of your clients, Nicole, a mother of four who lives in St. Louis County and was arrested in 2009 for driving with a suspended license. She spent two weeks in jail, with a bond of $1,700 that was later reduced to $700, and is still dealing with the traffic tickets from five years ago.
NICOLE: You learn to sacrifice in order to avoid the headache, but it’s still how much sacrificing can you do? Because, like, my children first start school in three weeks, but I’ve got to pay 50 bucks somewhere, and then I still got a couple more court dates out there. They’re going to want money. So, my money goes to, first, what I see, and then I worry about the next thing.
AMY GOODMAN: In the video, Nicole also talks about how she thinks the system needs to change.
NICOLE: There’s a lot of things that need to be rewritten. There’s a lot of things that need to be rewritten. Some of the fines can go down. Like, that’s ridiculous, $300, $500, for driving while suspended. When if a person came—OK, so, if a person, say—I stay in North County, and say I took a job all the way out in South County. I got to get to work. I have to make this money so I can take care of my children. But if you tell me not to drive, and say the bus don’t go where I need to go, you’re basically telling me I have to stop feeding my children just so I can abide by your law.
AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Harvey, talk about Nicole and what her case illustrates.
THOMAS HARVEY: Yeah, Nicole is a very good example of a kind of culmination of all these problems, because these are poor people. These are not criminals. These are people who can’t afford to pay the fines that middle-class folks could pay that would lead to an amendment of their nonmoving violation. And not to get too far in the weeds, but if you have means, and you and I have the same driving record, you can commit the same violations and pay to get a moving violation turned into a nonmoving violation, and then you don’t suffer the consequence of your actions.
So, Nicole has a driving while suspended because she couldn’t pay to get her tickets amended. So her license got suspended as a result. She has no proof of insurance, because she couldn’t get paid to get her tickets amendments, so her insurance costs went up, and it was prohibitively expensive. She’s charged with—typically charged with what our clients are charged with, the big three poverty crimes—and they’re not really crimes—but it’s driving while suspended, no proof of insurance, and failure to register vehicle. These are not people who are refusing to comply with the law; they’re people who cannot comply with the law.
And Nicole’s case is particularly illustrative because she was incarcerated—she was incarcerated for two weeks on a warrant for her arrest because she was unable to pay the fines. Then when she was brought before the court, she—as she’s entitled to, she asked for a hearing. We represented her. We asked for a hearing to determine her ability to pay the fines. And the court refused our hearing. That’s an unlawful act. The court refused our hearing on that matter and told us that we needed to schedule it a week later. Nicole was returned to jail and was threatened with another week of incarceration, while her children were with her mother and her sister, and she possibly was going to lose her job. And so her mother and her sister borrowed money. Her mom borrowed money against her life insurance policy. Her sister loaned Nicole her biweekly paycheck. That was to come up with $700. So, Nicole didn’t have $700. Her mother and her sister came up with 700 bucks to get her out of jail.
And that’s not what the system should be about. We have to divorce the administration of justice from the generation of revenue. And that’s a systemic problem in our region. And they’re incarcerating people and creating problems that, in the most charitable interpretation, I don’t think they’re aware of the consequences they’re having on people’s lives and the havoc they’re wreaking in this region.
AMY GOODMAN: Are we talking about debtors’ prison?
THOMAS HARVEY: Yes, I believe we are talking about debtors’ prison. It’s part of a problem that you see in the criminalization of poverty all over the country. Southern Poverty Law Center has brought a lawsuit. Southern Center for Human Rights has been involved in some litigation there. It’s something where you see people held in jail as a result of their inability to pay fines. Up to the moment where they are brought before the court because they failed to appear, I don’t believe there’s anything unlawful that’s happened. At the moment where a person has been brought to court on a warrant for failure to appear, and they’ve said, "I cannot afford to pay the fines you’ve assessed," the court must allow them to leave or make a finding that they are willfully refusing to comply with the court’s order. In the absence of such a finding, it’s unlawful to continue to incarcerate them.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, just as we wrap up, Thomas Harvey, just coming from Ferguson, the first night we were there, we were covering people in a parking lot who were protesting. Across the street were the riot police. They were standing in between the fire department and the police station. The police station was just being built. It was a modern, major facility. Is the money of these people being taken going to build that police station?
THOMAS HARVEY: I don’t know the answer to that question, but I will tell you that what my clients have told me since the first day I’ve ever represented anybody is, this is not about public safety, it’s about the money. And whether or not that building was built on the backs of poor people in Ferguson and the rest of the region, I really don’t know the answer. But I know my clients believe it. I know the optics are bad. And I realize that that dynamic is what’s contributing to some of the tensions between law enforcement and the community. And if we don’t take advantage of this opportunity to have some real structural reform and revise this system, that is racist—
AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Harvey—
THOMAS HARVEY: —that has a systemic racism built into it, we’re going to—it’s going to be a huge missed opportunity.
AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Harvey, we have to go, and we thank you so much for being with us, executive director of ArchCity Defenders. Tomorrow on Democracy Now!, an Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video.
Headlines:
•Israeli Assault of Gaza Enters 50th Day; Over 2,130 Palestinians Dead
Israel has bombed two high-rise buildings containing scores of homes and shops in Gaza City. As the Israeli assault has entered its 50th day, the Palestinian death toll has reached more than 2,130, the vast majority civilians, with 68 dead on the Israeli side, all but four of them soldiers. At least two Palestinians have been killed so far today. The Palestinian news agency Ma’an reports at least 12 were killed Monday. Reuters says the victims included at least four people killed when Israeli aircraft struck four homes in the town of Beit Lahia. A journalist, Abdullah Murtaja, reportedly died Monday, two weeks after he was injured by an Israeli attack in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. Egypt, meanwhile, has floated a new proposal for a truce between Israel and Hamas. Since a ceasefire collapsed last week, well more than 100 Palestinians have been killed.
•Protesters Continue Bid to Block Israeli Ship in Washington State
Residents in Washington state have continued to protest the Israeli assault and the long-standing blockade of Gaza by trying to block a cargo ship run by the Israeli company ZIM. One person was arrested after scores of people gathered at the Port of Seattle on Monday. The protesters said they plan to continue their actions.
JM Wong: "There’s already another ZIM ship that’s here that we didn’t know about, but they’re coming, they’re coming, and if we keep doing monthly protests and monthly blockades of ZIM, they’re going to get the idea that Seattle does not want them here."
•Obama OKs Spy Flights Over Syria in Possible Step Toward Strikes
The United States is sending spy drones and manned surveillance flights over Syria in the latest step toward possible airstrikes against Islamic State militants there. According to unnamed officals in The New York Times, President Obama authorized the spy flights over the weekend. On Monday, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad expressed willingness to work with the United States against the militants but warned unilateral action would be seen as an "act of aggression."
•U.N.: ISIL Militants Killed 670 Prisoners in Iraq
The United Nations has found evidence Islamic State militants killed as many as 670 prisoners from a jail in Mosul, Iraq. After taking control of the city in June, the group separated out all the Shiite prisoners and shot them. U.N. human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said the militants, also known as ISIL, are committing abuses daily.
Ravina Shamdasani: "Grave human rights violations are being committed daily by ISIL and associated armed groups. These include targeted killings, forced conversions, abductions, trafficking, slavery, sexual abuse, the destruction of places of religious and cultural significance and the besieging of entire communities because of their ethnic, religious or sectarian affiliation."
•Sectarian Attacks Kill Scores in Iraq
A car bomb has killed at least 10 people today in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Across Iraq on Monday, at least four dozen people were killed in a series of bombings targeting mainly Shiite areas. In Baghdad, 11 people were killed by a suicide attack inside a mosque. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for that attack, calling it revenge for a mass shooting that killed 73 people at a Sunni mosque east of the capital on Friday.
•Egypt, UAE Strike Militias in Libya; U.S. Reportedly Unaware
Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have carried out airstrikes on Islamist-allied militias in Libya. Unnamed officials told The New York Times the United States was unaware of the strikes and that Egyptian officials actually denied involvement. Both Egypt and the UAE are close U.S. allies who have received billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military equipment. The United Arab Emirates provided the planes and pilots for the strikes, which began a week ago. Libya has been roiled by fighting among rival militias following the U.S.-backed ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. On Sunday, Islamist militias claimed control of the Libyan capital Tripoli after taking over the main airport. On Monday, the country was thrown into deeper turmoil when the former Parliament, which is led by Islamists, reconvened and chose a new prime minister. The move effectively left the country with two governments. We’ll have more on Libya with Vijay Prashad later in the broadcast.
•170 African Migrants Drown After Boat Sinks Off Libya
Off the coast of Libya, at least 170 people have died after a boat carrying migrants sank while trying to reach Europe. At least some of the migrants appear to be from sub-Saharan Africa.
•Alleged Recording of Michael Brown Shooting Shows at Least 10 Shots
New evidence has emerged in the death of Michael Brown. The African-American 18-year-old was shot dead on August 9 by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking two weeks of protests. On Monday night CNN aired an audiotape which allegedly captured the moment Brown was shot. On the recording, at least 10 gunshots can be heard. A private autopsy had shown Brown was shot at least six times, twice in the head. The recording has not been independently verified, but the FBI has questioned the man who says he recorded it. On the recording, you can hear the unidentified man chatting in a building near where Brown was killed. As he says, "You’re pretty," six gunshots can be heard in the distance, then a pause, then four more shots. The audio lasts about 10 seconds.
•Thousands Attend Michael Brown’s Funeral in St. Louis
Thousands of people attended a funeral in St. Louis Monday to remember Michael Brown. Rev. Al Sharpton was among the speakers.
Reverend Al Sharpton: "This is about justice. This is about fairness. And America is going to have to come to terms with, there’s something wrong that we have money to give military equipment to police forces, but we don’t have money for training and money for public education and money to train our children."
We’ll have more from the funeral after headlines.
•Presidents of Russia, Ukraine Meet for Talks as Tensions Mount
The Ukrainian and Russian presidents are meeting for talks in Belarus today amidst tensions over a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Fighting between Ukrainian forces and the rebels has killed more than 2,000 people. Hours before the talks, Ukrainian security forces claimed to have captured 10 Russian paratroopers in Ukrainian territory southeast of the rebel-held city of Donetsk. On Monday, Russia announced plans to send a second batch of humanitarian aid into the region after its previous convoy made its delivery and returned to Russia. Ukraine, meanwhile, is facing a political crisis in Kiev after President Petro Poroshenko dissolved Parliament, accusing many members of siding with the rebels. He has called for early elections in October.
•French President Dissolves Government over Austerity Spat
France is in the midst of a political crisis after a dispute over harsh austerity policies caused the president to dissolve the government. President François Hollande took action after his economy minister harshly criticized the government’s policies and urged them to resist what he termed Germany’s "obsession" with austerity. German-backed economic measures have crippled economies and sparked mass protests across Europe.
•Liberian Doctor Who Received Ebola Drug Dies
A Liberian doctor infected with Ebola who received one of the last doses of an experimental drug has died. Two American missionaries recovered after getting the same drug; a Spanish priest who received it also died. The World Health Organization said Monday an unprecedented proportion of healthcare workers have been infected in the West African outbreak due to factors including a lack of equipment and dire staff shortages. More than 240 healthcare workers have contracted Ebola, and more than 120 have died.
•Guatemala Declares State of Emergency over Drought
Guatemala has declared a state of emergency in 16 out of 22 provinces amidst one of the worst droughts in decades. Local activist Dina Cardona said farmers are facing severe shortfalls.
Dina Cardona: "Some parts are drier, and in others no crops have grown. In others, there has been a total cut of crops. Not even the cattle want to eat it because it’s too dry. The farmers would have liked to sell their crops to recover what little they can, but they can’t. They’ve lost everything."
The World Food Program has estimated about 2.5 million people have been impacted across Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. California has been grappling with similar conditions with 98 percent of the state now deemed to be in a condition of "severe drought."
•Brazilian Prisoners to End Occupation over Poor Conditions
In Brazil, hundreds of prisoners have reached a deal to end their takeover of a prison in the southern city of Cascavel. Police say the rioters killed four fellow prisoners, two of whom were beheaded, after taking control of the prison Sunday. The deal will see most prisoners transferred to other facilities after they complained about food, strip searches and other conditions. The United Nations and human rights groups have repeatedly warned of dire conditions in Brazil’s overcrowded prisons.
Environmentalist Daniel McGowan Sues over Arrest for Writing Article
•Environmental activist Daniel McGowan has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for jailing him in solitary confinement after he wrote an article about his earlier imprisonment. McGowan spent more than five years in prison for arson as a member of the Earth Liberation Front. For part of his term, he was held in the prison’s highly restrictive Communications Management Unit, or CMU. After his release to a halfway house in 2012, McGowan wrote an article for The Huffington Post about how documents proved he was held in the CMU in retaliation for his political speech. Three days after the article came out, McGowan was again taken into custody and told he would be returned to a CMU. He was released the next day after federal authorities were notified they had arrested him under a regulation declared unconstitutional. McGowan’s attorney told The Huffington Post, "Communication management units are wrong now, they were wrong then, and trying to tell that to the world should not get you thrown back in prison."
•Report: NSA Built "Secret Google" for Agencies to Search Data
A new report by The Intercept news site reveals the National Security Agency is secretly providing troves of data to nearly two dozen government agencies using a "Google-like" search engine. Documents from Edward Snowden provide proof that for years the NSA has made data directly available to domestic law enforcement agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI. The search tool, known as ICReach, contains information on both foreigners and millions of U.S. citizens who have not been accused of wrongdoing. It is designed to share more than 850 billion records — that’s more than twice the number of stars in the Milky Way.
•U.S. Military Bans, Blocks The Intercept News Site
The report comes after The Intercept discovered that the U.S. military has banned all employees from visiting the news site and begun blocking it on work computers, purportedly because it has published classified material. Military employees reported being told it was "illegal and a violation of national security" to read The Intercept.
•Occupy Protesters Win Legal Victory over Brooklyn Bridge Arrests
Occupy Wall Street protesters have won a legal victory against the New York City Police Department. A federal appeals court has rejected the city’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the NYPD’s mass arrest of 700 Occupy demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge in 2011. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which filed the class-action suit, called the mass arrest "one of the largest ... mass violations of civil liberties in U.S. history."
•Ceasefire Ends 50-Day Israeli Assault of Gaza
Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to an indefinite ceasefire, ending Israel’s 50-day assault on the Gaza Strip. Palestinian health officials say 2,139 people, most of them civilians, including more than 490 children, were killed in the Israeli offensive. Israel’s death toll stood at 64 soldiers and six civilians, after two people were reportedly killed by mortar fire on Tuesday. The ceasefire deal was mediated by Egyptian officials in Cairo and took effect on Tuesday evening. It calls for an opening of Gaza’s blockaded crossings with Israel and Egypt and a widening of the territory’s fishing zone in the Mediterranean. Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urged both sides to respect the deal.
Stéphane Dujarric: "The children of Gaza and Israel must be able to start the school year without the sound of rocket alarms and airstrikes. After 50 days of profound human suffering and devastating physical destruction, any violation of the ceasefire would be utterly irresponsible."
We’ll have more on Gaza after headlines.
•Report: U.S. Recruiting Allies for Airstrikes in Syria
The Obama administration is reportedly mobilizing allies for possible U.S. military action in Syria. The New York Times, citing unnamed officials, says Obama is also planning to expand airstrikes against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq. On Tuesday, Obama vowed to continue action against the militants after they killed journalist James Foley.
President Obama: "But our message to anyone who harms our people is simple: America does not forget. Our reach is long. We are patient. Justice will be done. We have proved time and time again we will do what’s necessary to capture those who harm Americans, to go after those who harm Americans. And we’ll continue to take direct action where needed to protect our people and to defend our homeland."
•U.S. Citizen Killed While Fighting for Islamic State
An American citizen has been killed while fighting for Islamic State in Syria. Douglas McAuthur McCain was killed by rebels fighting for the Free Syrian Army.
•Afghan Candidate Boycotts Audit of Presidential Vote
Afghanistan is facing a fresh crisis over its presidential election with one of the leading candidates reportedly boycotting an audit of the vote. The move by Abdullah Abdullah has disrupted a U.N. audit aimed at resolving claims of fraud from both sides. It also comes amid tensions between the United States and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Karzai’s spokesperson told Reuters Tuesday Karzai will not attend a key NATO summit next week because he disagrees with the United States over the future of troops in Afghanistan.
•NATO Plans New Bases in Eastern Europe over Ukraine Crisis
NATO is planning to set up new bases in eastern Europe in response to the crisis in Ukraine. Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told The Guardian the organization would approve a plan at a summit next week to deter Russian incursions by deploying troops on Russia’s borders. The announcement came as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met for talks in Belarus.
•British Nurse Receives Experimental Ebola Drug
A British nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone has received the experimental drug ZMapp. The drug maker previously said supplies were exhausted after it went to two U.S. missionaries, three Liberian doctors and a Spanish priest. The priest and one of the doctors have died.
•Peaceful Protests Resume in Ferguson and St. Louis
Peaceful protests have resumed in Ferguson, Missouri, after the funeral of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The unarmed black teen was shot dead by police on August 9. Demonstrators in St. Louis demanded justice for both Brown and Kajieme Powell, an African-American man shot dead by St. Louis police 10 days after Brown. Police say Powell brandished a knife within four feet of officers, but video calls their account into question and shows he was shot within 20 seconds of the officers’ arrival. At a rally Tuesday, community activist Taurean Russell said he had spoken with Brown’s father.
Taurean Russell: "I talked to the father (Michael Brown Sr.) today. He said that the pursuit of justice does not end with a funeral, it begins with the funeral, because people saw that body, they heard the cries, the mother was crying, and they said, 'Keep going.' So I’m going to keep going."
•Coroner’s Report: Handcuffed Black Youth Shot Himself in Chest
New information has emerged about the death of a 22-year-old African American in police custody in March. Louisiana State Police have claimed Victor White III shot himself in the back inside an Iberia Parish police cruiser while his hands were cuffed behind him. A coroner’s report obtained by NBC News contradicts that claim, saying he was shot in the chest. But it still concludes he killed himself. White’s family says he had a new baby and would not have committed suicide.
•Tennessee: Sheriff’s Officer Fired After Photos Show Him Choking Student
In Tennessee, a Knox County Sheriff’s officer has been fired after photographs showed him choking a college student until he collapsed. A sequence of photographs published in Britain’s Daily Mail showed Officer Frank Phillips squeezing his hands around Jarod Dotson’s neck until Dotson fell to his knees. Police charged Dotson with public intoxication and resisting arrest.
•Burger King Deal Renews Criticism of Corporate "Tax Inversions"
Burger King is buying the Canadian coffee-and-donut chain Tim Hortons for $11.4 billion, creating the third largest fast-food chain in the world. The newly created firm will be headquartered in Canada where the corporate tax rate is lower than in the United States. While Burger King denies it was motivated by lower taxes, the deal has revived the debate over so-called tax inversions, whereby U.S. companies use mergers to move overseas and avoid U.S. tax rates.
•Water Shutoffs Resume in Detroit, Michigan
In Michigan, the city of Detroit has resumed water shutoffs to residents who have fallen behind on their bills. The shutoffs were halted for a month after local protests and criticism from U.N. experts who called them a violation of the right to water. Detroit will now allow residents who can pay 10 percent of their balance to enter a payment plan, but some residents in the economically devastated city still cannot afford to pay.
•TEPCO Ordered to Pay Damages in Fukushima Suicide Case
A Japanese court has ordered the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to pay damages to the family of a woman who killed herself after she was forced to evacuate due to radiation. TEPCO will pay the family of Hamako Watanabe the equivalent of $470,000. It is the first time a court has ordered TEPCO to pay damages for the 2011 nuclear meltdown.
•Report: 1,400 Children Sexually Exploited in British Town
A new report has revealed 1,400 children were sexually exploited over a 16-year period in a single British town. The report’s author, professor Alexis Jay, found leaders in Rotherham knew of the abuse years ago but failed to act.
Alexis Jay: "It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse the child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators. They were trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England. They were abducted, beaten and intimidated. There were examples of children being doused with petrol and threatened with being set alight. They were threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be the next if they told anyone."
•Report: Obama Seeking Climate Accord in Lieu of Binding Treaty
The new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report comes as President Obama is said to be seeking a nonbinding climate accord in lieu of a global treaty that would include binding cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. The New York Times reports U.S. negotiators are crafting a proposal that would not require congressional approval and would see countries pledge to cut emissions on a voluntary basis.
•9-Year-Old Girl Accidentally Shoots Instructor with Uzi During Lesson
In Arizona, a 9-year-old girl has accidentally shot and killed an instructor who was teaching her how to use an Uzi submachine gun. Police say the gun’s powerful recoil caused the girl to lose control and shoot the instructor in the head.
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