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Advocates of a free and open Internet are celebrating a vote Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission to approve strong net neutrality rules. The move bans "paid prioritization" by Internet service providers who seek to charge extra fees from content producers, as well as blocking and throttling of lawful content. The new rules will also apply to mobile access. The vote is seen as a major victory for grassroots advocacy groups — including Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Free Press, Color of Change and Center for Media Justice — who have spent years campaigning to preserve an open Internet. We speak to longtime open Internet advocate Tim Wu. He is a policy advocate and Columbia University law professor who is known for coining the term "net neutrality" back in 2002.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Advocates of a free and open Internet are celebrating a vote Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission to approve strong net neutrality rules. The move bans paid prioritization by Internet service providers who seek to charge extra fees from content producers, as well as blocking and throttling of lawful content. The new rules will also apply to mobile access. The vote is seen as a major victory for grassroots advocacy groups, including Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, Free Press, Color of Change and Center for Media Justice, who have spent years campaigning to preserve an open Internet. This is FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler speaking on Thursday.
TOM WHEELER: While some other countries try to control the Internet, the action that we take today is an irrefutable reflection of the principle that no one, whether government or corporate, should control free and open access to the Internet. The Internet—the Internet is the most powerful and pervasive platform on the planet. It’s simply too important to be left without rules and without a referee on the field.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: After nearly two hours of discussion Thursday, Wheeler joined Democratic Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mignon Clyburn in a three-to-two vote along party lines.
TOM WHEELER: So let me close where I began, with a shout-out to four million Americans who took their time to share with us their views. Today history is being made by a majority of this commission, as we vote for a fast, fair and open Internet. And with that, I will call for the yeas and nays. All in favor, say "aye."
COMMISSIONERS ROSENWORCEL, CLYBURN AND WHEELER: Aye.
TOM WHEELER: Opposed?
COMMISSIONERS PAI AND O’RIELLY: No.
TOM WHEELER: The ayes have it. The item is passed.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama welcomed the FCC’s vote with a thank you letter posted online to users of Reddit. Their outreach, along with years of grassroots campaigns, helped lead to an outpouring of an unprecedented four million comments to the FCC in favor of net neutrality.
But others, like former FCC Chair Michael Powell, complained the vote is a setback. Powell is now president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which is the most powerful agency representing the cable industry. He said consumers would, quote, "surely ... bear the burden of new taxes and increased costs, and they will likely wait longer for faster and more innovative networks since investment will slow in the face of bureaucratic oversight."
Well, for more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Tim Wu, policy advocate and Columbia University law professor who’s known for coining the term "net neutrality" back in 2002. He’s previously served as a senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission, also author of Who Controls the Internet? and The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, where his latest piece in reaction to Thursday’s vote is headlined "Why Everyone was Wrong About Net Neutrality."
Tim Wu, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. You’re usually in New York, but you went down to Washington to celebrate last night. Talk about the significance of the FCC decision.
TIM WU: I mean, this is simply a historic decision. It was a long time, as you said, in the making. Some of us have been working on this—me, personally—for 13 years. And I think it just sets us on a different path. It says that, you know, there need to be basic rules of the road for the Internet, and we’re not going to trust cable and telephone companies to respect freedom of speech or respect new innovators, because of their poor track record. So I think it’s a major step forward, a huge legacy achievement for both the Obama administration and this chairman, Tom Wheeler. And there’s a sense of jubilation here in Washington.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tim, the decision of Verizon, for example, to blast this with a—in Morse code, as if referring back to a previous communication era, I was struck by the fact that I don’t think Verizon sees the irony of its actions, because the old telegraph became—because of lack of government regulation, became largely a Western Union monopoly and out of the reach of ordinary Americans, and it was only used by the wealthy. So they’re actually using the old Morse code telegraph analogy to buttress an argument that is clearly bankrupt at this point in terms of the failure of the modern communications companies to be able to allow and to maintain public access.
TIM WU: You know, I think they need some new talking points. Having been in this debate for over a decade, they’re still relying on the same kind of Bush-era arguments, where they say, you know, "Hands off the Internet." They just say the same thing over—you know, telemedicine, there’s going to be five, 10 competitors in this market. Everyone has watched the broadband market, which used to have hundreds of competitors in the Clinton era, in the early '90s, go to more and more consolidation. They keep saying competition and random things, and, you know, their talking points have worn out. They don't even connect with anyone, I mean, right or left. They’ve kind of lost touch. And that’s why they were so defeated in this latest round, is I just think they kept saying the same things, but no one was listening, and therefore the commission, to its credit, really did what the people wanted. And I think when you look at polls, most people say—"How do you feel about cable or the phone companies putting up slow lanes, slowing down some traffic and speeding up?" Then, people were like, "We don’t like that." It’s not just a Democrat side. It’s nobody likes that. So, I think they just really haven’t done a good job. If there is a case to be made on their side, they haven’t done it.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you explain exactly what Title II is and how exactly the Internet will be regulated?
TIM WU: Sure. Well, I’ll explain it. So, in 1934—this is the allusion that Verizon is making—the New Deal Congress gave the—created the Federal Communications Commission and gave it a broad authority to regulate everything by wire, all communications by wire. And their idea back then was to control the problem of monopoly power that was manifest, actually, in the earlier version of Verizon, named AT&T. And it is basically, at its centerpiece—net neutrality—a nondiscrimination rule.
Frankly, it just keeps the Internet the same, the way it is now, and just makes it very clear to the phone and cable companies: You can’t block anything. You know, you might not like a website that says Verizon’s too expensive; you can’t block that. You can’t degrade service. And you can’t set up what are called slow lanes. That is to say, you can’t go around and say, "Hey, if you don’t want to be slowed down, you need to pay us more money," you know, like kind of a protection scheme. So those don’t seem very outrageous to most Americans. And frankly, they’re not, which is what has been challenging for the—I think, the telecom lobby, is those seem like very straightforward. They’re, frankly, the way the Internet is.
And just to add one last point, we’ve had some kind of net neutrality rules for a very long time. The reason we’re here is because Verizon sued to strike them down. And so, you know, they’ve gotten themselves—Title II just refers to a stronger way of supporting the law. And now that’s what Verizon and the cable industry has gotten themselves into.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the importance of the FCC extending this not just to broadband cable, but also to mobile devices?
TIM WU: Yeah, this is a major victory, which goes way beyond, frankly, what the first administration—the first Obama administration did. The chairman recognized, and I think a lot of people have been saying for a long time, that a lot of broadband is moving to wireless. And so, to just say, "Oh, you can do whatever you want on wireless, but on broadband," doesn’t make sense. And so, they just extended the principle of net neutrality to wireless, where, de facto, it’s basically been in operation anyways. And so, I think that’s a big step forward, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Tim Wu, you have a very interesting history, how you came to be involved with the Internet and coined the term "net neutrality." I don’t think a lot of people know. Well, you ran for lieutenant governor here in New York. But way before that, you clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. And talk about even before that, how you came to be involved with the Internet. Give us a brief, little CV.
TIM WU: Well, sure. I think we talked about this years ago, you know, back in the early days. I was in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s, right when the big—center of the boom. And I worked for a telecom company who made the stuff that was going to attack or destroy net neutrality. And we were trying to sell it to the Chinese government to sort of censor stuff, and also trying to sell it to American cable companies. And, you know, I was a fairly loyal employee, but after a while, I said, "This stuff stinks. It’s going to make the Internet terrible," because I had been—I mean, even earlier than that, I’d been kind of a computer programmer. I’m, you know, a good old-fashioned computer geek. And so, I just saw this, and this is really a threat.
And so, when I came to academia, the very first thing I did was say, "We need this principle called net neutrality." And, you know, at the time, nobody paid any attention. But somehow it caught on. And, you know, 13 years later, I guess, starting with that just innate sense of—you know, I was, I think, repelled—the idea that the Internet would become like cable television, you know, just is kind of crappy—sorry, if we’re on cable ourselves. But, you know, just like whatever makes money is the only thing that survives, I just thought this is terrible. And so, it was really from a personal place. And, you know, now, 13 years later, I guess it was worth it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And for a time, also you were having a good relationship with Michael Powell, the former FCC chair under George W. Bush. Now you’re on—clearly, on opposite sides with him on this issue.
TIM WU: Well, you know, to give Michael Powell a little bit of credit, he actually, to some degree, got the net neutrality thing started. You know, no person is completely good or completely bad in what they do. And he recognized that there was a threat to the Internet, too, from the phone companies and cable companies. And he was the first, when he was the chairman, to do a net neutrality order, actually under Title II, where there was a company in—a phone company that was blocking voice over Internet. And he said, "You know, you can’t do that," and he fined them. So he was tough. He is one of the people who started this. Now, as the head of the cable trade association, he’s had a different tune. But he actually was an enforcer who started this, so he gets a little bit of credit, even though he might not want to take it.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting that Michael Powell—you know, the son of Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and general—who was head of the FCC, comes to head the cable lobbying association that the current chair, Tom Wheeler, came from. Do you think—
TIM WU: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: How did Tom Wheeler get religion? What was—did he—has he talked to you about this epiphany? I mean, we had the images of the protesters in front of his home, not letting him go to work—
TIM WU: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —saying, "If this is how you’re going to work, we don’t want you to go to work"; the encampment outside the FCC that went on for many days.
TIM WU: You know, I think it’s really important never to typecast people entirely and be like, "This guy is a lobbyist," or "This guy is..." You know, a lot of people were worried, particularly in the progressive movement, that, former lobbyist, he was just going to show up at the FCC and do his former master’s bidding or something. But, you know, he’s near the end of his career. He’s not looking for another job. And, you know, he became a net neutrality advocate over—I think when you get in the job, you start to see sort of the wisdom of this position. It is a universal and ancient principle, preventing nondiscrimination in public infrastructure, whether it’s the roads, sidewalks, whatever. And, you know, you look at this idea of fast lanes, slow lanes. So I think, gradually—you know? And then he saw all the comments. And when you’re actually in the job—Michael Powell is another example—and you see what could happen to the Internet, you think, like, "That is no good." I think anyone who directly experiences this has that feeling.
And so, yes, he—by the way, it is a textbook case of grassroots organizing. Maybe we’ll talk about this later. But there was no one with any money or any power on the side of net neutrality. There were academics, you know, a group like Fight for the Future or Free Press, you know, activist groups. But the message was really strong. And finally, the four million Americans who wrote the agency really made a difference, and really, the president himself getting involved—all these things. So Tom Wheeler really changed his tune on this, and it just shows you, you really shouldn’t typecast anyone.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tim, I wanted to ask you—this is not a new fight, because, clearly, those who are familiar with some of the history of mass communications know that ever since the computer, the personal computer, was created, there’s been a constant debate of the relationship between the personal computer and the communications lines—
TIM WU: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —originally the old phone lines and now broadband. And this has been an ongoing battle over how the American people are going to get their information. So this is really only the latest stage of this, isn’t it?
TIM WU: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. You know, it goes back to the telegraph, where—I don’t want to, you know, go on too much about history, but in the 19th century, the telegraph had such control over the wire news, that they tried—would use their power to try to throw elections for the Republican Party. It has been—the tension between the people who own the wires and the stuff on top of the wires has been with us since the wires existed. And I don’t think it goes away. That’s why I think it’s—you know, at some level, there always needs to be government oversight. There’s too much power in private hands when someone owns the master switch, to use my book’s title. And we have seen this before. We saw it with AT&T. We’ve seen it over the radio waves, with broadcast networks. You know, there isn’t—everyone knows this, but, you know, the revolutionaries take over the radio stations, and now they take over the Internet sites, first because there is an enormous amount of power, and unchecked private power is a dangerous thing.
AMY GOODMAN: Last year, comedian John Oliver dedicated nearly 15 minutes of his HBO program to explain why net neutrality is so important, and ended the show with a call to his viewers to write to the FCC to encourage them to adopt the new rules. The enormous response broke the commission’s website. This is a clip from Last Week Tonight.
JOHN OLIVER: For once in your life, we need you to channel that anger, that badly spelled bile that you normally reserve for unforgivable attacks on actresses you seem to think have put on weight, or politicians that you disagree with, or photos of your ex-girlfriend getting on with her life, or nonwhite actors being cast as fictional characters. And I’m talking to you, Ron Paul Fan 2016, and you, One Direction Forever. And I’m talking to you, One Direction Sucks Balls. We need you to get out there and, for once in your lives, focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction. Seize your moment, my lovely trolls. Turn on caps lock and fly, my pretties! Fly! Fly! Fly!
AMY GOODMAN: That is HBO comedian John Oliver on his program, pushing for net neutrality. Finally, Tim Wu, on this day, your thoughts about if Aaron Swartz, the young Internet activist who, unfortunately, took his life a few years ago—what his feelings would be today, as he dedicated his life to net neutrality?
TIM WU: Yeah, no, I mean, you know, yesterday, we were having a celebration party in D.C., and it was one of these moments. Someone said, "This is a moment for hugs." Like, everybody was just so jubilant. We spent—you know, it’s tough when you work on progressive causes. You’re always outgunned, outspent, and people burn out because it just takes so much energy. And, you know, Aaron Swartz was the kind of guy who dedicated his life to these causes, and, you know, he should have been there. I think a lot of people should have been there. But it was at least one great moment for those who have patiently been sticking it out. And I salute all of the people who have worked tirelessly for low amounts of money now for over a decade to try and fight for an open Internet. That was his fight, that was our fight, and yesterday was a day of triumph, finally.
AMY GOODMAN: Tim Wu, we want to thank you for being with us, Columbia University law professor known for coining the term "net neutrality" back in 2002. He is the author of Who Controls the Internet? and The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, ISIS destroys the museum in Mosul. We’ll speak with an art historian who has tried to preserve the cultural heritage of Iraq. Stay with us.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made headlines Thursday when he compared the Islamic State to pro-labor protesters in Wisconsin. A top Republican presidential contender, Walker made the comment at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) when asked about the Islamic State. "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the globe," Walker told the audience. Meanwhile, Walker has announced plans to sign an anti-union right-to-work bill that would eliminate the requirement that workers must pay union fees. On Wednesday, the Wisconsin State Senate passed the measure on a mostly party-line vote of 17 to 15. The Republican-controlled State Assembly is expected to pass the legislation next week. We speak to Madison-based journalist John Nichols of The Nation. He is author of "Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Thursday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and possible presidential candidate, made headlines when he compared the Islamic State to unions in Wisconsin. He made the comment at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference.
NED RYUN: Governor Walker, Ned Ryun, American Majority, board member of the American Conservative Union. Would like to know, should you become commander-in-chief, how would you deal with threats such as ISIS?
GOV. SCOTT WALKER: We will have someone who leads, and ultimately will send a message, not only that we will protect American soil, but do not—do not take this upon freedom-loving people anywhere else in the world. We need a leader with that kind of confidence. If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, speaking at CPAC Thursday. Meanwhile, Walker has announced plans to sign an anti-union, right-to-work bill that would eliminate the requirement that workers must pay union fees.
Joining us here in New York, the person who’s usually in Madison, John Nichols. He’s a political writer for The Nation, author of Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street. In our last two minutes, John, the significance of Governor Walker comparing ISIL to the unions of Wisconsin?
JOHN NICHOLS: I’m afraid it’s not the first time that he has suggested that striking down these protests back in 2011, and continuing to try to prevent protests in the capital, trying to force protesters out, has somehow prepared him to deal with the world. And the tragedy of this is so profound on so many levels. First off, he is overestimating his own skills. Second, he is underestimating the challenges and the complexity of the threats from around the world.
But most of all, he is deeply, deeply mischaracterizing those who rose up to challenge and question his policies. These were school teachers and snow plow drivers and nurses and parents of children with autism and other challenges, seniors who were concerned about their care. This was not just a union protest in Wisconsin; it was an anti-austerity protest. And it was incredibly diverse, incredibly—and I will use the word—beautiful. You were there, Amy.
And I think to try and suggest that disrespecting peaceful protest, that literally went out of its way to stop at stoplights, you know, to let people cross, it’s so wrong. And I think it raises profound questions. You know, you can get angry about all this, but I think it raises profound questions about whether Governor Walker really begins to understand what he’s talking about as regards global threats, but also begins to understand how a president should look at the people he would serve.
AMY GOODMAN: Final question, and we only have 10 seconds. Back to our first story, FCC, the major decision around net neutrality, you said you debated Tim Wu on whether the term "net neutrality" should be the one that was used a decade ago.
JOHN NICHOLS: Well, you started the show with Tim Wu, and Tim did not blow his horn hard enough. He and I have both been involved for a long time with the group Free Press. And Tim really was the person who argued for using the term "net neutrality" so we understood net, the net, Internet, and that it had to be neutral with all forces. He was a profound figure in this. And frankly, you couldn’t have picked a better guest to start the show with.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, thank you, John Nichols, political writer for The Nation, author of Uprising.
That does it for our broadcast. Democracy Now! has a job opening, a part-time camera operator to work on our live broadcast here in New York. Go to democracynow.org for more information.
Video has surfaced showing militants from the Islamic State destroying ancient artifacts at a museum in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Men are seen toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C. The Islamic State has also reportedly destroyed the Mosul public library, which housed more than 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. On Thursday, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, called for the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on protecting Iraq’s cultural heritage. "I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq’s millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred," said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. We speak to Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archeology at Columbia University. She has worked extensively in Iraq, including periods as senior adviser to Iraq’s Ministry of Culture and a UNESCO consultant.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Iraq, where video has surfaced showing militants from the Islamic State destroying ancient artifacts at a museum in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Men are seen toppling statues and using sledgehammers and drills to destroy the artifacts. The Guardian reports one of the statues destroyed was a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 9th century B.C.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thurday, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, called for the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on protecting Iraq’s cultural heritage. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said, quote, "I condemn this as a deliberate attack against Iraq’s millennial history and culture, and as an inflammatory incitement to violence and hatred."
UNESCO has also warned about the self-proclaimed Islamic State generating income from the looting and smuggling of cultural heritage items. Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council banned all trade in antiquities from wartorn Syria and reaffirmed a ban on Iraqi artifact sales from about a decade ago.
Joining us here in New York is Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archeology at Columbia University. She has worked extensively in Iraq, including periods as senior adviser to Iraq’s Ministry of Culture and, back in 2004 or so, a UNESCO consultant.
We welcome you, Professor Bahrani, to Democracy Now! Talk about what is happening, the significance—let’s start with the Mosul museum.
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Well, the Mosul museum is a major museum in the Middle East. It’s one of the largest museums in the area, and it has a remarkable collection of finds that date back to the Neolithic era and continue into the Islamic period, so covering thousands of years, going back to about 8,000 B.C.
AMY GOODMAN: What was your reaction when we saw the video yesterday?
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Well, I think we, all of us who are in the field, were completely horrified. I mean, of course we expected that something like this might happen, ever since ISIS took over the area, took over Mosul. But to see it actually happen was devastating.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is their rationale or their reasons for doing this?
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Well, the rationale seems to be, from what they are saying on the video, that these are idols, and therefore they are false gods and should be destroyed. But, to me, this actually doesn’t make that much sense, since, of course, a lot of this cultural heritage and these antiquities have been visible since the seventh century A.D., and they have been there unharmed. So, it’s not really clear why now this should happen.
AMY GOODMAN: On the one hand, the rationale of it being heretical, right, the false idols—
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —and on the other hand, it’s believed—I mean, I can’t confirm this myself independently—that the militants have sold the ancient artifacts on the black market?
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Well, it seems to be that there is a great deal of selling of antiquities by ISIL. And this has been confirmed by certain people who are watching the trade in antiquities. So they are selling antiquities. One of the arguments is that the objects they destroyed yesterday were the larger pieces that could not be moved out and sold, so they were more likely to be able to destroy them.
I think that a great deal of the discussion here in the West, and perhaps throughout the world, has focused on the looting rather than the issue of cultural cleansing. The destruction of monuments on site is also something to be concerned about. I mean, the looting for the antiquities market, which is an illicit international market, is very important to consider, because this is very destructive. But the blowing up of shrines and monuments on site is really horrendous, and this is a form of cultural cleansing, certainly, but also ethnic cleansing.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Well, it’s a form of ethnic cleansing because this is a region of the world—Mesopotamia has always been a multicultural, mutli-ethnic, multilinguistic and multireligious community, the entirety of the country. And what’s happening now is that diversity is being wiped out. So when you wipe out people’s monuments and heritage, you erase any record of their ever having been there. And it’s a way of creating a terra nulla, if you will, a kind of an empty land that you can conquer and then claim that there was nothing there before. So it’s a general erasure and rewriting of history of Mesopotamia.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, UNESCO’s director-general expressed outrage following the Islamic State’s attack on the Mosul museum. Irina Bokova said, quote, "This attack is far more than a cultural tragedy—this is also a security issue as it fuels sectarianism, violent extremism and conflict in Iraq. ... The systematic destruction of iconic components of Iraq’s rich and diverse heritage that we have been witnessing over the past months is intolerable and it must stop immediately." And, of course, Iraq went—Iraq went through similar problems—not at this scale—during the—in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, the disorder that followed, when there was also some destruction and looting that occurred.
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Well, I think that’s right. And I think too many people have forgotten that all of this actually began a long time ago. Of course, the scale now is far greater, and the slaughter that’s taking place of human beings is truly horrendous, but the rewriting of Iraq’s history and the erasure of its past actually started with the 2003 war, if not even with the earlier one. So there has been a great deal of destruction of heritage sites, and the attempt to say that this is ingrained in the culture. I think one large problem is that pundits here in the West often say, "Well, these acts are grounded, are based, in the historical reality of Iraq, of Mesopotamia. This is a kind of an internal fight between Shia and Sunni peoples, and we should just mind our own business and leave it alone." But it seems to me that this is completely misguided, because what we are saying is that this is based in history. We’re trying to say—the pundits are trying to say that this is based in a historical reality, when it’s not. It’s a complete rewriting of what was the historical reality. Now, let’s take, for example, the idea of the resurrection of a medieval Islamic state. So, of course, here, everybody says, "Well, they are truly barbaric. They are medieval." But everybody who has read history knows that in the Abbasid empire, the caliphs of the Abbasids valued scholarship. They translated Greek classical texts. They loved the arts and promoted arts and architecture. So, it’s actually quite false to say that in the Middle Ages they were opposed to these things.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Professor Bahrani, going back to 2003, the day after Baghdad fell, that famous scene of the looters coming from the Iraqi museum—
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —and the criticism of the U.S. for not protecting the museum. Going back to that time, declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression, that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein. He said, "Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here." Looting, he said, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. Rumsfeld said, "Stuff happens."
ZAINAB BAHRANI: I remember his statements very well. I also remember that he was quite taken aback that there was more than one vase in the entire country. And he seemed to have not realized that Iraq is Mesopotamia, the cradle of the world’s civilization. And how he did not know that, I’m really not sure. But he was clearly very mistaken.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the historical legacy of Muslims protecting antiquities, knowledge, philosophy, science?
ZAINAB BAHRANI: Absolutely. I mean, it’s not my specific area of expertise, because I’m a specialist in the pre-Islamic past, but I know enough to know that this heritage has always been there, that Islamic geographers and travelers and historians have written about places like Babylon and Nineveh in the Middle Ages. The caliphs, the Abbasid caliphs especially, supported the scholarship of the ancient Greek classical texts and philosophy and the sciences, in a way that is truly unparalleled not just in the history of Iraq, but, I would say, in a great part of the world. It’s one of the high points of the world’s history of scholarly knowledge.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what’s been the reaction in the rest of the—throughout the rest of the Middle East, of other governments and civil society organizations after they’ve heard about this from yesterday?
ZAINAB BAHRANI: I think that most of the news that I’ve heard from all over the Middle East is that people are horrified, that everybody is taken aback, because nobody was expecting this extent of just senseless destruction. Of course, this is a very small thing to consider after the mass slaughter, the kidnapping, the rapes, the torture, the daily murdering. So, this is really very much just a kind of a last straw on top of a terrible annihilation of people.
But what I want to stress is that the destruction of this sculpture, of the heritage sites and the ancient Assyrian and Hadrian sculpture that we saw destroyed in the video, that this is not just about the past. This is about a destruction and an erasure of the history of the people of Iraq, as a way to say that they never belonged here.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Zainab Bahrani, professor of Near Eastern and East Mediterranean art and archaeology at Columbia University. Her most recent book is called The Infinite Image: Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to Pasco, Washington. It was there that police killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes. Cellphone video shows him putting up his hands. He was unarmed. Stay with us.
Authorities in Pasco, Washington, have revealed police fired 17 shots at Antonio Zambrano-Montes, an unarmed Mexican farmworker who was shot dead on February 10. Cellphone video shows Zambrano turning to face police and raising his hands before he is shot. The shooting has sparked weeks of protests. Live from Pasco, we speak with Felix Vargas, chairman of Consejo Latino, a group of local businessmen in Pasco who are working with Zambrano’s family. We also talk to Jennifer Shaw, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state and a member of the Community Police Commission in Seattle.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: After our next segment, we’ll talk about Governor Scott Walker comparing unions to the self-proclaimed Islamic State. But first, this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, for the second time in about two weeks, the Mexican government has expressed outrage over police shootings of unarmed immigrants by police officers in the United States. Mexican authorities say police in Grapevine, Texas, violated a decades-old treaty by waiting four days to inform them of the killing of Rubén García Villalpando. Police say they shot García early Saturday morning during a traffic stop, after he defied orders to halt and walked toward a patrol car with his hands in the air. García’s attorney and a local activist described their account of the shooting to news station KDFW.
CARLOS QUINTANILLA: When the officers said, "Don’t move, mother F," he stayed there. And for one reason or another, Rubén begins to walk towards a police officer, and that one second passed, and the officer fired twice—pop, pop—and Rubén was dead.
DOMINGO GARCIA: When this video is released, you will show that there is a man, who has no prior criminal record, a wife and four children, who puts his hands on his head, and is shot through twice because he asked the officer to treat him with respect and dignity and not to be calling him "mother F," multiple times.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The shooting in Texas comes just 10 days after the police killing of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, Washington. Zambrano was reportedly throwing rocks at police officers when he was killed. The incident happened at a busy intersection. Several eyewitnesses recorded cellphone video that shows Zambrano turning to face police, raising his hands before he’s shot. On Thursday, authorities confirmed how many times they fired at Zambrano. This is Sergeant Ken Lattin of the Kennewick County Police Department.
SGT. KEN LATTIN: Ultimately—this was a question that you had had—we’ve determined that they fired their weapons 17 times. Seventeen rounds were fired. Of those, five or six rounds struck Mr. Zambrano. We say five or six rounds because there’s obviously been two autopsies: one by—conducted by the medical examiner that was brought in by the coroner, and then, as Mr. Sant specified last week, the body was released to the family, they brought in their own independent pathologist to do an autopsy. And so, those results of both autopsies are not yet complete. Without going into any sort of gruesome detail, it’s not easy to determine, when you look at entry wounds and exit wounds, for sure, how many rounds.
AMY GOODMAN: The Pasco police also said Zambrano was not shot in the back, contradicting an independent autopsy by the victim’s family that found two entry wounds on the back of his body—one on the back his right arm and another in his buttocks. Zambrano’s family has now hired the attorney for Michael Brown’s family in Ferguson, Missouri, Benjamin Crump, who visited Pasco to meet with them this week. Pasco is about, oh, three-and-a-half hours southeast of Seattle.
All of this comes as the Mexican government reports 75 Mexicans have been killed by law officers in the United States since 2006.
For more, we go to Pasco, Washington, where we’re joined by Felix Vargas, the chairman of Consejo Latino, a group of local businessmen in Pasco who are working with Zambrano’s family and helping to call for justice in his shooting death. Vargas is a retired U.S. diplomat and Army colonel.
And we’re joined in Seattle by Jennifer Shaw, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state and a member of the Community Police Commission in Seattle. She wrote a letter urging the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the fatal police shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, saying the local police probe is needlessly focusing on his activities prior to the incident.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s go directly to Pasco. Felix Vargas, explain what happened and the fact there’s so much video of this. It was during rush hour?
FELIX VARGAS: Yes, it was. A crowded intersection, downtown Pasco, a gentleman is seen throwing rocks at cars. Police are called. There’s a minor scuffle. And then you see the gentleman running across the street away from the police. The police draw their weapons and fire an initial volley of shots at him. It appears that they hit him. He gets to the other side of the street, he turns left, heads west. The police are in pursuit of him, three, four yards behind him. He’s wounded. He turns around, appears to raise his arms up. He does not have a knife or a gun in his hand. And then he is effectively executed by the second volley of shots. In all, as you said, 17 shots were fired. The initial autopsy shows that five to six rounds made impact. We have a second autopsy, which was performed by the family’s forensic examiner, and that shows seven to eight impacts on the body. So, that is what has happened. It has really disturbed this community as never before.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Mr. Vargas, what has been so far the reaction of local authorities in terms of the police officers involved?
FELIX VARGAS: Well, the authorities have promised to withhold judgment until a police investigation of the police shooting takes place. There’s a special investigative unit, which is set up, excluding the participation by the Pasco police. But that particular unit is talking to witnesses and doing their own investigation. They do emphasize that this will be an impartial, objective investigation. That is really the process, after which the Franklin County prosecutor will determine if there are sufficient grounds to levy charges against the three police shooters, and then the case will go to trial. There’s also a call for a coroner’s inquest after this particular investigation. It is simply not a credible investigation—I need to add that.
AMY GOODMAN: Why isn’t it credible?
FELIX VARGAS: It’s not credible because it involves a group of police officers, who are brothers in uniform of the perpetrators of the shooting. It is not credible because in the last six months we’ve had four incidents, including this one; in the three previous incidents, the police have been exonerated. There is one other example of a shooting here six months ago of a young man also who suffered from mental illness, as did Antonio Zambrano, and also suffered from substance abuse—similar circumstances, again, shot with excessive—by excessive use of force here by the police. There is an inherent conflict of interest here whenever you have a police organization investigating its own. We need a higher-level investigation here, and that can only come from the Department of Justice here, that the—you know, that the community can have some reasonable grounds to believe that it will be independent. So, it’s important that we have this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the general state of relations in your part of the state, there’s been, obviously, a growing population of Mexican, especially Mexican, population as a result of the large agriculture there in the area. Can you talk about the state of relations in Washington?
FELIX VARGAS: Well, the state of relations is really quite good. We do have a city of 68,000, 60 percent of which are Hispanic. They’re drawn here primarily because of our very vibrant agricultural economy that we have here. And we really haven’t had any incidents. There is some unease with the police, because they don’t have enough certified language speakers. It is a police made up primarily of Anglo policemen. So, the relations are cordial. I wouldn’t say they’re warm. We have, as an organization, tried to improve that relationship and to build confidence within the community towards the police force. We met with the police chief two weeks before the incident to review his policies and procedures and to assure ourselves that we will not have an incident similar to the one in Ferguson. We received assurances that the training, the protocols were all in place to avoid this kind of situation. We’re greatly disappointed, really, in the leadership of the police chief, because we simply do not know if he knows what goes on within his police force.
AMY GOODMAN: You are a leading member of the community, a businessman, former military. Are you calling for the police chief to step down?
FELIX VARGAS: Not at this point. You know, there are things that have happened which caused us to believe that he’s not in control of his police force. It’s premature to do that. I think we need to let certain investigatory practices proceed. We would like to see active engagement by the Department of Justice in this regard. While the police chief has, I think, some lack in credibility, we’re not prepared to call for his—for him to step down at this point. We may do so later on.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we’re also joined by Jennifer Shaw, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state and a member of the Community Police Commission in Seattle. She wrote a letter urging the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the shooting of Antonio Zambrano-Montes in Pasco, saying the local police probe was needlessly focusing on his activities prior to the incident. Could you—Jennifer, could you summarize your concerns for us?
JENNIFER SHAW: Well, sure, and thank you for reaching out to us. You know, we’re seeing across the country a real need for a culture change within our police departments. As Mr. Vargas points out, it is concerning to have police investigating their own, and particularly the notion of trying to find something wrong with the person that was shot as a justification for the shooting. We saw the same thing with Trayvon Martin. There was comments about he smoked pot. Other—you know, the comments about Michael Brown, that he had engaged in other criminal activity, at a time when the officer wasn’t even aware of it. So it’s really not relevant what the victim of the shooting was doing two weeks ago, or two weeks prior to the shooting, and to have that be what appears to be the primary focus is really concerning. It’s also concerning that the police officers that were involved in the shooting have still not been interviewed by the investigators.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what needs to happen right now, Jennifer Shaw?
JENNIFER SHAW: Well, certainly, there needs to be a full and impartial investigation of this incident, but also there needs to be a review of the current policies and practices and training within the Pasco Police Department. What we’re seeing in Washington, and really across the country, is that police departments have been using outdated use-of-force policies. Their training is really much more focused on how to use force, not how to avoid using force. And so, tragically, we keep seeing these kinds of incidents.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to Sergeant Ken Lattin of the Kennewick County Police Department answering questions during Thursday’s news conference.
REPORTER: Have you interviewed the three officers?
SGT. KEN LATTIN: Good question. So as we’ve—that seems to be a big question each week. And we’ve got to have all the information before they sit down with those, so they’ve got to get those transcriptions done, so that the lead investigator that will sit down and interview with the officers has all the information. So, that—we’re not to that point yet. It’s still being set up.
REPORTER: So all the other witnesses that you want to talk to would be interviewed first, all that material transcribed—
SGT. KEN LATTIN: Absolutely.
REPORTER: —and the three officers will be the last people you interview?
SGT. KEN LATTIN: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Shaw, your comment on this? The witnesses will be interviewed first, and then the officers will be interviewed last.
JENNIFER SHAW: Well, when you think of any other investigation of a shooting by an individual, of another individual, with witnesses around, imagine that the police would wait 10 days, two weeks, before interviewing the person who was doing the shooting. It seems unreasonable. It seems, actually, kind of dangerous, for public safety purposes, to wait that long for the witnesses—or, for the officers to sit down and kind of read through everything and come up with a story. I mean, the idea of an investigation is to find out what happened from everybody that was involved. And it seems like these officers are being given special consideration because they’re police officers.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Shaw, we want to thank you for joining us from the Washington ACLU in Seattle, and, Felix Vargas, for joining us from your home in Pasco, Washington, with Consejo Latino. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, as we move on to our last segment. Juan?
Headlines:
FCC Passes Historic Rules for Open Internet
The Federal Communications Commission has voted in favor of historic rules to preserve a free and open Internet. After a record four million public comments, the FCC approved rules to prevent corporate Internet service providers from blocking access to websites, slowing down content or providing paid fast lanes for Internet service. This is FCC Chair Tom Wheeler.
Tom Wheeler: "This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech. They both stand for the same concept: openness, expression and an absence of gatekeepers telling people what they can do, where they can go and what they can think. The action that we take today is about the protection of Internet openness."
We will have more on net neutrality after headlines.
Congress to Postpone DHS Showdown for 3 Weeks
Congress appears set to avert a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security just hours before the agency runs out of money. Republicans have repeatedly sought to tie the funding to a reversal of Obama’s executive actions on immigration. But House Republicans appear poised to back a clean stopgap measure to fund the agency for another three weeks, postponing the battle.
CAGE: "Jihadi John" "Radicalized" by U.K. Security Agencies
More information has emerged about the British man nicknamed "Jihadi John" who has appeared in Islamic State beheading videos. Mohammed Emwazi is a 26-year-old born in Kuwait who moved to Britain as a child and studied computer science at the University of Westminster. The British group CAGE said he faced at least four years of harassment, detention, deportations, threats and attempts to recruit him by security agencies, which prevented him from leading a normal life. Emwazi approached CAGE in 2009 after he was detained and interrogated by the British intelligence agency MI5 on what he called a safari vacation in Tanzania. In 2010, after Emwazi was barred from returning to Kuwait, he wrote, "I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But know [sic] I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London." In 2013, a week after he was barred from Kuwait for a third time, Emwazi left home and ended up in Syria. At a news conference, CAGE research director Asim Qureshi spoke about his recollections of Emwazi and compared his case to another British man, Michael Adebolajo, who hacked a soldier to death in London in 2013.
Asim Qureshi: "Sorry, it’s quite hard, because, you know, he’s such a — I’m really sorry, but he was such a beautiful young man, really. You know, it’s hard to imagine the trajectory, but it’s not a trajectory that’s unfamiliar with us, for us. We’ve seen Michael Adebolajo, once again, somebody that I met, you know, who came to me for help, looking to change his situation within the system. When are we going to finally learn that when we treat people as if they’re outsiders, they will inevitably feel like outsiders, and they will look for belonging elsewhere?"
U.N. Finds Torture at U.S. Military Facilities in Afghanistan
The United Nations has reported "credible and reliable" accounts of torture at U.S. military facilities in Afghanistan which took place in 2013. The torture was reported by prisoners at two U.S. facilities north and west of the capital Kabul. The United Nations also detailed the ongoing torture of prisoners by the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
European Court: Iraq War Resister Must Give War Crimes Evidence for Asylum
There is a new development in the case of a U.S. soldier who went AWOL in 2007 and sought asylum in Germany because he opposed the war in Iraq. The Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice ruled that to obtain asylum, André Shepherd would need to show that he would have been involved in war crimes if he had followed orders to deploy to Iraq. Shepherd spoke Thursday in Munich.
André Shepherd: "What happens when you have a soldier, such as myself, who isn’t a conscientious objector from the perspective that I want to reject every single war, because of course defensive wars I find to be okay? You have to defend yourself, of course. But Iraq wasn’t one of those. They didn’t help the Iraqi people at all. They certainly didn’t help the American people at all. And all we have is senseless death and destruction, and, of course, the rise of ISIS. So, why would I want to take part in that?"
The final decision in Shepherd’s case will be made by a German court.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Compares Labor Protesters to Islamic State Fighters
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has compared militants from the self-proclaimed Islamic State to pro-union labor protesters in Wisconsin. Thousands of protesters have flooded the Capitol over an anti-union right-to-work bill passed by the state Senate this week. We will have more on Wisconsin later in the broadcast.
Argentina: Judge Rejects Late Prosecutor’s Case Against President
In Argentina, a judge has rejected a late prosecutor’s allegations Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner helped cover up Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center that killed 85 people. The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was found dead a day before he was due to testify on his findings. But Judge Daniel Rafecas ruled there was no evidence to support Nisman’s claims.
U.S. Diplomats Samantha Power, Susan Rice to Attend AIPAC
The Obama administration is sending two top diplomats to the annual gathering of the powerful pro-Israel group AIPAC. The conference opens Sunday just two days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address Congress in a bid to undermine the Obama administration’s attempts at a nuclear deal with Iran. White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who has called Netanyahu’s visit "destructive," will address the AIPAC summit, along with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.
Oxfam: Gaza Rebuilding to Take 100 Years Under Israeli Blockade
Thirty aid agencies have condemned the lack of progress rebuilding Gaza, six months after the end of a devastating Israeli assault. The groups say reconstruction of tens of thousands of destroyed homes, schools and hospitals has been "woefully slow," with 100,000 Palestinians still displaced. The agencies called on Israel to lift its naval blockade, which has barred needed construction materials from entering. Oxfam says it will take more than 100 years to rebuild Gaza if the Israeli blockade remains.
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