Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Wednesday, March 23, 2016
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After Brussels Attack, Will Response Be More War or a Look at the Root Causes of Terrorism?
Belgium has begun three days of mourning after at least 31 people died and over 230 were injured Tuesday in bombings targeting the Brussels Airport and a crowded subway station near the headquarters of the European Union. ISIS took responsibility for the Brussels bombings and claimed more would follow. The bombings took place just days after authorities arrested Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the November Paris attacks that killed 130 people. A massive manhunt is underway for a 24-year-old Belgium man named Najim Laachraoui, who is suspected of being involved in Tuesday’s attack as well as the Paris bombings. Over the past decade, hundreds of young Belgian men have left their home to fight with ISIS and other militant groups in the Middle East. We speak to three guests about the Brussels attack and how Belgium should respond: Frank Barat in Brussels, journalist Joshua Hersh and Yasser Louati of the the Collective Against Islamophobia in France.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Belgium has begun three days of mourning after at least 31 people died and over 230 were injured Tuesday in bombings targeting the Brussels Airport and a crowded subway station near the headquarters of the European Union. ISIS took responsibility for the Brussels bombings and claimed more would follow. The attacks took place just days after authorities arrested Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the November Paris attacks that killed 130 people. A massive manhunt is underway for a 24-year-old Belgian man named Najim Laachraoui, who is suspected of being involved in both Tuesday’s attacks as well as the Paris bombings.
AMY GOODMAN: According to press accounts, Najim Laachraoui went to Syria in 2013. He’s believed to be one of three men seen in security camera footage at the Brussels Airport prior to the bombing. Belgian media has also reported two brothers, Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui, as being involved in the bombings. Both are believed to have blown themselves up in the attack.
Over the past decade, hundreds of young Belgian men have left their home to fight with ISIS and other militant groups in the Middle East. Belgium reportedly provided the most ISIS fighters per capita of all EU countries last year. The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, has announced the country had raised its security level to maximum.
PRIME MINISTER CHARLES MICHEL: [translated] The Coordinating Unit for Threat Analysis has decided to bring the security level to level four, which means additional safety measures, the reinforcement of border controls and limits on public transport, and a reinforcement of military presence in key sites. We are studying further measures.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On the streets of Brussels, residents expressed grief over the bombings.
JOKI NIGS: After the past months, I believe that we have not really been prepared, but there has always been this sense of dread that something might happen. It honestly really hasn’t sank in yet for me personally, because I never really believed that something could happen here in Brussels. But yeah, it’s clearly here.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama addressed the bombings during his trip to Cuba.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is just one more example of why the entire world has to unite against these terrorists. The notion that any political agenda would justify the killing of innocent people like this is something that’s beyond the pale. We are going to continue with the over 60 nations that are pounding ISIL and going to go after them.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Brussels, Belgium, where we’re joined by Frank Barat, author and activist.
You’re in Brussels right now. Can you talk about this last 24 hours, what has happened and the response to it, Frank?
FRANK BARAT: Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Juan.
First, as an update for you—for you guys, there were reports this morning that Laachraoui, the major suspect, one of the major suspects in these attacks, has been arrested in the suburb of Anderlecht. So it’s not confirmed yet, but there were some reports saying that he had been arrested.
The last 24 hours have been a sort of a blur, I guess. You know, when those type of things happen, it’s very hard to make sense of it all. And I think as much as Belgians and the government and the police maybe expected something to happen, the scale of what happened was totally unexpected, so people were left in shock. And in a way, the response of the politicians and the police forces, etc., took a while to arrive, because I think it was a sort of a big shock for everybody.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is life like right now in Brussels after the attacks, in terms of the situation locally with the schools and other businesses?
FRANK BARAT: OK, I mean, the schools and the businesses and stuff were closed after Paris, so after November and the Bataclan attacks. Brussels was in a sort of total lockdown, with everything pretty much closed, including public transport. It’s different now. Schools are open today. Nurseries are open. A few businesses are open, not all of them. We’re here near, actually, the European—we’re in the European Quarter, very close to where the bomb of the suicide bomber happened in Maelbeek, so there’s lots of police, lots of journalists, as well, lots of cameras and press. There was like a minute of silence before, sort of about 200 yards away from where I am now. So, yeah, lots of police, lots of, you know, military personnel in the streets. A few roads are closed. A few shops are opened. But, you know, I think it’s—people are trying to, as much as they can, live a normal life, even if everybody is talking about what happened yesterday. I was in a taxi before; we talked about it. I went to a shop this morning; we talked about it. So, everybody, even at school this morning, my kids’ school, people were talking about it. So people are in shock still.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the significance of this subway station, Maelbeek, which is right next to the European Union and down the road from the European Parliament, can you talk about that and also the attacks coming as Salah Abdeslam was arrested a few days ago, and someone killed and others rounded up, and what you think is happening here, Frank?
FRANK BARAT: It’s very hard to sort of make any sort of conclusions now, because we don’t have a lot of the facts. What we know is that Paris—the Paris attacks and the Brussels attacks are linked. It’s now been established.
And what we know for sure is that two of the most major hub of life in Brussels and of political life in Brussels, the national airport and the European Quarter, have been attacked. And I guess these targets, these two targets, you know, are a terrorist sort of wish list, on top of a terrorist wish list. You know, the airport is a symbol of internationalism, symbol of Europe, symbol of many nationalities being there. And the European Quarter, of course, is the symbol of the European Union and the European Commission and the rest. So the targets chosen were very powerful, and hence the situation here, hence the fact that even the police and the army, at least from the reports that we heard yesterday, felt completely lost.
But now, I mean, the question is—we have to try to explain how this happened. You know, we’ve had in Brussels security and military personnel in the streets since Charlie Hebdo, so since January 2015, so for more than a year now. Military is all over the place, police. We are on the highest level of security alert. And despite all this, two, again, of the sort of biggest targets have been hit yesterday. So, a lot of questions need to be asked and answered, hopefully.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Frank, one of the points that you’ve made is that you believe that a lot of the radicalization of Muslim youth in Belgium is occurring not through the mosques or through trips to Syria, but through stints in prisons in Belgium. Could you talk about that?
FRANK BARAT: I mean, it’s—I don’t want to generalize, of course, and it’s a mix, a mixture of a lot of things. But if you see—I mean, when I was talking about jails and prison, it’s—the people that did the attacks in Paris, Coulibaly and the two brothers, had spent years in jail, together, actually, in the same jail. They met there. They were radicalized through jail and radicalized also through the people they met—that they met in jail, including a radical Islamist preacher. But it’s a mixture of things. But what we see—and the families have often talked about it—is that they were—you know, they came to jail as maybe small-time delinquents, and they came out completely transformed and radicalized. So sometimes this happened in a couple of years. The family just couldn’t sort of recognize their sons after that. So it’s—obviously, there’s a lot more to it than this, and, you know, radical Islam is also a factor. But we’re talking about sort of a disenfranchised youth in Paris and in Brussels, that is therefore left opened to being led into such a such path by people that actually maybe offer them something that they have never been offered before by sort of society and their peers.
AMY GOODMAN: Frank Barat, you are coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine—that’s Bertrand Russell—and president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. Can you talk about what political ideology is espoused by these young men and what you think is important to bring out?
FRANK BARAT: I mean, what’s important to bring out, I mean, in a way, we have to look at it—we’ve got two options, right? We either continue the status quo, we continue and we follow what sort of our so-called leaders are saying this morning and have been saying for—since even before, but since September the 11th—you know, those people hate our freedoms, they hate our culture, they do not like life the way we do, and they are waiting to go to paradise to meet whatever how many virgins—so we either do this and continue the sort an-eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth war and more sort of revenge-type of things that have led to nothing but more terrorism on the ground—I mean, the end of al-Qaeda and the killing of bin Laden was celebrated, but it only created something even more powerful in ISIS—so, we either do this and we follow sort of a maybe Fox News analogy or Donald Trump analogy, or we decide to stop and start to ask the tough questions and the questions that need to be answered.
We need to—I mean, as an example, in Norway, a country, actually, that most Trump supporters probably don’t know exist, we—after the attacks of Anders Breivik in 2011, which killed more than 70 people, the prime minister of Norway said that Norway’s response to terror would be more openness, greater political participation and more democracy. It’s words we don’t hear nowadays. You know, there’s been—the prime minister of Belgium has announced more security in the streets, more security at airports. So it’s either, you know, they don’t want to look at the real problem, and they don’t want to face their role in it and their responsibility in it, or they’re simply lying. So now the civil society has to be clear that we need answers from them.
And we need to look—I mean, those young Muslims and others, actually, that were radicalized, it didn’t come out of nowhere, right? It came out of radicalization through what’s happening in Syria, which is actually key to understand the creation of ISIS. Syria and what’s happened in Syria in the last few years is a betrayal, a total betrayal, in part of the Western world. You know, people rising to fight its oppressor and the West sort of turning its back on them, allowing slaughter, this created so much anger, so much rancor. And when you put this on top of the failure of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. imperialism, when you put this on top the sort of ambitions of the West in terms of oil, in terms of trade routes and in terms of supporting dictators and Israel, you know, it creates a powerful and very dangerous mixture that then manifests in the form of ISIS or al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organizations. So we have to ask the tough questions. And we need answers.
AMY GOODMAN: Frank, we’re going to break.
FRANK BARAT: We don’t need more blood. We don’t need more wars. But, unfortunately, this—yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and then we’re going to come back to this discussion.
FRANK BARAT: OK.
AMY GOODMAN: Frank Barat is an author and activist based in Brussels, Belgium. He is president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. And we’ll be broadening out the discussion with Joshua Hersh, who is a journalist who reported from Brussels following the Paris attacks in November, wrote a piece headlined "What They Missed: The Anti-Terror Raid That Asked All the Wrong Questions." We’ll also be joined by Yasser Louati, a French-Arab spokesperson for the International Relations Desk of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: The instrumental to "Butter" by A Tribe Called Quest. It was announced today that one of its main rappers, Phife Dawg, passed away at the age of 45. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We have a roundtable to talk about what’s happening in Brussels, Belgium. Here in New York, we’re joined by Joshua Hersh, who is—who reported from Brussels following the Paris attacks in November, wrote a piece headlined "What They Missed: The Anti-Terror Raid That Asked All the Wrong Questions." At the time, he was the BuzzFeed News Michael Hastings fellow.
Well, what did they miss?
JOSHUA HERSH: Well, that was a particular story about a raid that took place in a town in eastern Belgium in January of last year, and it was right in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. And so, it didn’t really get a lot of attention at the time. But what I did is I went back and looked at it, and I noticed that the description of it, the reporting on it, the way that the prosecutor talked about it fit with the pattern that we tend to hear about these raids: Somebody who’s a psychopath of some sort, who goes to Syria, who returns back to Brussels, he’s a very Islamist radical, and he wants to blow himself up and kill everyone. And that made some sense, but there was a third guy in that house. And they grouped him together in that category, but he didn’t really fit there. He seemed to be someone who had—he had never gone to Syria. Everyone I met said he wasn’t radicalized at all. Some people said he may have had no idea what he was doing there. But I think, more likely—
AMY GOODMAN: And this was which raid?
JOSHUA HERSH: This was a raid in a town called Verviers where they killed everyone except him. And this guy jumped out the window, and the prosecutor conceded that he didn’t seem prepared to die like the other two.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And they killed everyone in a fierce firefight, right?.
JOSHUA HERSH: A really—I mean, and you may have heard about the firefight in Saint-Denis after the attacks in Paris. It was exactly the same thing. I mean, it was a many-minutes-long battle.
AMY GOODMAN: But this was after Charlie Hebdo.
JOSHUA HERSH: This is after Charlie Hebdo, so it was much earlier. And what I realize is that people like this guy seem to exist—they come up all the time in these attacks. They’re people who play kind of smaller support roles, who have connections to the people who we think of as the terrorists, through childhood, through growing up in the neighborhoods together, through pretty criminality, but they aren’t terrorists in the way we think of it. And if we realize that actually those are the people we need to focus on, it helps us to understand that the foundation for the terrorism structure that exists in cities like Brussels and in Paris of people who are going abroad and coming back, it may be much more mundane than the sort of high rhetoric we hear about people trying to defeat democracy and they hate our freedoms and things like that. It’s actually people who exist within a sort of lower spectrum of local grievances and criminality and things that actually are maybe easier to deal with, but also more complicated to try to understand.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this neighborhood of Molenbeek that we’ve heard so much about now in recent months, it’s quite distinct from other Arab or Muslim neighborhoods in Europe in that it’s right in the center of Brussels, isn’t it?
JOSHUA HERSH: Yeah, it is, geographically. It’s just two metro stops away from the central station, which was striking to me, because I’m used to thinking of the suburbs in Paris, which are really isolated geographically. Molenbeek is right in the middle of the city, more or less. But it’s still really isolated, and the people who grow up there will tell you that they feel like they can’t really access other parts of the city. The other parts of the city feel like a foreign land to them. They can’t get apartments there. They can’t really get jobs in other places. And so, they’ll—I spoke to one young man who lived there, who told me—he said, "People always say that we refuse to leave, we refuse to integrate." He said, "That’s not the case. We’re not allowed to integrate. We’re not allowed to go elsewhere."
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what he meant. This is Mohamed?
JOSHUA HERSH: This is Mohamed, yeah. And he was, I think, characteristic of some of the people. Mohamed was in the piece I wrote. And he was describing how, among other things, for example—this is a young man who’s very well educated. He’s very smart. He’s studying at one of the higher colleges in the city and actually was able, through his education, to get out. He’s, I think, the only nonwhite Belgian in his school. And he still feels like he can never really be Belgian when he’s at school. He had a job. It was working in a department store. And he told me that it was the best job he could get—I mean, he tried for years to get another job—despite his education, and he speaks English, speaks French. And at this job, he was responsible for folding clothes and cleaning up, and the people he worked with refused to learn his name. They would just call him "worker." And this was a daily reflection of what—how distant he was always going to be from society.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I wanted to take that a little further. What is it, from what you’ve been able to see in terms of the particular social and political realities of Belgium, that has made it such a hotbed for the development of radicalized Muslim fighters now?
JOSHUA HERSH: Well, it’s hard to say. I mean, Belgium—one of the things that happens in Western Europe that we don’t deal with quite as much here in the U.S., although we have all—we have our faults, but integration is really hard to pull off in some of these countries in the Western—in Western Europe. And it has to do with a very strong sense of identity that these countries bring to the table. So when you arrive from North Africa or when you’re the child or grandchild of people who arrive from North Africa, which is really more often the case, you find yourself butting up against this reality, that you just can’t be considered Belgian. It happens in France. It’s going to happen quite a lot, I think, in Germany. And that creates a real tension, and it creates a sense of the ceiling of opportunity for you is rather low.
And I think that that ultimately got exploited by people. I mean, you know, we have to remember, early in the war in Syria, many, many people were going off to Syria to fight, and it was before ISIS. It wasn’t about radicalization. It wasn’t—it was actually, I think, to some extent, welcomed by the Belgian government, which, by its policy, supported the rebels against Assad. It was welcomed by the French government. They sort of turned a blind eye. So you had a huge number of people going rather freely, and that created an opening for people who wanted to exploit it.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Yasser Louati into this conversation, who’s a spokesman for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France. Talk about your response to what just took place—we had you on after the attacks of November in France—and your response to what’s happened over these last months, particularly to the Arab community of France.
YASSER LOUATI: Hi, Amy. It’s again a feeling of déjà vu. I’ve been following the news with the Brussels attacks, and it is the exact same feeling—shock and horror, people crying, people dead, and then we have politicians, you know, trying to advance their agenda on the bodies of our victims. And again, now, we have—we are facing the same problem, and we still refuse to address the question: Why do these things keep happening? What would make someone hate his or her country so much to the point of acting on behalf of a foreign terrorist organization?
So now the feeling is that the governments—I mean, like, I can speak for the French government, especially—four months after the November attacks, is not doing what should be done in addressing the root causes of terrorism. And every single guest, you know, on your program that spoke before me spoke about them. As long as you have foreign domination, imperialistic wars, social injustice, exclusion, strong identity against the minorities, etc., you will definitely push one of the weakest elements in the hands of these terrorist groups. And you don’t need a thousand of them; one or two are enough. And Brussels was just a plain demonstration of it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of what you expect now, considering what happened after the attacks in Paris in terms of dragnets and raids in the Muslim community, what’s your fears?
YASSER LOUATI: We hope the Belgian government will not act like the French government did, meaning brutality against the Muslim population and holding it responsible, directly or indirectly, for what happened. So far, the Belgian government is sending positive signals, and we hope that it won’t go down the path of said brutality against minorities. To give you a clear example of the French failures in the aftermath of the November 13th attacks, so far, after four months, 3,400 raids have been carried against homes, mosques, Muslim restaurants, etc., in total brutality, with a willingness to humiliate people. In the end, only four or five inquiries have been opened against—on the terror charges. This means that for four months you have been terrorizing innocent people and holding them accountable for your own failures. So I hope the Belgian government will look at the French failures and take another path, meaning that—you know, showing more solidarity, more unity in the face of a common threat.
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Who is the Best Democrat to Beat Trump? Dolores Huerta Debates Ex-Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson
On Tuesday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won the Democratic caucuses in Utah and Idaho by a wide margin with about 80 percent support in each state. But Hillary Clinton expanded her delegate lead with a victory in the Arizona primary. Meanwhile, in the Republican race, Texas Senator Ted Cruz won the Utah Republican caucus, while front-runner Donald Trump took Arizona. We host a debate on the two Democratic candidates with Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton, and Rocky Anderson, former Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, who has endorsed Bernie Sanders.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we turn now to the race for the White House. On Tuesday, Bernie Sanders won the Democratic caucuses in Utah and Idaho by a wide margin with about 80 percent support in each state. But Hillary Clinton expanded her delegate lead with a victory in the Arizona primary. Meanwhile, in the Republican race, Ted Cruz won the Utah Republican caucus, while Donald Trump took Arizona.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by two guests. Dolores Huerta, legendary civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez, she has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. And Rocky Anderson, the former Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, who has endorsed Bernie Sanders, in 2012 he ran for president on the Justice Party ticket.
Welcome, both, to Democracy Now! So, last night, Hillary Clinton had a big win in Arizona, and Bernie Sanders had big wins both in Utah and in Idaho. So let’s start in Salt Lake City, in Utah. The significance of the win in Utah, though he certainly still remains behind, hundreds of delegates behind Hillary Clinton, Rocky Anderson?
ROCKY ANDERSON: Yes, Bernie Sanders won about 79 percent of the vote. And the reason we see these enormous wins—it was about the same in Idaho—is because the Democratic parties in Utah and Idaho allowed the independents to also vote in the caucuses, whereas in Arizona it was closed. It was far less democratic and far less reflective of what’s going to happen in the general election, because the independents overwhelmingly will support Bernie Sanders if he is the candidate. And that’s just simply not true if Hillary Clinton is the candidate. Amazingly enough, Amy, in Utah—and it’s the most Republican state in the country; George Bush won by the widest margin in the country in both of his elections in Utah—the polls now show that if Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate, he will beat Trump by 48 to 37 percent, 11 percent margin, whereas Hillary Clinton is barely shown as prevailing over Trump. He is far more electable, Bernie Sanders, against Trump than Hillary Clinton. And I think that what we are seeing now is the independents, who don’t trust Hillary Clinton. Her honesty and trustworthiness numbers are in the toilet among independents, and her favorability ratings, the same. We’ve got to get the message out that Bernie Sanders is the candidate who can beat Trump, if he is the Republican nominee.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rocky Anderson, why do you think there is such a mistrust on the part of independents for Hillary Clinton?
ROCKY ANDERSON: Well, actually, there’s a huge mistrust among all voters, but it’s much greater among independents. And I think it’s because, first of all, she voted for the Iraq War, and she helped George Bush make his phony claims in support of the Iraq War. She supported that vote when she ran against Obama last time around, and now she’s saying, "Oh, it was a mistake." She supports fracking. She’s trying to back off that a little bit. She said the Trans-Pacific Partnership was the gold standard, until she had to face Bernie Sanders and she saw her base of voters disagreed with her on that. She opposed marriage equality until the polls changed. There’s no reason to trust this woman. And that’s showing in all of the polls.
So, I hope that those in the states that are going to be voting will recognize that a vote for Bernie Sanders is going to help the Democrats prevail against Trump, whereas Hillary Clinton is not doing well. And what we’re seeing in Utah, by the way, all these Republicans saying they would support Bernie Sanders over Trump, 48 to 37 percent. And most of the people—well, some 16 percent—are saying they won’t even vote if it’s Hillary Clinton versus Trump. We’re seeing the same thing nationally: huge leads for Bernie Sanders and a 1 percent lead by Hillary. And the trajectory is certainly against Hillary, because her numbers keep getting worse and worse in terms of her favorability ratings and voters’ perception of her honesty and trustworthiness.
AMY GOODMAN: Though the—though Bernie Sanders won in Utah and Idaho, I mean, the lines in Idaho—I think they said they were like a mile long to get into the caucuses. 
,
ROCKY ANDERSON: They were last night. Yeah, I waited two-and-a-half hours, Amy, and it was cold. People were wondering, like, is this—
AMY GOODMAN: But Hillary Clinton swept in the primary in Arizona. Dolores Huerta, you’re a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, a surrogate. You’re traveling the country supporting her. Why?
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, first of all, because I do believe that she is the best candidate. I think she’s competent, she’s intelligent. She’s got incredible amounts of experience. She’s got the skills, the knowledge, everything that we need to have a president of the United States that can get things done. And I think that’s very, very important to really focus on that. Hillary is a doer. She will make things happen.
And I know I just heard the gentleman speaking about how Republicans love Hillary. Well, I know that the Republican Party is doing a lot to make sure that Bernie, you know, gets their support, and they’re spending tons of money supporting Bernie Sanders, because they know that when it comes to November in the general elections, that they know that Bernie Sanders will be a lot easier to beat in the general election than Hillary. And so, I can understand their motivation and their support for Hillary, but I do believe that Hillary is the best candidate.
And it’s interesting when you talk about Arizona, because here you had Raúl Grijalva, who’s a very progressive Latino, and people really loved Raúl Grijalva, but even with Raúl Grijalva’s support and with all the—Bernie had a very strong base in Arizona. I was in Arizona. They did a lot of door-to-door work. They did a lot of mail work, a lot of stuff on the media. And Hillary still won very, very handily in the state of Arizona.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dolores, what about these criticisms of the flip-flops in Hillary Clinton’s position on a variety of issues, like marriage equality and also about—and also in terms of the TPP?
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, I think that we want a president that can be—can evolve in their thinking—I mean, the same thing that we said about Bernie Sanders with his support of the gun lobby, you know? And Bernie has also in the past made some mistakes, as we know. And I think in our last interview, I mentioned his big mistake that he made on immigration reform when he came out against the Ted Kennedy bill in 2007, when we thought we were very, very close to be able to get immigration reform because we had the support of all of the public at that case, after all the immigration rights marches that we had in 2006. So, yes, I think we want a president that is going to evolve in their thinking, and we don’t want anybody that’s stuck in the past. So I have great confidence that Hillary Clinton will be there, and she will react to what the public needs. And she’s always had a lot of compassion.
And I think—the one thing I do want to say, I think, at the end of the day, the person that we want to beat is Donald Trump. And I know that many of the values that Bernie Sanders has and that Hillary has are the same. The big difference between the two candidates is that Hillary is a person that can make things happen. She made things happen even before she was in office, when she was the first lady. She had the first convening—the first convening of a healthcare convention for Latino youth and children. You know, she was able to get—working with Republicans and Democrats, to pass a healthcare bill for children, that we got 8 million children covered under healthcare, even before we had the Affordable Care Act. And then she went forward with that one and passed the CHIP bill, so that we could get even migrant farmworker children and immigrant children covered under healthcare. And so—
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to an interesting poll. Compared to front-runners in previous presidential primary races, Trump and Clinton’s unfavorable ratings, 57 percent and 52 percent, respectively—that’s 57 percent unfavorable for Trump, 52 percent for Clinton—are the highest in CBS News/New York Times polls going back to 1984, when CBS first asked the question—both of their unfavorabilities. But I want to ask Mayor Rocky Anderson, former Mayor Anderson of Salt Lake City, the point that Dolores Huerta makes that you want a politician and a leader who’s evolving, who’s willing to change her mind?
ROCKY ANDERSON: Well, yeah, she does it right when she’s running for election. Bernie Sanders has been there his entire career to help promote the interests of the public. He’s against fracking. Hillary Clinton is not. Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, leaned toward approving the XL pipeline. And the corruption issues—we know that her brother received hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a pardon for a couple of his clients. You know, this whole Clinton dynasty dynamic is so anathema to most people, and certainly among independents. And by the way, independents are going to control the outcome of this election. And they don’t trust Hillary Clinton. Her unfavorability ratings are horrible among them. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate running for president right now that has a positive net favorability rating. That’s just amazing to me that people don’t realize this. And when you say we want somebody who can beat Trump, the only person, according to the polls, that has a good lead over Trump in poll after poll after poll is Bernie Sanders. And Hillary Clinton could easily lose this race, especially given the trajectory that we’re seeing in terms of people’s lack of trust for her. And it’s on so many issues.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask—
ROCKY ANDERSON: She was on Wall Street, pocketing $400,000—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Rocky Anderson, if I could just interrupt for a second—
ROCKY ANDERSON: —speaking to Goldman Sachs.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —because we only have about a minute left. I wanted to ask Dolores Huerta—Dolores, you’ve been associated with Democratic Socialists of America. Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist. Your response to the fact that an independent and avowed socialist is running for president and racking up so many votes, but you’re supporting his opponent?
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, first, I want to respond to the issue that the gentleman just mentioned. I want to say this. I think when you assign to Hillary Clinton what her brother did, that is so sexist. And it’s so typical of that always to blame women for something that somebody else did. You know, women have to clean up the mess the way Obama had to clean up George Bush’s mess.
ROCKY ANDERSON: No, no, no.
DOLORES HUERTA: And so, I just want—I just want to—I just want to point that out.
ROCKY ANDERSON: It was her brother getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Bill Clinton to grant a pardon to his clients. This is—you know, it’s like Chelsea Clinton.
DOLORES HUERTA: Bill Clinton—wait a minute. I want to stick by what I said.
ROCKY ANDERSON: She gets a fake job with NBC, $600,000 a year.
DOLORES HUERTA: I want to stick by what I said.
AMY GOODMAN: Unfortunately, we have 10 seconds to go, Dolores.
DOLORES HUERTA: Well, again, I think Bernie has a strong message. I think that Hillary can get it—can make it happen. When it comes to being able to have affordable college for students, I think Hillary can make it happen. To improve the Affordable Care Act, Hillary can make it happen. That is the big difference between the two candidates.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’ll have to leave it there. I thank you both for being with us, Dolores Huerta, civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, and former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.
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The GOP Response to Belgium? Torture & the "Patrolling and Securing" of Muslim Neighborhoods
Following the Belgium attacks, Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz issued a statement saying, "We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Meanwhile, Donald Trump urged the waterboarding of captured Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam despite international laws against torture. "I would do a lot more than waterboarding," Trump said. We get a response from our three guests: Frank Barat in Brussels, journalist Joshua Hersh and Yasser Louati of the the Collective Against Islamophobia in France.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response, Yasser, to our own politicians here in the United States. Following the attacks in Belgium, Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz, who’s a senator from Texas, issued a statement saying, quote, "We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Later Tuesday, Senator Cruz spoke to CNN.
SEN. TED CRUZ: If you have a neighborhood where there is a high level of gang activity, the way to prevent it is you increase the law enforcement presence there, and you target the gang members to get them off the streets. ... I am talking about an area where there is a higher incidence of radical Islamic terrorism. If you look at Europe, Europe’s failed immigration laws have allowed a massive influx of radical Islamic terrorists into Europe, and they are now in isolated neighborhoods where radicalism festers.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Senator Cruz speaking on CNN. Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, was asked on The Today Show about what Belgium officials should do to get information from Salah Abdeslam, who was captured last week.
DONALD TRUMP: I’m not looking to break any news on your show, but frankly, the waterboarding, if it was up to me, and if we changed the laws and—or have the laws, waterboarding would be fine. And if they want to do—as long as it’s with—because, you know, we work within laws. They don’t work within laws. They have no laws. We work within laws. The waterboarding would be fine. And if they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding. You have to get the information from these people. And we have to be smart, and we have to be tough, and we can’t be soft and weak, which is what we are right now.
AMY GOODMAN: So that was Donald Trump and, before him, Ted Cruz, calling for more waterboarding and for the monitoring of and police going into Muslim communities in the United States. Yasser Louati, your response?
YASSER LOUATI: First, Europe is not waiting for Ted Cruz to give us policy advice. If he wants to patrol neighborhoods, ask him to go patrol neighborhoods where you have a high rate of white-collar criminality, who have put millions of Americans out of their homes and lost their jobs. Let’s start with that.
Second, we have this idiot you call Donald Trump. What does he know about foreign policy? How about ending the drone war? How about ending the war against terrorism? How about paying for the consequences of the collapse of Iraq, that saw the emergence of the so-called Islamic State. So, every single war abroad carried by superpowers is—they’re directly translated into terrorist attacks. And to quote one of your CIA officials, you know, who said, being a—"Terrorist attacks is a small price for being a superpower." So how about addressing that?
When it comes to policies, yes, we need to address our policies, increasing dramatically inequalities and the exclusion of millions of people. And again, it doesn’t take more than 10 individuals to carry out massive-scale terrorist attacks. But unfortunately for America, you have two of the dumbest politicians running for the presidency, and that should be a shame for every single politician in America.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Josh Hersh, I saw you smiling as you saw some of those videos. Your response to the presidential candidates here?
JOSHUA HERSH: Well, I mean, it’s obviously an emotional and somewhat ludicrous response, but at the same time there is a law enforcement response. And we have to recognize that, that there is a role for law enforcement. But I mean law enforcement instead of the military, law enforcement in the way that we’re starting to learn we have to apply law enforcement in smart and engaged ways in our American cities. I mean, Ted Cruz mentioned if we had a neighborhood that was full of gangs, well, we wouldn’t send tanks down the streets. We wouldn’t blow up apartment buildings. We would try and figure out smart, intelligent ways to get information there, to work with neighbors to build relationships with people who might actually be able to inform, under the assumption that most of the residents of that neighborhood don’t want the gangs there, either.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Frank Barat, your response to listening to the presidential candidates in the United States? Actually, the New York police commissioner, Bratton, lashed out against the patrolling of Muslim communities. But your response to Cruz and to Trump, Frank, in Brussels?
FRANK BARAT: I mean, it’s ridiculous on so many levels. Maybe they should read the reports by intelligence agencies that have shown—have showed that the use of torture is actually pretty useless in getting sort of information, or good and solid information, out of people or terrorists. So, again, I mean, those people and most mainstream politicians are not interested by the facts, right? Otherwise, they would completely change their policies.
I wanted to say something about Paris and France. And the interesting and the scary thing is that the state of emergency and the repression of the sort of, you know, Muslim and Arab community—most of them, the majority, being French—has also been used now against social movements, against students, against unions. So they’re using—it’s a bit like, you know, the "shock doctrine," as Naomi Klein would put it. You know, they’re using this terrible thing that happened in Paris and using this to actually repress not only the Muslim community or the Arab community or the youth, but also any sort of political movement that intends on changing the narrative and changing the power in place. So, this is something we’ve seen happening over and over around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you all for being with us. Frank Barat, speaking to us from Brussels, Belgium, he is an author and activist, was the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, president of the Palestine Legal Action Network in Belgium. And I want to thank Joshua Hersh for joining us. We’ll link to your piece. He reported from Brussels following the Paris attacks in November, wrote a piece headlined "What They Missed: The Anti-Terror Raid That Asked All the Wrong Questions." At the time, he was BuzzFeed News Michael Hastings fellow. And thanks so much to Yasser Louati, joining us from Paris, spokesperson and head of the International Relations Desk for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the primaries and the caucuses in the United States—Utah, Arizona, Idaho. Stay with us.
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The People of Puerto Rico vs. the Hedge Funds: Supreme Court Hears Case on PR's Bankruptcy Laws
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments to decide whether Puerto Rico can avoid financial collapse by restructuring a portion of its massive $70 billion debt. The issue before the court was a bankruptcy law Puerto Rico’s Legislature passed in 2014 that would permit the island’s public utilities to restructure about $20 billion those entities owe to bondholders. Known as the Recovery Act, that law was struck down last year after several major bondholders sued successfully in federal court to oppose it. Juan González writes about the case in his new column for the New York Daily News, "Puerto Rico’s future lies in the hands of the Supreme Court."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Before we go to the results of the primaries and caucuses, Juan, you wrote a very interesting piece in the New York Daily News, "Puerto Rico’s future lies in the hands of the Supreme Court."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, well, amidst all of the news about the terrorist attack yesterday, not much attention was paid to the fact that the Supreme Court held a hearing and oral arguments on a case involving Puerto Rico, specifically related to its financial problems and its bankruptcy, because in 2014 the Legislature of Puerto Rico passed its own restructuring or bankruptcy act. This was in response to the fact that the federal government did not allow Puerto Rico to use federal bankruptcy laws in a law back in 1984, and the Puerto Rican government, facing major financial problems, passed its own bankruptcy law. But several hedge funds that held bonds, Puerto Rico bonds, then went to court in 2014, and last year a U.S. district court overturned the Puerto Rico law, said that the government of Puerto Rico did not have the constitutional right to have its own bankruptcy law. That was the appealed to the Court of Appeals in Boston, that upheld it, the original decision. And then in—so the hearing before the Supreme Court was over the Puerto Rico government’s appeal of the striking down of its bankruptcy law.
And it was a very interesting hearing, first of all, because in this particular case only seven justices will rule. Not only, obviously, is Justice Scalia no longer on the court, but Justice Alito has recused himself, presumably because he has—he and his wife have investments in Puerto Rico bonds. So he has recused himself, so only seven justices are hearing this case and heard the oral arguments yesterday between the government of Puerto Rico and the bondholders’ lawyers. And interestingly, the four liberal justices, who now have—in this particular case, have a majority, seem to be, in their comments, sympathetic to Puerto Rico’s position. Especially Justice Sotomayor and Justice Ginsburg questioned whether, when Congress eliminated the ability of Puerto Rico to use federal bankruptcy laws, it intended not to allow it to have any kind of bankruptcy laws, which is really the issue at hand.
So you have this situation now that the court will have to rule before June—or by the end of June on this case and presumably may be more sympathetic than Congress, because Congress still hasn’t acted. Remember, Speaker Ryan promised in December that he’d have a bill in the House passed by the House by March 31st. Well, Congress goes out of session today for the Easter recess, doesn’t come back 'til April 12th or 13th, I think, and Ryan has now postponed his promised legislation ’til then. And even then, it's still not clear that the Republicans will approve a bankruptcy provision for Puerto Rico.
So this still leaves the government of Puerto Rico facing massive debt payments—$440 million, I think, due on May 1st—and unable to pay. The secretary of education of Puerto Rico just sent a letter to Speaker Ryan yesterday saying, "Look, we don’t have money in our schools. We haven’t paid for our security guards now for months, and the security guard company has threatened to pull all of its security guards out of the public schools." There’s an influenza epidemic. The Zika virus is—there are many cases in Puerto Rico. There’s not enough money to provide proper healthcare for the public school students. All of these things, the government says, we need immediate action from the American government. It looks like the Supreme Court may be the only branch of the government that will actually act very soon.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, while you were in Puerto Rico last week, students were protesting throughout Puerto Rico, saying, "You’re paying more money on the interest of the debt than investing in our education." Well, we’re certainly going to continue to cover this, and we’ll link to your piece at democracynow.org.
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Headlines:Brussels in Mourning After 31 Killed in Attacks; Manhunt Underway for Suspect

Belgium has begun three days of mourning after at least 31 people died and more than 200 others were injured Tuesday in bombings targeting the Brussels Airport and a crowded subway station near the headquarters of the European Union. ISIS took responsibility for the Brussels bombings and claimed more would follow. The attacks took place just days after authorities arrested Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the November Paris attacks that killed 130 people. A massive manhunt is now underway for a 24-year-old Belgian man named Najim Laachraoui, who is suspected of being involved in both Tuesday’s attack as well as the Paris bombings. Belgian media has also reported two brothers, Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui, as being involved in the bombings. Both are believed to have blown themselves up in the attack. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel condemned the explosions.
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel: "I really want to say, with the greatest force, to those who have chosen to support a barbaric enemy of liberty, democracy and fundamental values—to say to them that we will remain united and assembled, that today we’ll be fully mobilized, with a profound pain in our hearts but with full and whole determination to act to protect liberty, to protect our way of life."
We’ll have more on the Brussels attacks after headlines.
TOPICS:
Islamic State
NYPD Chief Bratton Slams Ted Cruz's Call to "Patrol" Muslim Neighborhoods
In response to Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels, Republican presidential candidate and Texas Senator Ted Cruz said, "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Among those to criticize his comments was New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton.
Commissioner William Bratton: "I would remind the senator he lives in the United States of America. And the statements he made today is why he’s not going to become president of this country, because we don’t need a president that doesn’t respect the values that form the foundation of this country."
Republican front-runner Donald Trump called for "closing up" U.S. borders and doubled down on his vow to bring back torture. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton warned against insulting Muslim Americans in the wake of the attacks, while her rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, said the United States is fighting ISIS, not Islam.
Sen. Bernie Sanders: "We are fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion."
TOPICS:
Donald Trump
Republican Party
Sanders Wins Utah, Idaho; Clinton & Trump Take Arizona

Bernie Sanders won the Democratic caucuses in Utah and Idaho by a wide margin with about 80 percent support in each state. Clinton and Trump both won their party’s respective Arizona primaries. Cruz defeated Trump in the Utah Republican caucus. We’ll have more on the results later in the broadcast.
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Bernie Sanders
Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump
Utah
Idaho
Arizona
2016 Election
Obama Compares U.S. and Cuba to Estranged "Brothers" in Address to Cuban People

President Obama has wrapped up his historic visit to Cuba after delivering an address to the Cuban people. It was the first-ever live address by a sitting U.S. president to the people of Cuba.
President Barack Obama: "I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. ... In many ways, the United States and Cuba are like two brothers who have been estranged for many years, even as we share the same blood. We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans. Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave owners."
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Cuba
Obama Attends Baseball Game in Cuba; Kerry Holds Historic Meeting with FARC Rebels

Obama attended a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and a Cuban team in Havana Tuesday with Cuban President Raúl Castro. Also present at the game were members of Colombia’s FARC rebel group, including leader Rodrigo Londoño. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry held an unprecedented meeting with FARCleaders in Havana. The FARC and Colombian government are said to be nearing an agreement after three years of talks to end the five-decade-long conflict. Obama has now arrived in Argentina, where he will seek to renew ties with the country under its new pro-corporate, right-wing President Mauricio Macri.
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Cuba
Colombia
8-Member Supreme Court Hears Key Birth Control Case

The now-eight-member Supreme Court has deadlocked in a 4-4 tie for the first time since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last month. The tie left intact the decision of a lower appeals court in a bankruptcy case. Senate Republicans have vowed to block Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace Scalia. This comes as the court is set to hear arguments today in a case concerning birth control coverage under Obama’s signature healthcare law. The Obama administration has already exempted churches and other houses of worship from a rule requiring employer health plans to provide birth control coverage to employees without a copay. For religiously affiliated nonprofits, they simply need to notify the health insurer or the government that they object to providing birth control coverage, at which point the government takes over and the nonprofit has no further role. But a number of nonprofits said the mere act of communicating their objection would make them complicit in providing contraception, and therefore violate their religious freedom. If the court deadlocks in the case, it would leave intact appeals court rulings that have largely supported the birth control mandate.
TOPICS:
Supreme Court
Birth Control
NYC: Mexican Activist Launches Hunger Strike to Demand Peña Nieto's Indictment

A Mexican activist has launched a hunger strike here in New York City to call for the indictment of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and the return of the 43 students missing in Mexico for 18 months. Leobardo Santillán has launched similar actions in Dallas and Houston. He began his fast Monday in a plaza near the United Nations. Ahead of his fast, Santillán spoke in Times Square, where he went to show support for Antonio Tizapa, the father of one of the missing students, who ran Sunday’s New York City Half Marathon. Santillán explained the reason for his hunger strike.
Leobardo Santillán: "We are taking action because of the double standard in Washington, that has privatized, and they are pleased the corporations are in Mexico. And really, it’s a double standard of the United Nations. They have become an organization of delinquents, an organization of mercenaries, that serves the corporations. And we are very bothered because of the U.S. double standard, to say they are going to get rid of ISIS, and we have ISISover here in Los Pinos [the Mexican presidential residence]. The Mexican government and the cartels are working together, and the new cartel is the cartel of Peña Nieto."
TOPICS:
Mexico
United Nations
Tennessee: Law Criminalizing Pregnant Drug Addicts to Expire
In a victory for reproductive rights in Tennessee, a law that criminalizes people who use drugs during pregnancy, allowing them to be jailed for up to 15 years, will expire July 1, after an effort to extend the measure failed in a state House subcommittee. Alabama and Wisconsin have prosecuted women under similar measures as part of what advocates say is an increasing criminalization of pregnancy.
TN Anti-Transgender Bathroom Bill Dies; NC Lawmakers Seek to Block Anti-Discrimination Measures

In other news from Tennessee, a bill banning transgender students from using bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity has died in a House committee after transgender students packed the meeting to protest it. This comes after Charlotte, North Carolina, passed an ordinance protecting the right of transgender people to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. But North Carolina lawmakers are now taking action not only to overturn that ordinance but to ban local governments statewide from prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people in public accommodations.
TOPICS:
LGBT
ConAgra Becomes Latest Food Giant to Announce Labeling for GMOs
ConAgra has become the latest food giant to announce plans to use labels disclosing the presence of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, in foods throughout the United States. Campbell Soup Co., General Mills and Kellogg Company have also announced plans to apply the labels in order to comply with a new Vermont law requiring GMO labeling that will take effect in July.
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GMO
Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Dies at 46

And former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has died of a rare and aggressive form of cancer at the age of 46. Ford is best known for admitting to using crack cocaine "probably in one of my drunken stupors." A number of his exploits were caught on video, including a profanity-laced tirade about how he wanted to murder an unidentified person, as well as homophobic remarks and lewd comments about a female opponent. Ford refused to step down, and the Toronto City Council voted to curb his powers. He filed to run for re-election but dropped his bid after his cancer diagnosis in 2014. He leaves behind a wife and two children.
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