Governo canadense negou asilo à família de menino que se afogou na Turquia

No mais recente episódio da crise global da migração, as fotografias do corpo sem vida de um menino sírio que apareceu numa praia turca, depois que seu barco afundou no Mediterrâneo tornaram-se virais. O menino Aylan Kurdi de três anos de idade, seu irmão de cinco anos Galip e sua mãe, Rehan, afogou-se terça-feira como a família ao tentarem chegar a Grécia em uma eventual tentativa de juntar com parentes no Canadá, onde se tinha negado o pedido de asilo. A tia do menino, Teema Kurdim, que é cabeleireira em Vancouver, disse ao National Post, "Estava tentando patrociná-los, eu tenho meus amigos e meus vizinhos que me ajudaram com os depósitos bancários, mas não conseguimos tirá-los de lá e é por isso que eles entraram no barco." O governo do Canadá recebido fortes críticas por não aceitar mais sírios fugindo da guerra Civil Síria. Em Janeiro, o Ministro da imigração, Chris Alexander comprometeu-se que Canadá iria receber 10.000 sírios durante três anos. Mas novos números do governo mostram que, a partir do final de julho, Canadá teria recebido apenas 1.002 sírios.

In the latest from the global migration crisis, the photos of the lifeless body of a Syrian boy who washed up on a Turkish beach after his boat sank in the Mediterranean have gone viral. Three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rehan, drowned Tuesday as the family attempted to reach Greece in an eventual bid to join relatives in Canada where their asylum application had been denied. The boy’s aunt, Teema Kurdim, who is a hairdresser in Vancouver, told the National Post, "I was trying to sponsor them, and I have my friends and my neighbors who helped me with the bank deposits, but we couldn’t get them out, and that is why they went in the boat." Canada has come under intense criticism for not accepting more Syrians fleeing the Syrian civil war. In January, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander pledged Canada would resettle 10,000 Syrians over three years. But new government figures show that, as of late July, Canada had welcomed only 1,002 Syrians. 

Fonte: Democracy Now

The Secret History of How Cuba Helped End Apartheid in South Africa

As the world focuses on Tuesday’s historic handshake between President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro, we look back at the pivotal role Cuba played in ending apartheid and why Castro was one of only five world leaders invited to speak at Nelson Mandela’s memorial. In the words of Mandela, the Cubans 'destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor ... [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.' Historian Piero Gleijeses argues that it was Cuba’s victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. We speak to Gleijeses about his new book, "Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991," and play archival footage of Mandela meeting Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to the historic moment Tuesday when President Barack Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raúl Castro as both men participated in the memorial service for anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela in South Africa. The White House said the handshake was unscripted. It marked the first time a U.S. president has shaken hands with a Cuban leader since 2000. In Washington, Republicans expressed outrage over the exchange. During a hearing in the House, Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida sparred with Secretary of State John Kerry, who said it did not represent any change in U.S. policy toward Cuba.

REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN: Mr. Secretary, sometimes a handshake is just a handshake. But when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raúl Castro, it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant. Raúl Castro uses that hand to sign the orders to repress and jail democracy advocates. In fact, right now, as we speak, Cuban opposition leaders are being detained, and they’re being beaten while trying to commemorate today, which is International Human Rights Day. They will feel disheartened when they see these photos. Could you please tell the Cuban people living under that repressive regime that a handshake nonwithstanding, the U.S. policy toward the cruel and sadistic Cuban dictatorship has not weakened? Thank you.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Ladies and gentlemen, today is about honoring Nelson Mandela. And the president is at an international funeral with leaders from all over the world. He didn’t choose who’s there. They’re there to honor Mandela. And we appreciate that people from all over the world and from all different beliefs and walks of life who appreciated Nelson Mandela and/or were friends of his came to honor him. And I think, as the president said—I urge you to go read his speech, or if you didn’t see it or haven’t read it, because the president said in his speech today honoring Nelson Mandela, he said, "We urge leaders to honor Mandela’s struggle for freedom by upholding the basic human rights of their people"—

REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN: And would you say Raúl Castro is upholding their basic human rights?

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: No, absolutely not.

AMY GOODMAN: The uproar over President Obama’s handshake with President Raúl Castro has drawn attention to the close relationship between the South African anti-apartheid movement and Cuba. In 1991, Nelson Mandela visited Cuba with then-President Fidel Castro. This is a clip when they first met.

NELSON MANDELA: Before we say anything, you must tell me when you are coming to South Africa. You see—no, just a moment, just a moment, just a moment.

PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO: [translated] The sooner the better.

NELSON MANDELA: And we have had a visit from a wide variety of people. And our friend, Cuba, which had helped us in training our people, gave us resources to keep current with our struggle, trained our people as doctors, and SWAPO, you have not come to our country. When are you coming?

PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO: [translated] I haven’t visited my South African homeland yet. I want it, I love it as a homeland. I love it as a homeland as I love you and the South African people.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more on Cuba’s key role in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, we’re joined now in Washington, D.C., by Piero Gleijeses, professor of American foreign policy at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He uses archival sources from the United States, South Africa and Cuba to provide an unprecedented look at the history in his latest book, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991_. You can read the book’s prologuepretoria on our website at democracynow.org.

Professor Gleijeses, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this key relationship, why Cuba was so seminal to the anti-apartheid movement.

PIERO GLEIJESES: Cuba is the only country in the world that sent its soldiers to confront the army of apartheid and defeated the army of apartheid, the South African army, twice—in 1975, 1976, and in 1988. And in Havana, when he visited Havana in July 1991—I won’t to be able to repeat exactly the words of Nelson Mandela, but Nelson Mandela said, "The Cuban victory," referring to the Cuban victory over the South Africans in Angola in 1988, "destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor and inspired the fighting masses of South Africa. Cuito Cuanavale," which is a victory of the Cubans in Angola, "is the turning point in the liberation of our continent and of my people from the scourge of apartheid." So, in—

AMY GOODMAN: For a country that knows very little, Professor Gleijeses, about the Cuban experience, its military intervention in Angola, can you step back for a moment and explain what President Castro—what Fidel Castro and these Cuban soldiers did?

PIERO GLEIJESES: Sure. In 1975, you have the decolonization of Angola, Portuguese colony slated to become independent on November 11, 1975. There is a civil war between three movements: one supported by the Cubans, the Cubans that supported over the years in its struggle against the Portuguese; the other two supported by South Africa and the United States. And the movement supported by the Cubans, the MPLA, which is in power in Angola today, having won free election, was on the verge of winning the civil war. And it was on the verge of winning the civil war—a paraphrase from what the CIA station chief in Angola at the time told me—because it was the most committed movement with the best leaders, the best program. And in order to prevent their victory, the victory of the MPLA, in October 1975, urged by Washington, South Africa invaded. And the South African troops advanced on Luanda, and they would have taken Luanda and crushed the MPLA if Fidel Castro had not decided to intervene. And between November 1975 and April 1976, 3,6000 Cuban soldiers poured into Angola and pushed the South Africans back into Namibia, which South Africa ruled at the time.

And this had an immense psychological impact—talking of South Africa—in South Africa, both among whites and among blacks. And the major black South African newspaper, The World, wrote in an editorial in February 1976, at a moment in which the South African troops were still in Angola, but the Cubans were pushing them back—they had evacuated central Angola. They were in southern Angola. The writing was on the wall. And this newspaper, The World, wrote, "Black Africa is riding the crest of a wave generated by the Cuban victory in Angola. Black Africa is tasting the heady wine of the possibility of achieving total liberation." And Mandela wrote that he was in jail in 1975 when he learned about the arrival of the Cuban troops in Angola, and it was the first time then a country had come from another continent not to take something away, but to help Africans to achieve their freedom.

This was the first real contribution of Cuba to the liberation of South Africa. It was the first time in living memory that the White Giants, the army of apartheid, had been forced to retreat. And they had retreated because of a non-white army. And in a situation of internal colonialism, this is extremely important. And after that, the Cubans remained in Angola to protect Angola from the South African army. Even the CIA acknowledged that the Cubans were the guarantee for the independence of Angola. And in Angola, they trained the ANC, the African National Congress, of Mandela. And very close relations developed between the two. I don’t know if you want me to go on and talk about the next moment, or you want to interrupt me with some questions.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yes, Professor Piero Gleijeses, if you could speak specifically about the role of Che Guevara in Africa?

PIERO GLEIJESES: Yeah, Che Guevara had nothing to do with South Africa. The role—

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In Africa, though, in the Congo and Angola.

PIERO GLEIJESES: Yes, I understand. The role of Che Guevara in 1964, 1965—in late 1964, Che Guevara was sent by Fidel Castro as Fidel Castro’s top representative to Sub-Saharan Africa—it was the first visit by a top Cuban leader to Sub-Saharan Africa—because the Cubans believed that there was a revolutionary situation in central Africa, and they wanted to help. And Che Guevara established relations with a number of revolutionary movements. One of them, the MPLA, the Movement for the Liberation of Angola, that was based in Congo-Brazzaville. And in 1965, the first Cubans fought in Angolan territory together with the MPLA. But the major role played by Che Guevara is that he led a group of Cubans into Congo, the former Belgian Congo, where there was a revolt by the followers of the late Lumumba against the central government enforced by the United States. And the United States had created an army of white mercenaries, the White Giants, mainly South African and Rhodesians and then Europeans, to crush this revolt. And the Cubans went at the request of the rebels, at the request of the government of Egypt, Algeria and Tanzania to help the rebels.

AMY GOODMAN: Uh—

PIERO GLEIJESES: And—yes?

AMY GOODMAN: Professor, I wanted to go back to Angola—

PIERO GLEIJESES: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —and this time bring in former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. This is Kissinger explaining why the U.S. was concerned about the Cuban troops that Fidel Castro had sent to fight in Angola. After Kissinger, you’ll hear Fidel Castro himself.

SECRETARY OF STATE HENRY KISSINGER: We thought, with respect to Angola, that if the Soviet Union could intervene at such distances, from areas that were far from the traditional Russian security concerns, and when Cuban forces could be introduced into distant trouble spots, and if the West could not find a counter to that, that then the whole international system could be destabilized.

PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO: [translated] It was a question of globalizing our struggle vis-à-vis the globalized pressures and harassment of the U.S. In this respect, it did not coincide with the Soviet viewpoint. We acted, but without their cooperation. Quite the opposite.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Fidel Castro and, before that, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from the film CIA & Angolan Revolution. Professor Gleijeses?

PIERO GLEIJESES: OK, two points. One, Kissinger didn’t mention that the Cubans intervened in response to the South African invasion and that the United States had connived with the South Africans and urged the South Africans to invade. So here, there is a rather important issue of chronology.

The second point is that in the last volume of his memoirs, Kissinger, who in general is a very arrogant person, acknowledges that he made a mistake. And the mistake he made was in saying that the Cubans had intervened as proxies of the Soviet Union. And he writes in his memoirs that actually it had been a Cuban decision and that the Cubans had intervened and confronted the Soviets with a fait accompli. And then he asks a question in his memoirs: Why did Castro take this decision? And Kissinger’s answer is that Fidel Castro was probably—I’m quoting—"was probably the most genuine revolutionary leader then in power." So, there are two Kissingers, if you want, and there is the Kissinger of his memoirs, where he says a few things that actually are true.

AMY GOODMAN: Piero Gleijeses, what do you make of the furor right now? You just heard Congressmember Lehtinen from Florida attacking John Kerry, you know, the significance of the handshake between President Obama and President Raúl Castro right there at the Soweto stadium at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

PIERO GLEIJESES: I think it’s pathetic and reflects the ethics of the United States and the policy of the United States. Obama, President Obama, was received with applause in South Africa when he spoke, etc., because he is the first black president of the United States. But the role of the United States as a country, as a government, past governments, in the struggle for liberation of South Africa is a shameful role. In general, we were on the side of the apartheid government. And the role of Cuba is a splendid role in favor of the liberation. This handshake—going beyond this particular issue, the handshake was long overdue. The embargo is absurd, is immoral. And we have here a president who bowed to the king of South Africa—of Saudi Arabia, I’m sorry, which certainly is no democracy. I mean, even Obama should know it. So it’s an absurd situation. The problem with Obama is that his speeches are good, his gestures are good, but there is no follow-up. So, unfortunately, it is just a gesture, a long-overdue gesture that does not change a shameful U.S. policy.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Piero Gleijeses, before we conclude, let’s turn to Fidel Castro speaking in South Africa on his visit in 1998.

PRESIDENT FIDEL CASTRO: [translated] Let South Africa be a model of a more just and more humane future. If you can do it, we will all be able to do it.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Fidel Castro speaking in 1998 in South Africa, with former president, who just passed away, Nelson Mandela applauding him. Piero Gleijeses, we just have a minute. Could you talk about what most surprised you in your research in the Cuban archives about this history?

PIERO GLEIJESES: Well, there are a lot of things. One is the independence of Cuban policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. There are clashes between Fidel Castro and Gorbachev. There are clashes between the leaders of the Cuban military mission in Angola and the Soviet leaders, which I quote actually in my book and which make really fascinating reading. This is one thing.

But another thing that impressed me very much is the respect with which the Cubans treated the Angolan government. This is very important, because the Angolan government really depended on Cuba for its survival, the presence of the Cuban troops as a shield against South African invasion, which was a constant threat, and the very large and generous technical assistance that Cuba was providing to Angola. And the tendency would be to treat a government that’s so dependent with some kind of superiority. And this is something I’ve never found in international relations, this kind of respect with which Cuba treated what, by all objective counts, should have been a client government. And it’s particularly striking for someone who studies the United States and lives in the United States, because seriously the United States government does not treat government that depends on Washington with much respect.

AMY GOODMAN: Piero Gleijeses, thank you so much for being with us.

PIERO GLEIJESES: My pleasure.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor of American foreign policy at SAIS, the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. We will post the prologue of your book on our website. The book is just out; it’s called Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991, just published by University of North Carolina Press. Go to democracynow.org to read that prologue.

Report Finds Police Worldwide Criminalize Dissent, Assert New Powers in Crackdown on Protests

In a major new report, the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations details a global crackdown on peaceful protests through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report, "Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World," warns of a growing tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right — the right to protest — as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain. The report’s name comes from a police report filed in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets of Toronto to nonviolently protest the G-20 summit. A senior Toronto police commander responded to the protests by issuing an order to "take back the streets." Within a span of 36 hours, more than 1,000 people — peaceful protesters, journalists, human rights monitors and downtown residents — were arrested and placed in detention. We are joined by three guests: the report’s co-editor, Abby Deshman, a lawyer and program director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association; Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union; and Hossam Bahgat, an Egyptian human rights activist and the founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/10/report_finds_police_worldwide_criminalize_dissent

NSA Whistleblowers: "All U.S. Citizens" Targeted By Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers

A leaked court order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon customers. The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on an "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers, along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the contents of the communications.

We discuss the news with three guests: Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and two former National Security Agency employees turned whistleblowers: Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating the Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. "Where has the mainstream media been? These are routine orders, nothing new," Drake says. "What’s new is we’re seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records from any company."

Binney, who worked at nearly 40 years at the NSA and resigned shortly after the 9/11 attacks, says: "NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it’s been all the companies, not just one. And I basically looked at that and said: If Verizon got one, so did everybody else. Which means that they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information of all U.S. citizens."

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A leaked top-secret order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon Business customers. Last night The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on a, quote, "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the content of the communications. The order expressly compels Verizon to turn over records for both international and domestic records. It also forbids Verizon from disclosing the existence of the court order. It is unclear if other phone companies were ordered to hand over similar information.

AMY GOODMAN: According to legal analysts, the Obama administration relied on a controversial provision in the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 215, that authorizes the government to seek secret court orders for the production of, quote, "any tangible thing relevant to a foreign intelligence or terrorism investigation." The disclosure comes just weeks after news broke that the Obama administration had been spying on journalists from the Associated Press and James Rosen, a reporter from Fox News.

We’re now joined by two former employees of the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating the Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. William Binney worked for almost 40 years at the NSA. He resigned shortly after the September 11th attacks over his concern over the increasing surveillance of Americans. We’re also joined in studio here by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

First, for your legal opinion, Shayana, can you talk about the significance of what has just been revealed?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. So I think, you know, we have had stories, including one in USA Today in May 2006, that have said that the government is collecting basically all the phone records from a number of large telephone companies. What’s significant about yesterday’s disclosure is that it’s the first time that we’ve seen the order, to really appreciate the sort of staggeringly broad scope of what one of the judges on this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved of, and the first time that we can now confirm that this was under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which, you know, has been dubbed the libraries provision, because people were mostly worried about the idea that the government would use it to get library records. Now we know that they’re using it to get phone records. And just to see the immense scope of this warrant order, you know, when most warrants are very narrow, is really shocking as a lawyer.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, some might argue that the Obama administration at least went to the FISA court to get approval for this, unlike the Bush administration in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. Well, we don’t know if the Bush administration was, you know, getting these same orders and if this is just a continuation, a renewal order. It lasted for only—it’s supposed to last for only three months, but they may have been getting one every three months since 2006 or even earlier. You know, when Congress reapproved this authority in 2011, you know, one of the things Congress thought was, well, at least they’ll have to present these things to a judge and get some judicial review, and Congress will get some reporting of the total number of orders. But when one order covers every single phone record for a massive phone company like Verizon, the reporting that gets to Congress is going to be very hollow. And then, similarly, you know, when the judges on the FISA court are handpicked by the chief justice, and the government can go to a judge, as they did here, in North Florida, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, who’s 73 years old and is known as a draconian kind of hanging judge in his sentencing, and get some order that’s this broad, I think both the judicial review and the congressional oversight checks are very weak.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, this is just Verizon, because that’s what Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian got a hold of. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other orders for the other telephone companies, right?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Like BellSouth, like AT&T, etc.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: As there have been in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Yeah, those were—those were companies mentioned in that USA Today story in 2006. Nothing about the breadth of this order indicates that it’s tied to any particular national security investigation, as the statute says it has to be. So, some commentators yesterday said, "Well, this order came out on—you know, it’s dated 10 days after the Boston attacks." But it’s forward-looking. It goes forward for three months. Why would anyone need to get every record from Verizon Business in order to investigate the Boston bombings after they happened?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, William Binney, a decades-long veteran of the NSA, your reaction when you heard about this news?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, this was just the FBI going after data. That was their request. And they’re doing that because they—if they want to try to get it—they have to have it approved by a court in order to get it as evidence into a courtroom. But NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it’s been all the companies, not just one. And I basically looked at that and said, well, if Verizon got one, so did everybody else, which means that, you know, they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information on all U.S. citizens. That’s one of the main reasons they couldn’t tell Senator Wyden, with his request of how many U.S. citizens are in the NSA databases. There’s just—in my estimate, it was—if you collapse it down to all uniques, it’s a little over 280 million U.S. citizens are in there, each in there several hundred to several thousand times.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, let’s go to Senator Wyden. A secret court order to obtain the Verizon phone records was sought by the FBI under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was expanded by the PATRIOT Act. In 2011, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned about how the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

SEN. RON WYDEN: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned, and they are going to be angry. And they’re going asked senators, "Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn’t you know before you voted on it?" The fact is, anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act, and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified. It’s almost as if there were two PATRIOT Acts, and many members of Congress have not read the one that matters. Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Ron Wyden. He and Senator Udall have been raising concerns because they sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee but cannot speak out openly exactly about what they know. William Binney, you left the agency after September 2001, deeply concerned—this is after you’d been there for 40 years—about the amount of surveillance of U.S. citizens. In the end, your house was raided. You were in the shower. You’re a diabetic amputee. The authorities had a gun at your head. Which agency had the gun at your head, by the way?

WILLIAM BINNEY: That was the FBI.

AMY GOODMAN: You were not charged, though you were terrorized. Can you link that to what we’re seeing today?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, it’s directly linked, because it has to do with all of the surveillance of the U.S. citizens that’s been going on since 9/11. I mean, that’s—they were getting—from just one company alone, that I knew of, they were getting over 300 million call records a day on U.S. citizens. So, I mean, and when you add the rest of the companies in, my estimate was that there were probably three billion phone records collected every day on U.S. citizens. So, over time, that’s a little over 12 trillion in their databases since 9/11. And that’s just phones; that doesn’t count the emails. And they’re avoiding talking about emails there, because that’s also collecting content of what people are saying. And that’s in the databases that NSA has and that the FBI taps into. It also tells you how closely they’re related. When the FBI asks for data and the court approves it, the data is sent to NSA, because they’ve got all the algorithms to do the diagnostics and community reconstructions and things like that, so that the FBI can—makes it easier for the FBI to interpret what’s in there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration after he blew the whistle on mismanagement and waste and constitutional violations at the NSA. Thomas Drake, your reaction to this latest revelation?

THOMAS DRAKE: My reaction? Where has the mainstream media been? This is routine. These are routine orders. This is nothing new. What’s new is we’re actually seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records of—from any company that exists in the United States.

I think what people are now realizing is that this isn’t just a terrorist issue. This is simply the ability of the government in secret, on a vast scale, to collect any and all phone call records, including domestic to domestic, local, as well as location information. We might—there’s no need now to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Let’s just call it the surveillance court. It’s no longer about foreign intelligence. It’s simply about harvesting millions and millions and millions of phone call records and beyond. And this is only just Verizon. As large as Verizon is, with upwards of 100 million subscribers, what about all the other telecoms? What about all the other Internet service providers? It’s become institutionalized in this country, in the greatest of secrecy, for the government to classify, conceal not only the facts of the surveillance, but also the secret laws that are supporting surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Drake, what can they do with this information, what’s called metadata? I mean, they don’t have the content of the conversation, supposedly—or maybe we just don’t see that, that’s under another request, because, remember, we are just seeing this one, for people who are listening and watching right now, this one request that is specifically to—and I also want to ask you: It’s Verizon Business Services; does that have any significance? But what does it mean to have the length of time and not the names of, but where the call originates and where it is going, the phone numbers back and forth?

THOMAS DRAKE: You get incredible amounts of information about subscribers. It’s basically the ability to forward-profile, as well as look backwards, all activities associated with those phone numbers, and not only just the phone numbers and who you called and who called you, but also the community of interests beyond that, who they were calling. I mean, we’re talking about a phenomenal set of records that is continually being added to, aggregated, year after year and year, on what have now become routine orders. Now, you add the location information, that’s a tracking mechanism, monitoring tracking of all phone calls that are being made by individuals. I mean, this is an extraordinary breach. I’ve said this for years. Our representing attorney, Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project, we’ve been saying this for years and no—from the wilderness. We’ve had—you’ve been on—you know, you’ve had us on your show in the past, but it’s like, hey, everybody kind of went to sleep, you know, while the government is harvesting all these records on a routine basis.

You’ve got to remember, none of this is probable cause. This is simply the ability to collect. And as I was told shortly after 9/11, "You don’t understand, Mr. Drake. We just want the data." And so, the secret surveillance regime really has a hoarding complex, and they can’t get enough of it. And so, here we’re faced with the reality that a government in secret, in abject violation of the Fourth Amendment, under the cover of enabling act legislation for the past 12 years, is routinely analyzing what is supposed to be private information. But, hey, it doesn’t matter anymore, right? Because we can get to it. We have secret agreements with the telecoms and Internet service providers and beyond. And we can do with the data anything we want.

So, you know, I sit here—I sit here as an American, as I did shortly after 9/11, and it’s all déjà vu for me. And then I was targeted—it’s important to note, I—not just for massive fraud, waste and abuse; I was specifically targeted as the source for The New York Times article that came out in December of 2005. They actually thought that I was the secret source regarding the secret surveillance program. Ultimately, I was charged under the Espionage Act. So that should tell you something. Sends an extraordinarily chilling message. It is probably the deepest, darkest secret of both administrations, greatly expanded under the Obama administration. It’s now routine practice.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Shayana, I’d like to ask you, specifically that issue of the FISA court also authorizing domestic surveillance. I mean, is there—even with the little laws that we have left, is there any chance for that to be challenged, that the FISA court is now also authorizing domestic records being surveiled?

AMY GOODMAN: FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I mean, you know, two things about that. First, the statute says that there have to be reasonable grounds to think that this information is relevant to an investigation of either foreign terrorist activity or something to do with a foreign power. So, you know, obviously, this perhaps very compliant judge approved this order, but it doesn’t seem like this is what Congress intended these orders would look like. Seems like, on the statute, that Congress intended they would be somewhat narrower than this, right?

But there’s a larger question, which is that, for years, the Supreme Court, since 1979, has said, "We don’t have the same level of protection over, you know, the calling records—the numbers that we dial and how long those calls are and when they happen—as we do over the contents of a phone call, where the government needs a warrant." So everyone assumes the government needs a warrant to get at your phone records and maybe at your emails, but it’s not true. They just basically need a subpoena under existing doctrine. And so, the government uses these kind of subpoenas to get your email records, your web surfing records, you know, cloud—documents in cloud storage, banking records, credit records. For all these things, they can get these extraordinarily broad subpoenas that don’t even need to go through a court.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana, talk about the significance of President Obama nominating James Comey to be the head of the FBI—

SHAYANA KADIDAL: One of the—

AMY GOODMAN: —and who he was.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. One of the grand ironies is that Obama has nominated a Republican who served in the Bush administration for a long time, a guy with a reputation as being kind of personally incorruptable. I think, in part, he nominated him to be the head of the FBI, the person who would, you know, be responsible for seeking and renewing these kind of orders in the future, for the next 10 years—he named Comey, a Republican, because he wanted to, I think, distract from the phone record scandal, the fact that Holder’s Justice Department has gone after the phone records of the Associated Press and of Fox News reporter James Rosen, right?

And you asked, what can you tell from these numbers? Well, if you see the reporter called, you know, five or six of his favorite sources and then wrote a particular report that divulged some embarrassing government secret, that’s—you know, that’s just as good as hearing what the reporter was saying over the phone line. And so, we had this huge, you know, scandal over the fact that the government went after the phone records of AP, when now we know they’re going after everyone’s phone records, you know. And I think one of the grand ironies is that, you know, he named Comey because he had this reputation as being kind of a stand-up guy, who stood up to Bush in John Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004 and famously said, "We have to cut back on what the NSA is doing." But what the NSA was doing was probably much broader than what The New York Times finally divulged in that story in December ’05.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, will Glenn Greenwald now be investigated, of The Guardian, who got the copy of this, so that they can find his leak, not to mention possibly prosecute him?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Oh, I think absolutely there will be some sort of effort to go after him punitively. The government rarely tries to prosecute people who are recognized as journalists. And so, Julian Assange maybe is someone they try to portray as not a journalist. Glenn Greenwald, I think, would be harder to do. But there are ways of going after them punitively that don’t involve prosecution, like going after their phone records so their sources dry up.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw an astounding comment by Pete Williams, who used to be the Pentagon spokesperson, who’s now with NBC, this morning, talking—he had talked with Attorney General Eric Holder, who had said, when he goes after the reporters—you know, the AP reporters, the Fox reporter—they’re not so much going after them; not to worry, they’re going after the whistleblowers. They’re trying to get, through them, the people. What about that, that separation of these two?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I’ll give you an example from the AP. They had a reporter named, I believe, John Solomon. In 2000, he reported a story about the botched investigation into Robert Torricelli. The FBI didn’t like the fact that they had written this—he had written this story about how they dropped the ball on that, so they went after his phone records. And three years later, he talked to some of his sources who had not talked to him since then, and they said, "We’re not going to talk to you, because we know they’re getting your phone records."

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us. Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights. William Binney and Thomas Drake both worked for the National Security Agency for years, and both ultimately resigned. Thomas Drake was prosecuted. They were trying to get him under the Espionage Act. All of those charges were dropped. William Binney held at gunpoint by the FBI in his shower, never prosecuted. Both had expressed deep concern about the surveillance of American citizens by the U.S. government. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for our hours of interviews with them, as well.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to be looking at top-secret trade deals the U.S. is involved with, and then we’ll be interviewing the new mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. Stay with us.

A Massive Surveillance State: Glenn Greenwald Exposes Massive NSA Program Collecting Calls, Emails

The National Security Agency has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies — including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the top-secret program, codenamed PRISM, after they obtained several slides from a 41-page training presentation for senior intelligence analysts. It explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs. "Hundreds of millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions – in fact, billions of people around the world – essentially rely on the Internet exclusively to communicate with one another," Greenwald says. "Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chat and social media messages and emails, what you’re really talking about is the full extent of human communication." This comes after Greenwald revealed Wednesday in another story that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. "They want to make sure that every single time human beings interact with one another … that they can watch it, and they can store it, and they can access it at any time."

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin with news that the National Security Agency has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the top secret program on Thursday, codenamed PRISM, after they obtained several slides from a 41-page training presentation for senior intelligence analysts. It explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs that allow them to track a person or trace their connections to others. One slide lists the companies by name and the date when each provider began participating over the past six years. But an Apple spokesperson said it had "never heard" of PRISM and added, quote, "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any agency requesting customer data must get a court order," they said. Other companies had similar responses.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, columnist, attorney, and blogger for The Guardian, where he broke his story in—that was headlined "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal." This comes after he revealed Wednesday in another exclusive story that the "NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers." According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the scope of the NSA phone monitoring includes customers of all three major phone networks—Verizon, AT&T and Sprint—as well as records from Internet service providers and purchase information from credit card providers. Glenn Greenwald is also author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. He’s joining us now via Democracy—video stream.

Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Lay out this latest exclusive that you have just reported in The Guardian.

GLENN GREENWALD: There are top-secret NSA documents that very excitingly describe—excitedly describe, boast about even, how they have created this new program called the PRISM program that actually has been in existence since 2007, that enables them direct access into the servers of all of the major Internet companies which people around the world, hundreds of millions, use to communicate with one another. You mentioned all of those—all those names. And what makes it so extraordinary is that in 2008 the Congress enacted a new law that essentially said that except for conversations involving American citizens talking to one another on U.S. soil, the NSA no longer needs a warrant to grab, eavesdrop on, intercept whatever communications they want. And at the time, when those of us who said that the NSA would be able to obtain whatever they want and abuse that power, the argument was made, "Oh, no, don’t worry. There’s a great check on this. They have to go to the phone companies and go to the Internet companies and ask for whatever it is they want. And that will be a check." And what this program allows is for them, either because the companies have given over access to their servers, as the NSA claims, or apparently the NSA has simply seized it, as the companies now claim—the NSA is able to go in—anyone at a monitor in an NSA facility can go in at any time and either read messages that are stored in Facebook or in real time surveil conversations and chats that take place on Skype and Gmail and all other forms of communication. It’s an incredibly invasive system of surveillance worldwide that has zero checks of any kind.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, there is a chart prepared by the NSA in the top-secret document you obtained that shows the breadth of the data it’s able to obtain—email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, Skype chats, file transfers, social networking details. Talk about what this chart reveals.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think the crucial thing to realize is that hundreds of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions—in fact, billions of people around the world essentially rely on the Internet exclusively to communicate with one another. Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chats and social media messages and emails, what you’re really talking about is the full extent of human communication. And what the objective of the National Security Agency is, as the stories that we’ve revealed thus far demonstrate and as the stories we’re about to reveal into the future will continue to demonstrate—the objective of the NSA and the U.S. government is nothing less than destroying all remnants of privacy. They want to make sure that every single time human beings interact with one another, things that we say to one another, things we do with one another, places we go, the behavior in which we engage, that they know about it, that they can watch it, and they can store it, and they can access it at any time. And that’s what this program is about. And they’re very explicit about the fact that since most communications are now coming through these Internet companies, it is vital, in their eyes, for them to have full and unfettered access to it. And they do.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, as you reported, the PRISM program—not to be confused with prison, the PRISM program—is run with the assistance of the companies that participate, including Facebook and Apple, but all of those who responded to a Guardian request for comment denied knowledge of any of the program. This is what Google said, quote: "We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege [that] we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, first of all, after our story was published, and The Washington Post published more or less simultaneously a similar story, several news outlets, including NBC News, confirmed with government officials that they in fact have exactly the access to the data that we describe. The director of national intelligence confirmed to The New York Times, by name, that the program we identify and the capabilities that we described actually exist. So, you have a situation where somebody seems to be lying. The NSA claims that these companies voluntarily allow them the access; the companies say that they never did.

This is exactly the kind of debate that we ought to have out in the open. What exactly is the government doing in how it spies on us and how it reads our emails and how it intercepts our chats? Let’s have that discussion out in the open. To the extent that these companies and the NSA have a conflict and can’t get their story straight, let them have that conflict resolved in front of us. And then we, as citizens, instead of having this massive surveillance apparatus built completely secretly and in the dark without us knowing anything that’s going on, we can then be informed about what kinds of surveillance the government is engaged in and have a reasoned debate about whether that’s the kind of world in which we want to live.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, on Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein told reporters in the Senate gallery that the government’s top-secret court order to obtain phone records on millions of Americans is, quote, "lawful."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the FISA court under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act, therefore it is lawful.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Dianne Feinstein. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, the fact that something is lawful doesn’t mean that it isn’t dangerous or tyrannical or wrong. You can enact laws that endorse tyrannical behavior. And there’s no question, if you look at what the government has done, from the PATRIOT Act, the Protect America Act, the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, that’s exactly what the war on terror has been about.

But I would just defer to two senators who are her colleagues, who are named Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. They have—are good Democrats. They have spent two years now running around trying to get people to listen to them as they’ve been saying, "Look, what the Obama administration is doing in interpreting the PATRIOT Act is so radical and so distorted and warped that Americans will be stunned to learn" — that’s their words — "what is being done in the name of these legal theories, these secret legal theories, in terms of the powers the Obama administration has claimed for itself in how it can spy on Americans."

When the PATRIOT Act was enacted—and you can go back and look at the debates, as I’ve done this week—nobody thought, even opponents of the PATRIOT Act, that it would ever be used to enable the government to gather up everybody’s telephone records and communication records without regard to whether they’ve done anything wrong. The idea of the PATRIOT Act was that when the government suspects somebody of being involved in terrorism or serious crimes, the standard of proof is lowered for them to be able to get these documents. But the idea that the PATRIOT Act enables bulk collection, mass collection of the records of hundreds of millions of Americans, so that the government can store that and know what it is that we’re doing at all times, even when there’s no reason to believe that we’ve done anything wrong, that is ludicrous, and Democratic senators are the ones saying that it has nothing to do with that law.

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Glenn, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he stood by what he told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in March, when he said that the National Security Agency does "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. Let’s go to that exchange.

SEN. RON WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
JAMES CLAPPER: No, sir.
SEN. RON WYDEN: It does not?
JAMES CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s the questioning of the head of the national intelligence, James Clapper, by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: OK. So, we know that to be a lie, not a misleading statement, not something that was sort of parsed in a way that really was a little bit deceitful, but an outright lie. They collect—they collect data and records about the communications activities and other behavioral activities of millions of Americans all the time. That’s what that program is that we exposed on Wednesday. They go to the FISA court every three months, and they get an order compelling telephone companies to turn over the records, that he just denied they collect, with regard to the conversations of every single American who uses these companies to communicate with one another. The same is true for what they’re doing on the Internet with the PRISM program. The same is true for what the NSA does in all sorts of ways.

We are going to do a story, coming up very shortly, about the scope of the NSA’s spying activities domestically, and I think it’s going to shock a lot of people, because the NSA likes to portray itself as interested only in foreign intelligence gathering and only in targeting people who they believe are guilty of terrorism, and yet the opposite is true. It is a massive surveillance state of exactly the kind that the Church Committee warned was being constructed 35 years ago. And we intend to make all those facts available so people can see just how vast it is and how false those kind of statements are.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein. Speaking on MSNBC, she said the leak should be investigated and that the U.S. has a, quote, "culture of leaks."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: There is nothing new in this program. The fact of the matter is that this was a routine three-month approval, under seal, that was leaked.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Should it be—should the leak be investigated?
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: I think so. I mean, I think we have become a culture of leaks now.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Dianne Feinstein, being questioned by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Glenn Greenwald, your final response to this? And sum up your findings. They’re talking about you, Glenn.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington. It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we’ve had to learn what our government is doing.

But look, what she’s doing is simply channeling the way that Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power, which is, if you expose what it is that we’re doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we’re doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have been about. It’s what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It’s to create a climate of fear so that nobody will bring accountability to them.

It’s not going to work. I think it’s starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can’t be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we’re certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they’ve been doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, we want to thank you for being with us. Is this threat of you being investigated going to deter you in any way, as you continue to do these exclusives, these exposés?

GLENN GREENWALD: No, it’s actually going to embolden me to pursue these stories even more aggressively.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist and blogger for The Guardian newspaper. We’ll link to your exposés on our website, "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal", as well as "NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily".

This is Democracy Now!,democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, a Democracy Now! exclusive. President Obama just announced that the U.S. did kill, over the last years, four Americans. We’re going to speak with the father of Anwar al-Awlaki. His name is Nasser al-Awlaki. We’re speaking to him in Sana’a, Yemen. He’s also a grandfather of another of the victims, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. He was born in Denver. He was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen. Stay with us.

12 Arrested at Anti-Guantánamo Protest in New York

In New York City, 12 people were arrested Monday at a die-in on the steps of the federal courthouse in response to the more than two-month-long hunger strike by prisoners at Guantánamo. The military has admitted more than half of Guantánamo’s 166 prisoners are on hunger strike, with 16 being force-fed, a tactic widely viewed as torture. Defense lawyers say nearly all prisoners are on hunger strike. On Monday, protesters with the group Witness Against Torture wore orange jumpsuits and lay on the steps of the courthouse holding signs with the names of Guantánamo prisoners who have died waiting for release. Democracy Now! spoke to Jeremy Varon and Bill Ofenloch.

Jeremy Varon: "We’re here today at the federal courthouse in New York City in response to the hunger strike that’s currently taking place at Guantánamo. More than half the prisoners at the camp are on hunger strike, some since February 6, protesting their indefinite detention without charge or trial."

Bill Ofenloch: We’re trying to get Guantánamo closed and the prisoners who are free to be released to actually be released. The majority of them are there without any charges, and they’re cleared for release."

Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013): Tariq Ali on Late British PM’s Legacy from Austerity to Apartheid

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died at the age of 87. Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving three terms in office. Known as the "Iron Lady," Thatcher became synonymous with austerity economics as a close ally of President Ronald Reagan. She famously declared to critics of neoliberal capitalism that "there is no alternative." Her long-running battle with striking British miners dealt a major blow to the union movement in Britain and ushered in a wave of privatizations. On foreign policy, Thatcher presided over the Falklands War with Argentina, provided critical support to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and famously labeled Nelson Mandela a "terrorist" while backing South Africa’s apartheid regime. We go to London to discuss Thatcher’s legacy with Tariq Ali, British-Pakistani political commentator, writer, activist and editor of the New Left Review. [includes rush transcript]

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the breaking news of the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the age of 87. She was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving three terms in office. Known as the "Iron Lady," Margaret Thatcher became synonymous with austerity economics as a close ally of President Ronald Reagan. She famously declared to critics of neoliberal capitalism that, quote, "There is no alternative." Her long-running battle with striking British miners dealt a major blow to the union movement in Britain and ushered in a wave of privatizations. On foreign policy, Thatcher presided over the Falklands War with Argentina and provided critical support to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

To discuss Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, we go now to London, where we’re joined by Tariq Ali, British-Pakistani political commentator, writer, activist and editor of the New Left Review.

In these last minutes we have, Tariq, talk about the legacy of, talk about the tenure of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

TARIQ ALI: Amy, there’s no doubt about it. She transformed British politics. She basically won over the opposition. Her legacy is still very much in force, so she’s not at all dead in terms of what is going on in this country. Her policies are being carried out by the coalition government. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, New Labour prime ministers, were completely enthralled to her. She was the first person invited by Blair to 10 Downing Street when he became prime minister, to show how much he owed her, and Gordon Brown did exactly the same thing. So we have had a continuum, that the process Margaret Thatcher started off was carried on by Blair, who used rhetoric on the Iraq, Kosovo and Afghan wars very similar to the rhetoric she used on the Falklands. And this policy has continued. So her legacy is effectively to have wrecked Britain economically and to have made it a total vassal state of the American empire.

AMY GOODMAN: Tariq, can you talk about the legacy of Thatcherism for the working class in Britain?

TARIQ ALI: Well, basically, she took on the workers’ movement, which had become very strong. Trade unions were very powerful in this country, and they were effectively challenging capital by demanding a share of the take, and being quite successful. The miners’ union, one of the most respected unions in the country, challenged her. She organized the state, the use of the police, use of the secret services, to defeat them. And she did it, and she referred to union militancy as "the enemy within." She was very hot on enemies, either abroad or at home. And that phrase, "the enemy within," has been used subsequently against dissidents of other sorts by her successors.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about her foreign policy, from the Falklands War—and we only have a minute—to her support of the apartheid regime, calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist?

TARIQ ALI: Well, she did call Nelson Mandela a terrorist, but one should remember that the Western governments as a whole were not at all friendly to the ANC, sustained and maintained apartheid, with a few exceptions in Scandinavia, throughout it. And Thatcher was upfront about it. Her foreign policy was deeply conservative and reactionary, and that foreign policy has not changed since she was forced out on Europe. Europe is still a big, big divisive issue in the country and within the Conservative Party as a whole.

And so, on every level, Amy, domestic level, international level, Thatcherism continues. One shouldn’t imagine that it’s over. And I hate to say this, but the fact that we haven’t come up, or no one has—neither the center-left or anyone else has managed to come up with an alternative to the Wall Street crash of 2008, does indicate that there was some truth in her statement that there is no alternative, at least as far as the mainstream is concerned.

AMY GOODMAN: Tariq Ali, I want to thank you for being with us, British-Pakistani political commentator, historian, activist, filmmaker, novelist and editor of the New Left Review, joining us from London on this late breaking news that the former prime minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, has died at the age of 87.

That does it for our show. Tune in tomorrow. Will Potter of Green is the New Red will be on to talk about how over a dozen state legislatures have introduced bills to target people who go undercover to expose farm animal abuse.

Woody Guthrie at 100

"No Work, No Shopping, Occupy Everywhere": May Day Special on OWS, Immigration, Labor Protests

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

GUESTS:

Chris Hedges, senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and was part of a team of reporters that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He is the author of a number of books, including Death of the Liberal Class and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress. His most recent article for TruthDig is called "Why I’m Suing Barack Obama."

Marina Sitrin, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Globalization and Social Change at the City University of New York. She is author of the bookHorizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. She is researching global mass movements from Spain to Egypt to Greece. Most recently she co-authored the forthcoming Occupying Language, part of the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series published by Zuccotti Park Press.

Amin Husain, editor of Tidal magazine and a key facilitator of the Occupy movement in August 2011, leading the first General Assembly in Zuccotti Park. He is a co-founder of the Plus Brigade, which has been central to the weekly Friday protests down at the Stock Exchange. Amin Husain is a lawyer who left his job at a corporate law firm in Manhattan representing financial institutions to become an artist and activist.

Teresa Gutierrez, co-coordinator for the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights.

Ryan Devereaux, former Democracy Now! correspondent, now with The Guardian.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/1/no_work_no_shopping_occupy_everywhere#transcript

CISPA Critics Warn Cybersecurity Bill Will Increase Domestic Surveillance and Violate Privacy Rights

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A legislative battle has erupted on Capitol Hill over a controversial House bill that critics say would allow private internet companies to hand over troves of confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency and other agencies. In a letter on Monday, 18 Democratic House members warned that unless specific limitations were put in place, the bill, quote, "would, for the first time, grant non-civilian federal agencies, such as the National Security Agency, unfettered access to information about Americans’ internet activities and allow those agencies to use that information for virtually any purpose." The bill is titled the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or simply CISPA.
Backers of the legislation say it is needed to help private companies crack down on foreign entities—including the Chinese and Russian governments—committing online economic espionage that is stealing trade secrets from U.S. corporations and the government. But the bill has faced widespread criticism from online privacy advocates and even the Obama administration.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, the White House threatened to veto the legislation, saying, quote, "The sharing of information must be conducted in a manner that preserves Americans’ privacy, data confidentiality and civil liberties and recognizes the civilian nature of cyberspace. Cybersecurity and privacy are not mutually exclusive," they said. Critics also say the bill would essentially legalize a secret domestic surveillance program already being run by the National Security Agency.
Last week, a former top NSA official appeared on Democracy Now! to give his first TV interview. William Binney said domestic surveillance is already expanding under the Obama administration.

WILLIAM BINNEY: Actually, I think the surveillance has increased. In fact, I would suggest that they’ve assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens with other U.S. citizens.

AMY GOODMAN: How many?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Twenty trillion.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do you get the number 20 trillion?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Just by the numbers of telecoms, it appears to me, from the questions that CNET posed to them in 2006, and they published the names and how—what the responses were. I looked at that and said that anybody that equivocated was participating, and then estimated from that the numbers of transactions. That, by the way, estimate only was involving phone calls and emails. It didn’t involve any queries on the net or any assembles—other—any financial transactions or credit card stuff, if they’re assembling that. I do not know that.

AMY GOODMAN: National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney. To see the full interview with him, you can go to our website at democracynow.org.
We’re joined now by two guests. Michelle Richardson is with us in Washington, D.C., legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. Jacob Appelbaum is back with us again here in Democracy Now!’s studios in New York, computer security researcher, developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a system that enables its users to communicate anonymously on the internet.
Michelle, let’s begin with you. Talk about this legislation, this bill that is expected to be voted on this week, debates beginning today.
MICHELLE RICHARDSON: CISPA, the bill that will come up later today and probably be voted on tomorrow, will create an exception to all existing privacy laws so that companies can share very sensitive and personal information directly with the government, including military agencies like the National Security Agency. And then, once the government has it, they can repurpose it and use it for a number of things, including an undefined national security use. The violations of privacy are just amazing under this bill, and it’s even invoked a veto threat from the Obama administration.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And specifically in terms of the new powers that this grant, what does this do to existing laws that protect the privacy of American citizens and requires the government to get even FISA warrants when it wants to actually do surveillance in particular situations?
MICHELLE RICHARDSON: Right. Current law now creates a presumption of privacy in our phone calls, emails and internet records, and they say that companies have to keep them private unless there’s an emergency or the government serves them with a subpoena or warrant. And in one fell swoop, this bill will say that these privacy laws simply no longer apply. So, all of the process afforded under those laws, the protections, the congressional reporting, the role of a judge, all of that is swept away in one bill and will allow companies to decide how much and what type of information they want to turn over to the government. And it can include incredibly sensitive information, like the content of emails or internet use history. There’s no obligation on the companies to extract the personally identifiable information. And that’s the important thing to remember here, that information sharing may be a good thing. There are ways that it could be done, where companies would share technical data with the government that wouldn’t invade privacy. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This bill is incredibly broad and will allow the companies to turn over even the personally identifiable information.
AMY GOODMAN: The chief author of CISPA, Republican Congress Member Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a former FBI agent, when he introduced the bill in November, predicted privacy advocates would oppose the legislation.

REP. MIKE ROGERS: I expect that some will allege that the bill creates a new wide-ranging government surveillance program. This is false. The bill has nothing to do with government surveillance. It simply provides clear authority to the private sector, not the government, to identify and share cyber threat information. And remember what the threat is: up to a trillion dollars a year in lost intellectual property. The one thing that has set America apart from every other nation is our innovation in our intellectual property. If we lose that game, we lose this fight.

Moreover, the bill only permits sharing of cybersecurity threat information when a company is engaged in the protection of its own systems or networks or those of the corporate customer. Our bill does not require anyone to provide information to the government. Any sharing of information with the government is completely voluntary every step of the way. A government surveillance program that doesn’t require any information privileged to the government shouldn’t be a very good surveillance program. Now, I couldn’t believe it. As an old FBI guy, we would say that is an unworkable event.

AMY GOODMAN: House Intelligence chair, Michigan’s Republican Congress Member Mike Rogers, unveiling the legislation at a meeting hosted by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a lobbying powerhouse. The association’s president, Michael Powell, praised the legislation. Powell is the former chair of the Federal Communications Commission and the son of former secretary of state, General Colin Powell.

MICHAEL POWELL: It’s not an exaggeration to say, when it comes to cybersecurity, what you don’t know can hurt you. And one of the most valuable aspects of this legislation is it deals with the most critical problem when industries and government face a challenge like this: inadequate information flow. You can’t fix what you don’t know. You can’t work in cooperation and coordination with others when you’re not able to effectively share information. I think the legislation we’ll hear about today takes a dramatic and important step.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Michael Powell, formerly chair of the FCC. Michelle Richardson, your response?
MICHELLE RICHARDSON: Well, the advocacy and civil liberties community is united in their opposition to this bill. We all believe that this is an unjustifiable infringement on privacy. And while the sponsors speak about limitations, they’re just not in the bill. We’re being asked to just trust the companies and the NSA to work in secret and protect our privacy. And we know from the warrantless wiretapping scandal after 9/11, when these groups are allowed to work in private like this, they’re going to invade our privacy.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Michelle Richardson, there’s been apparently a series of amendments proposed, some of them by liberal Democrats like John Lewis and others who are hoping to make portions of this legislation more palatable. Your sense of these attempts at soothing the rough edges of this legislation, but leaving it essentially intact?
MICHELLE RICHARDSON: Well, last night, the House Rules Committee decided which amendments would actually get a vote on the floor tomorrow, and they decided that amendments offered by Mr. Lewis or Jan Schakowsky or some of the other progressive members simply will not get a floor vote. And these were incredibly important amendments that would have squarely made Congress decide whether the military and the NSA would be able to collect internet records on innocent Americans. But Congress will not be able to vote on that this week, and instead they’ll just have to vote no on the entire bill, to send the message that they don’t want the military surveilling internet.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, the legislation was co-sponsored by Democratic Congress Member Dutch Ruppersberger, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He has denied the bill would increase surveillance.

REP. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER: What the bill basically does is—in 1947, there was a bill, the intelligence bill, that really created what the rules or regulations were for CIA, NSA and all of the intelligence agencies. And what this bill basically does is allow a government entity—in most situations, the NSA here—it allows them to give information to the private sector. The 1947 bill says, if it’s classified information, you cannot give it to the other side. And how the bill really came together was this DIB pilot program. It’s a pilot program that allowed the NSA, working with the providers, the—I believe it was AT&T, it was Verizon and Qwest—and allowed them to give that information over to the private companies to work to protect themselves. That worked extremely well. And as a result of that, we kind of—we kind of modeled our bill after that.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, interestingly, the Obama administration at this point says that they would veto this, but that’s Democratic Congress Member Dutch Ruppersberger. And among those who are supporting the legislation are major companies, ones that have actually opposed SOPA, the Stop Online [Piracy] Act—for example, Google, and then there’s Facebook and these other companies. What do they have to gain, and what are the companies that are supporting it?
MICHELLE RICHARDSON: Last I heard, all of the major corporations that are involved with the internet are supporting this CISPA, the Rogers bill. And frankly, they’re going to make out like bandits. Under this bill, if they share our private information, they get complete protection from liability. Consumers will no longer be able to assert their privacy rights that exist under current law and hold them accountable in court. They can’t be prosecuted by the government like they currently can for illegal wiretapping or sharing information. They’re getting FOIA exemptions, so that no one will ever know about these breaches or the things that they share with the government. They’re really walking away here with maximum flexibility to share our personal information with minimum accountability and no enforcement to make sure that they are not oversharing and infringing on our privacy.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Michelle Richardson, what are the prospects of this legislation passing, first in the House, and obviously then it would also have to pass in the Senate? And how would the White House react to its possible passage?
MICHELLE RICHARDSON: Well, we were very, very pleased to see that the Obama administration issued a veto threat yesterday and said, in very clear terms, that they believe that control of the internet needs to remain civilian, and the military shouldn’t be routinely collecting information on innocent people. We expect the bill to probably pass tomorrow, but we expect a strong no vote. And even just a month ago, if this bill had been brought to the floor, it probably would have sailed through without much amendment at all. But the online organizing and the organizing by the advocacy community over the last month has really changed the game, and the members are more educated. And I think we’re going to see a very strong no vote from both Democrats and Republicans tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Richardson—
MICHELLE RICHARDSON: Now, the Senate has its own alternative and is slated to vote on their bill in May. And it does include more protections, so it will come down to a conference between the House and the Senate to see which bill prevails.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. When we come back, Jacob Appelbaum is back with us, computer security researcher. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

General Strike in Spain: Report from Madrid on Growing Anti-Austerity Protests

Workers in Spain staged a general strike Thursday, shutting down factories and parts of the transportation sector and holding massive marches. The strike was called by two major trade unions to protest labor rules that make it less costly for employers to hire and fire people in a country where unemployment is near 23 percent. We speak to former Democracy Now! producer Maria Carrion, an independent freelance journalist based in Madrid, Spain.

AMY GOODMAN: Workers in Spain staged a general strike on Thursday, shutting down factories and parts of the transportation sector, holding massive marches. The strike was called by two major trade unions to protest labor rules that make it less costly for employers to hire and fire people in a country where unemployment is near 23 percent. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is expected to deliver a budget today that includes some $26 billion in spending cuts and tax hikes.

To talk more about the situation in Spain, we’re joined by Maria Carrion. She is an independent freelance journalist based in Madrid. She’s a former Democracy Now! producer

It’s great to have you back, Maria.

MARIA CARRION: Great to be here, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you flew in just before the major strikes hit the airlines of Spain. Talk about what’s happening there.

MARIA CARRION: Well, in November, we got a new conservative government, so the Socialist Zapatero was ousted from power. And he didn’t even run for a third term, because his ratings were so bad because of the deep social cuts that he had to enact. And this was all because of, you know, the directives of the European Union and the troika, as they’re called, which includes the IMF. So now we have a conservative government. We have a deep economic crisis. We have 5.3 million people out of jobs. And the rate, which is 23 percent, is expected to go up. And among young people, over half are unemployed. So you have also a massive exodus of young people leaving the country and going to Germany and other places in search for work.

So this is the perfect scenario for a conservative government to do what it could never have done a few years ago, which is to privatize, which is to come up with a new labor law that basically makes it very inexpensive to hire and fire. And Rajoy keeps talking about, you know, this is in the benefit of the unemployed, the 5.3 million, but there’s no sense that more people will be hired. In fact, the—what we’re seeing is that, you know, a lot of companies have waited for this law in order to begin to fire people. And even the government is recognizing that next year we may face an unemployment rate of 25 percent. So these protests are a result of this new law. The PP, the governing party, has absolute majority, which means they don’t need to really negotiate with any other political party.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, how did this happen? I mean, you had the movement before Occupy Wall Street, the indignados, the thousands of people that took to the streets, and then the Socialist prime minister is out.

MARIA CARRION: Well, this movement, which grew out of a total indignation, happened during Zapatero’s presidency as a result of these deep social cuts. Zapatero spent the first four years, basically, enacting progressive policies and financing social spending that was needed in Spain, and then the economic crisis hit. So, for the past few years, not only has he had to backtrack on a lot of these promises, but also enact terribly deep social cuts. And that has led to, you know, young people saying, "We don’t have a future here in Spain anymore."

So these social movements and the indignados that rose up, and that were parallel or even a little before Occupy Wall Street, took the streets, but they never endorsed any other political candidate or party. And this citizen movement must be seen in a—out of a political context, outside of the two political parties, main political parties, and even some of the other political parties. This is a citizen movement that is no longer so visible in the streets. It has gone into the neighborhoods. It is now active, for instance, stopping evictions from taking place. Any time there is an imminent eviction, there they are, and they stand between the police and the families.

AMY GOODMAN: This is very similar to what’s happening in the United States.

MARIA CARRION: It is. And in fact, what happened—this has been going on in Spain before it happened in the U.S. And there was an international committee that took place—or a big meeting that took place during the occupation in Spain over the summer, and it was an international committee that wanted to internationalize this model of movement. And a lot of people that participated in Occupied Wall Street were part of this. So, you see these—you know, these movements coming here.

Will Occupy Wall Street influence the elections in the United States? Occupy Spain didn’t influence the elections. What they’re saying is they want deeper social transformation. This is not about the political parties, because the political parties are doing what Europe wants them to do and what the IMF wants them to do. They’re not really paying attention to alternative models.

AMY GOODMAN: I think most people will be surprised to hear that the unemployment rate in Spain is worse than in Greece.

MARIA CARRION: Far worse. When you have over half of the young people between the ages of 18 and 23 unemployed, it is serious. People are moving back into their parents’ homes. People are not having children, young people. You have a situation where maybe someone with three higher degrees cannot find a job, even like washing dishes in a restaurant. So it’s very serious.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who Rajoy is, how he came to be in power?

MARIA CARRION: Well, Rajoy has been the perpetual PP candidate for presidency, and he has lost every single election until now. And what he’s done, basically, is just waited. The first two elections he lost because Zapatero—the first time Zapatero won was right after the March 11th attacks, and the PP lying about the authors of these terrorist attacks and saying it had been—

AMY GOODMAN: Saying? Remind us.

MARIA CARRION: Well, this was al-Qaeda bombing several commuter trains in Madrid in 2004, and the PP government, because it had gone to war in Iraq—

AMY GOODMAN: And this was Aznar.

MARIA CARRION: This was Aznar. President Aznar, who supported the Iraq war and who went the Azores with Bush and Blair, basically did not want the public to know, because these bombings took place three days before the elections, the general elections, did not want people to think that these bombings might have been related to a stance on the war. And so, the government tried to cover it up by saying it was the Basque independence movement, ETA, that had authored these attacks. Once the lies were exposed, there was a social clamor. And the day before the elections, there was a huge demonstration in front of PP headquarters. And Rajoy, who had been expected to win the elections—he was sort of the Aznar protégé selected to take over from him—lost. And Zapatero came to power.

AMY GOODMAN: And Zapatero’s first promise was to pull the troops out of Iraq.

MARIA CARRION: And he did. And for the next—well, his entire presidency, he was basically ignored by the United States. Bush would never want to talk to him. It was a big deal for him, because it almost was like he had become the persona non grata for the United States, and he was afraid that it would affect all kinds of things like commerce with the U.S., etc. But yes, he pulled the troops out of Iraq. And for the first few years, Spain was doing well, in the sense that there were a lot of progressive social policies. The second time—the second elections, Rajoy lost again against Zapatero. Zapatero was still very popular at the time.

So, Rajoy was able to win these elections because the situation in Spain is catastrophic, and anyone in power would have lost the elections. And in fact, you know, Rajoy was told, "Shut your mouth. Don’t say anything about what you would do to resolve the crisis." It’s just let Zapatero basically disintegrate, and whoever takes over from him—and his former interior minister, Rubalcaba, was the Socialist candidate—will lose automatically, because people are so discontented. And the left was demobilized. And so, a lot of people who usually voted Socialist, in November, did not—either stayed home or voted for United Left, which is a more progressive political party.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what do you see happening now? The significance of this mass protest that’s taking place today in Spain?

MARIA CARRION: Unfortunately, this government does not need any kind of political consensus to enact any policy that they want. So Rajoy privately told his colleagues at the European Union in a meeting—and this was caught on one of those mics that was left on—saying, "I totally expect a general strike to take place, but it’s not going to matter. I’m going to continue with my policies." And that’s basically what’s going to happen on a political level in Spain.

On a social level, upheaval. Hopefully, the indignados will continue to press on. And I think that their role in society is very important, because now that we’re facing cuts in education and basic medical services and that people are being evicted, the indignados are there to remind society of what is happening on the streets.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Baltasar Garzón, the crusading judge in Spain—we followed the trial of the judge himself. You have been covering this for a long time, what is happening in Spain. I mean, he took on Pinochet. He took on the Bush administration around war crimes. He also took on September 11th. Talk about his history, but what it was—what was the fatal blow to his position in Spain, what he dared to take on at home?

MARIA CARRION: Well, Garzón, as you know, has inspired universal justice, the concept that any crime against humanity can be tried outside of the country where it is committed, if the country itself does not investigate and prosecute. And that’s what he did with Pinochet. After many, many years of inaction in Chile, he said, "Well, I’m going to go after Pinochet," and had him arrested in London. Garzón has continued on this crusade. The only good thing about the whole situation now is that Garzón is out of the judiciary because of his investigation of Franco crimes, but he has left a legacy.

AMY GOODMAN: Franco, the former general—

MARIA CARRION: The former dictator of Spain.

AMY GOODMAN: —dictator of Spain.

MARIA CARRION: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: How many people died under his reign, and how long did he rule for?

MARIA CARRION: Millions died. I’m not sure about the exact amount. Many people were disappeared, too. And the problem is that the disappeared have not—a lot of them have not been found. And that’s what he wanted to do. There are survivors. Even though Franco died in 1975, and many of these crimes took place over 60 years ago, 70 years ago, there are people who remember their mothers and their fathers being taken away and disappeared. This was a brutal civil war, and with brutal repression during the dictatorship, mass graves all over Spain. And what has happened is that these families have formed these associations, and they are the associations that brought the case before Garzón. And Garzón said, "They have not gotten relief in any court in Spain. I’m going to try to investigate, see what happened to these people."

That was too much for the conservative judiciary. You have to think that Supreme Court justices, a lot of them swore their loyalty to Franco. They are the remnants of the conservative fascist courts that we used to have. And they decided to put a stop to it, so they initiated a series of investigations against Garzón. He was actually acquitted in the trial on his Franco investigations, where he was being accused of abuse of power. But he was convicted on another case involving the taping, the wiretapping, of conversations between a corrupt network associated with the governing party and their lawyers. So, he’s been ousted from the judiciary.

Now, many judges remain in the national court in Spain, the court responsible for trying these crimes against humanity—against humanity, who continue doing Garzón’s work. So there’s a judge, for instance, who has taken on the Guatemala genocide case. And recently, General Ríos Montt was arrested in Guatemala. And that’s a direct result of these investigations going on in Spain. Once these investigations take place and the arrest orders take place, a lot of the countries begin to act and begin to bring these people to justice. And I think that’s Garzón’s legacy.

AMY GOODMAN: He will try to get back into the judiciary? He’s appealing?

MARIA CARRION: He’s appealing. It’s difficult, because he was ousted by the Supreme Court, and technically, there’s no place to appeal in Spain. But he is a very good judge. He knows the judiciary well. And he knows how to get around it. The problem is that I think, from the start, there is a policy of not allowing him back. So I doubt very much that he’s going to find relief in Spain. I think he’s going to have to go to the European Court of Human Rights for this.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Maria, you’re in the United States promoting a film festival that’s taking place in the Western Sahara. Can you just tell us what is happening in the Western Sahara? And then tell us about the significance of this film festival.

MARIA CARRION: Well, Amy, I think Democracy Now! is one of the few media outlets even talking about the Western Sahara. I think most people—most Americans don’t know where it is or what it is. It’s Africa’s last colony. It was occupied—well, there was a brutal military invasion by Morocco when Spain, the former colonist, stepped out. They gave the green light, along with Henry Kissinger, for this invasion to take place. And the Western Sahara is south of Morocco. There are a lot of natural resources, and Morocco had a huge interest in occupying and incorporating it into its country. As a result of the brutal invasion, over 100,000 people fled on foot.

AMY GOODMAN: When did it take place?

MARIA CARRION: This was in 1976. So the refugees went to Algeria to one of the most remote—one of the most remote parts of the world, the Sahara Desert. And they set up refugee camps and a parallel society, and even a parallel government in exile that has been acknowledged by many countries, including South Africa, for instance. And they subsist, and they survive. And the problem is that there’s a stalemate at the U.N. Security Council. There have been resolutions calling for a referendum on self-determination. But Morocco has refused to hold the referendum, and because of its powerful allies at the council, including France and the United States, they continue to avoid making a final decision. And in the Western Sahara, there is tremendous brutality. It is truly a military occupation, in every way possible. There’s a U.N. delegation there that is supposed to be overseeing the preparations for the referendum. Their offices are surrounded by Moroccan military perpetually, and Moroccan flags have been planted around the U.N. delegation. And it’s supposed to have a human rights mandate, and it does not, because the Security Council won’t allow it. So that’s the situation.

The film festival is an attempt to bring some entertainment and culture and education into the camps. And it’s held every year. Spanish filmmakers like Javier Bardem have supported it. And I’m here in the United States to let people know that it exists and that it needs support.

AMY GOODMAN: When is it taking place?

MARIA CARRION: This year, it’s May 1st to 6th.

AMY GOODMAN: And it’s films about the Western Sahara and also other films.

MARIA CARRION: Other films, as well. So they get to see everything, from comedies to dramas. But, of course, all films that are made about the Western Sahara, and even by the refugees themselves, are screened. And this takes place at night on this huge screen under the stars. And it’s this—I went to the first one, and one of the first films they showed—I forget the name of it, but it’s a beautiful documentary on bird migration that was done a few years ago. And the sense that these refugees in the middle of the desert all of a sudden were flying over the North Pole and over all these oceans—and these are, you know, people who often have never seen the sea before—was just magnificent.

AMY GOODMAN: And there is a film school that has been set up for people to document what is happening in the Western Sahara?

MARIA CARRION: Yes. That was established last year. So now the young Sahrawis, and especially women, because this has a—the school has a 85 to 90 percent female enrollment, can document their own stories. They can produce fiction and documentaries at the same time. They use them as educational tools. And it’s fledgling, but it’s at least a permanent production. It’s something that—it does not go away when the festival goes away.

AMY GOODMAN: Maria Carrion, thanks so much. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.