Transcripts For LINKTV Democracy Now 20140620

Years ago for a crime they did not commit, the brutal rape of a white woman in central park. And then to iraq. We will send a small number of military advisers to see how we can best train, advise, and support Security Forces going forward. As obama orders military advisers to iraq, we will speak to Colleen Hanabusa hanabusa on her effort to block sending forces to iraq without congressional approval. Wikileaks publishes the text of a secret trade agreement that bankingfect the industry. We will talk about that with lori wallach. Welcome to democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. The Obama Administration is sending up to 300 military advisers to help iraqs fight against the sunni uprising that has taken over large parts of the country. President obama announced the new contingent while ruling out the deployment of combat troops but also said he remains open to launching military strikes at the Iraqi Government request. We are developing more information about potential ,argets associated with isil and going forward, we will be prepared to take targeted emphasize military action if and when we determine the situation on the ground requires it. I will consult closely with congress and leaders in the rack any iraqi. In his remarks, he also said he was not pushing for the resignation of iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Almaliki but called on plans to abandon a sectarian focused rule. John kerry will visit the middle east this weekend for talks with u. S. Allies. Iraqi troops meanwhile are amassing near baghdad for a potential offensive to retake captured towns from sunni militants. Of new york has reportedly agreed to pay 40 million to five men wrongfully can acted of raping a female jogger in central park 25 years ago. The five black and latino men were convicted as teenagers. Media coverage at the time portrayed them as guilty and used racially coded terms to describe them. Vacatedr sentences were when the real rapist came forward and confessed after the five had served jail terms up to 13 years. We will have more on the settlement after the headlines. A Pakistani Military offensive against the palestinian taliban has displaced thousands of people. Over 90,000 have fled their homes in North Waziristan since last month. Air raids have killed at least 100 civilians over the past two weeks. The Pakistani Army says it has killed at least 200 militants since launching a new operation on sunday. Ukraine says around 300 or russian separatists have been killed in new clashes near the russian border. Fighting erupted thursday when separatists apparently refused to lay down their weapons as part of the Ukrainian Government peace plan. Nato meanwhile is accusing russia of resuming a military buildup along the border, claim russia denies. She is have erupted in the west take as part of an israeli crackdown over the kidnapping of three teenagers. At least one palestinian teenager was killed today when Israeli Soldiers opened fire. On thursday, forces traded gunfire leaving three palestinians wounded. At least 300 palestinians have been detained in the weeklong search for the israeli teenager who was kidnapped while hiking hitchhiking from a jewish settlement. No group has claimed responsibility. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Palestinian Authority to sever its recent unity deal with hamas leaders. An organization that is designated as a Terror Organization by many countries and it is a Terror Organization that is committed to israels destruction. I expect president abbas to dissolve the union with this murderous terrorist organization. I think that is important for our common future. Overe u. S. Has scaled ties uganda over accusations of making it a crime to not report homosexual individuals to authorities. A Regional Military exercise has been canceled with the ugandan military. The Obama Administration is unveiling new rules that grant nearly all marriage benefits to samesex couples nationwide. Federal marriage benefits have so far only been available to samesex couples in states where gay marriage has been legalized by the Obama Administrations move makes them available across all federal agencies in all states. Applyinges include Immigration Law equally to gay and heterosexual couples. Federal employees in samesex relationships will obtain Health Insurance for their spouses and the right to take a leave of absence in the case of illness. House republicans have filled to the bureau top leadership positions following the primary loss of eric cantor. Kevin mccarthy of california will replace him as majority leader while Steve Scalise of louisiana will take his place as party whip. Both mccarthy and scalise welcomed their new roles. Witherica is struggling the stagnant economy, a failed health care law, and so many are living paycheck to paycheck. They are looking for individuals that put people before politics. I make one promise. Toill work every single day make sure this conference has the courage to lead with wisdom to listen. Forward to bring a fresh new voice to our leadership table and helping to confront the challenges that people all across the country are facing. We have solid conservative willlt solutions that solve the problems of our country. Next week, mississippi thad cochran will phase a tea party. Hallenger he is encouraging democrats to vote for him in the runoff. Wisconsin prosecutors have determined scott walker was at the center of a criminal scheme to illegally coordinate fundraising with a number of rightwing groups. The claim from five District Attorneys is made in unsealed documents from an investigation into walkerss campaign in the failed effort to recall him in 2012. Walker has not been charged with any crime but prosecutors believe his top aides directly controlled outside groups and their expenditures. That would be a violation of state donation limits and laws requiring full disclosure of political spending. In a statement, walker dismissed the accusations as categorically false, adding wikileaks founder Julian Assange has marked two years of confinement at the embassy in ecuador. He has been there since june 2012 to avoid extradition to sweden where he faces questioning on allegations of sexual assault. He fears he would ultimately sent for prosecution to the United States should he return to sweden. Speaking via satellite, he thanked the ecuadorian government and its supporters. Proud thatle can be their country has stood up to intense pressure over myself many slanderous from press associated with the United States, some associated with the united kingdom. I am thankful to that resistance and also to the [inaudible] of my staff. Talks are again at an impasse with britain refusing to grant him safe passage. Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the killing of three civil rights workers in mississippi, a Pivotal Moment in the 1960s struggle for equality. In 1964, james chaney, andrew goodman, and Andrew Schwerner beaten and shot by a group of klansmen. They had come to mississippi to register africanamerican voters as part of the free room freedom summer campaign. A number of klansmen numbers were charged with minor sentences. It took 40 meters before a murder conviction was handed down with a former Ku Klux Klans mend it was found guilty of murder in 2005. Those are some of the headlines. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Im juan gonzalez. Welcome to our listeners and viewers around country and world. The city of new york has reportedly reached a 40 million settlement with the five men who were wrongfully convicted of raping a female jogger in central park 25 years ago. Anton mccray, kevin richardson, Raymond Santana, korey wise, and yusef salaam were arrested for beating and raping a white woman in central park. She came to be known as the central park jogger. The five were all black and latino between the ages of 14 and 16. Their arrest made National Headlines and initially confessed but soon recanted, insisting they had admitted to the crime under duress of exhaustion and coercion from police officers. The convictions were vacated after the real rapist, the tea is reyes, came forward in prison and convict did confessed to the crime. Dna evidence confirmed he was the sole attacker but by then the five defendants had already seven sentences of almost deal 13 years for the attack. In 2003, the five men sued the city for Wrongful Conviction and violation of their civil rights. A lawsuit gained renewed attention in 2012 when documentary filmmaker ken burns and his daughter sarah released the central park five. This is the trailer from the film. I want to remember what happened that day and to be horrified by ourselves. New york in the late 1980s was a completely schizophrenic divided city. New york is now the capital of racist violence. Wars, drugity, gang wars. It would have been irrational not to be afraid. Jogger night, a woman was found unconscious and partially clothed in central park, beaten and sexually assaulted. A woman jogging in central park. Central park was holy. It was the crime of the century. Five youths were arrested on 96th street all between 14 and 15 years of age. You can only imagine the pressure to have this crime solved and solved quickly. They started to put us in different rooms separately. What did you do, who were you with . I felt like they might take is to the back of the precinct and kill us. I am telling the guy, i dont know what you are talking about. Then they get angry. He has been interrogated for over 24 hours. Were guilty,g men it was almost unquestioned. The Police Control the story. They created the story. They seized on the fears of the people. There is no dna match whatsoever to these boys. Them,ody could identify but if they confessed, they confessed, and that was that. Did not do people their jobs. Defense lawyers, prosecutors. Institutional protection. We falsely convicted and walked away from our crime. This is the ultimate sovereign that says analyst are safe. That was the trailer from the film central park five. 40alk about the reported million settlement with the five men in which still has to be approved by the city controller and the judge, we are joined by natalie byfield, a reporter or the New York Daily News. She is now a professor of associate sociology. She has a new book out called savage portrayals race, media and the central park jogger story. Talk about the significance of a settlement. It starts to undo what you what historical i became an historic line. A launchingelf was pad for a transformation of the juvenile justice system, so were completed, between 1992 and 1999, almost all the states in the country, with the exception of maybe three or four, transformed or juvenile justice laws to incorporate more juveniles into the court system. So this case was quite a launching pad for a seachange in the juvenile justice system. The settlement is an institutional acknowledgment that this was a serious mistake, this was a problem, and we have to undo those historic lies so that they do not continue to transform the society. Were both colleagues at the daily news at the time of the case, attended the trial. In your book, you delve into the role of the media in building of the hysteria and amplifying the mistakes that were made by the Police Department in this case. I wonder if you could talk about that. This is really the scottsboro case of our time, in terms of what happened here, the role of the media played in swaying public opinion. The media played a variety of roles actually. In the context of the language that was used. This is the part that was discussed quite a bit. We remember very well terms like caseng, savage, and this was in fact, the case that invented the term wilding. It had not existed in our lexicon before the case. This helped to inflame public passion, certainly the language that was used. In addition to the language used, the media simply failed to interrogate the police, failed to act as an independent aday in the context body in the context of the case. So it acted as a mouth hes for the Police Department, in essence. So when the police or District Attorney resented evidence about or wereat matched consistent with that of the jogger and that evident sort of appeared and disappeared, there was no story following up on this. When their reports of a knife been used and then suddenly the District Attorneys office or police do not say anything about it anymore, the things that appeared and disappeared were not interrogated at all. These were for team to 16yearold kids. In this excerpt of the documentary, two of the teenagers, Raymond Santana and kevin richardson, described how detectives tried to play them against each other in their separate interrogations. He said, i know you did not do anything wrong, but the other guys, they are in other precincts and they say you did it. I am not saying anything, but these guys put your name in it. He said this is why im here to help you because i know you did not do anything, you are a good kid. He pulled out a picture and said, do you know this kid . Did you see this crap from this eye . This point, i am thinking, i do not know these guys. I am just going to make up something and include these guys names. Ok, if you are going to do good to me, im going to do it to you. Trial, thehe defendants were encouraged to consider pleading guilty. This is another clip from the documentary when Raymond Santana and yusef salaam describe the scene. Me into theed Conference Room and the lawyer said, we are going to lose this case. What we are planning to do is see if we can get you a plea deal. I remember telling them, you guys can cop out, but if i did something, i would cop out, i would want the least amount of time for what i did. If i did not do anything, you can give me the rest of my life in prison. I did not know what that meant back then but i knew that there would be no way i would cop out to something i did not do. They said it has to be all three of you or nobody. Natalie byfield, as you listen to these men whose now, a quarter of a century later, this case is being settled, mayor bloomberg refused to settle. The failure of the Previous Administration to settle the case is consistent with their approach to matters like this, matters related to the police. I really think that is important that the the Blasio Administration stuck to his promise that he would come in and settle the case because we have going on alongside this case something that i believe is a direct line from this case, the stop and frisk practice. Just in the same way that this case made it ok to criminalize lack youth, you see black youth, latino youth, male youth, particularly, being equated with crime, so it made it easier to make stop and frisk happen. It was very heartening for me to see that they are the blasio challenged the appeal to the stop and frisk case and that we have now brokered some kind of settlement and that we have this other settlement taking place here. This issue of the hand in glove relationship with the weree and media, we talking earlier, one of the key tech in the case, mike sheehan, who later became one of the big sources for the reporters, ended up leaving the Police Department and became a television reporter. Of theole question Police Department as the main source of the information that the media received. Its an interesting institutional relationship between the police and the press, particularly the newspapers that cover crime and rely on crime stories. I should say street crime stories, to be part of the fodder of what they regularly report to the public. They need them. Journalists,ing as part of the practice of working journalists is to work out at Police Headquarters and develop those relationships with the police. The problem is, when that relationship becomes too close or when you do not recognize that you are not art of that team that is policing the world in that way, you do not belong to that one group. You are, in fact, independent from all of these groups and the overseer, and an important element in democracy, so when you forfeit your role to do this, all sorts of things happen. In 2002, the convicted rapist and murderer the tedious reyes confessed in jail that he committed the rape of the central park jogger and that he had acted alone. Dna evidence later confirmed his participation in the crime, show that he was alone went to the scene. In this excerpt from the documentary, he describes what he did that. She came by and i saw that , i pickedade the turn up a tree branch. I cannot explain to you what happened after i left that night that thesentee you kids had no idea where she was coming from. On the one that did this. That was the convicted rapist and murderer who bumped into one of the defendants who was in jail and said im sorry. This is how this whole thing unfolded. Whats astounding about the story with the tedious reyes, he had the mo. He was a rapist and murderer but because police were blinded by their prejudice around these five young men, he was not investigated. In fact, the reason he went to jail, he raped a woman in my building. In that case, when he ran out, the doorman john thain. That is how he was ultimately caught. But so many woman would have neveraved they connected the semen to these young men. Was a rape in central park two days before the jogger was rate. Something like 200 yards from the site of the joggers attack. That if you odd have a pattern of rape in a particular area that you do not the possibility that this could have been done by the same person but they were so wedded to this idea that is group of teens have done it. I have analyzed this to the point where i just concluded that they believed there was some kind of moral panic going on in our society around the issue of drugs. We saw the regular nightly news reports across the country where every night a would walk out young black and latino men and the perp would walk into the car this was at the height of the crack epidemic. Exactly. They were the go to people for all crimes, equated with crime. So the idea that we have a culture of rape in the country, the idea that there was a for me,of rape, did not penetrating investigation in the way it should have. Then they would have investigated other possibilities. But for them, they have latched onto this wild in racialized understanding of what was going on. In terms of the newsroom and what got in the way of the alsotigation, where you have these Racial Attitudes and the willingness of the press to buy into these Racial Attitudes. I want to end with the words of Raymond Santana who was with us in 2012, and talked about how the case has impacted his life. I served almost seven years, try to get my life back together. The socialealize death we were given with the sentence. Five to 10, itst was a life sentence, a death sentence innocents. When i came home, i could not get employment, i filled out numerous applications. I had to register as a sex offender. My whole neighborhood looked at me kind of strange. Are you doing,w but you also have the bullseye on your back. Somehow i am Raymond Santana from the central jogging case. That was Raymond Santana. The reported settlement is only million dollars. Apparently one dollar a year for each year that these five young men were imprisoned. 4 1 million a year. The settlement still has to be approved by the city controller and the judge. Natalie byfield, thank you for being with us. She was a reporter for the New York Daily News at the time, now a professor at st. Johns university. We go to theback, Capitol Rotunda to speak with a congresswoman who is pushing to stop u. S. Forces from being committed to iraq. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Turn now to iraq. President obama announced a plan to send up to 300 military advisers to support iraqi forces confronting the sunni militants who have seized a large swath of the country. This will continue to increase our support to iraqi Security Forces. We are prepared to create joint Operation Centers in baghdad and Northern Iraq to share intelligence and coordinate planning to confront the terrorist threat of isil. We are prepared to work with congress to provide additional equipment. We have had advisers in your rack through our embassy and are prepared to send a number of military advisers, up to 300, to assess how we can best trade, advise, and support iraqi Security Forces going forward. American forces will not be returning to combat in iraq. But we will help iraqis as they take the time fight to terrorists to protect the region and american interests as well. To capitol hill where we are joined by Congress Member Colleen Hanabusa, democrat from hawaii, introduced an amendment this week that would prevent president obama from deploying troops to iraq without congressional approval. Congress member hanabusa, welcome. Can you explain exactly what youre amendment says and how would that apply to the announcement that president obama has made of sending 300 military advisers . Good morning and thanks for having me on. The amendment passed last night by unanimous consent. There was no opposition. I believe it is the only amendment in what is now the defense appropriation measure with the house of representatives will be voting on. Invoked the war powers resolution which has in it certain conditions, so he has time and ability to to as he has done. The resolution does not come in any way, prevent him from twoing troops or anyone in help the embassy situation for our citizens in your rack. Iraq by invoking it, he has done that. However, with the resolution that requires, and the amendment reaffirms, is that anything past that, the president must come to congress in order to get further authorization and this amendment says he cannot use any funds. No funds shall be used in a situation where the president has not complied with the war powers resolution. An opponent ofn the iraq war for many years. Your concern as you see the latest developments of the past few weeks of what this might mean for United States involvement in the iraq . You are correct, i have opposed the iraq war since 2002 and also the president s intervention into serious when he said he would do the limited airstrikes. The problem that i think we all have is why . Why are we doing this . We do know and the fact that the president has invoked the war powers resolution and then simply doing the unauthorized use of military force which is specific for iraq and afghanistan, that says to me that he realizes it is dealing from 9 11. What we are doing now is intervening into a sectarian civil war and the question i believe that most of us have is why and how did that link to national interest, and what is our National Security interest in this, and in addition, will this be construed as taking a with one of the three sectarian related groups in your rack, and will that exasperate the situation, and then how do we get out of it . The real question we have always had from the time we intervene the first time in your rack and went in under the guise of weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be false, is what is the endgame, what is it that we intend to achieve, what do we want . How do we leave a situation like that . More importantly, the American People want to know why. This is where we are in congress. Why this sectarian civil war, why are we going in . You are one of the few buddhists in congress. Your colleague, senator maisie her roto, also from hawaii, hank johnson of georgia. Does that play into your feelings in any way . I dont believe it necessarily plays into my feelings per se, but i was raised as a buddhist, always felt it was a philosophical way of looking at what goes on in our lives and how do we place that balance. In the sense that i am asking how thisions why and affects the people, what are my constituents, and in that sense, me to thensitizes major question of what is it . We are talking about human lives. The bottom line in all of this, it is not necessarily religious oriented. It is just a matter of humanitarian concerns and people and the question of what is it that we, as americans, intend to tell the world as we step in the middle of a sectarian civil war that we know has been going on for a while . What is the trigger this time . Congresswoman, i wanted to ask you, some of your colleagues, specifically john mccain in the senate, have said the mistake of the president was in removing so many troops from iraq that he allowed this situation to develop, that they predicted it. What is your response to that . I dont believe that is a correct assessment. The problem was going into your rack to begin with. It was not the removal of the troops. The removal of the troops was a function of whether or not at that time malik he was going to actually sign and he made it clear that the United States had to leave. Now we are getting stories about influencediki was heavily by the Supreme Leader of iran. So we have all these different players now in the region influencing how this is going to come out. Was we remove the troops, that is not the situation. Isis, however you want to refer to this group coming in, sunnibased, the question is where is the money coming from . Where is the training coming from . By all reports, they seem to be a welltrained, well financed group. Look at the currents and what they are doing. They are not really in this, but they have their territory as well. It was not taking the troops out, and it was not anything that the president had control over. That was a matter of what your rack wanted, and they made it clear, we are to leave with no troops left behind. We want to thank you for being with us, democratic congresswoman from hawaii, a member of the House Armed Services committee, introduced the amendment that would prevent president obama from deploying troops without congressional approval. When we come back, we talk about jewelry almaliki, and who is being pushed to replace him. Democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. Other news from iraq, pressure is mounting on iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Almaliki to form a less sectarian government or resign. Earlier today a representative ayatollahite cleric described what he would call a new form of government. The new ambassador in iraq and the state departments top official in your rack recently met with the controversial iraqi politician who has been described as a potential candidate to replace chalabi. Of thes the former head Iraqi National congress, a group that strongly pushed for the invasion. He helped to drum up prewar claims that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass instruction. The group provided bogus intelligence to the bush administration, u. S. Lawmakers, and journalist. After the invasion, chalabi became the chair of the Supreme National commission for de bathification. He has defended his actions leading up to the invasion. 2004, he said to talk more about Ahmed Chalabi we are joined by andrew cockburn, his latest piece for harpers, the long shadow of a neocon. Talk about what you understand is happening in this battle right now over whether Prime Minister malik he will be overthrown and what role chalabi could play in this. Is thenderstanding americans have made it clear in baghdad that they want malik you to go, even to the point of saying that there would be no aid of any kind, military, airstrikes, what have you, while malik he was leader of the government. They view him as the source of their troubles, which is not totally inaccurate. There is a certain irony in this because he is in power thanks to the u. S. Then ambassador to baghdad, khalil zeid, in 2006, selected maliki. He said, how would you like to become Prime Minister . Said are you serious . Again in 2010rmed when he had lost the election in the u. S. And iran the irony here rammed him back down the throats of the iraqi people. Now to be saying that he has to go, is rich with irony. Your article talks about his influence in afghanistan as well. Could you talk a little bit about his history . Has been a longtime footsoldier in the neocon movement, has a pretty grisly that agree. He is an afghan, then made his way to the u. S. As a young man as a student. From there, he fell under the influence of albert wohlstetter, an individual in chicago who was influential in the movement. And then from the beginning of the antisoviet war in afghanistan, he is very much in the mix. Instrumental in directing the whole policy which is not the case, but anyway, there he was signing the resolutions, calling for overthrowing saddam and so forth. 2001 when weme in successfully topple the taliban he was the only muslims of these people knew, so they appointed him the overseer of the posttaliban afghanistan from which he appointed hamid karzai. A lot of afghans are talk to at the time said that he was a weak khare and the idea was that lilzad would be the real ruler of afghanistan. The threatens all of these people with more strikes and so forth. After he was sure that no settlement would emerge in afghanistan and that his actions would be to the revival of the taliban, he was moved to iraq where the u. S. Was trying to put in some sort of government that they could entrust your rack to. As i said, they did not like the man they had, Prime Minister jeffrey. Khalilzad then looked around and selected almaliki, who was a relatively obscure figure, had been in the exiled opposition, have lived in damascus for most of his life running a butcher shop. He called in almaliki. He was with the British Ambassador and they started talking and when the ambassador realized, my god, this character almaliki was being offered the job of leading iraq, he started to protest. Outeby khalilzad kicked him of the room and turned to hal maliki said, would you like to be Prime Minister . Was in power, having made all sorts of promises like that he would reach out to the sunni minority, would respect human rights, stand up to you iran, all of which he immediately broke. He is just a very narrow minded, very sectarian, paranoid tell usr a written more about Ahmed Chalabi. With the u. S. Ambassador, brett now putting together this coalition, give us a history of Ahmed Chalabi and what role he could play now . As you said earlier, he was the prime instrument in fomenting the invasion of iraq in the first place, he was an exiled politician in the 1990s backed initially by the cia who picked him because he was weak, they thought, erroneously, that they could control him and boss him around, which turned out not to be the case. Then he made this alliance with the neoconservatives in andington who promoted him sort of swallowed his lies wholesale, broadcast them in the New York Times and elsewhere. Somehow deluded themselves into thinking that he had support inside iraq the time of the invasion. They get to baghdad and find out that no one supported him, he had no position in the country at all. Since then, he has hung around and has hung on in baghdad. Always with the ambition of becoming Prime Minister. He has been a player in iraqi politics. Whatever he had a Party Running in the election, he gets nowhere. He is not exactly a popular shrewd, he he is ,nows everyone, he is competent certainly as compared with almaliki, but he is very sectarian. Bathification, certainly cemented the job of isolating the sunni. Certainly, he has maintained his connections with the western press. I would not be surprised to hear that the New York Times learned that he would be meeting from the dutch with the americans from chalabi. I would almost guarantee he would be the source of that. That thet very ironic architect of this disastrous policy is back and running again. Thank you for being with us, washington editor for harpers magazine. We will link to his latest piece, the long shadow of a neocon. As we move to the last segment of todays broadcast, juan. Released what is called the trade in services 60eement which includes countries and 60 of world trade in services. Until now, the draft have been classified, to keep it secret during the negotiations but also for five years post in the. According to the text, the trade deal aims to cement the deal regulatory model of the 1990s by forbidding countries from improving financial regulation. Joined by lori wallach from denver, colorado, author of the rise and fall of Fast Track Trade Authority. Welcome back to democracy now talk about the significance of this week around the trade agreement. Known these negotiations have been ongoing but nobody knew exactly what they were up to until this. Effectively, the tax, if it were enacted, would roll back a lot of the regulation that follow the Global Financial crisis and basically handcuffs us into the 1990s extreme regulation model that we all recognized was the cause of the crisis and the perverse nature of it is, because of the extreme secrecy, you have the Obama Administration in public working to reregulate the dodd frank bill, but then behind closed doors, these negotiations in geneva, on the sidelines of the world trade organization, the u. S. And the European Union the text shows this are pushing amongst the most retrograde antiregulation provisions. Of commercechamber said the payoff from tisa would be huge for Domestic Service industry firms and would present a once a Generation Opportunity to tear down barriers to international trade. The chamber has also recommended tisa regulates inconsistencies and ensure that private companies are not put at a disadvantage when competing with stateowned enterprises. Your response . What they want to tear down is the regulatory structure that was strengthened after the Global Financial crisis. So there is a history to this agreement. At the world trade organization, if you remember, the doha round of negotiations, this is basically what happened after the seattle protest, there would be no wto expansion, and then after 9 11 in doha, there was something similar to what the countries rejected in seattle, and that included major financial deregulation. A lot of countries said no, and to other parts of that round. As a result, with a lot of citizen campaigning in protesting for over 10 years, the wto expansion never happened. There was a coalition of the willing countries, the neoliberals, and decided, if we cannot get everyone to do it, lets see if we could go to the side and start this financial deregulation agreement and then maybe we can drag everyone into it. So this is a subset, this tisa. This is the chambers agenda, this is tearing down all these regulations. Of course, they think it will be profitable for them to operate, ripping off all of us consumers, but what this shows is this is a proposal t only gangsters can not. This means grandma loses her house, you have huge debt, and wall street makes lab out like bandits again. Now that we see it, it has to be something that everyone fights against. It also gives us an indication of what the u. S. Is probably up to in the Transpacific Partnership and also in the transatlantic freetrade agreement. This agreement, if you will, is just the latest example of why there should never be Fast Track Trade Authority because we now see what they do with it. Of the are some specifics that you find most objectionable . Glaring,ngle most easiest part two see is a provision called standstill. It means you have to have your regulations standstill as to where they were and practically, it means, lets say you want to ban a certain kind of derivative that is created, it causes speculation and instability. You are forbidden from having new financial regulation, but the tricky part is, if you look at the way the different versions of that provision are written, it may require countries to standstill relative to where they were when the wto Services Agreement was established in the 1990s, and that would mean all of these new regulations that were put into effect after the Global Financial crisis would automatically be violations. So the way the language is written, maybe it is standstill from 1994, and if thats the case, would automatically make trade violations out of all of these new reregulations. Certainly it would not allow you to anything new going forward, but the way the text are written , it refers back to the old commitment from the 1990s, and that is where you are frozen. The second most dangerous thing is language that basically guarantees that there is freedom of movement and financial data. The problem there is, there are lots of Consumer Privacy protections where you are not supposed to have confidential information. For instance, banks cannot send in one package your Social Security number, name, address, information about your bank account. The rules about this movement of data for instance, in europe, where there are strong Consumer Privacy rules, it would be a rollback of those rights, and a risk for consumers. What about these issues of secrecy, that this agreement, tisa, was not supposed to be known about for five years after enactment . The frontd note on page, which is what you referred thewhat they say is, once actual agreement was adopted it would become public. In the u. S. , it would become federal law. All of our domestic policies would have to conform to meet it. We would see the actual final agreement. What that confidentiality agreement says is we would not be able to see any of the documents for five years that went into the making of the agreement, so anything about what position Different Countries brought to the table, anything about what countries that provisions meant as far as the interpretation, i call that the antiaccountability clause. Suddenly, sprung upon us would be this deregulatory agreement, and then all the fingerprints would be covered up for five years, as well as theoretically what it means, and that the interpretation would be left to a wto tribunal to tell us to cut our losses. Final comment on the relationship between tisa in the Transpacific Partnership, where tpp stands today . It gives you a hint of what is in the agreements and why we have to be against fasttrack. We are going to leave it there, thank you, lori wallach, author of the rise and fall of Fast Track Trade Authority. That does it for the broadcast. Democracy now is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed captioning. Email your comments to outreach democracynow. Org or mail them to democracy now p. O. Box 693 new york, new york 10013. [captioning made possible by democracy now ] u