Transcripts For KCSM Democracy Now 20151230 : comparemela.co

Transcripts For KCSM Democracy Now 20151230

Powers to protect. Amy with puerto rico only days away from the biggest Municipal Bond default in u. S. History, the governor of puerto rico has complained to the United Nations the u. S. Is backtracking on its promises of Self Government on the island. Well get the latest. And then, its being called the nations biggest environmental disaster since the bp oil spill. A runaway natural gas leak above los angeles has emitted more than 150 Million Pounds of methane. Well go to los angeles to speak with erin brockovich, renowned consumer advocate and legal researcher. While a single mother of three working as a legal assistant, she helped win the biggest Class Action Lawsuit in american history. Shes now working to seek justice for victims of the porter ranch ghastly, gas leak the worst in californias , history. All that and more, coming up. Welcome to democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. A new investigation by the New York Times shows how the richest families have avoided paying billions of dollars in taxes by quietly building a private tax system. The rich have reportedly exploited esoteric loopholes in the current tax system while also pouring millions into lobbying for policies to pay even lower taxes, such as repealing the inheritance tax. The result has been billions in lost taxpayer money. 20 years ago the 400 richest , paid 27 of their income to federal taxes. In 2012, the 400 richest paid only 17 . Many of the same families who have exploited tax loopholes have poured large sums of money into the 2016 president ial campaign. In chicago, white Police Officer Jason Van Dyke pleaded not guilty tuesday to six counts of murder in the 2014 shooting of africanamerican teenager Laquan Mcdonald. Officer van dyke shot 17yearold Laquan Mcdonald 16 times while the teenager was at a distance and walking away from the officer posing no threat. , on tuesday, Laquan Mcdonalds great uncle, marvin hunter, called for a fully televised trial. Are not asking for change of venue as has been mentioned in the media before, as much as we are asking for federal oversight. We now believe that it would be in the best interest of fairness and justice for this case if it was televised from gavel to believecause we really that there is a culture in the county of cook with the Police Department and the criminal Justice System where police feel comfortable with murdering African American people. Amy this comes as family members held a vigil to honor quintonio legrier, who was killed by Chicago Police saturday after his father called for help in which his son was behaving oddly in trying baseball bat. Friends and family remembered him as a straight a student who run the chicago marathon in 2013. The other victim of saturdays Police Shootings was bettie jones the mother of five grown children, who lived downstairs. Police have acknowledged they shot jones by accident. Chicago mayor rahm emanuel is returning to chicago amidst increasing calls for him to resign. Devastating flooding continues today in missouri, forcing hundreds of families to evacuate and dozens of businesses to shut down. Parts of interstate 44 have also been closed. It is missouris worst flooding and more than 20 years. 13 people have died in the flooding so far. The National Weather service is warning of record crests of rivers in the coming days. Missouri governor jay nixon has activated the national guard. The National Weather service says 17 Million People are currently living in Flood Warning areas. Meanwhile, scientists predict that the storms that brought devastating tornadoes to texas over the weekend will grow in size as they hurdle toward iceland, unleashing a surge of warm air that could push temperatures at the north pole to 50 degrees above normal. There is only one other time on record with air temperatures at the north pole have risen above freezing. Computer model simulations predict the storm could become one of the most powerful to hit the north atlantic. It is also expected to drop more rain on britain, which has already experienced devastating flooding. Americae, south colombia has declared a red , alert for the forest fires burning across the andes mountains. The Colombian Environmental Ministry says the forest fires are a consequence of the drought and rising temperatures across colombia. The red alert applies to 80 of the country. In pakistan, a suicide bomb attack has killed at least 26 people in the northwestern city of mardan. The bomb exploded tuesday outside a branch of the National Database and registration authority, which issues government i. D. Cards. The taliban has claimed responsibility. The u. S. Commander in afghanistan, general John Campbell said he may seek , additional u. S. Troops amid what he calls a deteriorating security situation. Speaking to usa today, campbell called for the current number of 9800 u. S. Troops stationed in afghanistan to be maintained for as long as possible, and said he may ask for even more troops. President obama had pledged to withdraw the majority of the thousands of u. S. Troops deployed to afghanistan by the end of 2015. But in october, he reversed course, saying nearly 10,000 troops would remain through 2016. Pentagon Officials Say the u. S. Led Coalition Airstrikes in iraq and syria have killed 10 isis leaders over the past month. U. S. Army colonel steve warren claims some were linked to the november 13 paris attacks, which killed 130 people. The World Health Organization has declared guinea free of ebola, 42 days after the last person confirmed with the virus tested negative for the second time. Ebola has killed more than 2500 people in guinea and left more than 6000 children orphaned. New details have emerged about how israel sought to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal and how how sought to stay ahead of the israeli efforts through intense nsa spying. The wall street journal reports that the nsa increased its surveillance of israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the months leading up to the talks. The spying showed how netanyahu leaked details of the u. S. Iran negotiations, coordinated talking points with jewishamerican groups, and lobbied u. S. Lawmakers to oppose the deal. The nsa monitoring of netanyahu also swept up contents of private conversations sparking , fears in the administration that it would be accused of spying on congress. Reporters without borders has reported that 67 professional journalists and 27 citizen journalists have been killed in 2015 worldwide. The deadliest countries for journalists were iraq and syria. The third most deadly country was france due to the january 7 attack on the newspaper charlie hebdo, where eight journalists were killed. Yemen, south sudan, india, mexico, the philippines and honduras all ranked among the top 10 deadliest countries for journalists. Reporters without borders secretary general Christophe Deloire spoke about how the majority of journalists killed in 2015 were deliberately targeted for their work. This year, two thirds were killed in countries at these, countries where there is no war, were journalists are deliberately targeted and the numbers prove it, the majority are not journalists in the wrong place at the wrong time during a bombing raid, they are journalists who are murdered to stop them from doing their job. Amy meanwhile, the committee to protect journalists reports than that china and egypt are among the worst jailers of journalists in 2015. The Committee Identified 199 journalists who are imprisoned because of the work world ride worldwide 23 journalists are , currently imprisoned in egypt. In news from the campaign trail, former new york governor George Pataki has suspended his bid for the 2016 republican president ial nomination. With his withdrawal, there are now 12 republican candidates still in the field. Pataki was one of the first candidates to critique rival republican candidate donald trump. In announcing the withdrawal from the race, pataki urged the party to choose a candidate who could unite people. And in nebraska, four people are facing felony charges for a protest at the office of the military contractor Northrop Grumman, the sixthlargest military contractor in the world. Jessica reznicek, one of the four protesters involved says , she smashed the windows of the Northrop Grummans building with a sledge hammer in order to call attention to the billions of dollars of taxpayer money funneled to the contractor. She spoke to local abc station from jail. My intention was to be on the do property to destruction. That is what it wanted to do. I didnt want to hurt anyone, to scare anyone. To bring Public Awareness to the fact we really dont know what our billions of taxpayers dollars are really going towards when we are handing them over to Northrop Grumman. I will sit in jail as long as i need to do gets people talking. Amy in 2015, Northrop Grumman received 6. 9 billion in government contracts, making it second only to rival military contractor lockheed martin, which received 11. 7 billion in u. S. Government contracts in 2015. And those are some of the headlines. This is democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman with juan gonzalez. Juan welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. Next month will mark seven years since president obamas inauguration. That also means it will be seven years since the president ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay military prison in one of his First Executive actions. We all know that has not panned out, with 107 prisoners still there. Its also well known that Congressional Republicans are the biggest obstacle, passing a series of measures blocking obamas effort. But now a new report sheds light on another hurdle thats received far less attention. According to reuters, the pentagon has thwarted the Obama Administrations efforts to close guantanamo by imposing bureaucratic hurdles to delay or derail prisoners release. A former official compared negotiating prisoner releases with military brass to punching a pillow. Pentagon delays forced four afghans to spend an additional four years in guantanamo despite their approval for transfer. The pentagon has even meddled with the effort to enlist other countries in accepting freed prisoners. Its refused to provide Foreign Governments with photographs and basic documentation necessary for the transfer process. And its barred foreign delegations from spending the night at guantanamo and reduced their interview times with eligible prisoners, making the prisoners much hard to vet. Much harder to vet. Amy in one case, the pentagon refused to release medical records for a hungerstriking yemeni prisoner to a delegation from a country that was considering taking him in. The prisoner, Tariq Ba Odah, remains at guantanamo today, five years after he was cleared for release. The obstruction appears reserved for president obama. While president bush transferred 532 prisoners out of guantanamo and faced no political opposition, obama has only been able to transfer 131 during his two terms. Obama has said hell Push Congress on closure during his final year in the white house. But reuters notes that with the added obstacles from the pentagon, it is increasingly doubtful that obama will be able to fulfill his pledge. For more we are joined by two guests. Charles levinson is a reuters correspondent who cowrote this special report on pentagon obstruction. And omar farah is an attorney with the center for Constitutional Rights. He represents Tariq Ba Odah, the yemeni prisoner who remains locked up at guantanamo because of the pentagons interference. Were going to go to Charles Levinson and read oh, nevada. Can you talk about the scope about what you discovered . I mean, this is president obamas pentagon. Right. Basically, there is sort of a deep institutional resistance in the military, and the pentagon against closing guantanamo among a lot of rankandfile midlevel and more senior officers, and they been able to use their sort of bureaucratic and administrative control over the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center to make it difficult to accomplish a lot of the things that need to be done in order to close the prison, such as facilitating visits of foreign delegations from countries who the united states, the Obama Administration, is asking to take prisoners that they want to transfer out of the prison. Juan what about for example, Tariq Ba Odah. A third country that the u. S. Wanteded to take ba odah to see the prisoner upons full medical file, a prisoner who has been on Hunger Strike for seven years and his weight has dropped from 148 pounds to a think 60 something. He obviously is going to need a lot of acute medical care by any country that takes him in and they wanted to review his full medical file, and the pentagon it over anduld turn still has not come instead just handing in a brief summary. The official reason the pentagon is given for this is patient privacy concerns. Waymr. Ba odahs lawyer has those concerns. I think a lot inside the Administration Believe the concerns are just a pretext for making it difficult to transfer ba odah, who i think many inside the military view as sort of still in the fight since he has been on this Hunger Strike for seven years. Juan Charles Levinson, these other livid imitations, not toowing foreign delegations sleep over in guantanamo when everyone knows how difficult it is to get to guantanamo. What about this limitation . How do they explain that . Right, this is one that has particularly rankled certain u. S. Officials who are trying to work to close the prison. Basically, these foreign delegations come to Guantanamo Bay and they want to interview as many prisoners as theyre considering taking. It could be 5, 6, 7, 8 prisoners. They want to spend time getting to know these guys. Do we trust them . Do we believe they wont be a threat if we bring them to our country . They are encouraged to get to know them by the Obama Administration. And that can take time. Andnstead of coming down spending a couple of days, 2, 3 days interviewing these prisoners, recently, basically since obama began his new push to close the prison, the military has put new restrictions on spending the night at guantanamo. These are new. Or a long time, foreign delegations were visiting this Detention Center and were allowed to spend the night. More recently, theyve been preventing just prevented from doing so. That impacts not just the ability of the Obama Administration to facilitate these prisoner transfers and close the prison, but also has a cost on taxpayers because at least in one case, the delegation in question had to commute each morning and afternoon from miami, a 90 minute flight, taxpayerfunded, and that added tens of thousands of dollars in cost in airfare of military planes to facilitate this sort of very burdensome commute schedule. Amy Charles Levinson, in your article you cite pentagon spokesman gary ross, a u. S. Navy commander. He says no Foreign Government or u. S. Department has ever notified the department of defense that transfer negotiations collapsed due to a lack of information or access provided by the department of defense. Can you respond to this . It is not a surprise to see the pentagon and the white house, for that matter, least publicly putting on a public face of cohesion and not sort of highlighting in their public statements the discord, but that statement certainly did not jive with our own reporting. In many my many officials that we spoke to voiced deep frustrations with the pentagon and relayed to us they had indeed convey those frustrations to officials many, many times over the past several years. Get inere you able to your reporting any sort of indication from the white house of its frustration with this policy . And why doesnt the president just as commanderinchief order that this stuff be done . Right. And i think there is been a Movement Towards doing that. I think as outsiders are not in the government seen as easy as the president saying, if this is what i want, this is the way should be. The fact it is not that easy some

© 2025 Vimarsana