Transcripts For LINKTV Democracy Now 20161019

B braces itself for the next bloody chapterer, having been ravaged by 13 years of war. As donald trump insists the elections are rigged. To rig thethey want election. There is a lot going on. They say there is nothing goingg on. People that have died 10 years ago are still voting. Illegal immigrants are voting. Amy we will speak with someone who says the election is eating rigged, but not by democrats. Finally, the Police Killings no one is talking about. I got a call about the death jacqueline. She was shot to death. When i started looking into this , i found studies showed that they were the group most likely to be killed by police. Amy we will speak with stephanie woodward. Rideout. S all of that and more, coming up. To democracy now , democracynow. Org, the war and peace report. Im amy goodman. The pentagon has confirmed u. S. Special forces are on the ground in iraq. Isily face an estimateded 5000 fighters. The e operation isis going as planned. A military commander told cnn that bad weather could prolong the battle further. Pres. Obamama it will be a difficult fight. Isil will bet defeated in most soul as well. Amy the United Nations humanitarian coordinator says as to 200,000 people might need shelter. In yemen, a 72hour ceasefire is slated to take effect at midnight tonight local time. The ceasefire calls for the u. S. Backed Saudiled Coalition to lift the blockade and put a halt to airstrikes. It also calls on the Houthi Rebels to stop their attacks. The temporary ceasefire seeks to allow food and other humanitarian aid into besieged areas, some of which are on the brink of famine. In election news, Hillary Clinton and donald trump are slated to face off tonight in the third and final prpresident l debate at the university of nevada in las vegas. The final dedebate comes as dond Trumps Campaign is reeling from a series o of accusations of Sexual Assault from nine different women now. Donald trump has denied these allegations. On tuesday, People Magazine published an article quoting six different people who all corroborated People Magazine journalist natasha stoynoffs account of being sexually assaulted by donald trump in 2005 at his maralago resort. Stoynoff says trump pushed her against the wall and kissed her against her will. Articlecited in the include two People Magazine editors and one of her coworkers, paul mclaughlin, who said i advised her not to say anything, because i believed trump would deny it and try to destroy her. Clinton, meanwhile, is facing increasing questions about her newly released and leaked emails, which reveal everything from Clintons State Department prioritizing friends of bill clinton while assigning aid contracts after the 2010 haitian earthquake, to clinton bashing environmentalists and antifracking advocates during a meeting with the Building Trades union in 2015, at which she said the activists should get a life. Ahead of tonights debate in las vegas, people are placing bets on everything from whether clinton will take a drug test as trump has called for to whether trump will show up at all. We have odds of 151 that hillary will take a drug test before the debate. 81 thatet odds of donald trump will walk out during the debate. 251 that he does not show at all. These are great things. Amy donald trump confirmed he will bring president obamas halfbrother to the debate. Tonights debate comes as Hillary Clinton and donald trump are facing record unfavorability ratings, and the widespread characterization that this years election cycle has been a circus a description that is angering some professional circus workers. As a clown, i am a professional clown. I have worked my whole life. His is a dream of mine i have gone to school. I have had training. I would never associate the president of the United States of america as a clown. I would never do that. In the selection, doing that is an insult. Amy democracy now will be broadcasting the third and final debate live, with commentary both before and afterwarards. From 8 30 our special to 11 30 p. M. Eastern time at democracynow. Org. Tune in for our to our expanding the debate special. The final debate comes as early voting has begun in georgia where tens of thousands of people have waited for hours in long lines to vote. Local Officials Say they h have never seen so many people turn out for the early days of early voting. Has confirmed that it has temporarily cut off Internet Access in its embassy in london amid accusations that he has been interfering with the u. S. President ial election. This comes after wikileaks released atrophic of emails revealing how the democratic Hillary Clinton and worked behind the scenes to discredit and defeat Bernie Sanders in the president ial primaries. Wikileaks has released a trove of emails from the account of Hillary Clinton Campaign Advisor john podesta. Hundreds of thousands of women are slated to join a womens strike to protest violence against women. It comes after the rape and murder of a 16yearold argentine girl. Cornered was alive, we want us. In north dakota, a sheriffs been arrested after being found passed out in his car. Deputy fowler faces charges and has been put on paid leave. Seattle, more than 2000 teachers are slated to arrive at schools across the Seattle Public School system wearing tshirts reading blacklivesmatteratschool. Many teachers will use the day to lead discussions about institutional racism and what black lives matter means. Faculty members are on strike to cuts to theiric health care in pennsylvania. A. It is the first time in the unions 34 year history faculty members have gone on strike. France, a court has rejected a bid to stop the french government from demolishing a refugee camp known as the jungle. For months, french authorities have been seeking to shut down the camp, which is home to thousands of refugees from iraq, afghanistan, syria, sudan, somalia and other wartorn regions who are seeking to reach england by crossing through the channel tunnel. On tuesday, a court in the city of lille rejected an appeal from 11 charities, which had sued the french government over the plan, arguing the camps demolition violates the refugees rights. In light of the ruling, some of the charities are arguing as many refugugee children as possible should be permitted to resettle in england. The dismantling should happen this way. Take people who we have a solution and take them to england. On tuesday, about a d den of the camp costs more than 1000 children and teenagers were permitted to resettle in britain. Those are some of the headlines. Show in iraq. s Led Coalition force of about 30,000 includes Iraqi Security personnel, kurdish fighters, Sunni Muslim Arab tribesmen and a shia muslim paramilitaries. Isilface an e estimated 5 5000 fighters in and around most of. Commandersrs say the opeperatios gogoing as planned, though isiss fighters slowed advancing troops with suicide car bomb attacks. A peshmerga military commander to cnn it could take two months for the troops to recapture mosul, which isis has controlled for two years. President t obama said iraqss fight to take mosul will be successful, but difficult. We are seeing the iraqi andes with the coalition andr nations moving forward encircling musclmosul. The intention is to drive isil out of its first urban major stronghold. It continues to be one of the key organizational and let just leadership hubs for isil. Tough fightto be a and a difficult t fight. Amy president obama says plans and infrastructuture are in ple for dealing with a a potential humanitatarian crisis in mosul, which has a populationon of abot 2 Million People. The united natations huhumanitn coorordinator for iraq said as 200,000 pepeople might n need shelteter during thehe the offensnsive. Humanitarian workers say the first large group of nearly a thousand civilians has now fled the city and crossed the border into syria. Some expressed concern isis l fighters would use the civilians as human shields as iraqi forces get closer to mosul. This is courtney lare with the Norwegian Refugee Council in the iraqi city of erbil. They are prepararing for massive waveves of ththis claim. We a are expececting up to 200,0 individuals. The humanitarianan community is trying to prepare. Amy well for more we go to london to speak with patrick cockburn, middle east correspondent for the independent. His recent article is headlined, mosul braces itself for next chapter, having been ravaged by 13 years of war. His book has just been published titled, age of jihad Islamic State and the great war for the middle east. Welcome back to democracy now this is a decisive battle. This was the great victory of islam escape. In junek it by surprise 2014. Is different from what one has been seeing on the television. The forces attacking at our fragmented. Iraqi army,d the , they alllitaries have different agendas. They have extreme rivalry. Of the things keeping the islamist state and business in the past and will affect the course of the battle. The other thing to bear in mind, it would not be happening without u. S. Support. Usled airstrikes by the coalition. We have had people describe victories by the Iraqi Government forces taking solutia reate taking solutia fallujah. One town only has four buildings left. It is a usled operation. It has not gotten into the city yet. We will see what happens when street fighting starts. You have ae of mosul level playing to the east. People have fled two years ago. The kurds said they will not empty will not enter the city. When it getsts engaged in street fighting, wewe will see whwhat happens. S. I it call in the shia paramilitaries, will it escalate the bombing . Amy you begin your piece by saying the government and its l from may capture mosu isis, but it could be a new chapter in the war. Explain. Mosul haseen been captured or recaptured five times since 2003. Amost immedediately, there was babattle. Herere was mass looting andowd came out as a mosque identified kurds as enemies and looters and were threatening to lynch my drivever, somomeone persuaded them against doing this. I wewe to a local hospital. This is a deeply divided place. The u. S. 101st division came in. You may remember the battle for led by the marines, the iraqi armed opposition came in , a muchptured mosul bigger city. They moved out after a week. This is illustrative of the divisions. Oful ststands at a juncture ethnic d differences. Turkey wants to be a player there. It has 3000 troops nearby. Many ways the situation could go. It will be going towards more war, not peace. Amy can you talk about the relationship between the kurds , as well asd mosul u. S. Troops . The kurds have fled. The kurds mostly fled or were driven out. The same is true of the christians. Forces were advancing, but very much under u. S. Air cover. Iraqi armynows the fled when it was attacked by isis. Each of these sites, they have some troops. Kurdish troopss had not been paid for much for months. It is much more ramshackle than it looks when you see it on television. Officers look as though they are very much in control. What is going to happen when they get close to the city. There must be some chance isis will withdraw, but i doubt it. This w was their big victory. They are probablbly betttter off fighghting in muzzle. Ul. Fighting in mos the likelihood is that it will be a long battle. Amy they said it was uncertain how long the operation would last. Not aware of a specific time frame for when the operation would he completed. This represents the next important step in our campaign iraq. T isil in there is a coalition to support e Iraqi Government as they seek to rid isofrom their country. Amy this is Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov speaking tuesday about mosul. Of course we are following this operation. We are all interested in defeating the Islamic State. I hope itow why, but is because they simply couldnt do it. This corridor were still exists. Amy Iraqi Foreign minister Ibrahim Al Jaafari said tuesdayy that he was relying on support from the internanational communy in the fight against isis. It will not stop at iraq. We must look at it from this perspective. Iraqi is not only fighting to defend itself, but also divisive and but also to defend all countries of the world. These fighters come from more than 100 countries. We say we are defending ourselves and all countries of the civilized world and we are defending democracy. Amy as you hear them talk about significance,nal and also w what this means for syria. Everything that happens in countries aside. Factions and different parties within the country allged into outside allies, of whom have their own rivalries and who have their own agendas. They dont necessarily lead towards peace. Turkey is saying it wants to preserve sunni dominance in mosul. The kurds and the Iraqi Government have their own agendas. How does this impact syria . One of the reasons they took the city was they were able to expand into syria during the war, take advantage of the Syrian Civil War and their own experience and money and weapons offices to move into the war zone and take over most of eastern syria. That will be affected by what is happening in mosul. Amy what about the humanitarian situation, a city of 2 million, what this means . Is lefty knows what there. It is probably over one million. The thing is, all of these sieges have a certain amount in have, whetherouou it is the various districts in damascus, aleppo, ramadi, fallujah, mosul. Government forces want to separate the f fhters fromom the civilian population. They do that by bombarding these places. Those defending the places, in this case, isis, dont want to lose the civilian population, so they prevent them leaving and they are described as human shields. Basically, who is whoever is on thehe defenending side has te interest to keep the civilian population there. Amy dont they have to be desperate to flee into syria . Has been the way out. It may seem that way. Out, itho have gotten seems to be easier before this happened, it is about 600 per person to get out. You would cross into the kurdish controlled area of northeast. Yria they would move to camps they are and move on word from there. They would move to camps there and move onward from there. I talked to people who came from mosul, they paid money to guides. They were e walking through fied who they thought there were es there. It seems to be safer to go west rather than east. Geographically, it is much longer. Amy talk about this in terms of Hillary Clinton and donald trump on the middle east. Be to fall, itld would be a plus for the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton. What would the effect of the outcome of the up president to on that for Hillary Clinton and a number of her leading candidates for high positions have talked about, fly zones in making a ked about ssad targets to fight both. They have been trying that for four or five years. It has failed, almost become a joke. Fly zone sounds benign, but are we going to shoot down and stop the third world war . Who will control things on the ground . I dont know how far they consider these practical policies. It could change. It could change for the worst. A lot of expectations in the middle east. Toont know if that is going be. If there is more information, it will go the same way as these other interventions. Do badly. They make bad situations worse. Amy patrick, we are going to leave it there. We will link to your article. Book donald trump says the elections are rigged. The nationak with s ari bergman. Stay with us. [music break] amy i am amy goodman. We turn to the u. S. Election. It is now 19 days away. On tuesday, president obama criticized republican president ial nominee donald trump for claiming the elelectin will be e rigged. He said it was unprecedented for any president ial candidate to discredidit the elections before any votes were even cast. Obobama defended the integrity f the election process and told trump to stop whining. Pres. Obama i would invite mr. Trump to stop whining and to make his case to get votes. If he got the most votes, it would be my expectation to offer a concession speech and work with him to make sure that the American People benefit from an effective government. Amy for weeks, donald trump has claimed the election would be rigged at the voting booth. The guardiaian reports he has hired the former head of the Koch Brothers intelligence gathering operation to run an Election Protection effort. On monday he said dead people and undocumented immigrants are voting. Mr. Trump they want to try to rig the election at the polling booths. They say there is nothing going on. Years agot have died are voting. Illegal immigrants are voting. Smarts ofthe street some of these politicians. Corrupt. Ities are amy trumps claims of a rigged election have been widely criticized by both democrats and republicans. Is week, o ohios republican secretary of state said trump is wrong and engaging in irresponsible rhetoric, adding, i am in charge of elections in ohio, and theyre not going to be rigged. Meanwhile, experts say cases of voting fraud are very rare. One study by Loyola Law School found just 31 instances involving allegations of voter impersonation out of 1 billion votes cast in u. S. Elections between 2000 and 2014. All of this comes as this years president ial election is the first in 50 years to take place without the full protections of the Voting Rights act. Fourteen states nearly all controlled by republicans also have new voting restrictions in place. For more were joined by the nation magazines ari berman who argues in his latest piece that this election is being rigged, but not by democrats. He says the true danger to american democracy stems from republicanled efforts to make vote. Der to his book is called, give us the ballot the modern struggle for Voting Rights in america. Ari berman, welcome back to democracy now democracy isat to from republicanled efforts to make it harder to vote, things like strict voter id laws, cutting early voting, making it harder to register to vote. I have seen evidence of people being turned away from the polls. Evidence ofing voter fraud, but i am seeing evidence of people turned away from the polls. We should be saying people are being turned away right now because of laws republicans have passed. Amy many people have voted. They have been voting for a while. Ari early voting in wisconsin started in late september. Get idhave been going to to vote. They have been going to get id and they have been turned away. The election has already started. Emergency. Ational we should be talking about the whoer problem of the people want to be able to vote are not able to. They are saying they have never seen anything like the turnout. They are saying people are waiting and unprecedentedly long lines. Had one early voting site for the entire county. Was one county in atlanta. Saw a the primaries, we county in arizona have long lines because republicans closed 70 of polling places. Pollingre be enough places, enough Voting Machines . These things can lead to longer and many other problems on election day. Amy talk about the Election Protection efforts, bringing out the Koch Brothers. Amy he said law enfororcement should monitor the p polls in certain areas, which is illegal in states like pennsylvania. Racialnt eveven coded language. Watch mexicans, syrians, people not speaking english. Has hired the head of the Koch Brothers intelligence agency. It is very dangerous. The thing i am hopeful for is the Trump Campaign is so disorganized that this will not come to pass. If it did happen, if they tried to challenge based on racial profiling, it could get difficult. Amy t this is the first president ial election in over half a century without the full protection of the voters rights act. Ari it is a very important thing. Controlled by republicans, if the vote was being rigged for hillary, it would have to be republicans raking it. We are seeing many of these officials are making it harder for constituencies to be able to vote. In ohio, one Million People were purged. They were supposed to be put baback on a roll. There are a lot of problems in the early running up to election day. Amy what are you most concerned about now . The cases go through the courts. We s see on the grground whahats happening all ovover the countr. History isoncerned repeating itself here. We are seeing a new iteration of these things today. They are being turned away because they dont have strict forms of id or the amount of time to vote has been cut. Amy what you mean it has beenen cut . Cut earlyes have voting. It had a real impact on elections. Lots of people who want to be able to vote, who are eligible to vote, will not be able to. I am not concerned with the problem of voter fraud which has. Een blown out of proportion amy the boston globe spoke to a man, steve webb, a 61yearold carpenter from fairfield, ohio. Webb told the globe, trump said to watch your precincts. Im going to go, for sure. Ill look for well, its called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who cant speak american. Im going to go right up behind them. Ill do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. Im not going to do anything illegal. Im going to make them a little bit nervouous. Ari this is an insane hypothetical. It is unconstitutional, antiamerican. How are you going to do this . Are they going to go to everyone not speaking english as their native language . These are the things that happened during jim crow. And preventpatrol people from voting simply because of their race. By one of the major c candidates from for te presidency is alarming. Amy florida purged thousands of voters from the polls. One who set xs phones needed to be purged. The purge problem was was discriminatory. The voter purge list. What happened in addition to the other issues, people were told they were felons and were prevented from voting. The naacp sued the state of florida and found 12,000 voters were wrongly labeled as felons and it prevented from voting. It really was decisive in terms of outcome. Some republicans learned of the lesson that small or not so small manipulation to the voting laws could make a big differeree in close elections. Fraud, theut voter way it occurred was a way of Building Public support. The 2000 election in florida laid the groundwork for future voters. Amy now you have hurricane that , is itumber on florida true the governor opposed Voter Registration extensions because people couldnt register during the crisis . Floridiansas telling to leave their homes but was not extending the Voter Registration deadlines. A federal court extended the deadline. It is outrageous that i in the middle of a hurricane you would not extend the deadline. This shows what republicans are up to hear. The laws around felonony convictions around pepeople serving time in jail. Ari 6. 1 million peoplple will t be able to vote. These people have served time, have been released. Huge number of people like in states of florida. Amy thank you for joining us. We will link to your piece. The author of a book. This is democracy now depthk at an in investigation, the Police Killings no one is talking about. Stay with us. [music break] amy this is democracy now show with a new investigation that explodes myths about who is most likely to die at the hands of police. The article, titled, the Police Killings no one is talking about, explains that when compared to their percentage of the u. S. Population, natives were more likely to be killed by police than any other group, including African Americans. Analysis of cdc data from 1999 to 2014 shows that native americans are 3. 1 times more likely to be killed by police than white americans. The investigation found that cases of African American Police Deaths tend to dominate headlines, killings of native people go almost entirely unreported by mainstream u. S. Media. One of the cases that received almost no National Coverage was the Police Killing of Jacqueline Salyers, a 32yearold pregnant mother and member of the puyallup tribe who was killed by police in tacoma, washington, on january 28, 2016. Salyers was at the wheel of a parked car when Police Spotted her partner, kenneth wright, who had multiple outstanding warrants, in the passenger seat. Police shot and killed salyers while wright escaped. The shooting was ruled justified based on an officers testimony that salyers had attempted to run him down with the car. Family members dispute that account. Their justice for jackie group backs an initiative to change washington law to improve police accountability. For more, we are joined by journalist stephanie woodard, writer of the article the Police Killings no one is talking about. Also with us is james rideout, Jacqueline Salyers uncle. She was in a parked c car. There is very Little Information about what happened that night, other than what the police are telling us. Or bodyid not use dash cameras. There was a camera on the street that malfunctioned. There were some security cameras on a house nearby, both front and back of the house, that might have recorded useful policetion, but when the took them, they broke them and the hard drives to which they were connected. Little information about what went on that night. The family has gotten underway its own investigation and is talking to people to see if more information is available. What seems to have happen is the car started at a slow speed because it coasted to a stop a few feet later after she was shot. Out of the car, onto the sidewalk, dragged into a police car, driven to a corner, dragged back out onto the pavement where she received chest compressions. She may have been dead at this point. There was concern that she had been her body had been disrespected or manhandled while she had been shot. It turned out her body was returned to the family and buried and it turned out she had been pregnant at the time and that was additionally upsetting to the family. They would have had a different ritual for the child in addition to the mother had they known the child existed. Got to tacoma to talk to Family Members and attend a family meeting and interact with them, it was clear that it was traumatic. Are part of the justice for jackie group. Can you talk about who she was and what you believe happened . She is a member of a tribe, i am just correcting your pronunciation. She was a loving and caring and considerate person that did not deserve to die. We seek through circumstances, even though there is no media coverage, they said this killing will be justified. We have discovered so many multiple of things. Circumstancesting when your loved one is killed by Law Enforcement and how protected they are by unions. Today, we had the greater opportunities to fight the injustices. If it was for another Family Member or someone who did not have those types of resources, it is difficult. They have all fallen victim of police brutality. That is what started community for good policing here in our tribe. Ur tribe today provides hope the initiative is one that we are looking to change the laws. In the state of washington, they have a law called malice and good faith. The is the only state in United States that has this law that no office or can ever be prosecuted for any of their actions. When the news had to explain to me this was going to be justified, that is what it meant. Upon learning these things, our tribe supported the initiative and we are looking forward to getting signatures to washington state. Tomorrow, we go to the state capital. Tois difficult when we speak Council Members, the mayor, even the governor about the circumstanances. Gatherough for them to the support. It is more tough when the unions have a precedentsetting circumstance over the city council, the mayor, and the media itself. It is like they provoke you to be violent. We do nott want to be violent. We are a peaceful group. In august, the review board determined the shooting was justified. Cousin speaking with the news in response to the findings. There is no way we will accept that investigation. They all work together. Amy i want to ask stephanie, if broadn put this in a context. We looked at two important studies that had, how. In addition to finding as many as we could of the individuals , and coveringled , we looked at the , where he showed native americans were the most likely to be killed. They were two of the top three groups when you divide the population by age. That is in proportion to their percentage of the population. We looked at another study from claremont university, which quantified, corroborated the findings. It quantified the coverage in the top 10 papers. Police brutality was covered during the 15 month peperiod they looked at in hundreds of articles and hundreds of thousands of words. Of all of the victims who were shot, only two were mentioned in these top newspapers. There is a media blackout. It is not a blackout, it is a media blind spot. All of a sudden, people were very surprised all of these peoplele came out from behind te blind spot and had. Amy how important is it for the government to get involved . One of the activists who wrote, which is intended to remove this easy out for hayes said she thought the involvement of the tribe was important. Tribes are sovereign governments. They have relationships with other governments. Their involvement gives a great deal of weight to this. It is a big deal. Amy james, you went to the and calledartment for an independedent ininvestigation. They said they have too much oversight and they could not cover their fiduciary responsibility to the tribes and one of our Council Members stated there were 257 police stations that they have a responsibility to. Disrupting they dont do their part. We would want multiple things being done. It does not happen for indigenous people. Amy we are going to have to leave it there. We are going to do part two and posted online. We will link to your piece. Major investigations, Police Killings no one is talking about. That does it for our show. A twohour special tomorrow, expanding the debate. Reyes a mass migration away from war and violence. More than a Million People have fled to europe, a crisis that has burdened its borders, but some have found solace in south america. Im elaine reyes in washington, d. C. , and this is americas now. Syrian refugees head to south america with the expectation of building a new life after running away from a conflict zone. [man shouting in native language] man maybe brazil is j just a station for another movement man yes. Man or maybe i will stay here in brazil. I dont know. But in brazil, i cant survive. I dont know. Man you cant . Man no, because ithere is no job. Reyes brazil opens the door to thousands of syr