democracynow--2020-10-22--"We Are Asking for Justice": #EndSARS Anti-Police Brutality Protests Grow as Nigerian Forces Kill 12

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : A warning to our listeners and viewers : We turn now to a story that includes graphic video and accounts of state violence .
We begin today ’ s show in Nigeria , where there ’ s growing evidence to confirm security forces fired without warning on peaceful protesters Tuesday night , killing at least 12 people , as authorities imposed a curfew to clamp down on growing demonstrations against police brutality .
Video shared widely on social media shows security forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of demonstrators who were singing Nigeria national anthem .
AMY GOODMAN : Amnesty International issued a report Wednesday that it was Nigeria ’ s security forces that fired on the protesters .
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet issued a statement that , quote , “ There is little doubt that this was a case of excessive use of force , resulting in unlawful killings with live ammunition , by Nigerian armed forces , ” she said .
Amnesty International also said it received reports that shortly before the shootings , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the area where protesters had camped .
At least 56 people have died during two weeks of widespread demonstrations in Nigeria , including 38 on Tuesday .
The killings come two weeks after protests began against a branch of the Nigerian police known as SARS , the Special Anti-Robbery Squad , which has long been accused of committing torture , murder and extortion .
The killings have sparked outrage from Nigerians across the globe .
The soccer star Odion Ighalo , who plays for Manchester United , posted this video online .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we go to Nigeria , where we ’ re joined by two guests .
In Abuja , the capital of Nigeria , we ’ re joined by Sowore Omoyele .
He is a Nigerian journalist , a human rights activist , and founder and publisher of Sahara Reporters .
He also ran for president in Nigeria and has been imprisoned there .
In Lagos , the most populous city in Nigeria , which is the most populous country in the African continent , we ’ re joined by Aderonke Ige , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the organization Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa .
Ige has been participating in the End SARS protests .
We welcome you both to Democracy Now !
We ’ re going to start in Lagos , where those fatal killings happened , the fatal shootings happened , on Tuesday night .
Aderonke Ige , you ’ ve been out on the streets .
Describe what ’ s happened , and talk about the level of peaceful protest that has been going on against this police unit and police brutality in general .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to describe in words the kind of barbaric action of the Nigerian government that we saw play out on Tuesday here in Lagos .
Now , these protests have been sustained , have been peaceful , have been the most — you know , a lot of people would tend to say , “ Oh , we don ’ t even know the leaders.
” It ’ s not , you know , all of that , but it has been one of the most coordinated protests or demonstrations I have ever seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of leadership .
That ’ s how we have been conducting ourselves for the past two weeks .
And you could see that there was raw passion , there was energy , to just salvage the soul of our collective group , our country , Nigeria .
And a lot of young people have been at the forefront , just everybody demanding , in unity and in oneness : What are we asking for ?
We ’ re asking for justice .
We are asking for our lives to be preserved , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of state called SARS — that ’ s Special Anti-Robbery Squad — but then , even beyond SARS , by the Nigerian police , by the Nigerian military .
It looks like everything about Nigeria is just forceful .
And especially with this government , it ’ s been totally arbitrary , has been full of impunity , and just is set up against the people .
So , that ’ s all we ’ ve been asking for .
And it ’ s been totally organized .
And that ’ s why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the applause of everyone who has seen it .
But then , rather than the Nigerian government taking action heeding to these demands and just being responsible , what we saw was , you know , what a lot of us have been seeing over the years , which , good enough , is now coming to the full glare of the globe .
Now we have seen where government , rather than heed to the voices of its citizens , would rather turn against them , oppress them and even further @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intimidated .
So , what happened on Tuesday was the anticlimax of everything .
So , in the last two weeks , we ’ ve been on the street , just chanting , just making our voices heard , demanding what we have been asking for as usual .
But then , the government , like a thief in the night that it has always been , went out .
Now , in the early evening , around 4 or 3 p.m. , there had been messages .
In fact , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uniform , tampering with the closed-circuit camera TV , you know , and saying there ’ s something suspicious going on here .
It was later we realized that they had actually gone to cut off the cameras .
Eventually , as well , they cut off the lights .
And who could have had access to the government ’ s source of light , if not government ?
So , lights were cut off .
And then , what came after was the most horrendous thing ever , most horrific .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We saw men in soldier ’ s uniform spraying bullets , just firing live rounds at peaceful protesters who held national flags , singing the national anthem .
And how did we know this eventually ?
We are grateful for technology .
Some of us had their cameras on .
Some went on — in fact , there was one of us — DJ Switch is her name , in Nigeria here — she went live on Instagram .
And that was how most of us were able to also follow , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points , different grounds , running shifts and just showing solidarity for one another and with one another .
But she went on live , and we were able to follow , to monitor , though it was dark because the government had cut off the lights , but we were still able to make out sounds .
We saw the injured .
We saw people dying right before our eyes .
But then it was a situation where citizens were helpless in the face of government officials who had been sent to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were just there singing the national anthem .
So , what that told us is that — because , you know , there was also this message we passed across in recent — like four days ago , we started spreading it around , because in the course of this protest — this is all the same protest — we have also seen the aggression , brutality .
Everything that we have been asking , demanding , campaigning against was also unleashed on us .
We ’ ve seen the aggression of police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us and so on .
So , what we told our people was , try , when you go out , to go with the national flag .
Ordinarily , when any military official sees the national flag or you ’ re singing the national anthem , they are supposed to just respect us .
It ’ s a social contract .
And that ’ s everything that symbolizes us , that gives us dignity as citizens .
But guess what .
Everything that dignifies us was desecrated that night , from what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They were helpless .
They were shouting .
They were screaming .
And this went on and on .
So , that ’ s what happened on Tuesday .
But then , that was the anticlimax , that happened in Lagos .
So , the specific location where that happened in Lagos , the protest point , is at Lekki .
We call it Lekki toll gate .
So , there have been other points , like I personally have been protesting Alausa through Orile , you know , all of those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this peacefully and sensibly and in the most applaudable manner .
But then the government came , as usual , and applied force and massacred people and injured , maimed its own citizens , who were there for nothing else than to ask for their lives to be saved and not be brutalized as it has always been .
AMY GOODMAN : Aderonke Ige , we ’ re going to break and then come back .
We will hear more from you .
Aderonke Ige is a human rights activist and a lawyer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s capital , Abuja , where Sowore Omoyele , the Nigerian journalist and human rights activist , who ’ s been imprisoned by the Nigerian state , has also been leading protests .
Stay with us .
AMY GOODMAN : “ Zombie ” by the late , great , legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti .
His son Femi Kuti recently marked what would have been Fela ’ s birthday by leading an End SARS protest in Nigeria .
This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as we continue to talk about what ’ s happening in Africa ’ s most populous country .
A warning to listeners and viewers again : As we report on Nigeria , the coverage includes graphic video and accounts of state violence in Nigeria , where there ’ s growing evidence to confirm security forces fired without warning on peaceful protesters Tuesday night , killing at least 12 people , as authorities imposed a curfew to clamp down on growing demonstrations against police brutality .
Some witnesses posted videos on social media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A warning : This is graphic video of state violence .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , for more , we continue in Nigeria with our two guests .
In Lagos , the human rights attorney and activist Aderonke Ige , who was out in the streets , she works with the organization Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa .
She participated in the End SARS protests .
And we now go to Abuja , Nigeria ’ s capital , where Sowore Omoyele is a Nigerian journalist , human rights activist , founder and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is great to see you .
You ’ ve been imprisoned by the Nigerian state .
Now , once again , you ’ re out on the streets .
Talk about who the SARS police are , why you were protesting , and what this continued violence against the people of Nigeria means .
OMOYELE SOWORE : Thank you so much , Amy .
And I ’ m glad to be on your show .
SARS is the Special Anti-Robbery Squad .
It was formed in 1992 apparently to fight armed robbery @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demise — not the demise , but after a unit of the Nigerian police known as the “ Kill-and-Go ” was kind of rested because they were committing the same type of atrocities in those days .
They were being used by oil companies to suppress villagers and protesters in the Niger Delta region .
So , SARS is the nephew or cousin or brother , as you can imagine , in the police force , a tactical unit that ’ s been unleashed on the young people , in particular .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thing the Kill-and-Go do : to kill , destroy , decimate , extort , invade .
But it started having problems recently when they started to stop young people on the street who have dreadlocks , who have their hairs colored .
And they extort them , and they arrest people with phones and ask them to unlock their phones .
They take them to ATMs to collect bribes and extortion fees .
It was crazy .
And this has been going on .
And they ’ ve been killing people , young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason .
And it got to a head .
Well , let me be very clear : SARS is just the alias name for the pent-up anger within the Nigerian society , where young people are fighting over unemployment , over lack of justice , lack of access to the national wealth , I mean , in terms of oil resources and other resources , and the fact that the democratic system in Nigeria has started to break down and yield no dividend for the people of Nigeria .
So , all these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ here , they are fighting against police brutality , but they are also fighting against Army brutality , they are fighting against unemployment , they are fighting against the incompetence and indifference of the regime that has been in power , who , by the way , sent me to prison last year for five months simply because I organized a protest , that was supposed to take place August 5 , 2019 , in Lagos .
And they flew me to Abuja , detained me without trial for a long time .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the same thing .
You know , people are getting detained , jailed for making social media posts on Facebook , on Twitter .
It ’ s unbelievable .
Nigeria has become a police state , practically .
And what you ’ re seeing is a response to all of these abuses that have been taking place .
And , of course , on top of that is corruption .
You know , when Nigeria was under lockdown from COVID-19 between February and now , officials were making away with billions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you know , millions in dollars , from — [ inaudible ] are saying that they are failing schoolchildren who are not going to school .
So , people are hearing all of this , and social media has happened to amplify all of these abuses .
Images are coming out , as you know , live and instantaneously .
And this makes people to rise up at once .
And I tell you , I was happy to be back on the streets fighting on the side of all these young @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And this is what I ’ ve always asked for , that Nigerians need to rise up against oppression and fight for their rights and have the revolution that will give them a new order and a new direction , that can restore faith once again in what they call democracy here , which has just completely been managed by morons .
So , this is where we are , Amy .
And in Abuja , where I participated , the dimension was different .
They introduced what I will call an informal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Abuja , they are not sending soldiers to kill protesters directly , but they ’ re moving urchins , you know , and hoodlums in government vehicles to attack protesters .
And they ’ ve injured — killed one protester in Abuja that we know of , and they ’ ve injured a lot of people .
As of last night , these urchins , being directed by the police and the secret service — I mean , the secret police in Nigeria — I don ’ t know how to say , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you know , they are doing house-to-house searches for people they say are the leaders of this uprising that ’ s happening in Nigeria .
In my own case , yesterday , they went to court to try and revoke my bail so that I could get rearrested .
But luckily for me , lawyers did a fantastic job to ward that off .
So , they are at war against the youth .
They are at war against human rights .
They are at war against the people of Nigeria .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seeing , is the very , very principled response to these abuses by Nigerians .
And this has never happened before .
Even during when we were fighting against the military , I ’ ve never seen such a coordinated , very disciplined set of young people who have acted peacefully .
And what they did in Lagos was to go after these young people , most of them middle-class young people who , as they were peacefully protesting , they were shooting them at close range .
They ’ re using war-caliber @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for fighting terrorists and fighting the wars , against peaceful protesters at this Lekki toll gate at close range .
There ’ s never been anything like that .
What made a difference this time around was social media , that this thing was captured instantaneously and broadcast to the world .
Otherwise , they would have denied it .
As we speak , they are still denying it .
They are claiming that the casualties were false and the wounded are recovering .
And they ’ re doing all kinds of things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make it an ethnic and religious issue .
But fail , they must .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : But , Omoyele , as you pointed out , these protests are not just about police violence , but about a number of other issues .
But I just want to say that a University of Leiden report in 2016 found that police violence in Nigeria is apparently among the worst in the world , if not the worst , that when police intervene in a confrontation , almost 60 % of the time someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Could you talk about — as you said , President Buhari ’ s government was responsible for imprisoning you last year just for organizing protests .
What has his response been to these protests and the response to his decision to disband SARS ?
OMOYELE SOWORE : The reason why people did not take his decision seriously is that President Buhari is tone-deaf .
This is who he is .
This has been his character .
He was the former military dictator who had carried out killings of people , judicially at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — that some drug carriers were sentenced , and he brought their sentences forward and sentenced them to death .
He ’ s been part of every military regime in the country that partook in abuses of human rights up ’ til 1983 , when he took over government .
And he continued it .
He clamped down on the press .
And that ’ s what he ’ s doing now , because beside just killing people , beside this whole clampdown on people , they ’ re also clamping down on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ criminalize people who are speaking out against the government .
That carries death penalty .
They are pushing these laws through the National Assembly .
And the National Assembly has become a rubber-stamp National Assembly in Nigeria .
So , this is not new .
This is Buhari ’ s way of doing things .
Buhari doesn ’ t believe in human rights , doesn ’ t believe in public opinion .
Buhari doesn ’ t believe in democracy .
But , unfortunately , he was packaged in 19— I mean , 2015 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came to office .
And he ’ s just continuing with his own way of doing things .
And he ’ s surrounded by people who have the same mindsets , because it suits their agenda to have a populace that can not speak , that can not discuss openly .
And it suits their agenda that they suppress everybody so that they can carry out — they can continue to carry out corruption of immense proportion .
So , Buhari came to power saying he will fight corruption , but , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his government than even previous governments in the history of Nigeria .
So , this is Buhari for you .
And in rejecting his ban on SARS , people are just saying , “ Look , this is not enough.
” You know , you have the inspector general of police — they asked him to be fired .
They refused .
You had the chief of Army staff , who presumably ordered the stealings at — or , the shooting at Lekki .
The people have been asking for this man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know , they refuse to remove them because they are there to protect the despot , the Nigerian despot Muhammadu Buhari .
And unfortunately , I don ’ t think the international community is doing enough .
But , hey , you know , this is what they are about , because , for them , oil coming out of Nigeria is more important than the people of Nigeria .
But the good news we have here is that people can now speak up .
They can tell their own stories through the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in galvanizing public opinion internationally and locally .
And we now have a solid diaspora , too , that has become part of this struggle in a way that has never happened before in Nigeria .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Aderonke Ige , I just — could you say — we just have a couple of minutes — what exactly are protesters calling for now ?
ADERONKE IGE : [ inaudible ] beginning , it was about End SARS at first , because of the brutality , because of what we saw as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ordinary citizens , especially young people , were treated as common criminals , just by profiling them and stereotyping and so on .
However , it went beyond .
It became a thing of — you know , these things have been pent up over the years , years of indiscipline , lack of accountability , impunity on the part of government officials .
So it became a thing of reform the entire police .
Their modus operandi is not suitable .
They are killing people .
At the same time , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal government , the criminal silence when you need their voice to be loudest .
They are totally silent , aloof in a criminal manner .
People die under your watch .
There ’ s no accountability for anything .
Even officers that are named , nothing happens to them .
There ’ s no prosecution .
No justice is being seen as been done , manifestly done .
So , people were tired .
It became a whole lot of issues .
Now , what the demands were initially , we were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even in the course of the protests , as we were protesting against brutality , people were still brutalized , arrested and so on .
And we said , “ OK , release these people already .
Then , every named victim of police injustice , of systemic injustice , we want them to be duly compensated .
We want them to get justice , just by bringing people to book and then getting a proper sanction .
We want to have that .
Then we want to manifestly see that government is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ topical issue , that we have raised.
” And we have said we want this to be done and that to be done .
For instance , we will tell you here that there ’ s a commission that is called the National Human Rights Commission .
This commission normally is supposed to oversee all human rights issues , you know , abuses and just violations and so on .
But let me tell you , even as we speak , that commission seems to be a toothless bulldog , because there ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a governing council , what can they do ?
There has not been a governing council since 2015 .
Those are some of the issues .
But then — so , it became a thing of even the End SARS that we are calling for , that became the hashtag for all these other holistic demands , the government was playing politics with it .
So that ’ s the reason you will see , OK , they came and said the IGP — still , as we speak , General Muhammadu Buhari @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let ’ s even leave him aside .
The IGP came and said — AMY GOODMAN : Could these protests bring down the government of Muhammadu Buhari ?
ADERONKE IGE : Look , anything can happen at this point , because everybody is speaking with one voice .
And that is the reason that when they tried to politicize this and say , “ Oh , it ’ s this group , is that opposition ” — no , we can ’ t all be opposition at the same time .
We are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you are not doing , on the fact that the system is running on injustice , and you are choosing to politicize it .
So , even at the point that they said they were disbanding SARS , was that it means these people are not listening .
They don ’ t get the point .
We are not doing a christening ceremony .
You can ’ t disband SARS and then immediately replace it with SWAT , because SWAT is going to eventually become a worse form of SARS .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the anger of an average Nigerian .
So , yes , you are correct : This can totally unseat the government .
And this can totally lead to a kind of reform that we have been asking for , to that social revolution , intellectual revolution , people political resolution , because right now what is worse is that instead of listening to the people and engaging appropriately , you are suppressing the people .
You are oppressing the people for that .
And for how long can you do that ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ see — AMY GOODMAN : Aderonke Ige , we want to thank you so much for being with us .
We are certainly going to continue to cover this .
Please be safe .
Human rights activist and lawyer , now in the streets of Lagos , Nigeria , where security forces gunned down at least a dozen people in the last few days .
And Omoyele Sowore , Nigerian journalist , human rights activist , ran for president , was imprisoned by the current Nigerian regime , speaking to us from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see more of our coverage of Nigeria , you can go to our documentary Drilling and Killing : Chevron and Nigeria ’ s Oil Dictatorship .
Democracy Now !
went to Nigeria .
I covered the Niger Delta with Jeremy Scahill , and we went with Sowore Omoyele to the Niger Delta , where we were investigating the activities of an earlier SARS , called , as he said , the Kill-and-Go .
That ’ s the Kill-and-Go .
When we come back , as fighting continues in the South Caucasus between Armenia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conflict , which has already taken the lives of over 700 people .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: A warning to our listeners and viewers: We turn now to a story that includes graphic video and accounts of state violence. We begin today’s show in Nigeria, where there’s growing evidence to confirm security forces fired without warning on peaceful protesters Tuesday night, killing at least 12 people, as authorities imposed a curfew to clamp down on growing demonstrations against police brutality. Video shared widely on social media shows security forces in Lagos firing directly into a crowd of demonstrators who were singing Nigeria national anthem.
PROTESTERS: [singing] Arise, O compatriots,
Nigeria’s call obey
To serve our Fatherland
With love and strength and faith.
The labor of our heroes past
Shall never be in vain,
To serve with heart and might
One nation bound in freedom, peace and unity.
AMY GOODMAN: Amnesty International issued a report Wednesday that it was Nigeria’s security forces that fired on the protesters. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet issued a statement that, quote, “There is little doubt that this was a case of excessive use of force, resulting in unlawful killings with live ammunition, by Nigerian armed forces,” she said. Amnesty International also said it received reports that shortly before the shootings, electricity was cut off for security cameras in the area where protesters had camped.
At least 56 people have died during two weeks of widespread demonstrations in Nigeria, including 38 on Tuesday. The killings come two weeks after protests began against a branch of the Nigerian police known as SARS, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, which has long been accused of committing torture, murder and extortion.
The killings have sparked outrage from Nigerians across the globe. The soccer star Odion Ighalo, who plays for Manchester United, posted this video online.
ODION IGHALO: I’m sad, and I’m broken. I don’t know where to start from. I’m not the kind of guy that talks about politics, but I can’t keep quiet anymore for what is going on back home in Nigeria. I will say, Nigerian government, you guys are a shame to the world for killing your own citizens, sending military to the streets to kill unharmful protesters because they are protesting for their rights. It’s uncalled for. Today, 20th of October, 2020, you people will be remembered in the history as the first government that sent military to the city to start killing their own citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go to Nigeria, where we’re joined by two guests. In Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, we’re joined by Sowore Omoyele. He is a Nigerian journalist, a human rights activist, and founder and publisher of Sahara Reporters. He also ran for president in Nigeria and has been imprisoned there. In Lagos, the most populous city in Nigeria, which is the most populous country in the African continent, we’re joined by Aderonke Ige, a human rights activist and lawyer who works with the organization Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa. Ige has been participating in the End SARS protests.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! We’re going to start in Lagos, where those fatal killings happened, the fatal shootings happened, on Tuesday night. Aderonke Ige, you’ve been out on the streets. Describe what’s happened, and talk about the level of peaceful protest that has been going on against this police unit and police brutality in general.
ADERONKE IGE: Thank you.
I cannot even begin to try to describe in words the kind of barbaric action of the Nigerian government that we saw play out on Tuesday here in Lagos.
Now, these protests have been sustained, have been peaceful, have been the most — you know, a lot of people would tend to say, “Oh, we don’t even know the leaders.” It’s not, you know, all of that, but it has been one of the most coordinated protests or demonstrations I have ever seen, without any face or any type of leadership. That’s how we have been conducting ourselves for the past two weeks.
And you could see that there was raw passion, there was energy, to just salvage the soul of our collective group, our country, Nigeria. And a lot of young people have been at the forefront, just everybody demanding, in unity and in oneness: What are we asking for? We’re asking for justice. We are asking for our lives to be preserved, not to be killed arbitrarily by these officers of state called SARS — that’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad — but then, even beyond SARS, by the Nigerian police, by the Nigerian military. It looks like everything about Nigeria is just forceful. And especially with this government, it’s been totally arbitrary, has been full of impunity, and just is set up against the people. So, that’s all we’ve been asking for. And it’s been totally organized. And that’s why we have demonstrated, in fact, to the applause of everyone who has seen it.
But then, rather than the Nigerian government taking action heeding to these demands and just being responsible, what we saw was, you know, what a lot of us have been seeing over the years, which, good enough, is now coming to the full glare of the globe. Now we have seen where government, rather than heed to the voices of its citizens, would rather turn against them, oppress them and even further intimidate them for asking not to be intimidated.
So, what happened on Tuesday was the anticlimax of everything. So, in the last two weeks, we’ve been on the street, just chanting, just making our voices heard, demanding what we have been asking for as usual. But then, the government, like a thief in the night that it has always been, went out. Now, in the early evening, around 4 or 3 p.m., there had been messages. In fact, one of us captured some officers, wearing certain uniform, tampering with the closed-circuit camera TV, you know, and saying there’s something suspicious going on here. It was later we realized that they had actually gone to cut off the cameras. Eventually, as well, they cut off the lights. And who could have had access to the government’s source of light, if not government? So, lights were cut off.
And then, what came after was the most horrendous thing ever, most horrific. And then it was just the Nigerian military. We saw men in soldier’s uniform spraying bullets, just firing live rounds at peaceful protesters who held national flags, singing the national anthem.
And how did we know this eventually? We are grateful for technology. Some of us had their cameras on. Some went on — in fact, there was one of us — DJ Switch is her name, in Nigeria here — she went live on Instagram. And that was how most of us were able to also follow, because we have been protesting at different points, different grounds, running shifts and just showing solidarity for one another and with one another. But she went on live, and we were able to follow, to monitor, though it was dark because the government had cut off the lights, but we were still able to make out sounds. We saw the injured. We saw people dying right before our eyes.
But then it was a situation where citizens were helpless in the face of government officials who had been sent to fire live rounds on peaceful protesters who were just there singing the national anthem. So, what that told us is that — because, you know, there was also this message we passed across in recent — like four days ago, we started spreading it around, because in the course of this protest — this is all the same protest — we have also seen the aggression, brutality. Everything that we have been asking, demanding, campaigning against was also unleashed on us. We’ve seen the aggression of police we’ve seen just coming at us and so on. So, what we told our people was, try, when you go out, to go with the national flag. Ordinarily, when any military official sees the national flag or you’re singing the national anthem, they are supposed to just respect us. It’s a social contract. And that’s everything that symbolizes us, that gives us dignity as citizens.
But guess what. Everything that dignifies us was desecrated that night, from what we saw live. People were dying. They were helpless. They were shouting. They were screaming. And this went on and on. So, that’s what happened on Tuesday. But then, that was the anticlimax, that happened in Lagos.
So, the specific location where that happened in Lagos, the protest point, is at Lekki. We call it Lekki toll gate. So, there have been other points, like I personally have been protesting Alausa through Orile, you know, all of those places. And we have been doing this peacefully and sensibly and in the most applaudable manner. But then the government came, as usual, and applied force and massacred people and injured, maimed its own citizens, who were there for nothing else than to ask for their lives to be saved and not be brutalized as it has always been.
AMY GOODMAN: Aderonke Ige, we’re going to break and then come back. We will hear more from you. Aderonke Ige is a human rights activist and a lawyer. We also will go to Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, where Sowore Omoyele, the Nigerian journalist and human rights activist, who’s been imprisoned by the Nigerian state, has also been leading protests. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Zombie” by the late, great, legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. His son Femi Kuti recently marked what would have been Fela’s birthday by leading an End SARS protest in Nigeria.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, as we continue to talk about what’s happening in Africa’s most populous country. A warning to listeners and viewers again: As we report on Nigeria, the coverage includes graphic video and accounts of state violence in Nigeria, where there’s growing evidence to confirm security forces fired without warning on peaceful protesters Tuesday night, killing at least 12 people, as authorities imposed a curfew to clamp down on growing demonstrations against police brutality. Some witnesses posted videos on social media where rapid gunfire could be heard. A warning: This is graphic video of state violence.
WITNESS: Please tell people. Please tell people. People are having to run. They’re shooting at them at the Lekki toll gate. Please tell social media.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we continue in Nigeria with our two guests. In Lagos, the human rights attorney and activist Aderonke Ige, who was out in the streets, she works with the organization Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa. She participated in the End SARS protests. And we now go to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, where Sowore Omoyele is a Nigerian journalist, human rights activist, founder and publisher of Sahara Reporters.
Sowore, it is great to see you. You’ve been imprisoned by the Nigerian state. Now, once again, you’re out on the streets. Talk about who the SARS police are, why you were protesting, and what this continued violence against the people of Nigeria means.
OMOYELE SOWORE: Thank you so much, Amy. And I’m glad to be on your show.
SARS is the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. It was formed in 1992 apparently to fight armed robbery. But it was formed after the demise — not the demise, but after a unit of the Nigerian police known as the “Kill-and-Go” was kind of rested because they were committing the same type of atrocities in those days. They were being used by oil companies to suppress villagers and protesters in the Niger Delta region. So, SARS is the nephew or cousin or brother, as you can imagine, in the police force, a tactical unit that’s been unleashed on the young people, in particular. And they have license to do the same thing the Kill-and-Go do: to kill, destroy, decimate, extort, invade.
But it started having problems recently when they started to stop young people on the street who have dreadlocks, who have their hairs colored. And they extort them, and they arrest people with phones and ask them to unlock their phones. They take them to ATMs to collect bribes and extortion fees. It was crazy. And this has been going on. And they’ve been killing people, young people, without warrants, without any reason. And it got to a head.
Well, let me be very clear: SARS is just the alias name for the pent-up anger within the Nigerian society, where young people are fighting over unemployment, over lack of justice, lack of access to the national wealth, I mean, in terms of oil resources and other resources, and the fact that the democratic system in Nigeria has started to break down and yield no dividend for the people of Nigeria.
So, all these young people you see on the street here, they are fighting against police brutality, but they are also fighting against Army brutality, they are fighting against unemployment, they are fighting against the incompetence and indifference of the regime that has been in power, who, by the way, sent me to prison last year for five months simply because I organized a protest, that was supposed to take place August 5, 2019, in Lagos. And they flew me to Abuja, detained me without trial for a long time. A lot of young people are going through the same thing. You know, people are getting detained, jailed for making social media posts on Facebook, on Twitter. It’s unbelievable. Nigeria has become a police state, practically. And what you’re seeing is a response to all of these abuses that have been taking place.
And, of course, on top of that is corruption. You know, when Nigeria was under lockdown from COVID-19 between February and now, officials were making away with billions of local currency, naira, which is, you know, millions in dollars, from — [inaudible] are saying that they are failing schoolchildren who are not going to school. So, people are hearing all of this, and social media has happened to amplify all of these abuses. Images are coming out, as you know, live and instantaneously. And this makes people to rise up at once.
And I tell you, I was happy to be back on the streets fighting on the side of all these young people in their call to revolution. And this is what I’ve always asked for, that Nigerians need to rise up against oppression and fight for their rights and have the revolution that will give them a new order and a new direction, that can restore faith once again in what they call democracy here, which has just completely been managed by morons. So, this is where we are, Amy.
And in Abuja, where I participated, the dimension was different. They introduced what I will call an informal repression. In their own case in Abuja, they are not sending soldiers to kill protesters directly, but they’re moving urchins, you know, and hoodlums in government vehicles to attack protesters. And they’ve injured — killed one protester in Abuja that we know of, and they’ve injured a lot of people. As of last night, these urchins, being directed by the police and the secret service — I mean, the secret police in Nigeria — I don’t know how to say, the DSS — are going from — you know, they are doing house-to-house searches for people they say are the leaders of this uprising that’s happening in Nigeria.
In my own case, yesterday, they went to court to try and revoke my bail so that I could get rearrested. But luckily for me, lawyers did a fantastic job to ward that off.
So, they are at war against the youth. They are at war against human rights. They are at war against the people of Nigeria. And that’s what you’re seeing, is the very, very principled response to these abuses by Nigerians. And this has never happened before. Even during when we were fighting against the military, I’ve never seen such a coordinated, very disciplined set of young people who have acted peacefully.
And what they did in Lagos was to go after these young people, most of them middle-class young people who, as they were peacefully protesting, they were shooting them at close range. They’re using war-caliber kinds of bullets, that are meant for fighting terrorists and fighting the wars, against peaceful protesters at this Lekki toll gate at close range. There’s never been anything like that.
What made a difference this time around was social media, that this thing was captured instantaneously and broadcast to the world. Otherwise, they would have denied it. As we speak, they are still denying it. They are claiming that the casualties were false and the wounded are recovering. And they’re doing all kinds of things to change the narrative, including trying to make it an ethnic and religious issue. But fail, they must.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But, Omoyele, as you pointed out, these protests are not just about police violence, but about a number of other issues. But I just want to say that a University of Leiden report in 2016 found that police violence in Nigeria is apparently among the worst in the world, if not the worst, that when police intervene in a confrontation, almost 60% of the time someone — the police shoot and kill someone. Could you talk about — as you said, President Buhari’s government was responsible for imprisoning you last year just for organizing protests. What has his response been to these protests and the response to his decision to disband SARS?
OMOYELE SOWORE: The reason why people did not take his decision seriously is that President Buhari is tone-deaf. This is who he is. This has been his character. He was the former military dictator who had carried out killings of people, judicially at that time, supposedly, because he — that some drug carriers were sentenced, and he brought their sentences forward and sentenced them to death. He’s been part of every military regime in the country that partook in abuses of human rights up ’til 1983, when he took over government. And he continued it. He clamped down on the press.
And that’s what he’s doing now, because beside just killing people, beside this whole clampdown on people, they’re also clamping down on social media. They have laws to criminalize people who are speaking out against the government. That carries death penalty. They are pushing these laws through the National Assembly. And the National Assembly has become a rubber-stamp National Assembly in Nigeria.
So, this is not new. This is Buhari’s way of doing things. Buhari doesn’t believe in human rights, doesn’t believe in public opinion. Buhari doesn’t believe in democracy. But, unfortunately, he was packaged in 19— I mean, 2015, as a reform democrat, and came to office. And he’s just continuing with his own way of doing things. And he’s surrounded by people who have the same mindsets, because it suits their agenda to have a populace that cannot speak, that cannot discuss openly. And it suits their agenda that they suppress everybody so that they can carry out — they can continue to carry out corruption of immense proportion. So, Buhari came to power saying he will fight corruption, but, you know, we discovered even more corruption in his government than even previous governments in the history of Nigeria. So, this is Buhari for you.
And in rejecting his ban on SARS, people are just saying, “Look, this is not enough.” You know, you have the inspector general of police — they asked him to be fired. They refused. You had the chief of Army staff, who presumably ordered the stealings at — or, the shooting at Lekki. The people have been asking for this man to be removed for years. You know, they refuse to remove them because they are there to protect the despot, the Nigerian despot Muhammadu Buhari.
And unfortunately, I don’t think the international community is doing enough. But, hey, you know, this is what they are about, because, for them, oil coming out of Nigeria is more important than the people of Nigeria.
But the good news we have here is that people can now speak up. They can tell their own stories through the social media platforms, that have helped in galvanizing public opinion internationally and locally. And we now have a solid diaspora, too, that has become part of this struggle in a way that has never happened before in Nigeria.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Aderonke Ige, I just — could you say — we just have a couple of minutes — what exactly are protesters calling for now?
ADERONKE IGE: [inaudible] beginning, it was about End SARS at first, because of the brutality, because of what we saw as the indiscipline, the way that citizens, ordinary citizens, especially young people, were treated as common criminals, just by profiling them and stereotyping and so on. However, it went beyond. It became a thing of — you know, these things have been pent up over the years, years of indiscipline, lack of accountability, impunity on the part of government officials. So it became a thing of reform the entire police. Their modus operandi is not suitable. They are killing people. At the same time, the nonchalant attitude of government, especially the federal government, the criminal silence when you need their voice to be loudest. They are totally silent, aloof in a criminal manner. People die under your watch. There’s no accountability for anything. Even officers that are named, nothing happens to them. There’s no prosecution. No justice is being seen as been done, manifestly done. So, people were tired. It became a whole lot of issues.
Now, what the demands were initially, we were asking for protest stands that were — even in the course of the protests, as we were protesting against brutality, people were still brutalized, arrested and so on. And we said, “OK, release these people already. Then, every named victim of police injustice, of systemic injustice, we want them to be duly compensated. We want them to get justice, just by bringing people to book and then getting a proper sanction. We want to have that. Then we want to manifestly see that government is taking action on every other issue, topical issue, that we have raised.” And we have said we want this to be done and that to be done.
For instance, we will tell you here that there’s a commission that is called the National Human Rights Commission. This commission normally is supposed to oversee all human rights issues, you know, abuses and just violations and so on. But let me tell you, even as we speak, that commission seems to be a toothless bulldog, because there’s no governing council. And without a governing council, what can they do? There has not been a governing council since 2015. Those are some of the issues.
But then — so, it became a thing of even the End SARS that we are calling for, that became the hashtag for all these other holistic demands, the government was playing politics with it. So that’s the reason you will see, OK, they came and said the IGP — still, as we speak, General Muhammadu Buhari has been criminally silent. So, let’s even leave him aside. The IGP came and said —
AMY GOODMAN: Could these protests bring down the government of Muhammadu Buhari?
ADERONKE IGE: Look, anything can happen at this point, because everybody is speaking with one voice. And that is the reason that when they tried to politicize this and say, “Oh, it’s this group, is that opposition” — no, we can’t all be opposition at the same time. We are calling you out on certain things that you are not doing, on the fact that the system is running on injustice, and you are choosing to politicize it.
So, even at the point that they said they were disbanding SARS, was that it means these people are not listening. They don’t get the point. We are not doing a christening ceremony. You can’t disband SARS and then immediately replace it with SWAT, because SWAT is going to eventually become a worse form of SARS. So, they are not listening. And that is the anger of an average Nigerian.
So, yes, you are correct: This can totally unseat the government. And this can totally lead to a kind of reform that we have been asking for, to that social revolution, intellectual revolution, people political resolution, because right now what is worse is that instead of listening to the people and engaging appropriately, you are suppressing the people. You are oppressing the people for that. And for how long can you do that? Now, in fact, you will see —
AMY GOODMAN: Aderonke Ige, we want to thank you so much for being with us. We are certainly going to continue to cover this. Please be safe. Human rights activist and lawyer, now in the streets of Lagos, Nigeria, where security forces gunned down at least a dozen people in the last few days. And Omoyele Sowore, Nigerian journalist, human rights activist, ran for president, was imprisoned by the current Nigerian regime, speaking to us from the capital.
For folks who want to see more of our coverage of Nigeria, you can go to our documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship. Democracy Now! went to Nigeria. I covered the Niger Delta with Jeremy Scahill, and we went with Sowore Omoyele to the Niger Delta, where we were investigating the activities of an earlier SARS, called, as he said, the Kill-and-Go. That’s the Kill-and-Go.
When we come back, as fighting continues in the South Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan, we look at the conflict, which has already taken the lives of over 700 people. Stay with us.


democracynow--2020-10-22--Headlines for October 22, 2020

Headlines for October 22, 2020

The confirmed U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has topped 222,000 , as a new report by Columbia University researchers blasted the Trump administration over its disastrous handling of the pandemic .
The report ’ s authors write , “ We estimate that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership .
Even with the dramatic recent appearance of new COVID-19 waves globally , the abject failures of U.S. government policies and crisis messaging persist.
” The report came as the Centers for Disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heading into the most dangerous phase of the pandemic yet — with cold weather and holidays driving people to congregate indoors , where the virus spreads much more easily .
CDC Deputy Director Jay Butler spoke at a rare news conference at the agency ’ s Atlanta headquarters .
On Wednesday , the CDC changed its definition of a “ close contact ” with an infectious person to include brief interactions totaling 15 minutes or more within six feet of someone over a one-day period .
The recommendation will expand the number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ according to the CDC .

The confirmed U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has topped 222,000, as a new report by Columbia University researchers blasted the Trump administration over its disastrous handling of the pandemic. The report’s authors write, “We estimate that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership. Even with the dramatic recent appearance of new COVID-19 waves globally, the abject failures of U.S. government policies and crisis messaging persist.”
The report came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned the U.S. is heading into the most dangerous phase of the pandemic yet — with cold weather and holidays driving people to congregate indoors, where the virus spreads much more easily. CDC Deputy Director Jay Butler spoke at a rare news conference at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters.
Jay Butler: “Unfortunately, we are seeing a distressing trend here in the United States with COVID-19 cases increasing in nearly 75% of the country.”
On Wednesday, the CDC changed its definition of a “close contact” with an infectious person to include brief interactions totaling 15 minutes or more within six feet of someone over a one-day period. The recommendation will expand the number of people who should go into quarantine, according to the CDC.


democracynow--2020-10-21--Ex-Mexican Military Head Arrested in U.S. on Drug Charges. Should He Be Tried for Massacres, Too?

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González , as we spend the rest of the hour looking at Mexico , as former Defense Secretary General Salvador Cienfuegos has been indicted in New York on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to distribute drugs in the U.S. from 2015 to 2017 .
General Cienfuegos is accused of working with the Beltrán Leyva Cartel to arrest and torture rivals in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a judge ordered Cienfuegos to be held in U.S. custody without bail , saying he is a flight risk .
The judge also ordered the former defense secretary be sent to New York from Los Angeles , where he was arrested at L.A. International Airport last Thursday .
Cienfuegos served as defense secretary from 2012 to 2018 under Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto .
On Monday , the current Mexican president , Andrés Manuel López Obrador , said he would ask the U.S. to share all information about ties between the former defense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has long been accused of human rights abuses in Mexico , including refusing to allow investigators to interview soldiers who may have been involved in the 2014 disappearance and likely massacre of 43 students from a teachers ’ college in Ayotzinapa , Guerrero , Mexico .
Cienfuegos also defended soldiers who were accused of massacring nearly two dozen people in the town of Tlatlaya in the state of Mexico in 2014 .
For more , we ’ re joined by two guests .
Anabel Hernández is with us .
She ’ s been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ journalists in Mexico .
In 2010 , she published the groundbreaking book Narcoland : The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers , linking top Mexican governmental officials to the world ’ s most powerful drug cartels .
She received so many death threats that the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico assigned her two full-time bodyguards .
Despite the danger , she has continued to report .
Her most recent book , Traitor : The Secret Diary of Mayo ’ s Son , about the son of one of the most powerful Mexican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Zambada .
Also with us , John Gibler , author and independent journalist based in Mexico .
His book on the 2014 attacks against the Ayotzinapa students is called I Couldn ’ t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us .
He ’ s the author of To Die in Mexico : Dispatches from Inside the Drug War and , more recently , Torn from the World : A Guerrilla ’ s Escape from a Secret Prison in Mexico .
We welcome you both to Democracy Now !
Anabel Hernández , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somewhere in Europe right now .
I mean , you face so much enormous personal threat for your work on exposing drug cartels in Mexico .
Can you talk about the significance of the arrest of the former defense secretary of Mexico , Cienfuegos ?
Well , I really — what I can see is that the arrest of this general is not a case insulated .
You have to see all the piece of all the picture .
In this court was processed Joaquín Guzmán Loera , called “ El Chapo , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sinaloa Cartel , in 2008 — 2018 , 2019 .
He was sentenced to life in prison .
Then , this court , the same Attorney General ’ s Office , ordered the arrest of Genaro García Luna , another former secretary of security , public security , in Mexico in the period of the government of Felipe Calderón .
And now you have this third very important arrest of the general .
So , if you see the picture , you can see like a maximum process against the corruption and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government .
That ’ s what I see , a maximum process that hasn ’ t had an end yet .
I think that now that Richard Donoghue and Michael Robotti , the two attorney generals head on these three cases , has a bigger picture about , really , how penetrated was the Mexican government in the last 18 years by the cartels .
What I revealed in my book in 2010 , Narcoland — and you know the story , all the threats that I have , I received because I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this court , in this historic moment .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Well , Anabel Hernández , I wanted to ask you — you mentioned Genaro García Luna , who not only was a top official under Felipe Calderón in terms of fighting drugs , but also was a top law enforcement official under the previous president , Vicente Fox .
These are people who the United States drug authorities , enforcement authorities , worked closely with over the years .
What does it say about the ability of the United States in terms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that these top officials worked closely with them , and now we ’ re finding out they were a part of the problem ?
ANABEL HERNÁNDEZ : For me , it ’ s really a controversial question , for the U.S. government , of course , for the DEA , for the Department of Justice : How didn ’ t get — how they didn ’ t understand that these people were working for the drug cartels ?
I mean , the story of Genaro García Luna with the cartel , with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sinaloa Cartel and los Beltrán Leyva brothers , and the complicity also of Cienfuegos — Cienfuegos just doesn ’ t start to do this in between 2015 and 2017 .
He started to protect the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltrán Leyva brothers , according — according with documents that I have , according with formal depositions of members of these cartels in front of the Attorney General Office in Mexico in 2010 , in 2011 .
According with these depositions , General Cienfuegos was also protecting to Sinaloa Cartel and Beltrán Leyva brothers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vicente Fox , when Cienfuegos was the head of the Army in that region , in Guerrero , and then in Mexico City , when these two parts were absolutely under control of the Sinaloa Cartel and Beltrán Leyva brothers .
So , yes , the question is : If I , as a journalist , were able to discover on time that these two men , head of the government , were involved with the cartels , what happened with the DEA ?
What happened with the other agencies that works in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ?
They let them work ?
What happened ?
I think it ’ s a question that until now is not a clear answer .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Yeah , and I think we have John Gibler also on with us , an independent journalist .
I ’ m wondering if you could talk about the role of former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos in terms of the massacre of Ayotzinapa and his legacy there ?
JOHN GIBLER : Of course .
Hi , Amy , Juan and Anabel .
I hope everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to us , as well .
Salvador Cienfuegos was , of course , the secretary of defense during the Peña Nieto administration , 2012 to 2018 , and , as such , was chief of the Army and chief of the so-called drug war during those years , when several major massacres happened across Mexico .
You mentioned the murder of 22 people in Tlatlaya , Mexico state , at the hands of Army soldiers , as well as the murder of six people and the forced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like the other high-level federal officials , initially dismissed the importance of those events , immediately dissuaded any analysis of state participation , of military participation in those events , but also , much later , when the family members of the disappeared , first , and then , second , the human rights organizations and the independent international experts that arrived in Mexico also to assist the families in the investigation , requested officially the ability to interview soldiers stationed in Iguala , Mexico , where most of the attacks took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 27 , to just interview them about what happened , where they were , everything that happened that night , Salvador Cienfuegos himself , the head of the military , repeatedly refused to allow the families or their legal representatives and the independent experts access to the soldiers to interview them .
Not only did he refuse that , but he went so far as to say that even talking to those soldiers would be criminalizing them .
So , now you have here a person , who ’ s being charged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ international drug trafficking and one count of money laundering , refusing to let parents looking , desperately looking , for their children , forcibly disappeared by police in an operation carried out over hours a mile and a half away from a major military base — refusing to let them speak to the soldiers — just speak to them — saying that that , in and of itself , would criminalize the soldiers .
AMY GOODMAN : We ’ re going to break and then come back to this discussion and also talk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what it means — in the United States , billions have gone to the “ drug war ” and have gone to the Mexican government .
Who has pocketed that money ?
How many of them are now under arrest for drug trafficking themselves ?
Anabel Hernández and John Gibler are our guests .
Stay with us .
AMY GOODMAN : “ Ayotzinapa ” by Verónica Valerio .
This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González , as we talk about the latest news .
We ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month authorities brought criminal charges against military soldiers for the first time in the ongoing investigation into the 2014 disappearance and likely massacre of 43 students from a teachers ’ college in Ayotzinapa , Guerrero , Mexico , Mexican officials announcing they had issued at least 25 arrest warrants against suspects believed to be the , quote , “ material and intellectual authors of the disappearance , ” including a former head of the federal police .
Also , this past week , the former defense secretary of Mexico was arrested in Los @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to turn to families of the disappeared students who have long maintained the military was involved in the mass abduction .
This is Clemente Rodríguez Moreno , the father of missing student Christian Alfonso Rodríguez .
AMY GOODMAN : For more , we continue with our two guests , journalists John Gibler and Anabel Hernández .
Anabel , if you could talk further about the human rights abuses in Mexico , the U.S. money that went into the so-called drug war — millions , if not billions , of dollars — and not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but , as well , another massacre that took place where 22 people were killed in the town of Tlatlaya in Mexico ?
AMY GOODMAN : And if you can relate this to the general who was just arrested ?
ANABEL HERNÁNDEZ : Absolutely .
As you remember , since the Plan Mérida was signed between the U.S. government and Mexican government on 2008 , 2009 , the cooperation , the collaboration between the U.S. government and Mexico were stronger , supposedly , against the cartels .
Now you see that part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But that was the story that they told to us .
Then , of course , the general , Cienfuegos , as I told you , has been always inside this system .
He was a member of one very strong group in the defense secretary .
Then , when Enrique Peña Nieto decided that Salvador Cienfuegos be the defense secretary , all this politics , all these decisions about the “ war against drugs ” cross under the order of Cienfuegos .
So he was a key , a key part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto .
So , with the pretext of this war — fake , as we can see very clearly — the Army abuse of their power .
They disappear many , many , many people , hundreds of people in Mexico , since all this part of the time .
I mean , since 2008 from 2020 , we have been seeing how the Army participate in massacres , disappear people , abuses of power , abuse of human rights and all these things .
So , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against drugs , ” in one place of Mexico called Estado de México , on July of 2014 , the Army massacre , kill to 21 people , just like that .
The official version was that supposedly was a combat between these supposed members of the cartel and the Army , and all the members of the cartel were murdered .
Just two days before the attack and the disappearance of the students in Iguala , just two days before , the Army , General Cienfuegos have to confess , “ Yes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people .
We ’ re not a combat .
We killed them , ” and start to be very uncomfortable for the government of Enrique Peña Nieto and for Cienfuegos in face this crime in Tlatlaya .
Then , what happened in Iguala , when these students were attacked by the Federal Police , by the Army , by the local police , the government of Enrique Peña Nieto , instead of reveal the truth about the case , instead investigate to the Army , to the members of the Army that participate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They create a fake story about what really happened that night .
And that ’ s why this one — this is one of the reasons why , until now , these parents can not hug again to their boys , to their children .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Yeah , I wanted to ask John Gibler : John , could you talk about what President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has done since coming in office ?
He promised there would be no more impunity among — with the military .
Just last month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of arrest warrants for police and soldiers connected to the Ayotzinapa massacre or disappearances of the students .
How has López Obrador dealt with this situation ?
JOHN GIBLER : Well , López Obrador made a very explicit commitment to the families , actually , when he was still campaigning .
The families confronted him during a campaign event in Iguala , Guerrero , and he made , at that point , a very explicit commitment to investigate the case , to find their children , to find the truth of what happened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And when he was elected , he reiterated his commitment .
He formed a presidential commission to investigate the case .
And then , later , many months later , they named a special prosecutor , who is someone who had actually worked with the independent experts earlier during the Peña Nieto administration , so someone who is intimately familiar with the details of the case .
Since then , many of the family members have said to me that they — while they believe in the commitment that the president has made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anguish of how long it ’ s taking .
But the new government has issued arrest warrants for several federal officials , including Tomás Zerón de Lucio , who was the former police official supposedly in charge of investigating the attacks against the students , but who was one of the chief architects of the lie , the version that the government insisted on for several years , that the students had been confused for a rival cartel and taken out to this open-air , outdoor trash dump near a town of Cocula @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the course of a single night .
Of course , that story was based on confessions that were extracted through torture .
Several videos of those torture sessions have since come out , so it ’ s become absolutely impossible to sustain the veracity of those confessions .
But one thing that is important , that the new government is very clearly distancing itself from this previous administration ’ s cover-ups or acts of administrative forced disappearance of the students for so many years .
And , in fact , the president , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the first time , explicitly said that the attacks against the students had been a crime of state .
The president articulated what had been for years the call of the families and of protesters in the street : ” ¡Fue el Estado !
” It was the state .
It was a crime of state .
AMY GOODMAN : And finally , we just have 30 seconds , John , but how would you relate the U.S. funding of the “ drug war ” to the mass migration of Mexicans into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly , I mean , I think U.S. “ drug war ” has and always been a racist and neoimperialist tool .
It ’ s never been about controlling substances that are dangerous for communities .
And the arrest of Cienfuegos is just one more example of how the highest-level federal officials in charge of supposedly policing the drug industry are the ones actually administering it .
This goes back all the way to the ’ 90s with General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo , Noé Ramírez Mandujano in the Calderón administration , of course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States is obsessed with controlling and perpetuating this “ drug war , ” which wreaks terror on communities , connecting it to migration .
I was in the Central Valley of California — JOHN GIBLER : Migrants that are fleeing situations of terror that are provoked by the U.S. “ drug war.
” AMY GOODMAN : We want to thank you both for being with us , John Gibler and Anabel Hernández .
This is Democracy Now !
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Juan González .
Stay safe .
Wear @ @ @ @ @

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we spend the rest of the hour looking at Mexico, as former Defense Secretary General Salvador Cienfuegos has been indicted in New York on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to distribute drugs in the U.S. from 2015 to 2017. General Cienfuegos is accused of working with the Beltrán Leyva Cartel to arrest and torture rivals in exchange for bribes. On Tuesday, a judge ordered Cienfuegos to be held in U.S. custody without bail, saying he is a flight risk. The judge also ordered the former defense secretary be sent to New York from Los Angeles, where he was arrested at L.A. International Airport last Thursday.
Cienfuegos served as defense secretary from 2012 to 2018 under Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. On Monday, the current Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said he would ask the U.S. to share all information about ties between the former defense secretary and cartels.
General Salvador Cienfuegos has long been accused of human rights abuses in Mexico, including refusing to allow investigators to interview soldiers who may have been involved in the 2014 disappearance and likely massacre of 43 students from a teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico. Cienfuegos also defended soldiers who were accused of massacring nearly two dozen people in the town of Tlatlaya in the state of Mexico in 2014.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Anabel Hernández is with us. She’s been described as one of the most courageous journalists in Mexico. In 2010, she published the groundbreaking book Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers, linking top Mexican governmental officials to the world’s most powerful drug cartels. She received so many death threats that the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico assigned her two full-time bodyguards. Despite the danger, she has continued to report. Her most recent book, Traitor: The Secret Diary of Mayo’s Son, about the son of one of the most powerful Mexican drug lords, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Also with us, John Gibler, author and independent journalist based in Mexico. His book on the 2014 attacks against the Ayotzinapa students is called I Couldn’t Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us. He’s the author of To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War and, more recently, Torn from the World: A Guerrilla’s Escape from a Secret Prison in Mexico.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Anabel Hernández, we’ll just say that you are somewhere in Europe right now. I mean, you face so much enormous personal threat for your work on exposing drug cartels in Mexico. Can you talk about the significance of the arrest of the former defense secretary of Mexico, Cienfuegos?
ANABEL HERNÁNDEZ: Good morning, Amy. Nice to hear you.
Well, I really — what I can see is that the arrest of this general is not a case insulated. You have to see all the piece of all the picture. In this court was processed Joaquín Guzmán Loera, called “El Chapo,” one of the heads of the Sinaloa Cartel, in 2008 — 2018, 2019. He was sentenced to life in prison. Then, this court, the same Attorney General’s Office, ordered the arrest of Genaro García Luna, another former secretary of security, public security, in Mexico in the period of the government of Felipe Calderón. And now you have this third very important arrest of the general.
So, if you see the picture, you can see like a maximum process against the corruption and the penetration of the drug traffickers inside the government. That’s what I see, a maximum process that hasn’t had an end yet. I think that now that Richard Donoghue and Michael Robotti, the two attorney generals head on these three cases, has a bigger picture about, really, how penetrated was the Mexican government in the last 18 years by the cartels. What I revealed in my book in 2010, Narcoland — and you know the story, all the threats that I have, I received because I revealed this — that now is in this court, in this historic moment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Anabel Hernández, I wanted to ask you — you mentioned Genaro García Luna, who not only was a top official under Felipe Calderón in terms of fighting drugs, but also was a top law enforcement official under the previous president, Vicente Fox. These are people who the United States drug authorities, enforcement authorities, worked closely with over the years. What does it say about the ability of the United States in terms of dealing with combating drugs in Mexico that these top officials worked closely with them, and now we’re finding out they were a part of the problem?
ANABEL HERNÁNDEZ: For me, it’s really a controversial question, for the U.S. government, of course, for the DEA, for the Department of Justice: How didn’t get — how they didn’t understand that these people were working for the drug cartels?
I mean, the story of Genaro García Luna with the cartel, with the Sinaloa Cartel, in complicity with the Sinaloa Cartel and los Beltrán Leyva brothers, and the complicity also of Cienfuegos — Cienfuegos just doesn’t start to do this in between 2015 and 2017. He started to protect the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltrán Leyva brothers, according — according with documents that I have, according with formal depositions of members of these cartels in front of the Attorney General Office in Mexico in 2010, in 2011. According with these depositions, General Cienfuegos was also protecting to Sinaloa Cartel and Beltrán Leyva brothers since 2005, also the government of Vicente Fox, when Cienfuegos was the head of the Army in that region, in Guerrero, and then in Mexico City, when these two parts were absolutely under control of the Sinaloa Cartel and Beltrán Leyva brothers.
So, yes, the question is: If I, as a journalist, were able to discover on time that these two men, head of the government, were involved with the cartels, what happened with the DEA? What happened with the other agencies that works in Mexico? They didn’t saw it? They let them work? What happened? I think it’s a question that until now is not a clear answer.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and I think we have John Gibler also on with us, an independent journalist. I’m wondering if you could talk about the role of former Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos in terms of the massacre of Ayotzinapa and his legacy there?
JOHN GIBLER: Of course. Hi, Amy, Juan and Anabel. I hope everyone’s doing well, everyone listening to us, as well.
Salvador Cienfuegos was, of course, the secretary of defense during the Peña Nieto administration, 2012 to 2018, and, as such, was chief of the Army and chief of the so-called drug war during those years, when several major massacres happened across Mexico. You mentioned the murder of 22 people in Tlatlaya, Mexico state, at the hands of Army soldiers, as well as the murder of six people and the forced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in late September 2014.
Salvador Cienfuegos, like the other high-level federal officials, initially dismissed the importance of those events, immediately dissuaded any analysis of state participation, of military participation in those events, but also, much later, when the family members of the disappeared, first, and then, second, the human rights organizations and the independent international experts that arrived in Mexico also to assist the families in the investigation, requested officially the ability to interview soldiers stationed in Iguala, Mexico, where most of the attacks took place on the night of September 26, 27, to just interview them about what happened, where they were, everything that happened that night, Salvador Cienfuegos himself, the head of the military, repeatedly refused to allow the families or their legal representatives and the independent experts access to the soldiers to interview them. Not only did he refuse that, but he went so far as to say that even talking to those soldiers would be criminalizing them.
So, now you have here a person, who’s being charged in New York of three counts of international drug trafficking and one count of money laundering, refusing to let parents looking, desperately looking, for their children, forcibly disappeared by police in an operation carried out over hours a mile and a half away from a major military base — refusing to let them speak to the soldiers — just speak to them — saying that that, in and of itself, would criminalize the soldiers.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion and also talk about another massacre, as well as what it means — in the United States, billions have gone to the “drug war” and have gone to the Mexican government. Who has pocketed that money? How many of them are now under arrest for drug trafficking themselves? Anabel Hernández and John Gibler are our guests. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Ayotzinapa” by Verónica Valerio. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we talk about the latest news. We’re looking at Mexico, where last month authorities brought criminal charges against military soldiers for the first time in the ongoing investigation into the 2014 disappearance and likely massacre of 43 students from a teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, Mexican officials announcing they had issued at least 25 arrest warrants against suspects believed to be the, quote, “material and intellectual authors of the disappearance,” including a former head of the federal police. Also, this past week, the former defense secretary of Mexico was arrested in Los Angeles airport.
So, we want to turn to families of the disappeared students who have long maintained the military was involved in the mass abduction. This is Clemente Rodríguez Moreno, the father of missing student Christian Alfonso Rodríguez.
CLEMENTE RODRÍGUEZ MORENO: [translated] The previous government, led by Peña Nieto, said, “My little soldiers are untouchable.” Colonel Cienfuegos said it: “No one can touch my troops.” With this new government, we’ve managed to enter the military barracks, the 27th military barracks in Iguala. With this government, we’ve managed to do something we couldn’t before — for example, the arrest of police officers.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we continue with our two guests, journalists John Gibler and Anabel Hernández. Anabel, if you could talk further about the human rights abuses in Mexico, the U.S. money that went into the so-called drug war — millions, if not billions, of dollars — and not only the Ayotzinapa massacre of 2014, but, as well, another massacre that took place where 22 people were killed in the town of Tlatlaya in Mexico?
ANABEL HERNÁNDEZ: Yes. Well —
AMY GOODMAN: And if you can relate this to the general who was just arrested?
ANABEL HERNÁNDEZ: Absolutely. As you remember, since the Plan Mérida was signed between the U.S. government and Mexican government on 2008, 2009, the cooperation, the collaboration between the U.S. government and Mexico were stronger, supposedly, against the cartels. Now you see that part of the government was part of the cartels. But that was the story that they told to us.
Then, of course, the general, Cienfuegos, as I told you, has been always inside this system. He was a member of one very strong group in the defense secretary. Then, when Enrique Peña Nieto decided that Salvador Cienfuegos be the defense secretary, all this politics, all these decisions about the “war against drugs” cross under the order of Cienfuegos. So he was a key, a key part of this “war against drugs” in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto.
So, with the pretext of this war — fake, as we can see very clearly — the Army abuse of their power. They disappear many, many, many people, hundreds of people in Mexico, since all this part of the time. I mean, since 2008 from 2020, we have been seeing how the Army participate in massacres, disappear people, abuses of power, abuse of human rights and all these things.
So, with the pretext of the “war against drugs,” in one place of Mexico called Estado de México, on July of 2014, the Army massacre, kill to 21 people, just like that. The official version was that supposedly was a combat between these supposed members of the cartel and the Army, and all the members of the cartel were murdered. Just two days before the attack and the disappearance of the students in Iguala, just two days before, the Army, General Cienfuegos have to confess, “Yes, yes, we killed to that people. We’re not a combat. We killed them,” and start to be very uncomfortable for the government of Enrique Peña Nieto and for Cienfuegos in face this crime in Tlatlaya.
Then, what happened in Iguala, when these students were attacked by the Federal Police, by the Army, by the local police, the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, instead of reveal the truth about the case, instead investigate to the Army, to the members of the Army that participate, they cover up the crime. They create a fake story about what really happened that night. And that’s why this one — this is one of the reasons why, until now, these parents cannot hug again to their boys, to their children.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask John Gibler: John, could you talk about what President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has done since coming in office? He promised there would be no more impunity among — with the military. Just last month, Mexican authorities arrested — issued dozens of arrest warrants for police and soldiers connected to the Ayotzinapa massacre or disappearances of the students. How has López Obrador dealt with this situation?
JOHN GIBLER: Well, López Obrador made a very explicit commitment to the families, actually, when he was still campaigning. The families confronted him during a campaign event in Iguala, Guerrero, and he made, at that point, a very explicit commitment to investigate the case, to find their children, to find the truth of what happened that night and to do justice. And when he was elected, he reiterated his commitment. He formed a presidential commission to investigate the case. And then, later, many months later, they named a special prosecutor, who is someone who had actually worked with the independent experts earlier during the Peña Nieto administration, so someone who is intimately familiar with the details of the case.
Since then, many of the family members have said to me that they — while they believe in the commitment that the president has made, they feel, inevitably, the anguish of how long it’s taking.
But the new government has issued arrest warrants for several federal officials, including Tomás Zerón de Lucio, who was the former police official supposedly in charge of investigating the attacks against the students, but who was one of the chief architects of the lie, the version that the government insisted on for several years, that the students had been confused for a rival cartel and taken out to this open-air, outdoor trash dump near a town of Cocula and incinerated there during a rainstorm over the course of a single night. Of course, that story was based on confessions that were extracted through torture. Several videos of those torture sessions have since come out, so it’s become absolutely impossible to sustain the veracity of those confessions.
But one thing that is important, that the new government is very clearly distancing itself from this previous administration’s cover-ups or acts of administrative forced disappearance of the students for so many years. And, in fact, the president, López Obrador, I think, for the first time, explicitly said that the attacks against the students had been a crime of state. The president articulated what had been for years the call of the families and of protesters in the street: ”¡Fue el Estado!” It was the state. It was a crime of state.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, we just have 30 seconds, John, but how would you relate the U.S. funding of the “drug war” to the mass migration of Mexicans into the United States?
JOHN GIBLER: Very quickly, I mean, I think U.S. “drug war” has and always been a racist and neoimperialist tool. It’s never been about controlling substances that are dangerous for communities. And the arrest of Cienfuegos is just one more example of how the highest-level federal officials in charge of supposedly policing the drug industry are the ones actually administering it. This goes back all the way to the ’90s with General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, Noé Ramírez Mandujano in the Calderón administration, of course García Luna and now Cienfuegos. The United States is obsessed with controlling and perpetuating this “drug war,” which wreaks terror on communities, connecting it to migration. I was in the Central Valley of California —
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
JOHN GIBLER: Migrants that are fleeing situations of terror that are provoked by the U.S. “drug war.”
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, John Gibler and Anabel Hernández. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Stay safe. Wear a mask. Vote.


democracynow--2020-10-21--"A Barrett Confirmation Is a Catastrophe": What Democrats Can Do to Block Trump's Supreme Court Pick

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : I know you have to leave , but we wanted to get to Part 2 of this conversation , and that ’ s not about Google , but about Supreme Court justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett .
In today ’ s headlines , we said that the Associated Press has revealed Supreme Court nominee Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of a private Christian school which barred openly gay teachers , effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Minnesota , in Virginia , affiliated with the secretive religious group People of Praise , of which Barrett is a longtime member .
That ’ s just the latest news .
The schools teach that homosexuality is abomination against God .
You have urged Senate Democrats to use every procedure possible to block her confirmation .
Why ?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT : A Barrett confirmation is a catastrophe .
We don ’ t know a fraction about her .
This is like getting married in three weeks , except it ’ s not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somebody who ’ s going to govern us , effectively , decide the rules of our democracy , the rules governing our bodies , the rules governing our intimate relationships , for 50 years .
And we don ’ t actually need to know that much to know that a 6-3 majority on the court is basically a bomb coming at what is left of our protections against corruption in politics , against corporate money , what is left of the Voting Rights Act .
I mean , this is an absolute 5- @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats have not been , for instance , denying unanimous consent at every single vote , forcing McConnell to deliver every single senator every single moment .
There ’ s techniques that have already — opportunities that have already passed .
For instance , the Democrats could have had week-by-week continuing resolutions to keep the government going , forcing McConnell to produce his vulnerable senators .
And there will be moments coming up this Thursday .
But what I hear from the Democrats is , “ Well , that isn ’ t sure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to work.
” That is not the question .
If there is a one-in-500 chance that a two-hour delay caused by impeachment , let alone a day delay caused by impeachment , of Bill Barr , for instance , would lead to enough disruption that enough Republican senators would say , “ McConnell , you ’ re asking too much .
I ’ m not going to be there for you , ” then we wouldn ’ t be leading into this catastrophe .
So , I think we really need to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats aligned on a very clear message about the whole , the altogether illegitimacy of this process and the catastrophic danger of this nomination .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Zephyr Teachout , in the eventuality that she is confirmed , there ’ s been increasing debate over what can be done to counter the court packing that has been going on now for several years on the part of the Republicans in the federal judiciary .
I ’ m wondering your thoughts on this whole issue of expanding the Supreme Court , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democrats gain control of both houses .
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT : Well , I have been arguing for rebalancing the court for a long time , that we — I think it is a small-D democratic necessity .
It ’ s solidly constitutionally grounded .
And after the court , Justice Roberts , in a grotesquely innovative — which is to say he made it up — theory , struck down the Voting Rights Act , it became very clear that we needed a rebalancing of the court and a new understanding of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shorter terms for justices .
I think that is absolutely necessary .
AMY GOODMAN : And finally — and I know you have to go — the Supreme Court decision that just came out — AMY GOODMAN : — around voting rights , the Supreme Court issuing a 4-to-4 ruling on a voting rights case in Pennsylvania , so significant because this was a victory for voting rights advocates .
It shows the court is evenly divided on these issues .
Of course , the election is going to be key .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would break that tie .
The significance of this ?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT : The both short- and long-term significance of this is extraordinary , because this is about the court reviewing state constitutional decisions about what those local state constitutions require .
And you have this very dangerous , radical perspective by four members of the Supreme Court , which Amy Barrett would join , which would jump in and second-guess those states ’ constitution-based decisions , which have been important in allowing people ’ s votes to be counted in this election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Justice Barrett being a tiebreaker in suppressing votes in this upcoming election and changing the outcomes of the votes that are happening right now for the November 3rd election .
AMY GOODMAN : Why haven ’ t Democrats pushed harder , do you think ?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT : I am pulling my hair out about this .
Sorry to be so — well , I ’ m not sorry to be so blunt about it .
There is such a deep misunderstanding of risk , and short-termism , and a failure to understand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complacency and sclerosis .
And I think — you know , what I hear is people say things like , “ That is not likely to work.
” Well , I will tell you , whether you talk to a serious death penalty lawyer defending their client on death row or a serious corporate lawyer defending against a corporate takeover , their answer to that question is , “ If we ’ ve got a one-in-100 chance , we are going to file that motion.
” And we just don ’ t have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the House .
AMY GOODMAN : Zephyr Teachout , we want to thank you so much for being with us , professor of law at Fordham University and author of the new book Break ’ Em Up : Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag , Big Tech , and Big Money .
This is Democracy Now !
When we come back , a shocking arrest in Los Angeles airport , the former Mexican defense chief , the defense secretary .
We ’ ll talk about the implications of this for the drug trade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and murders of activists in Mexico .
Stay with us .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to leave, but we wanted to get to Part 2 of this conversation, and that’s not about Google, but about Supreme Court justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett. In today’s headlines, we said that the Associated Press has revealed Supreme Court nominee Barrett served for nearly three years on the board of a private Christian school which barred openly gay teachers, effectively barred admission to children of same-sex parents. Trinity Schools runs schools in Indiana, Minnesota, in Virginia, affiliated with the secretive religious group People of Praise, of which Barrett is a longtime member. That’s just the latest news. The schools teach that homosexuality is abomination against God. You have urged Senate Democrats to use every procedure possible to block her confirmation. Why?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: A Barrett confirmation is a catastrophe. We don’t know a fraction about her. This is like getting married in three weeks, except it’s not getting married, it’s choosing somebody who’s going to govern us, effectively, decide the rules of our democracy, the rules governing our bodies, the rules governing our intimate relationships, for 50 years. And we don’t actually need to know that much to know that a 6-3 majority on the court is basically a bomb coming at what is left of our protections against corruption in politics, against corporate money, what is left of the Voting Rights Act. I mean, this is an absolute 5-, 10-alarm fire catastrophe.
And the Democrats have not been, for instance, denying unanimous consent at every single vote, forcing McConnell to deliver every single senator every single moment. There’s techniques that have already — opportunities that have already passed. For instance, the Democrats could have had week-by-week continuing resolutions to keep the government going, forcing McConnell to produce his vulnerable senators. And there will be moments coming up this Thursday.
But what I hear from the Democrats is, “Well, that isn’t sure to work or isn’t likely to work.” That is not the question. If there is a one-in-500 chance that a two-hour delay caused by impeachment, let alone a day delay caused by impeachment, of Bill Barr, for instance, would lead to enough disruption that enough Republican senators would say, “McConnell, you’re asking too much. I’m not going to be there for you,” then we wouldn’t be leading into this catastrophe.
So, I think we really need to see, in these last few days, Democrats aligned on a very clear message about the whole, the altogether illegitimacy of this process and the catastrophic danger of this nomination.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Zephyr Teachout, in the eventuality that she is confirmed, there’s been increasing debate over what can be done to counter the court packing that has been going on now for several years on the part of the Republicans in the federal judiciary. I’m wondering your thoughts on this whole issue of expanding the Supreme Court, if Joe Biden is elected and the Democrats gain control of both houses.
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Well, I have been arguing for rebalancing the court for a long time, that we — I think it is a small-D democratic necessity. It’s solidly constitutionally grounded. And after the court, Justice Roberts, in a grotesquely innovative — which is to say he made it up — theory, struck down the Voting Rights Act, it became very clear that we needed a rebalancing of the court and a new understanding of this institution, as well as thinking about shorter terms for justices. I think that is absolutely necessary.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally — and I know you have to go — the Supreme Court decision that just came out —
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — around voting rights, the Supreme Court issuing a 4-to-4 ruling on a voting rights case in Pennsylvania, so significant because this was a victory for voting rights advocates. It shows the court is evenly divided on these issues. Of course, the election is going to be key. If Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, she would break that tie. The significance of this?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: The both short- and long-term significance of this is extraordinary, because this is about the court reviewing state constitutional decisions about what those local state constitutions require. And you have this very dangerous, radical perspective by four members of the Supreme Court, which Amy Barrett would join, which would jump in and second-guess those states’ constitution-based decisions, which have been important in allowing people’s votes to be counted in this election. So, we could see a Justice Barrett being a tiebreaker in suppressing votes in this upcoming election and changing the outcomes of the votes that are happening right now for the November 3rd election.
AMY GOODMAN: Why haven’t Democrats pushed harder, do you think?
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: I am pulling my hair out about this. Sorry to be so — well, I’m not sorry to be so blunt about it. There is such a deep misunderstanding of risk, and short-termism, and a failure to understand the scope of this catastrophe, and complacency and sclerosis. And I think — you know, what I hear is people say things like, “That is not likely to work.” Well, I will tell you, whether you talk to a serious death penalty lawyer defending their client on death row or a serious corporate lawyer defending against a corporate takeover, their answer to that question is, “If we’ve got a one-in-100 chance, we are going to file that motion.” And we just don’t have that approach in the Senate or in the House.
AMY GOODMAN: Zephyr Teachout, we want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of law at Fordham University and author of the new book Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, a shocking arrest in Los Angeles airport, the former Mexican defense chief, the defense secretary. We’ll talk about the implications of this for the drug trade, as well as human rights abuses and murders of activists in Mexico. Stay with us.