Attacks on Indian reporters highlight growing intolerance
By EMILY SCHMALL


In this Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020 photo, a photojournalist takes photographs of Indian paramilitary soldiers patrolling a street vandalized in Tuesday's violence in New Delhi, India. Reporting in India has never been without its risks, but journalists say attacks on the press during last week's deadly communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi show the situation is deteriorating. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

NEW DELHI (AP) — Reporting in India has never been without its risks, but journalists say attacks on the press during last week’s deadly communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi show the situation is deteriorating.

One reporter was shot and survived, another had his teeth knocked out, and many more said Hindu mobs demanded proof of religion and tried to keep them from documenting vandalism and violence that included people attacking one another with axes, swords, metal pipes and guns.

Authorities have yet to provide an official account of what sparked the 72-hour clash that left 42 people dead and hundreds wounded, though tensions between Hindus and Muslims have been building for months over a new citizenship law. Nor have they addressed journalists’ allegations that they were singled out by Hindu mobs.

But experts and journalists say the attacks on reporters covering the riots — and censorship of critical content in the aftermath of the violence — are a sign of growing intolerance for independent reporting in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist led government.

Anindya Chattopadhyay, a photographer for the Times of India newspaper, said that as he reached the scene of the riots Tuesday, a man approached him, offering to put a tilak, a mark indicating a person is Hindu, on his forehead.

The man said it would make his work easier. Chattopadhyay refused, but later, after he rushed to take pictures of a building on fire, he was approached by a group demanding to know whether he was Hindu or Muslim, threatening to remove his pants to check whether he was circumcised per Muslim custom.

“I folded my hands and pleaded with them to let me go, saying I was a lowly photographer,” Chattopadhyay recalled.

He noted that while journalists in India have always been targeted for their work, under Modi “the attackers are much more open, furious and fearless.”


In this Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020, a video-journalist films as Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol a street vandalized in Tuesday's violence in New Delhi, India. Reporting in India has never been without its risks, but journalists say attacks on the press during last week's deadly communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi show the situation is deteriorating. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)


Similar demands for proof of religion were made during 2002 riots in Gujarat, Modi’s home state and where he was the chief elected official at the time.

The state erupted in violence when a train filled with Hindu pilgrims was attacked by a Muslim mob and caught fire and 60 Hindus burned to death. In retaliation, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the state.

Modi was accused of tacit support for the rampage against Muslims, and was even banned by the U.S. from traveling there, though he was ultimately cleared by a court of wrongdoing and the travel ban was lifted.

Modi’s supporters saw the international criticism of him and pinned the blame for it on journalists and other critics, a feeling that continues today, said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor at Brown University and an expert on India’s history of riots.

“Right since 2002, Hindu nationalists have looked at journalists as part of the problem,” Varshney said.

He said Modi and his followers believe “critical media” is interfering with their plans to build a Hindu state.

Kuldeep Dhatwalia, a government spokesman and director of the federal Press Information Bureau, said he was not “aware of any complaints about press access.”

“It is not correct to link conditions of journalists for coverage of different incidents at different places,” he said.

Avowed Modi supporters have already attacked critical commentary of last week’s riots.


In this Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020, a television reporter holds a microphone as she walks through a street vandalized in Tuesday's violence in New Delhi, India. Reporting in India has never been without its risks, but journalists say attacks on the press during last week's deadly communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi show the situation is deteriorating. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Mir Suhail, a Kashmiri cartoonist in New York, adapted a news photograph taken during the riots of a Muslim man crouched in supplication, his traditional garb splattered with blood, with a white-bearded man on his back practicing yoga poses.

Suhail had superimposed a stretching Modi from a video of his morning yoga exercise routine that the prime minister posted online in 2018 and was seen by millions of Indians.

Suhail’s animation was retweeted and praised, but also condemned.

By Thursday, a day after the riots came to an end, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter had removed Suhail’s cartoon, saying it violated community standards on hate speech.

This, Suhail said, is why he had to leave his job at a news organization in New Delhi.

“I can’t publish this cartoon,” he said. “I am also afraid that if I go back to India they will throw me in jail, because this is no big deal for them.”

Hotstar, India’s largest video streaming platform, also removed an episode of the American show “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” that poked fun at Modi’s mega-rally with President Donald Trump, who made his first official visit to India last week. The comedian also criticized the Indian government’s response to the violence in New Delhi.

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting spokesman Saurabh Singh said the government “had nothing to do with” the censorship of the cartoon and episode.

Arvind Gunasekar, a reporter for New Delhi Television News, won’t be able to work again until after he has surgery to repair his jaw, which was shattered during the riots.

He and his colleagues were standing on an overpass Tuesday, using their cellphones to capture a Hindu mob tearing down the walls of a Muslim graveyard. One of the vandals spotted him and grabbed him by the collar, calling the others to join.

The blows came hard and fast as the group chanted pro-Hindu slogans.

 
In this Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020 photo, a television reporter, left, reports from a street vandalized in Tuesday's violence in New Delhi, India. Reporting in India has never been without its risks, but journalists say attacks on the press during last week's deadly communal riots between Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi show the situation is deteriorating. (AP Photo)


Gunasekar’s colleague Saurabh Shukla ran his aid. Shukla showed the attackers the prayer beads hanging from his neck and shouted that he was a high-caste Hindu.

“I had to play that card or else they would have killed him. They were about to throw him over the (overpass),” Shukla said.

The mob made Gunasekar unlock his phone and delete the videos he had recorded.

“There are no more journalists here, only nationalists and anti-nationalists, according to our government,” he said. “And such identities are passed all the way down and we are ending up as victims at the hands of the polarized crowd.”

CAPITALISM IN CRISIS 

Empty streets, economic turmoil as virus alters daily life

By DAVID KLEPPER and MARI YAMAGUCHI

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A Health Ministry staffer monitors the body temperature of travelers deplaning from international flights at the Mariscal Sucre Airport, in Quito, Ecuador, Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020. Officials in Ecuador on Saturday confirmed the first case of the new coronavirus in the South American nation. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)

TOKYO (AP) — The coronavirus has claimed its first victim in the United States as the number of cases shot up in Iran, Italy and South Korea and the spreading outbreak shook the global economy.

Governments stepped up efforts to contain the disease. Saudi Arabia closed Islam’s holiest sites to foreign pilgrims. In Japan, professional baseball teams played in deserted stadiums. The French government advised the public to forgo customary greeting kisses.

Ireland and Ecuador among the countries reporting their first cases Saturday. More than 85,000 people worldwide have contracted the virus, with deaths topping 2,900.

China recorded 573 new virus cases and 35 more deaths in the 24 hours through midnight Saturday, according to the National Health Commission. That raised the total for the country where the disease emerged in December to 2,870 deaths and 79,834 cases.

In the United States, a man in his 50s in suburban Seattle became the first coronavirus death on U.S. soil. Officials say they aren’t sure how the man acquired the virus because he had not traveled to any affected areas.

“Additional cases in the United States are likely, but healthy individuals should be able to fully recover,” President Donald Trump said. Officials announced heightened warnings about travel to certain regions of Italy and South Korea as well as a ban on travel to Iran.

Many cases of the virus have been relatively mild, and some of those infected are believed to show no symptoms at all. But that can allow for easier spread, and concern is mounting that prolonged quarantines, supply chain disruptions and a sharp reduction in tourism and business travel could weaken the global economy or even cause a recession.

South Korea, the second hardest hit country after China, reported 376 new cases on Sunday morning, raising its total to 3,526. Most of the cases in South Korea have been reported in the southeastern city of Daegu and nearby towns.

Italian authorities say the country now has more than 1,100 coronavirus cases, with 29 deaths so far.

Iran is preparing for the possibility of “tens of thousands” of people getting tested for the virus as the number of confirmed cases spiked again Saturday, an official said. So far, the virus and the COVID-19 illness it causes have killed 43 people out of 593 confirmed cases in Iran.

Researchers reported the death rate may be lower than initially feared as more mild cases are counted.

A study by Chinese researchers published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine analyzing 1,099 patients at more than 500 hospitals throughout China calculated a death rate of 1.4%, substantially lower than earlier studies that focused on patients in the central city of Wuhan, where it started and has been most severe.

Assuming there are many more cases with no or very mild symptoms, “the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%,” U.S. health officials wrote in an editorial in the journal.

That would make the new virus more like a severe seasonal flu than a disease similar to its genetic cousins SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or MERS, Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Also Saturday, a survey of Chinese manufacturers showed activity plunged in February by a wider margin than anticipated, adding to the virus’s mounting economic toll.

The monthly purchasing managers’ index issued by the Chinese statistics agency and an industry group fell to 35.7 from January’s 50 on a 100-point scale on which numbers below 50 indicate activity contracting.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a 270 billion yen ($2.5 billion) emergency economic package to help fight the virus. Abe said at a news conference that Japan is at critical juncture to determine whether the country can keep the outbreak under control ahead of the Tokyo summer Olympics.

Abe, who earlier announced plans to close all schools for more than a month through the end of the Japanese academic year sparked public criticism, said the package includes financial support for families and their employers affected by the closures.

“Frankly speaking, this battle cannot be won solely by the efforts of the government,” Abe said. “We cannot do it without understanding and cooperation from every one of you, including medical institutions, families, companies and local governments.”

Even in isolated, sanctions-hit North Korea, leader Kim Jong Un called for stronger anti-virus efforts to guard against COVID-19, saying there will be “serious consequences” if the illness spreads to the country.

In other areas caught up in the outbreak, eerie scenes met those who ventured outside.

Streets were deserted in the city of Sapporo on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, where a state of emergency was issued until mid-March. Tokyo Disneyland and Universal Studios Japan announced they would close, and big events were canceled, including a concert series by the K-pop group BTS.

In France, the archbishop of Paris advised parish priests not to administer communion by placing the sacramental bread in worshippers’ mouths. Instead, priests were told to place the bread in their hands. The French government cancelled large indoor events.

Saudi Arabia closed off Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina to foreign pilgrims, disrupting travel for thousands of Muslims already headed to the kingdom and potentially affecting plans later this year for millions more ahead of the fasting month of Ramadan and the annual hajj pilgrimage.

Tourist arrivals in Thailand are down 50% compared with a year ago. In Italy, which has the most reported cases of any country outside of Asia, hotel bookings are falling. Premier Giuseppe Conte raised the specter of recession.

The head of the World Health Organization on Friday announced that the risk of the virus spreading worldwide was “very high.” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the “window of opportunity” for containing the virus was narrowing.

Economists have forecast global growth will slip to 2.4% this year, the slowest since the Great Recession in 2009, and down from earlier expectations closer to 3%. For the United States, estimates are falling to as low as 1.7% growth this year, down from 2.3% in 2019.

Despite anxieties about a wider outbreak in the U.S., Trump has defended measures taken and lashed out at Democrats who have questioned his handling of the threat.

Trump has accused Democrats of “politicizing” the coronavirus threat and boasted about preventive steps he’s ordered in an attempt to keep the virus from spreading across the United States.

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Klepper reported from Providence, R.I. Associated Press writers Joe McDonald in Beijing, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, John Leicester in Paris, Deb Riechmann and Darlene Superville in Washington, Adam Geller, Joseph Pisani and Edith M. Lederer in New York, Hyung-jin Kim and Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, Renata Brito and Giada Zampano in Venice, Italy, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Paul Wiseman, Christopher Rugaber in Washington, Marilynn Marchione in Milwuakee and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

GLOBAL WARMING
No ice wine for you: Warm winter nixes special German wine

By DAVID McHUGH

FILE-In this Dec. 18, 2009 file photo snow covered grapes hang in a vineyard near Freyburg, Germany. A warm winter means that for the first time Germany's vineyards will produce no ice wine _ a prized vintage made from grapes that have been left to freeze on the vine. The German Wine Institute said Sunday that none of the wine regions that make ice wine saw the necessary low temperature of minus 7 degrees Celsius, or 19 degress Fahrenheit. (AP Photo/Eckehard Schulz)

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — A warm winter means that, for apparently the first time in the history of German winemaking, the country’s fabled vineyards will produce no ice wine — a pricey, golden nectar made from grapes that have been left to freeze on the vine.

The German Wine Institute said Sunday that none of the country’s wine regions saw the necessary low temperature of minus 7 degrees Celsius, or 19 degrees Fahrenheit.

A succession of warm winters have cut into ice wine production recently, the institute said, noting that in 2017 only seven producers managed to make it, and only five managed it in 2013.

“If warm winters become more frequent over the coming years, ice wines from Germany’s regions will soon become an even more expensive rarity than they already are,” said wine institute spokesman Ernst Buescher.

Buescher said the institute knew of no vintage year in this century or last when no ice wine was made, and since winters were colder in the 19th century, it assumed that the latest harvest was the first one to create no ice wine since production began in 1830.

Freezing the grapes before they are crushed concentrates the sugar and leads to an intensely sweet, golden wine often served with dessert. It has always been an niche product with around 0.1% of German production, and expensive due to low volumes.

Making it is a tricky business that can enhance the winemaker’s reputation. Workers must race into the vineyards to bring the grapes in with only a few hours notice when the temperature falls, often at night or in the early morning. Since the grapes must be pressed while still frozen, makers labor in unheated facilities. Vineyard owners also face the risk that grapes set aside for ice wine will rot on the vine before the hard freeze comes.

Canada’s Niagara Peninsula is one of several other places where ice wine is produced, thanks to its cold winters. It’s also made in northern Michigan and Ashtabula County, Ohio, near Lake Erie.

Major markets for German ice wine include Japan and China as well as Scandinavia and the U.S., the institute said.

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Follow AP’s full coverage of climate change issues at https://apnews.com/Climate

‘Into the Wild’ lures the unprepared to Alaska wilderness
By RACHEL D'ORO February 28, 2020

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FILE - This March 21, 2006, file photo, shows the abandoned bus where Christopher McCandless starved to death in 1992 on Stampede Road near Healy, Alaska. For more than a quarter-century, the old bus abandoned in Alaska's punishing wilderness has drawn adventurers seeking to retrace the steps of a young idealist who met a tragic death in the derelict vehicle. Scores of travelers following his journey along the Stampede Trail have been rescued and others have died in the harsh back-country terrain. Now families of some of those who died are proposing looking at building a footbridge over the Teklanika River. (AP Photo/Jillian Rogers, File )


ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — For nearly a quarter-century, the old bus abandoned in Alaska’s punishing wilderness has drawn adventurers seeking to retrace the steps of a young idealist who met a tragic death in the derelict vehicle.

For many, Christopher McCandless’ legend was cemented in the 1996 “Into the Wild” book and later in the movie. But scores of travelers following his journey along the Stampede Trail just outside Denali National Park have been rescued and others have died in the harsh reality of back-country terrain.

The area is marked by no cell phone service, unpredictable weather and the raging Teklanika River, whose swollen banks prevented the 24-year-old Virginian from seeking help before his 1992 starvation death.


Now families of some of those who died are proposing looking at building a footbridge over the Teklanika. The effort is led by the husband of a 24-year-old newlywed woman from Belarus who died last year trying to reach the bus.

“People keep going there despite multiple accidents reported,” said Piotr Markielau, who was with his wife Veramika Maikamava when she was swept away by the river. “Making the crossing safer is a social responsibility. It is also a constructive and humane way to learn from people who died there.”

But some local officials in Denali Borough in Healy, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away, fear a footbridge could give people a false impression of safety that doesn’t exist. There are other hazards, including harsh weather and dangerous terrain. Some attempting the trip are ill-prepared.

“It’ll only encourage more people to go,” says Denali Assembly member Jeff Stenger, who rejects the bridge idea and would prefer to see warning signs posted in the area.

Borough Mayor Clay Walker wants to see the bus relocated to a safer location on the other side of the Teklanika with the help of federal and state agencies.

“This bus has meaning to a lot of people, and the challenge will be to put together a plan that works for all,” Walker said.

FILE - In this June 20, 2008, file photo, a view extends into Denali National Park and preserve from the end of the pavement on the Stampede Road in Healy, Alaska. For more than a quarter-century, an old bus abandoned in Alaska's wilderness has drawn adventurers seeking to retrace the steps of a young idealist who met a tragic death in the derelict vehicle. Scores of travelers following his journey along the Stampede Trail just outside Denali National Park have been rescued and others have died in the harsh back-country terrain that prevented a 24-year-old Virginian from seeking help before his 1992 starvation death. (AP Photo/Matt Hage, File)

A bridge would not have made a difference in the latest rescue. It involved five Italian tourists — one with frostbitten feet — who were rescued Saturday after visiting the dilapidated bus.

The long-discarded bus sits in a clearing on state land roughly half a mile (0.8 kilometers) from the boundary of the Denali National Park and Preserve.

Travelers often traverse park land to get to the bus. It was left in the wilderness as a backcountry shelter for hunters and trappers after it was used to house construction crews working to improve the trail so trucks could haul ore from a mine, according to the book. It’s outfitted with a barrel stove and bunks.

The bus was abandoned when McCandless encountered it and wrote in his journal about living there for 114 days, right up until his death.

Author Jon Krakauer, who wrote “Into the Wild,” said he is “saddened and horrified” by the deaths of people trying to cross the Teklanika. He’s also skeptical building a bridge or moving the bus will solve the problem.

“I really don’t know what can be done or should be done about the unprepared ‘pilgrims’ who get into trouble and perish or need to be rescued,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “I have no objection to removing the bus, or building a bridge to it, if a persuasive argument can be made that doing either of these things would solve the problem. I am skeptical about the wisdom of either of these proposed measures, however.”

McCandless’ sister agrees. Carine McCandless believes people will keep trying to reach the site, regardless of what locals decide. She said people send her messages every day from all over the world, identifying with her brother’s story, and she understands why people continue to make the trek.

“It is not Chris’s story they are following, it is their own, even if they don’t realize it at the time,” she said. “And as far as the lure of the bus — it’s not about the bus, either. If the bus is moved, people will simply erect a memorial in its place and continue to go there.”

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Associated Press writer Mark Thiessen contributed to this report from Anchorage, Alaska.

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Follow Rachel D’Oro at https://twitter.com/rdoro

Anti-Defamation League Report on White Supremacy Ignores Trump’s Role in Racism

The new ADL report highlights a 120% increase in white supremacist incidents in 2019 over the last year, but ignores the roots of this rise and doesn't tackle racism.

February 24, 2020

Story Transcript

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Marc Steiner: Welcome to Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, good to have you with us. A new report by the Anti-Defamation League, or the ADL, show there was an exponential leap in white supremacy incidents and propaganda in the year 2019. This ADL report recorded on a 120% increase, more than doubling the number of incidents that were recorded in 2018. The ADL, which was once part of the civil rights struggle in America, has in recent years hardly taken up the banner against racism at all. One could argue that in recent years, it’s done very little to combat racism, but seems to be morphing into a lobby organization to promote the Israeli government and accuse critics of Israeli policy of being anti-Semites, many of whom are associated with the Black Lives Matter movement when they seek solidarity with, for example, let’s say, the struggles in the Gaza strip. So, let’s unpack the most recent report.

It’s good for the ADL to be joining the fight against white supremacy, we all have to, but is it part of a strategy to legitimize their efforts to support the Netanyahu government and his policies among the left and recruit support for the Israeli occupation among African Americans and other groups in our country? Well, there’s that and there’s much more to talk about with our guests who joins us once again. Phyllis Bennis, who’s a fellow and direct with the New Internationalism Project at the Institute For Policy Studies in D.C. and the author of numerous books, our latest is a revised edition of Understanding The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. And Phyllis, welcome, great to have you back with us.

Phyllis Bennis: Great to be with you Marc.

Marc Steiner: So, one of the things that struck me reading this report was that Trump’s name never came up at all in this report. They never talked about his rallying of white supremacists and the way he did. Let’s look at this clip.

Donald Trump: When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. If I win, they’re going back. It’s okay to know it’s Mussolini. Look, Mussolini was Mussolini. It’s okay to… it’s a very good quote on it. Honestly, I don’t know David Duke. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. I pretty sure I didn’t meet him.

Marc Steiner: And so, Trump has made a name for kind of aligning himself with these groups very, very quietly and sometimes not so overtly, but doing it. The shooter in Pittsburgh that was inspired by Trump. The report glosses over that completely, doesn’t talk about that at all. But tries also [inaudible 00:02:23] on the left. So what’s at work here?

Phyllis Bennis: Well, I think this is actually consistent with a long part of ADLs history, which has always linked opposition to white supremacy and some good work and investigating episodes of white supremacy, indexing it, having a report every year on the rise in white supremacy attacks, while at the same time largely refusing to hold states and governments that it supports, namely the United States and Israel, accountable for having any role to play. It as if all of white supremacy just emerges from civil society has nothing to do with governments, no one in power, for example, Donald Trump, plays any role in encouraging it despite, as you say, the very clear links when Trump announced that the racists and fascists and Nazis who were marching in Charlottesville were pretty good people. Or the way he talks about immigrants leading to the shooting up of a synagogue killing nine people in Pittsburgh, where the shooter said explicitly that it was because that synagogue, and by extension Jews in general, were supporting the rights of refugees as of course many Jews traditionally have.

So it’s this refusal to acknowledge the role of the state and playing a role in fact with agencies of the state. So the ADL has for years, for decades, been very wrapped up in work with the FBI, with Homeland Security. And while they’ve done work, for example, in creating a very well known K through 12 curriculum guide called A World of Difference-

Marc Steiner: Right.

Phyllis Bennis: Which deals with the issue of white supremacy in a number of ways. It doesn’t only deal with antisemitism, although it starts with and really focuses a great deal on antisemitism. They see no contradiction between on the one hand, publishing something like that curriculum and in many ways doing educational work against Islamophobia in general, while at the same time in the real world, calling for and supporting US government efforts at racial profiling, at surveillance of Muslims and Arabs supporting the worst kind of anti-Arab racism that has led among other things, for example, back in the mid 1980s in California, it was an ADL investigation of what they claimed were Palestinian extremists, Palestinian terrorists, et cetera.

They prepared a report, turned it over to the FBI. The FBI was glad to collaborate with them and the result was the what became known as the Los Angeles Eight case, the longest lasting deportation effort in US history.

Marc Steiner: You were involved-

Phyllis Bennis: Seven… I was. I was part of the legal team for that case. It went on for 21 years until we finally won in the Supreme Court and the case never involved any allegation against any of the eight, it was seven Palestinians and a Kenyan woman, all of whom had been involved in Palestine activism, mainly on campuses in a cultural group a dabke group passing out literature, raising money for clinics in the occupied territories or in refugee camps in Lebanon.

No one ever alleged that they were ever involved with or ever supported anything violent. There were the efforts to find that kind of evidence went on and on, including posting a LA Sheriff’s department officer who moved into an apartment next door to where two of them lived where his wall, which was then filled up with listening devices was against their bedroom walls. So even listening in on pillow talk among one of the married couple, among the eight, they never found any evidence there because there was none. There was no involvement with anything violent with anything extremist and eventually the case won. But that was after 21 years of people being unable to leave the country, unable to attend their parents’ funerals, unable as they graduated and had terrible difficulty getting work. All of these things, they paid an enormous price for that.

And it all started with an ADL report turned over to the FBI. So that kind of collaboration with the state has been a very consistent pattern and it’s what has given them the kind of credential that they have now. So when there’s episodes, for example, when Starbucks was facing new allegations of racism by its employees and the Starbucks company decided they were going to close all the Starbucks for a day and have all their employees go through some kind of anti-racism training, the ADL was among the first organizations they called on to help organize that. To their credit, the other people who were on the team that had been pulled together said, “Wait a minute, this is wrong. This is not the organization that should be doing that.” And they did not ultimately participate.

Marc Steiner: So.

Phyllis Bennis: Yeah, go ahead.

Marc Steiner: We talked about this just before we went on the air together here, that in the early 60s, mid 60s, the ADL marched with King. The ADL put out this book about King, though it didn’t put any political nuance about King’s life in this report they did on the King for kids, but they were part of that struggle. Was it the occupation, from 67 on, that changed all of this? I mean, what more, what changed this political dynamic here?

Phyllis Bennis: I think what changed for the ADL, I mean I wasn’t around at that time in a conscious way and I wasn’t a… I don’t have a fly on the wall of those meetings, but I think what changed was not so much the ’67 war and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories of the Syrian Golan Heights of the Egyptian Sinai, but the fact that opposition to Israel, recognition that Israel was indeed a settler colonial state, that’s what began to rise. And the result was that suddenly Israel was no longer the subject of adoration and support as a tough little outpost in this very tricky neighborhood. The kind of propaganda that had for so long accompanied US support for Israel, certainly among the US Jewish population, but far beyond that, it was very much an American popular idea. After ’67 that became much harder.

And so opposition to Israel began to rise. And not surprisingly, it began to rise in the earliest iterations among people who were already identifying with the anti-colonial struggles around the world, who were seeing African liberation movements as tied to the movement for black liberation in the United States where those connections were being drawn and suddenly Israel was not seen as part of the solution, but as part of the problem, so opposition to Israeli occupation began to rise. It wasn’t the occupation itself that bothered ADL, it was the fact that as a result of the occupation, people began to see Israel in a new light and the criticism of Israel among Jews, among the black community, in a whole range of US communities, began to rise. And it was then that we see a more explicit engagement. Now, it wasn’t the first time.

There are massive reports of ADLs involvement. For example, during the HUAC hearings, again putting itself on the side of the US government among those who would criticize-

Marc Steiner: During McCarthy’s hearings you’re talking about?

Phyllis Bennis: Exactly.

Marc Steiner: That’s a piece of history I don’t know about. Yeah.

Phyllis Bennis: Yeah. So you know, this is the history has gone on for a long time. There was a black list that was created by ADL in 1983 of critics of Israel and anti-semites, as they would define them, very much a parallel to the current work of organizations that are part of the pro Israel lobbies, such as the Canary Mission, which targets particularly academic students and faculty, identifies them as troublemakers because they mobilize for Palestinian rights on campus and the goal of it is to have this massive website that would be available to all future employers so that automatically anybody thinking of hiring any young student coming out of college would think, “Well, I better go check it out on the Canary Mission website and see if they’re a troublemaker or not.” So criticism of Israel becomes equated maybe with being an anti-Semite, but certainly being a troublemaker. And this kind of history goes right back to what the ideal has done for a very long time. So

Marc Steiner: So let’s talk a bit further, let’s close with this, there’s this piece here, so what’s the connection here? If there is a connection, ADL has become fairly vociferous in support of the Netanyahu government and kind of shifted to the right, I mean it was more of a liberal than neoliberal kind of group present, the shift is the right it seems, and this connection between this and the law enforcement training with the Israelis, the Israelis training the law enforcement here, I mean is there a link to all of this or are we making too much of a leap here?

Phyllis Bennis: No, I think there is very definitely a link. The training issue that you’re talking about is the target right now of a major campaign called the Deadly Exchange campaign that’s designed to challenge what has become a massively popular process among US local and statewide law enforcement agencies who are given money by the ADL to go on trips sponsored and arranged by the ADL to go to Israel for “training” by Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military, and the Israeli national police in things like, how to control crowds, how to deal with violent uprisings. And of course what you’re looking at is a military, the Israeli military, the IDF whose job it is to keep control of a militarily occupied population. That’s who these local police forces are asking to train their officers, soldiers whose job it is to suppress an occupied population.

So this is a very dangerous proposition that we see that ADL is responsible for. Jewish Voice for Peace has been leading the national campaign of Deadly Exchange in collaboration with groups like the Black Youth Project 100 in places like Durham, North Carolina, where the campaign had its first victory in a city council resolution that says that, “No, US police will be sent to any country with a record of human rights violations for any kind of training.” That’s the kind of position that every law enforcement agency in this country should have, but it’s emerging right now as a much bigger campaign because the capacity of the ideal to mobilize things, like that police training operation, is a much bigger component. They’re raising millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars every year, for these kinds of processes, these kinds of campaigns. And the result is that the work that they do, the work they have done historically to at least monitor one aspect of white supremacy, which is the nongovernmental side of white supremacy, has been taking a back seat. The focus is, as you say, Marc, much more on building support for Israel.

Marc Steiner: Well, Phyllis Bennis, it’s always a pleasure to talk with you and the clarity you bring to these situations and your analysis. I appreciate it so much. You’re work and being with us today, thank you so much.

Phyllis Bennis: Thank you, Marc. It’s been a pleasure.


Marc Steiner: Always good to talk to you. And I’m Mark Steiner here for the Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us. Please let us know what you think. Take care.

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow and the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC.  Her books include Understanding ISIS & the New Global War on Terror, and the latest updated edition of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.

ADL: Right-wing extremists killed 38 people in 2019


A surveillance stills show alleged gunman Patrick Crusius holding a rifle as he enters a Walmart store at the start of his mass shooting that left 22 people dead, in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019. UPI Photo | License Photo

Feb. 27 (UPI) -- The vast majority of domestic extremist-related killings in the United States last year were committed by right-wing extremists, according to a new report from the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL, an anti-hate group founded in 1913 to stamp out anti-Semitism, published its annual Murder and Extremism in the United States report Wednesday, tallying 42 deaths by domestic extremists in 2019 -- of which, 38 were committed by right-wing extremists.




Of those deaths, 34 were carried out by white supremacists, which coincides with the resurgence of the ideology in the country since 2015, it said.

The four deaths not attributed to a right-wing extremist occurred during the December attacks in New Jersey City allegedly by David Nathaniel Anderson and Francine Graham, who have ties to the Black Hebrew Israelite movement the ADL described as a fringe racist and anti-Semitic religious sect.

RELATED 5 alleged white supremacists arrested for targeting journalists

The ADL said the pair defy "a simple 'left-right' classification scheme" and as the investigation continues it may become more clear how to define their alleged extremism.

The report said the 42 deaths occurred in 17 separate attacks last year,14 of which resulted in a single death. However, the year's deadliest attack was the August shooting in El Paso, Texas, that left 22 people dead and at least two dozen more injured, it said, adding it was also the third deadliest attack in the past 50 years.

Only the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, for which Timothy McVeigh was executed for, and the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in which 49 people were killed were deadlier, it said.

The 42 deaths also make 2019 the sixth deadliest year on record for extremist-related violence since 1970 and a continuation of a trend of lethal attacks in the United States.

In the past decade, right-wing extremists were responsible for 330 deaths, it said.

"Over the last decade, right-wing extremists have been responsible for more than 75 percent of extremist-related murders in this country," ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. "This should no longer come as a shock to anyone. Lawmakers, law enforcement and the public need to recognize the grave and dangerous threat posed by violent white supremacy."

However, none of the deaths last year were connected to domestic Islamic extremism, a first since 2012, though the United States did see its first terror attack of foreign origin since the 9/11 attacks in December when a Saudi aviation student fatally shot three people at a Florida naval academy.

PAM PALMATER ON INDIGENOUS LAND DEFENDERS IN CANADA
Police Arrest Indigenous Land Defenders After Trudeau Demands an End to Blockades

February 25, 2020

Indigenous lawyer Pamela Palmater says Canada’s government is unduly influencing law enforcement. 

Story Transcript

This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Dimitri Lascari…: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for the Real News Network from Montreal, Canada. As the Real News reported last week, blockades of critical infrastructure have been erected across Canada in solidarity with land defenders on Wet’suwet’en territory. Those land offenders have been peacefully resisting the construction of the fracked gas pipeline on their lands, situated in Northern British Columbia. For days, federal and provincial law-enforcement reacted to these solidarity blockades with relative restraint. But all of that changed on Friday, February 21st, when prime minister Justin Trudeau demanded that the blockades be dismantled. Here’s what the Prime Minister had to say on that day.

Justin Trudeau: Canadians have been patient. Our government has been patient, but it has been two weeks and the barricades need to come down now.

Dimitri Lascari…: This morning, February 24th, Ontario Provincial Police forcibly arrested indigenous land defenders in Tyendinaga Mohawk territory, which lies between Toronto and Montreal. Their indigenous land defenders had set up a rail blockade, which among other things had brought passenger rail traffic between Canada’s two largest cities to a standstill for weeks. Now here to discuss these latest developments with us as Pam Palmater. Pam is a Mi’kmaq lawyer and a member of the Eel River Bar First Nation. She currently holds the Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. She’s also a frequent media commentator, author and former spokesperson and educator for the Idle No More Movement. Thank you so much for joining us again, Pam.

Pam Palmater: Thanks for covering this.

Dimitri Lascari…: Pam, I would like to start by getting your overall reaction to the developments of the past few days. Trudeau claimed in his press conference last Friday that his government had been patient. He claimed to have engaged in dialogue with indigenous land defenders. He claimed that his government had “come to the table” or that the hereditary chiefs at the Wet’suwet’en had failed to come to the table. What do you make of all of these claims by the prime minister?

Pam Palmater: Well, this was a lot of propaganda for the benefit of Canadians, knowing full well what was going to happen. The Wet’suwet’en people’s and the hereditary leaders and clan members have been asking for a nation-to-nation meeting with Canada, the Prime Minister and the BC Premier John Horgan since January. They have been asking for a real nation-to-nation discussion, but they had said they can’t have this discussion at gunpoint. So, the RCMP had to leave their territories so that they could engage in a way with, there’s no violence or intimidation. Canada refused to meet those demands. While the RCNP said that they were going to leave the territory, they never did. We saw the pictures and videos. You have a situation where the Prime Minister sends a very strong message to the police forces in this country. These blockades must come down, when in effect, governments are supposed to have no role in how different police agencies conduct their business.

Up until that point, like you said in your introduction, the OPP, the Ontario Provincial Police had shown some degree of restraint. So, that message comes out and it’s no shocker then that they move into arrest the Mohawks at Tyendinaga Mohawk territory. But at the same time the RCMP, were also rolling into Wet’suwet’en territory, and both of those are being reported at the same time. This is really, really inappropriate. It’s undue influence on the police, and it’s something that should never happened. You know what else? It sounds eerily familiar to what happened during the Ipperwash crisis, and if you’ll recall an OPP officer shot and killed an unarmed land defender. So, the OPP of course should never have done what they did, but it’s this undue influence by political leaders saying, “Get the Indians on the park. Remove the blockades. Enforce the rule of law.” But no rule of law for indigenous peoples.

Dimitri Lascari…: So yes, it seems rather a fortuitous that the police moved in so shortly after the Prime Minister declared that the blockades must come down. Hard to believe that the two events are unrelated. But, I want to talk to you about another aspect of the narrative, Pam, that is being promulgated by the mainstream media, and particularly the right-leaning politicians in this country. They, some of them have derided the notion that the hereditary chiefs speak of the Wet’suwet’en speak for the Wet’suwet’en people. Some have implied that there’s something vaguely anti-democratic about giving precedents to the will of hereditary decision-makers. I’ve even seen some people, including persons who would describe themselves as progressive, described the hereditary chiefs as royalty as though they’re not unlike European monarchies. Could you talk to us about why in indigenous culture, the voices of hereditary chiefs are authoritative and whether in fact, they bear any resemblance at all to traditional European monarchies?

Pam Palmater: Right. I don’t think they bear any resemblance to monarchies, first of all. But I mean that’s a really good comparison. If you’re going to complain about something, you need to look at your own systems. But for indigenous nations across the country, like the traditional indigenous nations, there’s all different kinds of traditional governing systems. Some have hereditary systems, others have systems of matriarchs. Others have others have systems where the leaders are identified at birth. There’s a whole bunch of different traditional systems. We’re not all the same, but in the hereditary system, it’s not like someone is just anointed and then they’re there for life. If they don’t do the will of the people, if they don’t follow their traditional laws, if they’re not looking out for the entire nation, they can be removed. In fact in the Wet’suwet’en nation, hereditary leaders have been removed for not acting accordingly.

There’s a whole bunch of culture and traditions and laws and rules and regulations around it. It’s not at all like the monarchy and it’s about traditional laws and customs. There’s something far more democratic about traditional laws that work on the basis of consensus and trying to get everybody on board, versus a 51% rule. I mean, that’s not even a real majority in any sense of the word. Then when you take into account, so few people vote, you’re really talking about a fraction, where traditional governments, really it’s about everyone getting a voice, everybody working towards consensus. If you can’t get 100% consensus that are working to accommodate concerns in a fair way, and that takes time. Democracy skips all that for convenience. I think these traditional forms of governance are far more effective and far more representative of the people. If you think about democracies in general, it’s supposed to be about governance by the people, for the people, and traditional governments do that far better than the electoral system.

Dimitri Lascari…: Now, on February 19th, two days before Trudeau’s tough guy, press conference on Friday, the polling firm, Ipsos Reid issued a poll showing that 61% of Canadians say they disagree that the protesters are conducting justified and legitimate protest while 39% take the opposite view, agreeing that the protests are both legitimate and justified. Ipsos Reid noted that in 2013, a poll of Canadians reacting to indigenous blockades taking place at that time showed that 31% thought the blockades were justified compared to 69% who didn’t. So, support appears to have risen significantly in the past seven years. Moreover, the corporate community hasn’t shied away from painting the blockades as the work of extremists, but when nearly 40% of the Canadians appear to agree with what they’re doing, can they fairly be characterized as extremists. What do you make these polling numbers overall?

Pam Palmater: Well, I mean polls are problematic because it tends to be those with some degree of affluence who are polls. So, people who have access to cell phones and computers. You think about all of the remote territory’s who won’t be accessed. You think of all of the people who are homeless or precariously-housed people in prison, all of the most impoverished, tend not to be the ones that are polled. It’s a small group of people that are constantly pulling themselves. So, I always take that with a grain of salt. Second of all, human rights are not … They’re not a popularity contest. If they were, women wouldn’t be in politics right now. If it had been left to waiting for a majority of men who agree that women should have rights, we would still be fighting it. And that’s what human rights are.

It’s meant to be a pushback against the majority who are oppressing and anti-human rights. It’s the same thing with native rights, except at a much, at a much higher level. And no, of course, the people involved in this are not extremists. I’m involved. I’m a lawyer. I have four university degrees. There are academics. There are lawyers. There are doctors. There are massive numbers of unions, teachers groups, standing on these protests. There’s Canadians. There’s kids that are doing this. I mean these, even some of the rail workers were saying that they were offering support. This is not about extremism. But these comments show something very clearly, that they are worried. It’s a lot easier when it’s just a few native people because it’s easier to vilify people and cut out their voices in the mainstream media. But when you’re talking about thousands and thousands of Canadians, protesting in Toronto, protesting at the Parliament today, doing rolling barricades, shutting down ports and legislatures, that they’re quite worried about the fact that Canadians continue to grow in support of us and well they should.

This is about human rights. Native rights are human rights and they’ve been denied for far too long. This kind of extremist language is really just showing their fear around it.

Finally, Pam, I’m going to ask you to prognosticate again, which is always a dicey proposition, but based on what you’ve seen from the public today, for example, there was a protest in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en in the nation’s Capitol. I’m sure there’ve been numerous others around the country. Where do you expect things to go from here? Are the blockades over or do you envision an escalation in the resistance?

I don’t think the solidarity actions are over at all. Because when you think about it, the Mohawks from Tyendinaga territory, they were doing their actions in solidarity, very peacefully, not even on the rail, but a fire on the side of the rail. So, not technically blocking anything and they get arrested. So, because theirs was done in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en, now you have all of these solidarity actions in solidarity with the Mohawks from the Tyendinaga territory. There’s one thing that that is really, really important here. Of course, there’s going to be more solidarity actions. There’s going to be more actions all across the country and not just by indigenous peoples, by Canadians. I mean, there’s letters being issued by senators and MPS and the lawyers today saying, Oh, what Canada’s doing wrong. But I think it’s important for the viewers to note that United Nations has already called on Canada to stand down, stop violence against indigenous peoples, remove the police officers and their weapons and work towards consent on these projects and not move ahead with them without consent.

So, everything has changed as far as I’m concerned. Canada reached a tipping point. They promised reconciliation. They brought their law enforcement out with their weapons, and now we’re in a scenario where reconciliation looks dead. What gives me hope is that Canadians are trying to keep it alive, and I think if there’s going to be any success here, it’s going to be the push of Canadians on politicians who cannot get their minds out of the colonial mindset.

Dimitri Lascari…: Well, we’ve been speaking again to indigenous lawyer, activist and scholar Pam Palmater about the most recent maneuvers of the Trudeau government and response to solidarity blockades. Thank you so much for joining us again today Pam.

Pam Palmater: Thank you for having me.

Dimitri Lascari…: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for the Real News Network.


Canada Sees a ‘Watershed Moment’ in the Struggle for Indigenous Rights
February 19, 2020

Indigenous lawyer Pamela Palmater says ongoing solidarity protests show Canadians grasp more than ever how their government is violating indigenous rights.



Story Transcript

DIMITRI LASCARIS: This is Dimitri Lascaris reporting for The Real News Network from Montreal, Canada.

This past weekend, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cut short an international charm offensive in order to return to Canada to deal with a worsening crisis. Trudeau was on a multi-state trip designed to garner support for a Canadian seat on the United Nations Security Council, but solidarity protests with Indigenous Land Defenders forced him to abandon that trip. The Wet’suwet’en people, whose land in northern British Columbia has never been ceded, had been peacefully resisting the construction on their territory of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline.

The planned pipeline would be 670 kilometers or 416 miles long and would run from a $40 billion fracking project near Dawson Creek to a liquified natural gas facility near Kitimat on the west coast of Canada. There the natural gas would be liquified and prepared for export to foreign markets. The RCMP or Royal Canadian Mounted Police, have responded to the peaceful resistance to this pipeline with heavy handed tactics. As revealed by The Guardian in December of last year, RCMP officers were prepared to shoot Indigenous Land Defenders.

According to documents reviewed by The Guardian, RCMP commanders instructed officers to “use as much violence toward the gate as you want.” On 7 January of this year, RCMP officers dressed in military green fatigues and armed with assault rifles descended on the land defenders’ checkpoint, dismantled their gate and arrested 14 people. Then earlier this month, in a further operation to dismantle the blockade erected by Indigenous level defenders, the RCMP blocked media from bearing witness to their operations.

Jerome Turner of Ricochet Media was detained by the RCMP for eight hours, prompting the Canadian Association of Journalists to denounce the RCMP for acting in blatant disregard of the law in a way that is previously unheard of in Canada and unthinkable in a democratic country. Since early February, solidarity protests have erupted around the country. Indigenous Land Defenders have blockaded rail lines in Quebec, BC and Ontario. Demonstrators have temporarily shut down ports. On February 16th, a solidarity protest temporarily blockaded the Rainbow Bridge between Canada and United States in Niagara Falls.

Now here to discuss this burgeoning crisis with us is Pam Palmater. Pam is a Mi’kmaq lawyer and a member of the Eel River Bar First Nation. She currently holds the chair in Indigenous governance at Ryerson University. She’s also a frequent media commentator, author and former spokesperson and educator for the Idle No More Movement in Canada, defending in Indigenous lands, waters and sovereignty. Thank you so much for coming back on The Real News, Pam.

PAM PALMATER: Thanks for having me and covering this issue.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Pam, as you know as well as anyone, there is a long and illustrious history in this country of peaceful Indigenous resistance to the abuses of Indigenous rights. And this includes of course, the Idle No More Movement in which you played so key a role. But these protests seem unprecedented in one respect. They are causing economic disruption across the country. Do you think we’re witnessing a watershed moment in Indigenous resistance? And if so, why do you think this is happening now?

PAM PALMATER: I do think this is a watershed moment for lots of the reasons that you’ve outlined, but also because Canadians are standing with us in droves. During the Idle No More Movement was kind of the building of these relations and educating Canadians. This time around, Canadians are much more informed. They know to look beyond the headlines. They do their own research and they ask Indigenous peoples what’s going on.

And you’ll notice in many of these protest marches, rallies, blockades, you can see hundreds and hundreds of Canadians organizing this. Not all of them are even Indigenous led. That shows a real shift in Canadian education but also the will of Canadians to tell government, “Enough is enough.” And these are very targeted, very specific actions that Canada has to pay attention to. And I think how Canada responds right now, whether they respond with force or the promised nation to nation relationship, will determine what happens from this point forward.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And I wanted to come back to the end game at the close of our discussion. But before we get there, I want to dig deeper into an issue. You talked about Canadians understanding the issues better today than in the past. Proponents of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline argue that band councils have consented to the planned route of the pipeline, whereas opponents of the pipeline assert that what matters here for purposes of Indigenous rights, is the consent of the hereditary chiefs, which has not been given. Could you talk to us about the band councils and please explain why their consent is not enough to justify the government’s actions?

PAM PALMATER: Yeah, so this isn’t about one group being better than the other group. This is just a matter of law in Canada. Under the Indian Act, chiefs and counselors, which is an imposed system on our traditional nations, have very, very limited jurisdiction and powers. It’s limited to the reserve lands. They certainly don’t have jurisdiction outside of those reserve lands. The pipeline doesn’t propose to cross any reserve lines. Whether or not the elected council did or did not consent to the pipeline is beside the issue for several reasons. One, it doesn’t cross reserve lands, they don’t have any jurisdiction over it.

And two, the real legal authority over Aboriginal title lands, which is all of the traditional territory, which is far greater than the little tiny reserve lands that had been set aside, is with the hereditary chiefs. And how do we know this? One, we know this because that’s Wet’suwet’en law. That it’s always been the hereditary chiefs who have responsibility according to each of their clans to protect different areas in their territory. And we also know this because the hereditary chiefs went to court to assert Aboriginal title over their territory. And it was the hereditary chiefs who represented the Aboriginal title claim, not the Indian Act chiefs.

Now government, and of course industry is going to try to confuse Canadians and say, “Oh, but we have this agreement.” They haven’t shown anyone this agreement. And that’s part of the problem. We don’t know even if the Indian Act councils did consent or not. What we do know from one of the leaked agreements is that the Coastal GasLink Pipeline has told first nations that they have to take every action to quell any dissent in their communities, not even allow people free speech, to speak in public or on social media. And that is also against our laws here in Canada.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Now, today, Pam, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Murray Mullen, the CEO of the Mullen Group was quoted extensively in the Canadian Press talking about the rail blockades. The Mullen Group does trucking for the oil patch in both Canada and the United States. Mullen described the rail blockades as quote, ecoterrorism. How do you respond to that charge?

PAM PALMATER: Well, again, that’s just more inflammatory language, trying to turn Canadians against us because there’s literally a groundswell of support from Canadians and I would also add Americans who blocked some rails in Seattle. But this is about racist language. We’ve always been portrayed as dangerous, militant savages, domestic terrorists, and depending on which government is in power, you get more or less of that kind of dialog. All that does is scare people and it’s not based on facts.

Just like the Idle No More Movement, all of these activities which are done in solidarity, have all been peaceful and everyone organizing these have given as their first instruction, that this is to honor the Wet’suwet’en, to stand in solidarity with their land rights and no violence, no weapons, nothing is allowed at the site and that’s the way it’s been. And you know how it is in the media if people can use inflammatory or scary language that maybe people won’t want to support what’s happening. But so far Canadians have looked beyond those really inflammatory words.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And finally, Pam, so far, the Trudeau government has resisted calls from people like Mr. Mullen and from right wing politicians, most notably the Conservative Party leader, Andrew Scheer, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, to be more forceful in responding to the blockades. And in fact–and I personally found this rather surprising–the Indigenous Services Minister Mark Miller, after meeting with the participants in one of the blockade stated quote, “What I hear back from communities and Indigenous peoples when we talk about the rule of law is that the rule of law for them has been time and time invoked to perpetuate what believe to be historical injustices.”

Now, given its record of enthusiastic support for Canada’s fossil fuels industry, the Trudeau government looks very much to be caught between a rock and a hard place. What in your opinion is Trudeau’s likely end game here? How do you think his government will try to resolve this crisis? And how do you think he should try to resolve this crisis?

PAM PALMATER: Well, that’s a really good question. And we all know Canada is the state perpetrator of genocide and they still haven’t addressed that. For all the nice words that they have used, they haven’t followed that up with actions. The RCMP still invaded and forcibly removed Wet’suwet’en peoples from their homes in fact. What we see though is a categoric difference on a province by province basis. I wouldn’t even say it’s a national response. You see the province of Ontario saying, “Wait, we’re not going to rush in and forcibly remove people. That didn’t work in any of the other protests. It just escalated tensions. We’re not going to do it here.”

And it’s important to remember in a democratic country, federal and provincial governments aren’t supposed to have any sway over law enforcement. Whether or not that’s the case, that’s another issue. But they can’t be telling them go in and get these people or remove these people or not. Thank goodness for its law enforcement restraint. I think Mark Miller so far has had the most relationship focused comments, to actually acknowledge that we’re only here because of a continued denial of our sovereignty, our governing systems, and our land rights; that’s the only reason why we keep having these flashpoints.

And I think on a go forward basis, Justin Trudeau is really going to have to sit back, do business, not as usual, not look to the usual political, “well, we’ll study this or we’ll have a meeting,” and actually sit down and have a nation to nation conversation with the Wet’suwet’en and try to work things out. And if that means no pipeline in Wet’suwet’en territory, they’re going to have to once and for all accept that we have the legal right to say no when we want to. And everybody’s watching nationwide whether or not that right is going to be respected. We’ll see how he moves forward.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: Well, we’ve been speaking to Indigenous lawyer, activist and scholar Pam Palmater about a burgeoning crisis in Canada relating to the Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia. Thank you so much for joining us again on The Real News, Pam.

PAM PALMATER: Thanks for covering this.

DIMITRI LASCARIS: And this is Dimitri Lascaris reporting from Montreal, Canada.

Pam Palmater is a Mi’kmaw lawyer and member of Eel River Bar First Nation, currently holding the Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. She is also a frequent media commentator, author, and former spokesperson and educator for the Idle No More movement in Canada defending Indigenous lands, waters and sovereignty. Media: www.pampalmater.com

A Racist Voter ID Law Targeting Native Americans Just Lost its Punch

February 26, 2020

North Dakota will now provide Native Americans with no-cost identification to vote in a victory against racist voter ID laws⁠—but they still face shocking barriers to the ballot box nationwide.

Story Transcript
This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Kim Brown: Welcome to The Real News, I’m Kim Brown. The efforts to preclude nonwhite citizens from voting have continued to persist in the 21st century. Voter ID is the weapon du jour with conservative state legislatures over the past decade, placing onerous burdens on citizens of colors to in effect show their papers in order to exercise their right to vote. Now, this is what happened to Native Americans in North Dakota. People whose homes didn’t have formal addresses or who didn’t have birth certificates were made to jump through onerous hoops in order to participate in elections. But a new settlement reached last week could ease some of those challenges. And today we’re joined with Jacqueline De León. Jacqueline is a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, which is a legal organization defending the rights of Native American tribes, organizations, and people. She has led hearings across Indian country on Native American voting rights and she practices ongoing litigation and legislative advocacy to enable Native American voters to participate in state and federal elections, and she joins us today from Boulder, Colorado. Thank you for being here, Jacqueline.


Jacquelin De Le…: Thank you so much for having me.


Kim Brown: So let’s start with what happened last week and go backwards so that we all can grasp how we’ve arrived at this point. So first off, Native American tribes were set to go to trial in May as the plaintiffs suing the state of North Dakota behind a voter suppression law involving securing so-called proper ID to cast a ballot, but last week a settlement was reached and tell us what happened as a result of that.


Jacquelin De Le…: We were happy to hear that the state was willing to enter into settlement negotiations after years and years of battle, and what the tribes effectively agreed to is that a voter who doesn’t have an address can go into the polling booth and mark on a map where their address is, indicate on the cross streets where it is that their house or where it is, even if they’re homeless, their tent is, and the state will then assign them an address. That vote will become a provisional ballot, the state will assign an address before the final tally of counts is made and then they will report back to the tribes that they have assigned that address and that that vote was counted. So we think that that’s a good solution for individuals that lack addresses. The state will also support the issuance of free IDs on the reservations 30 days before an election and some compensation for tribes issuing IDs and the acceptance of tribal letters to serve as ID.


Kim Brown: So how were Native Americans voting prior to the passage of this bill through the North Dakota legislature? Because it was not this complicated to vote prior to, I believe it was either 2012 or 2014 that the Republican controlled state house as a reaction to the Native American voting block, which helped to not only elect Barack Obama in 2012 but also saying Heidi Heitkamp to this, to the U.S. Senate in 2012. This law was enacted as an outgrowth of that. Can you explain to us how it was prior to the law being enacted and what caused the passage of this GOP initiative?


Jacquelin De Le…: So prior to the law, North Dakota was a very progressive state in a lot of ways. When it came to voting, there’s no voter registration, so an individual could go up to vote. At the time they had a thing called voucher, meaning that somebody from the community could say, I know… If for example, you didn’t have an identification, an individual could say, you know what, I know this person, so this person is from our precinct. And they can vouch for that voter. There also was an individual voter could attest that they were qualified under penalty of perjury. And basically that’s the voter swearing that they were qualified to vote. And that’s the fail safe mechanism that the district judge implemented after our victory in 2016 to allow voters to vote again. And so going back as to why it is that this very open system was changed.


And again, remember North Dakota is not a very populous state. What may not be feasible in a more populous state was very feasible in North Dakota where voters largely knew each other in very small communities. But in 2011 the legislature considered an ID bill and they ultimately decided that that ID bill would be too onerous to people who didn’t have an identification. And they were also informed at that time that Native Americans lack residential street addresses, and so they wouldn’t be able to comply with an ID requirement that required an address. And so they rejected a voter ID bill in 2011. In 2012 Heidi Heitkamp won a surprise victory for U.S. Senate. And immediately in the session following that election, the legislature passed the ID bill. It’s important to note that Heidi Heitkamp’s election was considered to be attributable to the Native American vote.


She won by 1% and so the Native American vote was seen as a block that carried her to victory. And so the passage of the ID bill in the subsequent legislative cycle in 2013 we think was a direct response to that election. They did not consider any other viewpoints. They didn’t open up the floor to debate. They used a legislative maneuver. Basically they attached the ID bill to another bill so it could be voted on without any discussion. And the effects in 2014 were immediate and severe. And that’s when NARFE got the call that many Native Americans were being turned away from the polling place.


Kim Brown: And it’s not a reach to say that the Native American voting blog helped deliver Heidi Heitkamp her U.S. Senate seat because she lost reelection in 2018 with this voter ID law firmly in place. Can, can we attribute her loss to Native Americans being denied access to the ballot box?


Jacquelin De Le…: So I think that what led to her victory in 2016 was a host of factors. She was facing a especially weak candidate due to some scandals that that candidate had and the Native American vote carried her over the top in that instance. And it was, I think widely acknowledged that it was the Native American vote that secured her victory.


In this last election cycle, she was facing a more formidable opponent. North Dakota is a traditionally Republican state. And there was, in this instance, exceptionally high turnout among Native Americans. And the reason was is that with the articulation of the injustice, with these years of litigation with us saying to the Native American tribes, you are being disenfranchised. And then with I think a national spotlight being put on North Dakota because the balance of the Senate was at play at the time, a ton of donations came into North Dakota to try and mobilize the native vote. And tribes issued, hundreds of IDs for free using those donated funds. And they also assigned addresses and tried to compensate for the suppressive effects of the law. And so it led to sort of a historic turnout. Now, if the law were to remain in place and the settlement hadn’t been reached, we think that the suppression would’ve continued when there weren’t sort of this surplus of money coming in due to national attention. And we think that that barrier would have led to decreased turnout over the years.


Kim Brown: So broadly Jacquelin what are the challenges surrounding voters in Indian country and what are some of the ongoing barriers to participation? Because it’s not easy for people of color across the spectrum to vote at all. And we know that Native Americans are the OGs of bearing the brunt of this colonial state, especially when it comes to oppressing people’s human rights, basic human rights, but certainly rights as citizens and trying to do that as voters. So what are the challenges that Native Americans are still dealing with in 2020


Jacquelin De Le…: So Native Americans face unreasonable barriers I think that would shock the conscience of everyday Americans. In the Duckwater Reservation in Nevada, individuals have to travel 140 miles to register. That’s crazy. Given the fact that there’s mountains in the region and road conditions, that’s a four to five hour trip one way. In order to cast a vote in person, tribes throughout Nevada have to travel over 100 miles. These kind of distances are unreasonable and they are prevalent throughout Indian country. Other tribes regularly face 40 or even 20 miles. But the problem is, is that those distances are on dirt roads and individuals have to leave a reservation in order to cast their ballot. And that can be incredibly costly, not just in the tank of gas that it takes to get and the hours that you have to commit to. I’m going to go vote, but also in childcare and other barriers that pop up when you have to travel those kinds of distances.


But I think that those distances also critically communicate to Native American communities that their votes are not important and that they don’t matter. And so Native Americans face just unreasonable distances when it comes to casting a ballot and registering. Other issues that face Native Americans are a digital divide. So 99% of tribes lack broadband access. It’s not uncommon for me to go onto a reservation and then immediately lose service. And so as states progress towards online registration, tribes are left out of that calculus.


Voter ID continues to be a problem in Indian country in South Dakota. They recently considered a bill and a decided that tribal ID wouldn’t be allowed for online registration. Native Americans also face hostility when they vote outside of their reservations. So not only do they have to travel these unreasonable distances to go and cast their ballot when they go outside of the reservation, there are tensions between the border town and the reservation and they have to go to these hostile areas.


For example, in Arizona, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians describe how their flow of water is regularly blocked by individuals in the border town, racial tensions are so high. And so when you place a polling location where there are really high racial tensions, people don’t feel comfortable going there. In Wisconsin, they also have a polling locations inside of a Sheriff’s office, which is a huge deterrent for individuals going to go vote. It’s intimidating. There’s also disrespect shown in South Dakota, native Americans were forced to vote out of a repurposed chicken coop and described the humiliation they felt when they saw feathers on the floor and no bathroom facilities. And so it’s a really discouraging landscape out there.


And I will also say that when you go to a border town that is hostile, that also communicates that your vote is unwanted and that border town does not necessarily have to host the polling location. There’s no reason why a polling location isn’t on a reservation. For example, in Crow Creek, they placed the polling location in Gann Valley, which has a whopping population of 12 people, instead of Fort Thompson that has a population of 1,200 people in a largely Native American population.


Kim Brown: Wow. These are issues that are numerous and indefinitely complex and in my opinion, absolutely under-reported. So hopefully we can check in with you in the future, Jacqueline, and you can bring us up to speed-


Jacquelin De Le…: Yes, I’d love to.


Kim Brown: On some of the challenges that our brothers and sisters in Indian country are facing. Jacqueline, we appreciate your time today. Thank you so very much.


Jacquelin De Le…: Thank you so much.


Kim Brown: And thank you for watching The Real News Network.