G20, U.S. Conference of Mayors, DEA

Protesters Demand G20 Nations Do More to Address Climate Change

Interview with Cassady Craighill, media officer with Greenpeace USA, conducted by Scott Harris

An estimated 100,000 activists from across Europe and elsewhere converged on Hamburg, Germany to engage in multi-issue protests at the Group of 20, or G20 summit meeting July 7-8. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were among the leaders of the G20 industrial nations who gathered in Hamburg to discuss trade, immigration, terrorism and human rights.

Although a group of militant protesters received most of the corporate media attention due to their running street battles with some of the 20,000 police deployed in Hamburg, most of those protesting were peaceful. Activists who came to Hamburg organized an alternative summit meeting and participated in diverse actions designed to focus attention on issues including ongoing wars, climate change, economic inequality and the plight of immigrants.

Greenpeace was among the many international non-governmental organizations with a presence in Hamburg, where members staged several actions. Activists in kayaks and small boats wrote the words, “End Coal,” on a ship delivering 75,000 tons of coal to the German port, while others scaled a city bridge and suspended a large banner with the same message: “G20 End Coal.“ Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Cassady Craighill, a media officer with Greenpeace USA, who discusses the climate issues that were the focus of her group’s protests at the G20 summit meeting. [Rush transcript]
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CASSADY CRAIGHILL: Certainly, a kind of beehive of activity both in the officials meetings and on the street. Greenpeace was there and we obviously are an organization that prioritizes as nonviolent. But the G20 is a place where people can see the power imbalance and so Greenpeace, at these types of events and gatherings on the world stage, pushes the narrative to really shift that power back into the hands of the people rather than corporate interests and the economic elite. So that was certainly one of our priorities there.

The Paris Climate Agreement was of course one of the top agenda items this year. And we wanted to raise awareness to how much Trump had set us back, but not just the United States – the whole world. And send the message that was not something that really reflected the needs and desires of people in the United States, but also people around the world. So, the G20 is really a unique event where it is such a gathering of the most powerful in the world. But to have such a diverse group of protesters there was really important and I think really shifted the narrative this year.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I know Greenpeace was concerned about the continued burning of coal throughout the world, particularly industrial nations. And there was a coal ship, I believe, that was delivering a shipment of coal to the Hamburg port and Greenpeace had a creative way to focus their attention on the continued burning of coal and its contribution to climate change. You want to tell our listeners a bit about what happened to that coal ship?

CASSADY CRAIGHILL: Sure. The coal action was one of the few that Greenpeace did during the G20. And the overall message there was that you can’t have global climate action without phasing out the burning of coal and switching to 100 percent renewable energy. So we really wanted to point out some of the lip service that is often paid to climate action still needs some more substantial, significant steps to phasing out those fossil fuels, including coal – but also of course, oil and gas, particularly in the United States.

So, Germany is one of the countries that is still too reliant on coal, yet is seen as a leader on climate change. And so that was a moment to really highlight that you can say what you want at these sorts of meetings, but unless you’re actually backing it up with action and actually phasing out those dirty fossil fuel sources and energy sources, then we’re really not making the progress, at a global level that we need.

That was to really point out that even a country as progressive as Germany is, it still has an addiction to fossil fuel that needs to be addressed.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Cassady, what was the response of the G20 nations to Donald Trump’s announcement on June 1st that he’s pulling out of the Paris climate accord? From what I understood, a lot of these leaders did reaffirm their commitment to the Paris accord, some even bolstering their commitments from that were made originally. But you could provide a summary of some of the responses of these world leaders to the Trump pullout.

CASSADY CRAIGHILL: Like you said, the rest of the G20 – or G19, really – now needs to double down on their commitment and I think it’s up to people around the world to push those countries to do so, particularly ones that are in such a great position to do so. Europe, Canada, Asian countries I think all realize that they need to double-down on those commitments and are doing so. I think at this point, of course, having the United States in that agreement would help, but the fact of the matter is that there are so many other forces in the United States that are moving forward with that progress. You know, the leading companies in this country – from Apple to Google to Facebook – are making their own commitments. Mayors around the country to Virginia to San Francisco, to the Southwest. All four corners of the country are making their own commitments and moving forward on them. So I think that it’s important for us to signal to the rest of the world that despite the president of the United States not listening to the majority of scientists in the world and not joining respected leaders in this agreement, that the rest of the United States is going to do so.

And I think it’s important for other leaders, particularly the developing world in countries like India, to continue to push Trump to rethink this decision. They may be the only one to have that leverage and it’s important for them. But in the meantime, Trump is not any sort of person to reason with. They need to be even more ambitious about their original commitments.

For more information, visit Greenpeace at greenpeace.org; 350.org at 350.org; Friends of the Earth at foe.org; The Sierra Club at sierraclub.org.

U.S. Conference of Mayors Adopts Resolutions Opposing Trump’s Military Budget Increase

Interview with Toni Harp, mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

At the close of its 85th Annual Meeting on June 26, the United States Conference of Mayors for the 12th consecutive year, adopted a strong resolution put forth by a coalition called Mayors for Peace, which called on President Trump to lower nuclear tensions, prioritize diplomacy, and redirect nuclear weapons spending to meet human needs and address environmental challenges, which was sponsored by Mayor Frank Cownie of Des Moines, Iowa and 19 co-sponsors.

The Mayors Conference also unanimously passed two complimentary resolutions, one which opposed the Trump administration’s proposal to move $54 billion from human and environmental spending at home and abroad to military spending, sponsored by Mayor Svante L. Myrick of Ithaca, New York. The other resolution called on cities across the U.S. to hold public hearings to explore what they could do with funds, if major cuts were made to the nation’s military budget. The resolution also urged cities to pass motions locally demanding reductions in military spending, moving the money saved to fund cities and sending the resolution to members of Congress asking for their response. That resolution was submitted by New Haven, Connecticut Mayor Toni Harp, whose city passed such a resolution in February.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus visited Mayor Harp in her office recently, and spoke with her about the resolution she initiated as well as the differing responses to her call for reductions in military spending since the advent of the Trump presidency. [Rush transcript]
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TONI HARP: It’s something the Mayors for Peace have done resolutions for years at U.S. Conference of Mayors, and our resolution was made a part of an overall resolution of that organization and supported by that organization. It went before the International Committee, which I am a member of. And in all honesty, this year, probably for the first time, there was push back. There were a number of people who didn’t want to vote on it, and after some discussion, it was voted upon.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And where did the pushback come from, or what was the rationale?

TONI HARP: Many of them felt it was an affront to the Trump administration.

BETWEEN THE LINES: And … ?

TONI HARP: Well, clearly some of them were Trump supporters and they felt like it went a little bit too far, and so a number of us felt the opposite way and felt it was really important, especially when we look at some of the proposals in the budget that impact cities, that we have always argued in the U.S. conference that we get what we have always gotten from the federal government to support our cities, but beyond that, we actually try to push for more. And so this resolution that looks at our federal spending on our war apparatus and sort of moving into peacetime operation just made sense in light of an administration that actually wants to pour more dollars into our Armed Forces and our war apparatus. It’s going in the exact opposite way we thought we were going, I don’t know, two years ago.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Do you feel that resistance is growing to the Trump administration in ways that could be effective, or do you fear that, with the federal government re-establishing its priorities in a very different way, that you’re going to have a hard time in the future?

TONI HARP: Well, I think we’re in a very precarious place in America. You have in North Korea a very unstable leader, who now claims he can get a nuclear warhead to American lands, and we have a president who doesn’t seem to be at all concerned that the world really cannot have nor contemplate a nuclear war, and really uses language and tweets that I think endanger the American people. Having said that, and then decides he’s going to use the resources of the American people not for Medicaid, not for food programs – SNAP or food stamps, not for Meals on Wheels – not for Youth at Work, not for any of the labor programs, and is going to use it so it can play this game with the rest of the world that really leverages all of our lives, I’m very worried about it, and I think other mayors are too.

When you look at the cities in America, almost all the cities are blue, which means they care a lot about communities, people, and making sure they have the resources to care for people, but oftentimes they’re in red states, and the way in which our democracy has been designed with the Electoral College, makes a red state like Wyoming have more say – or an individual in that state – have more say than people in a blue state with more population have, and then the few get to decide where the many go. And that is a problem, and it is dangerous, and I’m worried about it. I think most mayors are.

BETWEEN THE LINES: You said most cities are blue, but there were Republican mayors there.

TONI HARP: Oh, there absolutely were Republican mayors there, and not all of them are blue, but some of the major cities typically with the larger populations are blue, in the U.S. oftentimes in red states, so it creates a bit of a problem, but most all of those cities that are blue, they are standing behind the Paris Climate pact, they are standing behind and fighting for the resources the people in their cities need at the federal level, and they’re putting pressure on Congress to really be a balance of power. Again, you know, Congress is largely Republican, but in the cities that are represented by these folks, there is still a lot of pressure. They’ve got to go home to say why they don’t want to pay for medical care for people, why they don’t want to make sure that poor people who can’t afford food, don’t have access to it, and so hopefully, at the local level, holding our federal leaders’ feet to the fire, we can move away from what appears to be somewhat suicidal.

BETWEEN THE LINES: But you did say the resolution passed unanimously, is that right?

TONI HARP: Yeah.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So even the Republican mayors thought it was okay.

TONI HARP: Yeah, they thought it was okay.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I wonder if that’s because they thought it didn’t require … I mean, every city could do what it wanted to, I guess.

TONI HARP: Well, I think part of it is you are bringing decision making back to the local area in a way that’s very bright, because what happens is that you are able then to help people at the local level understand what’s at stake. And hopefully it’ll start a movement. (laughs)

For more information, visit United States Conference of Mayors at usmayors.org and the U.S. Peace Council at uspeacecouncil.org.

DEA Lied About Deadly Honduran Drug Raid, Accountability Demanded

Interview with Annie Bird, director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, conducted by Scott Harris

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-supported narcotics interdiction raid in Honduras in May 2012 that killed four civilians, including two women and a 14-year-old boy, received new attention recently with the May release of a report by inspectors general of the Departments of State and Justice. The report refuted an initial account filed by the DEA that stated the Honduran attack on a civilian boat by a DEA-led Honduran police unit and U.S. machine-gun-equipped helicopter was justified, and found that DEA and State Department officials had misled Congress.

According to Annie Bird, director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, the attack which took place in the rural Miskito indigenous community of Ahuas, on the Honduran Caribbean coast shines a light on the need for close scrutiny of U.S. support for the drug war in Central America.

Bird and Alexander Main of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, had visited Ahuas several weeks after the May 2012 attack and collected first-hand accounts from survivors and eyewitnesses that contradicted the DEA’s version of events. Their op-ed piece, titled, “The Deadly Results of a D.E.A.–Backed Raid in Honduras,” was published in the New York Times on July 2. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris reached Annie Bird in Honduras, where she described the 2012 attack, and the need for oversight and investigations by Congress into U.S. security operations and funding for counternarcotics missions in Central American nations. [Rush transcript]
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ANNIE BIRD: The incident that happened in 2012 – the killing of four innocent bystanders and three others who are currently disabled – was a very tragic event because it became pretty clear early on that it was the DEA that was directly involved. The DEA was claiming that it had been a Honduran operation and that none of the people involved in the shooting had actually been DEA agents. So I traveled out to Ahuas with Alex Main from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and we interviewed witnesses and survivors of the attack and it became very clear there was a family who was moving from one town to another, had all their belongings, school records for 14-year-old boy who was killed. He was transferring from one school to the other. The family had some woman who were pregnant, one of them, her doctor who had been seeing her affirmed this. There was all kinds of evidence showing that this was a water taxi and it was traveling on the river because that’s how people in that area travel and was mistaken by the DEA raid operation and the DEA then ordered the Honduran gunners on the helicopter to open fire on the boat. It became very clear that the DEA was actually in charge of the operation. That the Honduran agents were under the orders, under the command of the DEA.

And that the DEA in the United States was not being honest about that. But then what became even more concerning that the DEA and the State Department began promoting its story in Congress, when Congress began asking questions that individuals on a water taxi had opened fire on a boat DEA and police officers were on. And there was no evidence to substantiate that. In fact, what happened, is that there was a witness who essentially lied, admitted she lied, gave contradictory evidence, declarations and three different interviews. So it’s a very intentional sort of misleading of Congress and the public, so the whole incident provided a very disturbing window into how the DEA is interacting with Honduran – not only drug net lords – but also the corruption in the police forces that they’re working with.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Annie, tell us about the issue of accountability here. Your article emphasizes the fact that no one at the Drug Enforcement Administration has been held accountable for the lies and misdirection that they gave State Department and Justice Department investigators.

ANNIE BIRD: Exactly. And what the State Department and DEA what we’re hearing that their response is, is that while this inspector general report that came out with all these very damning findings, is not longer relevant because the unit that undertook that operation was dissolved. Well, the fact of the matter is the way that we see it, is that the most disturbing aspect of what happened is how the DEA and the State Department got (unintelligible) afterwards by going along with lies, perpetuating misinformation, promoting false testimony and all of that was with the infrastructure of the DEA office in the country, the INL, the International Narcotic Law Enforcement Unit for the State Department and they actively participated in undermining the [investigation of chief mission authority] over their operations and then hiding what had actually happened in the operation and how they had later reacted to it.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Your investigation into this situation on Honduras shines a light on a pattern of behavior by the United States in terms of its involvement in Central American governments and the drug trade there that really provides much caution in your mind that the Congress really needs to investigate this and scrutinize very heavily what the US DEA and other security assistance programs are doing to these countries where innocent civilians are being killed as well as corruption is rife within the local police departments and the military.

ANNIE BIRD: Exactly, there’s this Central American Regional Security Initiative, CARSI, which was created in 2009 and which has seen billions of dollars, which are completely opaque. Congress does not know what the funds are being used for, and we’re talking about billions of dollars. And our theory is that that funding, of what we see evidence to suggest, is that some of that funding could actually be promoting works of corruption and feeding into the power structure of the actual criminal organizations that we’re supposed to be combatting. I mean, it’s just a tiny little microcosm example that have theories and reasons to believe and indications that the false witness who was herself was connected to organized crime was likely paid by the Honduran government, maybe intended for witness protection or to promote access to information.

And what I have seen in other areas of the country is payment being lost to people to give false testimony, essentially to protect drug traffickers or death squads who are stealing land from popular farmers.

For more information, visit the Guatemala Human Rights Commission at ghrc-usa.org; Center for Economic and Policy Research at cepr.net; and Alex Main, CEPR at cepr.net/about-us/staff/alexander-main-senior-associate-international-policy.

This week’s summary of under-reported news

Compiled by Bob Nixon
As Venezuela’s political crisis continued to escalate, with a recent attack by government supporters targeting the opposition controlled National Assembly, Mexico is working within the Organization of American States to negotiate a settlement between Venezuela’s Socialist President Nicholas Maduro and his political opponents. (“Mexico Takes Lead to Rein in Venezuela – and Sends Message to Voters at Home,” Christian Science Monitor, June 30, 2017; “Venezuela: Pro-Government Militiamen Injure Politicians in Attack on Congress,” The Guardian, July 5, 2017)
Bertha Zungia, the daughter of slain rainforest activist Bertha Caceres survived a violent attack only weeks after taking over the indigenous rights group her mother founded. Caceres, the recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, was murdered in her home in March 2016. (“Daughter of Murdered Honduran Activist Survives Armed Attack,” The Guardian, July 4, 2017)
California Governor Jerry Brown blasted Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate accord and quickly set up a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping to outline steps to cap greenhouse gas emissions. However in Sacramento, the state capitol, Brown is playing an insider strategy to extend the state’s innovative cap and trade program. Instead of supporting progressive legislation, Brown is negotiating directly with California’s powerful oil and gas industry. (“EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Documents Show Jerry Brown Giving Big Oil a Seat in Drafting Climate Policy,” In These Times, June 28, 2017)

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