Guantánamo Detainee Who Wrote a Book About His Torture to be Released

Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantanamo Diary was a bestseller. (photo: Guardian UK)

By Spencer Ackerman, Guardian UK

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Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose book detailed his treatment by the US military, was found to have no ‘continuing significant threat’ to US security

ne of the most tortured men in the history of Guantánamo Bay has received clearance from the wartime prison’s quasi-parole board to leave after nearly 14 years of detention without charge.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian citizen whose harrowing account of his torture at Guantánamo Bay became an international bestseller in 2015, will soon leave behind the Cuban detention center where US military personnel contorted his body; bombarded him with noise; deprived him of sleep; stuffed his clothing with ice during a nighttime boat ride meant to to convince him he was headed to an even worse place; threatened his life; and threatened his mother with rape.

The periodic review board, a nonlegal panel representing various US security agencies tasked with assessing threats posed by Guantánamo’s 76 residual detainees, found Slahi to represent no “continuing significant threat to the security of the United States”. The consensus decision, reached on 14 July, was made public on Wednesday.

Slahi has maintained that position throughout his ordeal. Although he once fought alongside al-Qaida against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, he wrote in his book Guantanamo Diary of renouncing the terror group in 1992. A federal judge in 2010 ordered him freed for lack of evidence untainted by torture to justify his detention, yet the US justice department appealed. He is considered so docile inside Guantánamo he is permitted to garden.

“In making this determination, the board considered the detainee’s highly compliant behavior in detention. The board also noted the detainee’s candid responses to [the] board’s questions, to include recognition of his past activities, clear indications of a change in the detainee’s mindset,” the panel found.

It is not clear when Slahi will actually get to leave Guantánamo. His lawyers do not yet know whether he will return to Mauritania or resettle in a different country, and a destination is a prerequisite for the US military to place Slahi on a plane off the base in south-eastern Cuba.

Myles Caggins, a detentions spokesman at the White House national security council, said that “no decision has been made regarding the location to which Mr Slahi will be transferred.”

Slahi’s lead attorney, Nancy Hollander, said she learned of her client’s imminent release in the Dallas airport. Emailing from an airplane, Hollander said she grew emotional at the news.

“I cannot stop crying every time I write it as I notify the many, many people who have supported Mohamedou through the years. I now hope for a speedy release so I can meet him next in his new home, surrounded by his family,” Hollander said.

In a 2 June hearing before the quasi-parole panel, Slahi’s representatives told the board that he bore no grudge against the US, “despite all the US government has done to him” and referred to the unlikely but “meaningful relationships he developed” with some of his Guantánamo guards.

Slahi’s brother Yahdih, a computer engineer who lives in Germany, has offered to support him financially while his representatives told the panel he works on his plans to “pursue a small business and write books.”

In the summer of 2003, senior Guantánamo officials, believing Slahi was an important link to al-Qaida, sought and received permission from the Pentagon to torture him.

The torture plan, overseen by a Chicago police detective and navy reservist, called for stress positions, sleep deprivation, sensory bombardment and more. A masked interrogator told Slahi he dreamed of killing him. At one point, the detective, concocting a false identity as a White House aide, told Slahi that were he not to cooperate, the US would arrest Slahi’s mother and transfer her to the “all-male prison environment” at Guantánamo.

US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved Slahi’s torture on 13 August 2003.

Mark Fallon, the deputy commander of the now-defunct criminal investigative task force at Guantánamo, called it “a shameful chapter for the Department of Defense and those who served in uniform.

“It was a command-sanctioned torture of a prisoner in custody. It was unwarranted, unnecessary, and obviously totally ineffective,” he said.

In his book, Slahi recalled being so broken by the torture that he would tell his tormentors whatever they wished to hear. “I don’t care, as long as you are pleased. So if you want to buy, I am selling,” Slahi informed his interrogators.

Guantánamo officials would later move him into housing reserved for detainees cooperating with US interrogators, where he was permitted to watch TV and maintain a modest garden. There, he would write his memoirs, which he provided to his attorneys and ultimately published to international acclaim.

Slahi’s torture “left us with a detainee [who] continued to be held for years, not based on what he did to us,” said Fallon, “but based on what we did to him.”

The Art of the Con. Trump Style.

 
Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page

05 August 16
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all it the "art of the con." Donald Trump’s business career is a long list of bankruptcies, defaults, deceptions and indifference to investors, according to regulatory, corporate and court records, as well as sworn testimony and government investigative reports. When he repeatedly got into financial trouble, either his father bailed him out or other people paid the price.

Here’s a dirty dozen of examples (details in article below):

1. His first project was revitalizing the Swifton Village apartment complex in Cleveland, which his father had purchased for $5.7 million in 1962. After Trump finished his work, it was sold for a net loss.


2. In 1970, he invested in a Broadway comedy called "Paris Is Out!" Once again, Trump failed; the play bombed.


3. By the late 1970s Trump was losing big money in real estate partnerships. In 1978, his tax returns showed personal losses of $1.5 million (in current dollars); in 1979, he lost $11.2 million (again, in current dollars).


4. His casino deals in the 1980s were even bigger disasters, financed with $675 million in junk bonds at 14 percent interest, and pushing Trump’s total debt to $1.2 billion. In 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy, and Trump was forced to relinquish his post as chief executive. The name of the company was then changed to Trump Entertainment Resorts; it filed for bankruptcy in 2009, four days after Trump resigned from the board.


5. In 1990, Trump persuaded banks to lend him $380 million to purchase the Eastern Airlines’ New York to Washington shuttle. It never turned a profit. In 1992, Trump defaulted on his debt for the shuttle and turned it over to his creditor banks.


6. In 2005, buyers put up millions of deposits in Trump Tower Tampa, believing the building was being constructed by him. Instead, they discovered it was all a sham. When they lost their money and sued Trump, he answered in court that he had “no liability” because it was only a name-licensing deal.


7. In 2006, Trump hosted a glitzy event touting Trump Mortgage, which collapsed 18 months later. Trump tried again, rechristening the failed entity as Trump Financial. It also failed.


8. Also in 2006, Trump unveiled Trump Vodka, predicting that it would become the most requested drink in America. Within a few years, the company closed because of poor sales.


9. In 2007, Trump launched Trump Steaks. After two months of being primarily available for sale at Sharper Image, the endeavor ended; the head of Sharper Image said barely any of the steaks sold.


10. In 2008, Trump defaulted on a $640 million construction loan for Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, and the primary lender, Deutsche Bank, sued him. (Trump countersued, howling that the bank had damaged his reputation.)


11. Then came Trump University, where students who paid hefty fees were supposed to learn how to make fortunes by being trained by experts handpicked by Trump. Many students have since sued, saying the enterprise was a scam. Particularly damning was the testimony of former employee Ronald Schnackenberg, who recalled being chastised by Trump University officials for failing to push a near-destitute couple into paying $35,000 for classes by using their disability income and a home equity loan.


12. In 2009, Trump unveiled plans for Trump Hollywood, a 40-story oceanfront Florida condominium. Sales were minuscule. In 2010, lenders foreclosed on the $355 million project. Meanwhile, scores of buyers who had ponied up $32 million of deposits in Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, a proposed 525-unit luxury vacation home complex that Trump proclaimed was going to be “very, very special,” were notified their money had been spent, no bank financing could be obtained, and that Trump and his developers were walking away from the project.

Trump is a conman. And now he's trying to con America.

Good Riddance, Roger Ailes. You Were a Disaster for America, Journalism and the Truth

Roger Ailes in 2015, looking every inch at the peak of his power. (photo: Andrew Toth/Getty)

By David Schrieberg, Forbes

28 July 16
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s a young reporter, in the days when coal mining was still a significant industry, I covered a national strike by the United Mine Workers union. Based in Washington, D.C., I was working for an independent coal industry publication and as a specialist reporter, had unprecedented access to the key players in the dispute.

It was one of those wonderful moments for a still-green journalist – I actually knew what was going on. My inside knowledge rested entirely on the facts and insights I had into behind-the-scenes negotiations. Best of all – or worst, depending on your perspective – it was the first of many lessons in how media can bend, twist and manipulate reality.

One of my colleagues on the story was a middle-aged New York Times reporter. I watched in amazement how in each of his stories he got facts wrong. I don’t mean minor, unimportant details. These were significant aspects, central to the moment-by-moment developments in a tense situation across the country’s coalfields.

But that was just the one-half of the lesson – that the august New York Times (then and still, the gold standard for young journalists) could make and publish massive mistakes. The other half was still more astonishing: How the major and minor figures on both sides – the mineworkers and the coal companies – would then bend to the “new reality” as reported by the Times. When I questioned my sources about how this could happen, they would literally shrug their shoulders.

It taught me how media could create “facts on the ground,” and how reality could shape and shift around untruths, distortions and deliberate misinformation.

So I watch with the greatest satisfaction the fall of Roger Ailes, a man who singlehandedly has done more damage to journalism and the role it plays in a healthy democracy than almost any single individual I can think of (ok, maybe Rupert Murdoch belongs by his side). Under his two-decade-long stewardship, the founder, Chairman and Chief Executive of Fox News was instrumental in creating the political golem that is Donald Trump.

Through an endless and deafening tide of phony issues and outright deliberate lies – see: death panels under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); the birther movement that served as the foundation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign - Fox News has been as destructive a force to intelligent discourse as any Founding Father could ever have envisioned. (The Daily Show prepared a tasty selection of 50 Fox-broadcast untruths that were then corroborated by Politifact).

I can’t resist reproducing a few flagrant examples:

• More children died in bathtubs in 2013 than killed accidentally by guns


• NASA scientists fudged the numbers to make 1998 the hottest year to overstate the extent of global warming.


• Since 1965, the United States has spent “untold trillions” yet the poverty rate hasn’t budged.


• There is no good data showing secondhand smoke kills people.


• The insurance industry is actually run by mostly Democrats.

If you have a few hours to kill – or a few days – Google “Fox News lies distortions” and knock yourself out.

In the coverage of Ailes’s fall from power (his fall from grace came way, way, way before then), this is the quote that recalled my early-reporting-days education in the reality of media impact on actual events:

“I think back to when I was in the Bush White House, there was an issue with management of the ports being sold to a firm out of Dubai, and post-9/11 that was something Fox made an issue,” Alex Conant of Republican consultancy Firehouse Strategies told The New York Times. “Once Fox made it an issue, then all of the sudden Congress made it an issue, and it was something that the Bush administration hadn’t seen as an issue, but suddenly became a big priority.”

It’s no wonder that Trump has relied on Fox News as his principle mouthpiece in the “mainstream” media. He got more airtime there than any of his Republican primary rivals. The cable channel has been the home of choice and entryway-to-legitimacy for the loud-mouthed, short-sighted, xenophobic and racist political interests. It may have brought ratings and riches to its masters at Fox and it’s unlikely to change under Ailes’s successor (for now, Rupert Murdoch on an interim basis).

But no one who cares about truthful information and honest discourse will mourn the passing of the Roger Ailes era of media dominance.

Trump Is Getting a Free Pass on His Tax Returns. These Numbers Prove It.

Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. (photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)

By Judd Legum, ThinkProgress

01 August 16
readersupportednews.org

 
nlike every other major party nominee since 1976, Donald Trump has not released his tax returns.

He claims that he is not releasing his returns because they are under audit. This excuse is something of a non-sequitur. There is nothing preventing Trump from releasing returns that are under audit. The fact that some returns are under audit, as Paul Krugman noted, actually makes it easier to go public. The primary risk in publicizing your tax returns is triggering an audit.

Further, by his own admission, there are many years of tax returns — everything from 2008 and earlier — that are no longer under audit. Trump won’t release those either.

There are 15 years of Hillary Clinton’s tax returns available online.

Nevertheless, Trump has no plans to release his tax returns. His campaign confirmed Wednesday that he “will not be releasing” the returns before the election.

Asked about the issue Thursday night on Fox News, Trump said he has “very, very little pressure” to release the returns.

On that score, he is absolutely right.

ThinkProgress conducted an analysis of coverage of Trump’s tax returns in major newspapers during 2016 and compared them to the coverage of Mitt Romney’s tax returns in 2012.

Romney, like Trump, initially refused to release any of his tax returns. But in January 2012, under pressure from the media Romney released his 2010 tax return and a summary of his 2011 return. It was less than any other major party candidate in decades, but it was something.

Nevertheless, in the first seven months of his election year, Romney generated more than twice the coverage of his tax returns — almost all of it critical — than Trump has generated this year. The contrast is similarly stark at some of the nation’s top national and regional papers:

CREDIT: Dylan Petrohilos

Among those critical of Romney’s failure to disclose his returns was Donald Trump himself.

In a January 2012 appearance on Fox News, Trump said that Romney was being “hurt really very badly” by refusing to release his tax returns. He implored Romney to “release them now.”

Trump’s plans for his own returns have varied dramatically. In May, Trump described the release of his tax returns as imminent, saying their release was coming “as fast as the auditors finish.” He switched course days later, telling George Stephanopoulos that his tax rate was “none of your business” and that he fights “very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”

According to information submitted to New Jersey’s gambling commission, Trump paid no taxes at all for at least two years in the 1990s. Similar filings revealed he also paid nothing to the federal government for at least two years in the late 1970s.

Trump’s reluctance to release his returns may go beyond the embarrassment of a low (or 0%) tax rate. His candidacy also presents a dizzying array of conflicts of interest that tax returns could expose in more detail.

His tax returns could also undermine Trump’s claim that he is incredibly rich. Trump claims he is worth $10 billion but that number has been called into question. It is based on multi-billion dollar valuations for nebulous assets like the “Trump” brand. Trump’s personal financial disclosure that he filled with the FEC only required him to reveal assets in broad ranges but showed a much smaller amount of liquid assets. His tax returns could reveal an even bleaker picture.

Trump clearly has a lot to gain from not releasing his tax returns. His explicit calculation is, based on the amount of media scrutiny he’s receiving, why bother?

Donald Trump's Disgusting Hate

Elizabeth Warren. (photo: AP)

By Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News

01 August 16

readersupportednews.org

 

I’m disgusted by Donald Trump’s selfish, hate-filled attacks on the parents of an American Muslim soldier who died bravely serving our country in Iraq.

Disgusted – but not surprised.

Trump's plan is to turn Americans against each other. A deceitful and ugly blame game that says, whatever worries you, the answer is to blame that other group. Spend your energy hating them. And when that happens, there will be no energy to make real change and guys like Donald Trump can stay on top.

It's not a new tactic in America. It's a very old one. And like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explained before us, we see it – and we know how to defeat it. 

Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, I spoke about how rich and powerful men like Donald Trump have used anger, fear, and hate to divide our country and keep the system rigged for the rich and powerful. 

Donald Trump doesn’t care about making America great again. That’s why he doesn’t think twice about attacking a Gold Star family. Donald Trump cares about exactly one thing – and that’s Donald Trump.

But at the end of the day, this election isn’t about Donald Trump’s cruelty. It’s about us. About our patriotism. About our Constitution that Khizr Khan keeps in his pocket.

Yes, Americans are worried about their future – angry about a system that’s not working for America’s families. And it is precisely in times like these, when our voices must be heard louder than ever, that we cannot turn on each other.

Along with the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, now is the time to stand together. Now is the time to stand up. Now is the time to recommit to the work of forming a more perfect union.

That’s not Donald Trump’s America. That’s our America.

Pope Says It's Wrong to Identify Islam With Violence

Pope Francis waves during a press conference on the plane after his visit to Krakow, Poland for the World Youth Days, on July 31, 2016. (photo: Filippo Monteforte/Reuters)

By Philip Pullella, Reuters

01 August 16
readersupportednews.org

 
ope Francis said on Sunday that it was wrong to identify Islam with violence and that social injustice and idolatry of money were among the prime causes of terrorism.

"I think it is not right to identity Islam with violence," he told reporters aboard the plane taking him back to Rome after a five-day trip to Poland. "This is not right and this is not true."

Francis was responding to a question about the killing on July 26 of an 85-year-old Roman Catholic priest by knife-wielding attackers who burst into a church service in western France, forced the priest to his knees and slit his throat. The attack was claimed by Islamic State.

"I think that in nearly all religions there is a always a small fundamentalist group," he said, adding "We have them," referring to Catholicism.

"I don't like to talk about Islamic violence because every day when I look at the papers I see violence here in Italy - someone killing his girlfriend, someone killing his mother-in-law. These are baptized Catholics," he said.

"If I speak of Islamic violence, I have to speak of Catholic violence. Not all Muslims are violent," he said.

He said there were various causes of terrorism.

"I know it dangerous to say this but terrorism grows when there is no other option and when money is made a god and it, instead of the person, is put at the center of the world economy," he said.

"That is the first form of terrorism. That is a basic terrorism against all humanity. Let's talk about that," he said.

When he started the trip on Wednesday, Francis said the killing of the priest and a string of string of other attacks were proof the "world is at war" but that it was not caused by religion.

He told reporters on the plane that lack of economic opportunities for young people in Europe was also to blame for terrorism.

"I ask myself how many young people that we Europeans have left devoid of ideals, who do not have work. Then they turn to drugs and alcohol or enlist in ISIS," he said, referring to the group also known as Islamic State.

Mike Pence Walks 10 Nuns Out of the Voting Booth

Vice presidential candidate Mike Pence. (photo: Getty)

By Dennis J Bernstein and Greg Palast, Reader Supported News

29 July 16

readersupportednews.org

 

ike Pence is the poster boy for Voter ID laws. No one has benefited more from this legalized form of vote theft than the Republican nominee for VP. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last Wednesday, Pence said he “wants every American to succeed and prosper.”

However, he certainly doesn’t want every American to vote. Indeed it was thanks to Indiana’s Voter ID laws – the first of their kind in the nation – that he squeaked into the governor’s office. These seemingly benign laws, requiring voters to show approved photo ID, have a sinister and very deliberate effect: they suppress black, brown, young, old, poor – and, above all, blue votes. In this week’s Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Election Crimes Bulletin, Flashpoint’s Dennis J Bernstein gets the lowdown on the sleazy practice of vote-rigging-by-ID-law from political hanky-panky expert Greg Palast. They also discuss how these racist-by-design laws tap dance around voting rights and discrimination protections, and could ultimately help Pence and Trump waltz into the White House.

TRANSCRIPT (Originally broadcast on July 20, 2016)

Dennis J Bernstein: Today Mike Pence is front and center. He’s out there on his proverbial knees to greet the Trump helicopter. He’s getting ready to accept his party’s nomination. But also, as you point out, he’s a vote bandit. Tell us the joke about the nuns trying to vote. 

Greg Palast: Ten nuns walk into a voting booth. I know that Mike Pence says he’s a Christian, but he also stopped 10 nuns from voting – and that’s very important. Mike Pence would not be governor of Indiana if he hadn’t figured out a way to knock out black voters, nun voters, student voters, and poor voters.

DB: You are serious about the nuns? 

Palast: Yes. Here’s the story: In 2008, 10 nuns walked into a voting station, a place where they had been voting for decades, and they were told “Scram sisters!” because Indiana had just passed its Voter ID law. It was the first state in the nation that said you had to have a photo Voter ID. So the nuns proudly showed their driver’s licenses, except that the licenses had expired because they were all in their eighties and nineties. But they hadn’t expired. Nevertheless, they were told they couldn’t vote because they needed a current state ID, even though there’s no reason why. There’s no logic for any Voter ID because in the 100 years in which records have been kept, not one single person in a 100 year history of voting in Indiana – not one – was found to have used someone else’s identity. In other words, using identify theft to cast a vote. Because you are going to the hoosegow for a very long time, at least five years under federal law and more under state law. But, nevertheless, this was the first Voter ID law. This is the Voter ID law that Justice Scalia provided the fifth and deadly vote in favor of, saying that it was constitutional and okay under the Voting Rights Act. Now, the Voting Rights Act itself has been killed by the former Scalia court. (Get my FREE COMIC BOOK DOWNLOAD, which includes the NUNS’ TALE.) 

But here’s where Mike Pence comes into the story: we wouldn’t have a Governor Pence except for this. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the ACLU hired Matt Barreto, who’s a great statistician. He calculated that about 72,000 black people in Indiana would be barred from voting by this ID law. Furthermore, students would be barred from voting. You can’t use a student ID. You can use a gun ID, but not a University of Indiana ID. Students would be barred, and obviously people who don’t drive tend to be poor people, whether they are white or black. Poor people tend to vote Democratic. Black people vote Democratic. Hispanic people vote Democratic – we’re not even counting those yet. Students vote Democratic. So if you add a few more of the blocked voters to the 72,000 African-Americans who are blocked from voting in Indiana, that more than accounts for Mike Pence’s very, very slim 80,000 vote margin when he ran for governor of Indiana. So Pence just sneaked by the Democrat, congressman John Gregg, and he sneaked by simply by blocking voters through this racist ID law. 

DB: And the lower courts found it to be a real problem. Justice Terence Evans was not all that impressed, was he? 

Palast: No. His ruling was that this was just a clear, bold attempt at partisan manipulation of voter rolls by the Republican Party, knowing that they are knocking out their adversaries. But Scalia, being the 5th vote, said, “I don’t care.” Scalia famously said, “You can always get a non-voter ID.” Well, it’s kind of a catch 22 – you need ID to get a non-voter ID. But even if you do, it’s an average three bus, all day trip back and forth from a county office – on average a 17 mile trip. And, as Scalia infamously said, “Seventeen miles is 17 miles, whether you are black or white.” 

But, of course, he had a black Beemer, for which he got a speeding ticket. But whether it’s a black Beemer or a white Beemer, 17 miles is nothing for him. But if you actually have to take a bus, and most people who don’t have licenses have to take a bus, it’s a major hardship. He knew that.

And while it’s racist, that’s only secondary to their plan. It’s partisan, and the interesting thing is that the Republicans in the court say a plan which knocks out your opponents, that’s perfectly fine. It just can’t be clearly and overtly intended to be racist. Now there was a glimmer of hope, because the devil needed his advocate early and took Scalia from us. And the Texas court of appeals is changing and the Texas ID law, which is also a nasty piece of work. That ruling just came out yesterday. 

DB: That was not thrown out. It’s thrown back to the lower court, so that could show its ugly face again. Now, Karl Rove thinks it’s a good idea. He thinks, if you gotta go get groceries, they check your ID, so if you gotta go to vote, they check your ID too.

Palast: Yeah, can you imagine Karl Rove trying to cash a check at the grocery store?

But the difference is that cashing a check at a grocery store is not the key to American democracy, but we like to think of voting as part of it. By the way, most Americans don’t realize voting is not a constitutional right. I want to repeat that: There is nothing in the Constitution which gives you the right to vote. That silence in the Constitution was what allowed the Supreme Court to pick George Bush as our president in Bush v. Gore. There is no right to vote in the Constitution. The one thing the Constitution has is the 14th Amendment, which says if you allow the people to vote, you can’t stop them from voting because they were once slaves or their great-grandparents were slaves. And, of course, the 19th Amendment said if you allow people to vote, you can’t stop them from voting based on their genitals. That was the suffrage amendment. But you don’t have a right to vote – that’s what makes it possible to have these nasty laws.

DB: Mike Pence, you said, was a recipient of this kind of draconian, and I guess we can call it racist, on its face, behavior? 

Palast: There’s this big back and forth – and we see this in Texas – about whether something is racist by intent or racist in effect. Those have two different meanings under the law. If it’s racist by intent, then the law has to be thrown out. In fact, in places like Wisconsin, one of the Republicans confessed that when the Voter ID law was passed there was absolute jubilation among the Republicans. And Charlie Crist said that in Florida. He was the Republican governor and he said the Republican party specifically did that to knock out black voters. When he revealed that, he was basically tossed out of the Republican Party. But even if it’s not intended, if it has a racial effect, the law must be modified. That’s what’s happening in Texas. They have to modify the law to try to remove some of the overt racial effects. I don’t know how they’re going to do that though.

DB: The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has weighed in on this as well, haven’t they?

Palast: Yes. Here’s a breakdown from the Brennan Center: 6 million senior citizens don’t have their legal ID, mostly poor senior citizens.

DB: 6 million? 

Palast: 6 million. 5.5 million African-Americans, 4.5 million 18- to 24-year-olds, and 15% of voters with household incomes under $35,000 a year – that is the poor … If you’re on food stamps these days, what they now call SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, in most states you get an official government ID card with your photo on it. Well, Texas allows you to use your gun permit with your photo on it, but does not allow you to use your food stamp card with your photo ID on it. That’s one thing that the court did latch onto. 

By the way, they are saying that’s not racist. And you know what? They may be right. It’s really class war. I want to emphasize this. In all my research, while we see that most of the victims of election thefts are voters of color, it’s really class war by other means. Upper-middle class, wealthy Hispanics and wealthy African-Americans tend not to have trouble voting. They have passports. Vernon Jordan and Andy Young had no problem at all with the Voter ID law. They said, “That’s a good idea. People should have ID.” Well, of course, they’ve got passports – and their chauffeurs to vouch for them!

But a lot of white people are caught up in these things too. Elderly, poor white people who are barely getting by on Social Security. Because 15% of the voters are under the poverty line, and that’s white and black. Most poor people in America, remember, are white. People tend to forget that because of the way things are portrayed on TV. Most people who are poor are white, and they don’t stand much of a chance if all they have to show is their food stamp cards. It’s really class war. 

DB: Broaden this out at the national level. We’ve been talking about Mike Pence because he’s going to accept the Republican nomination tonight and he was an offender in Indiana. But this is a national program. 

Palast: Understand the republic lasted two centuries without photo ID. We founded the republic before there were photographs without any problem. We haven’t had hoards of identity thieves voting. But it’s been marvelously excellent at knocking out literally hundreds of thousands of poor people, especially voters of color. 

We’ve gone from one state having a photo Voter ID program in 2000 – Pence was the beneficiary. He would not be governor if it weren’t for that law. Since Indiana, it’s gone like a virus. Once the Supreme Court said Indiana was okay, it was both constitutional and not violating the Voting Rights Act, 20 states adopted some type of ID requirement. And there’s no case in which it doesn’t have a very smelly racial aroma.

---

Dennis J Bernstein is the executive producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on Pacifica Radio, and is the recipient of a 2015 Pillar Award for his work as a journalist whistleblower. He is most recently the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. 

Greg Palast has been called the “most important investigative reporter of our time – up there with Woodward and Bernstein” (The Guardian). Palast has broken front-page stories for BBC Television’s Newsnight, The Guardian, The Nation Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Harper's Magazine. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, Armed Madhouse, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and the highly acclaimed Vultures’ Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC’s Newsnight Review. His books have been translated into two dozen languages. Palast’s investigation and production team are currently preparing to release his new film on the theft of the 2016 election: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits. 

Palast’s film will screen in Oakland on September 7th.