Links to today’s show transcripts:

Brother of Honduran President Is Arrested for Cocaine Trafficking as Migrants Flee Violent Drug War
The brother of Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández has been arrested in the United States for drug trafficking and weapons offenses. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman accused Tony Hernández of being “involved in all stages of the trafficking through Honduras of multi-ton loads of cocaine that were destined for the U.S.” Hernandez is also accused of providing heavily armed security for cocaine shipments transported within Honduras, including by members of the Honduran National Police and drug traffickers. Dana Frank is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her new book is titled, “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.”

“It Is Not a Natural Disaster”: Dana Frank on How U.S.-Backed Coup in Honduras Fueled Migrant Crisis
As the United States continues to face criticism for tear gassing asylum seekers on the U.S.-Mexico border, we look at the crisis in Honduras and why so many Hondurans are fleeing their homeland. Honduras has become one of the most violent countries in the world because of the devastating drug war and a political crisis that stems in part from a U.S.-backed 2009 coup. Dana Frank is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her new book is titled, “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.”

Honduras: As Berta Cáceres Murder Trial Nears End, Will True Perpetrators Be Brought to Justice?
Eight men are on trial in Honduras for the murder of environmentalist Berta Cáceres, who was gunned down in her home in La Esperanza in 2016. A verdict is expected this week. The assassination of Cáceres came a year after she won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work protecting indigenous communities and her campaign against a massive hydroelectric dam project. Dana Frank is a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her new book is titled, “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.”

How Tear Gas Became a Favorite Weapon of U.S. Border Patrol, Despite Being Banned In Warfare
As the Trump administration continues to defend firing tear gas into crowds of asylum seekers, we look at the history of tear gas, which is banned in warfare but legal for federal authorities and police to turn on civilians. Border authorities’ use of tear gas has spiked under the Trump administration, with the agency’s own data revealing it has deployed tear gas over two dozen times this year alone. Customs and Border Protection told Newsweek Tuesday it began using tear gas under the Obama administration in 2010. The agency’s use of tear gas has now reached a seven-year record high. Stuart Schrader, lecturer in sociology at Johns Hopkins University is interviewed. He has studied how tear gas went from a weapon of war used in Vietnam to being deployed by law enforcement at home. His forthcoming book is titled “Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.”

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.

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Witness: “No Warning” Before U.S. Border Patrol Started Tear Gassing Central American Asylum Seekers
The Mexican government is demanding a full investigation after U.S. border authorities fired tear gas Sunday into a crowd of Central American asylum seekers as they tried to push their way through the heavily militarized border near San Diego. Among those attacked were mothers and small children, who were left gagging and screaming as tear gas spread. The migrants are mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and mass unemployment. The Border Patrol’s use of tear gas has been widely condemned. Trump is now urging Mexico to deport the thousands of Central American migrants who are at or approaching the U.S. border in an attempt to seek asylum. Pedro Rios is the director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program. He witnessed U.S. border agents using tear gas on Central American migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday.

Border Patrol Officer Who Shot Unarmed Teenager on Mexican Soil Is Acquitted of Manslaughter Charges
Last week, a jury found Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz not guilty of involuntary manslaughter for shooting and killing 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodríguez through the U.S.-Mexico border fence in 2012. The jury hung on whether to bring a charge of voluntary manslaughter, leaving it unclear whether prosecutors would seek to try Swartz a third time. A previous jury acquitted Swartz on murder charges but deadlocked on lesser manslaughter charges. Authorities claim José Elena Rodríguez was throwing rocks at agents over the border fence before Swartz opened fire. But medical examiners say José was shot as many as 11 times, with all but one of the bullets striking from behind, leading them to conclude the teen was shot in the back as he lay on the ground. John Carlos Frey, Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and PBS NewsHour special correspondent is interviewed. He has reported extensively on the killing of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez.

How a Climate Change-Fueled Drought & U.S.-Fed Violence Are Driving Thousands from Central America
President Trump is urging Mexico to deport the thousands of Central American migrants who are at or approaching the U.S. border in an attempt to seek asylum, days after U.S. border authorities fired tear gas into a crowd of asylum seekers as some tried to push their way through the heavily militarized border near San Diego. Trump tweeted, “Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!” This comes just days before Andrés Manuel López Obrador is sworn in as Mexico’s new president. López Obrador’s incoming government has denied it made any deal with the Trump administration to force asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their U.S. asylum claims are processed. John Carlos Frey, Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and PBS NewsHour special correspondent is interviewed. He recently returned from reporting trips in Guatemala, Mexico City and Tijuana, where he was documenting the migrant caravan.

U.S. Prisons Have a Mental Health Crisis. This Story of A New York Prisoner’s Death Helps Reveal Why
U.S. Prisons Have a Mental Health Crisis. This Story of A New York A major new Marshall Project investigation looks at the the mental health crisis in U.S. prisons by diving deep into the story of Karl Taylor, a prisoner who died at a maximum-security prison in the Catskills of New York after an altercation with prison guards in 2015. Karl Taylor was serving out a minimum 27-year sentence for a rape conviction when his life came to a sudden end at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in April of 2015. The African-American prisoner had been diagnosed with delusional disorder and paranoid personality disorder when he was taken into custody in 1995. By April of 2015, Taylor was housed in a special unit at Sullivan for prisoners classified as mentally ill. He had spent nearly ten years in solitary confinement. That’s when he got into what would turn out to be a fatal altercation with a prison guard. Investigative reporter Tom Robbins, author of “Why Is Karl Taylor Dead?” is interviewed.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.

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Rev. Barber: MS Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith Jokes About Hangings, But Her Policies Will Strangle the Poor
Mississippi voters will head to the polls Tuesday in the state’s hotly contested runoff senate election, as incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith faces off against Democrat Mike Espy. In a state that Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points two years ago, Espy is attempting to become Mississippi’s first African-American senator since Reconstruction. His opponent, incumbent Sen. Hyde-Smith, attended and graduated from an all-white segregationist high school and recently posed for photos with a Confederate Army cap and other Confederate artifacts. Earlier this month, a viral video showed Hyde-Smith praising a campaign supporter, saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Mississippi was once considered the lynching capital of the United States. Rev. Dr. William Barber is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. He recently traveled to Mississippi to get out the vote.

Rev. William Barber: Tear Gassing Central American Migrants is Inhumane, Unconstitutional, Immoral
U.S. border patrol officers fired tear gas into a crowd of desperate Central American asylum-seekers Sunday in Tijuana, Mexico as some tried to push their way through the heavily militarized border with the United States. Mothers and small children were left gagging and screaming as the tear gas spread. The migrants are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and mass unemployment. Rev. Dr. William Barber is interviewed. He is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach.

Trump Admin Tries to Bury 1,656-Page Climate Report Warning of Devastating Health Impacts of Warming
The White House released an alarming climate change report on Black Friday, attempting to bury a 1,656-page government assessment that directly contradicts President Trump’s history of climate change denial. The damning report, known as the National Climate Assessment, says that the consequences of climate change will leave no part of the U.S. untouched and that the warming climate will increase wildfires, crumble infrastructure, worsen air quality, destroy crops and lead to more frequent disease outbreaks. It also finds that global warming could shrink the U.S. economy by as much as 10 percent by the end of the century. The findings are a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration’s insistence that environmental regulations hurt jobs and hinder economic growth. Kristie Ebi is a professor of global health at the University of Washington in Seattle and the lead author of the report’s chapter on the human health impacts of climate change.

Bill McKibben: New Report Reconfirms Climate Change is Shrinking Inhabitable Parts of the Planet
On the heels of yet another alarming climate change report—this time released by a White House that openly denies global warming— 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and public health scholar Kristie Ebi are interviewed about President Trump’s environmental policies, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal and what it will take to fight the growing threat of climate change.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.

Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.

Democracy Now! produces a daily, global, independent news hour hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.

Links to today’s show transcripts:

Trump Chooses “Relationship with Saudi Arabia” over Accountability for Jamal Khashoggi’s Murder
Despite overwhelming evidence that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated at the order of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Trump stood by Saudi Arabia Tuesday in an extraordinary written statement riddled with exclamation points and subtitled “America First,” writing, “It could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t! That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” Trump’s statement came even after The Washington Post reported last Friday that the CIA has “high confidence” that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Saudi officials have tried to dismiss Khashoggi’s death as a rare, unauthorized killing, but a recent New York Times report suggests the kingdom has sought out private companies to assassinate perceived enemies since the beginning of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rule. Israeli investigative reporter who helped break the story, Ronen Bergman, is the author of “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations.” Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the senior national security correspondent for Yedioth Ahronoth. His piece in The New York Times is titled “Saudis Close to Crown Prince Discussed Killing Other Enemies a Year Before Khashoggi’s Death.”

Did Israel Kill Yasser Arafat? Stunning Investigation Exposes Israel’s Secretive Assassination Program
Israeli intelligence officials desperately tried to prevent Ronen Bergman from writing “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” a stunning book exposing the details of Israel’s extrajudicial killing program. Israel even changed and extended secrecy laws to prevent Bergman from gaining access to historical documents. Despite this, Bergman gained unprecedented access while writing the book, scouring thousands of documents and meeting with some 1,000 sources. The result is a stunning investigation that dives deep into the targeted killing programs of Israel, which has assassinated more people than any other country in the Western world since World War II. Ronen Bergman speaks about Israel’s many attempts to kill the former chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and the possibility that they succeeded.

Costs of War: 17 Years After 9/11, Nearly Half a Million People Have Died in Global “War on Terror”
Nearly half a million people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” in the wake of 9/11, according to a major new report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project. More than 17 years later, the war in Afghanistan is the longest war in U.S. history. Costs of War reports that more than 480,000 people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan—including soldiers, militants, police, contractors, journalists, humanitarian workers and civilians. Several times as many people have died indirectly because of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural problems, and war-related disease. The wars have uprooted 21 million Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani and Syrian people who are now refugees of war or internally displaced. The cost of the global so-called war on terror will soon surpass $6 trillion. Neta Crawford is the director of the Costs of War Project. She is a professor and department chair of political science at Boston University.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.

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Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s “Asylum Ban,” Saying President Can’t Rewrite Immigration Laws
In the latest pushback against President Trump’s attack on immigrants rights, a federal judge in California has temporarily halted Trump’s asylum ban, which attempted to deny asylum to anyone entering the country from outside of a legal port of entry. Trump announced the move earlier this month, but Monday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar put a temporary halt on the order. Tigar wrote, “Asylum seekers will be put at increased risk of violence and other harms at the border, and many will be deprived of meritorious asylum claims. The government offers nothing in support of the new rule that outweighs the need to avoid these harms.” We speak with one of the lawyers who sued the Trump administration over the ban, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights Baher Azmy.

New American Nazis: Inside the White Supremacist Movement That Fueled Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting
Neo-Nazis are on the rise in America. Nearly a month after a gunman killed eleven Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we look at the violent hate groups that helped fuel the massacre. On the same day that shooter Robert Bowers opened fire in the synagogue, a neo-Nazi named Edward Clark that Bowers had been communicating with online took his own life in Washington, D.C. The man’s brother, Jeffrey Clark, has since been arrested on weapons charges. The brothers were both linked to the violent white supremacist group Atomwaffen. We speak with A.C. Thompson, correspondent for FRONTLINE PBS and reporter for ProPublica. His investigation “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis” premieres tonight on PBS stations and online.

How America’s Perpetual Warfare Abroad Is Fueling an Increase in White Supremacist Violence in U.S.
America’s perpetual warfare abroad has led to an increase in white supremacist violence at home. That’s one of the key findings in Frontline PBS and ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson’s new investigation, “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis,” which premieres Tuesday evening on PBS. The documentary reveals the deep ties between the military and white supremacy, as Thompson examines the Pittsburgh shooting and the rise of violent hate groups such as Atomwaffen. Thompson interviews historian Kathleen Belew, who says there has always been a correlation in the U.S. between the aftermath of war and the rise of white supremacist violence. “If you look for instance at the surges in Ku Klux Klan membership, they align more consistently with the return of veterans from combat and the aftermath of war than they do with anti-immigration, populism, economic hardship or any of the other factors that historians have typically used to explain them,” she notes. We speak with A.C. Thompson in Boston. His investigation premieres Tuesday on PBS stations and online.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.

Links to today’s show transcripts:

Meet the Prisoners Being Paid $1 an Hour to Battle the Deadly Climate-Fueled Fires of California
As the death toll from the Camp Fire rises to 77, California is combatting its deadliest fire in state history using prison labor. Some 1,500 of the 9,400 firefighters currently battling fires in California are incarcerated. They make just a dollar an hour, but are rarely eligible to get jobs as firefighters after their release. According to some estimates, California saves up to $100 million a year by using prison labor to fight its biggest environmental problem. In September the Democracy Now! team traveled to the Delta Conservation Camp in Northern California, a low-security prison where more than 100 men are imprisoned. Incarcerated firefighters are interviewed who had just returned from a 24-hour shift fighting the Snell Fire in Napa County.

Filipino Reporter Maria Ressa on Duterte’s Targeting of the Press & How Facebook Aids Authoritarians
As Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte amps up his attacks on the free press, we speak with renowned Filipino journalist Maria Ressa about Duterte’s deadly “war on drugs,” his affinity for Donald Trump, and his weaponization of social media. Ressa is the CEO and executive editor of the leading independent Filipino news site The Rappler, which Duterte has repeatedly tried to shut down. Last week, the Filipino government indicted her for tax evasion in what is widely seen as the government’s latest attack on the website. We speak with Maria Ressa in New York City. She has received the 2018 Knight International Journalism Award and the Committee to Protect Journalists 2018 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.