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Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman
There has never been a more urgent time for courageous, daily, independent news. Media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society. Can you support Democracy Now! with $15 donation today? With your contribution, we can continue to go to where the silence is, to bring you the voices of the silenced majority – those calling for peace in a time of war, demanding action on the climate catastrophe and advocating for racial and economic justice. Every dollar makes a difference. Thank you so much!
Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman
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In Pakistan, lawyers have launched a three-day nationwide strike to mourn the deaths of dozens of their colleagues in a suicide bomb attack outside a hospital in Quetta Monday. At least 74 people were killed, and 120 more were wounded. The suicide bomber struck the hospital as lawyers and journalists had gathered to mourn the assassination of prominent lawyer Bilal Kasi, whose body was being brought in to the site when the attack occurred. One of the workers at the hospital described the scene.
Shakeel Gul: “As soon as I came out of the ward, I felt as if the end of the world had come. It was such a horrifying scene that I sat down in shock. Then we gathered courage and started picking up dead bodies. Things reached such a point that the mortuary got overfilled, and we had to put the rest of the bodies outside.”
A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack and for the murder of Bilal Kasi. We’ll have more on Pakistan after headlines.
In news from the campaign trail, protesters interrupted Donald Trump more than a dozen times during a speech at the Detroit Economic Club in which Trump laid out his economic policies. Trump’s proposals included corporate tax cuts and rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and renegotiating NAFTA.
Donald Trump: “All of our policies should be geared toward keeping jobs and wealth inside of the United States. Under my plan, no American company will pay more than 15 percent of their business income in taxes. In other words, we’re reducing your taxes from 35 percent to 15 percent.”
Trump announced his economic team on Friday. It includes 13 men, no women, several billionaires, an Oklahoma oil baron and one part-time professional poker player. One of the members is John Paulson, who made billions by betting against the housing market in the lead-up to the 2008 crash. We’ll have more on Trump’s economic speech later in the broadcast with Detroit auto worker Jacqui Maxwell, who interrupted the speech, and Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi.
There are primaries across the country today, including in Wisconsin, where House Speaker Paul Ryan is running for re-election. On Friday, Donald Trump endorsed Ryan after refusing to do so earlier last week, even though Ryan spoke at the Republican National Convention. Instead Trump had praised Ryan’s opponent, Paul Nehlen, saying he was “running a very good campaign.” In his speech Friday, Trump also endorsed Arizona Senator John McCain and New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, whom he’d attacked earlier last week, saying, “We don’t need weak people. We have enough of them.”
Meanwhile, 50 Republican national security officials, including former top aides or Cabinet members to President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring Donald Trump unfit to be president. The letter calls Trump reckless and says, “Unlike previous Presidents who had limited experience in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself. He continues to display an alarming ignorance of basic facts of contemporary international politics.”
Another third-party candidate has jumped into the 2016 race: former CIA officer Evan McMullin, who announced Monday he’ll run for president as an independent. A Utah native, McMullin also served as the former chief policy director of the House Republican Conference. He said he is strongly opposed to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but that Trump is “a real threat to our republic.”
The parents of two Americans killed in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court Monday against Hillary Clinton. Patricia Smith and Charles Woods, the parents of Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods, are claiming Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state contributed to the attacks. The lawsuit accuses Hillary Clinton of “extreme carelessness in handling confidential and classified information,” which the lawsuit alleges contributed to the conditions that led to her their sons’ deaths. They also accused Clinton of defaming them in public statements.
Tim Canova, who is running against former Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her congressional seat in Florida, has filed a complaint against Wasserman Schultz with the Federal Elections Commission. Wasserman Schultz stepped down last month as DNC chair after the WikiLeaks release of nearly 20,000 emails revealing how the Democratic Party favored Hillary Clinton and worked behind the scenes to discredit and defeat Bernie Sanders in the presidential primaries. Canova’s campaign said the complaint alleges that Wasserman Schultz “used her position with the DNC and the resources of the DNC to improperly benefit her congressional campaign.”
Police in Virginia arrested NAACP National President Cornell William Brooks on Monday to end a six-hour sit-in calling for the restoration of the original Voting Rights Act of 1965. The sit-in took place inside Virginia Congressmember Bob Goodlatte’s office. Brooks and Stephen Green, the national director of the group’s youth and college division, were arrested for trespassing when Goodlatte’s office closed at 5 p.m. The NAACP says Goodlatte, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has failed to hold a hearing on what they describe as “egregious voter discrimination” across the country.
In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is speaking out following the release of video showing the fatal police shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager. The newly released video from police body cameras shows the moments before and after police killed 18-year-old Paul O’Neal on July 28. In the video, police are seen shooting repeatedly at the car O’Neal was driving, which police say was stolen. Police then chase O’Neal into a nearby backyard, where the video shows officers handcuffing O’Neal behind his back and searching his bag as he lay dying from a gunshot wound. Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson said Sunday that the video appeared to show violations of the department’s rules for using lethal force. Mayor Rahm Emanuel spoke Monday.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel: “I’m reserving any judgment while it’s in the middle of investigation, because there’s a lot of questions, and I probably want to echo what the superintendent says. There are more questions at this time than there are answers, and I don’t want to jump to a conclusion until we know some basic fundamental facts from an event that happened.”
This comes as today marks the second anniversary of the death of African-American teenager Michael Brown. Brown was 18 when he was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. We’ll have more on the anniversary of Michael Brown’s death and the police killing of Paul O’Neal later in the broadcast.
Meanwhile, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has threatened a strike, after Chicago proposed a contract similar to one the union rejected earlier this year. The city is trying to slash teacher pay by 7 percent. Chicago teachers have been without a contract for over a year.
In financial news, British banking giant Barclays Bank has agreed to pay $100 million in a settlement with 44 U.S. states for rigging Libor, the interest rate which underpins trillions in global transactions. British and U.S. authorities have taken action against a number of banks over alleged rate manipulation since 2012. This was the first settlement between a bank and U.S. states.
In Afghanistan, the American University of Afghanistan has suspended campus operations after two teachers were kidnapped at gunpoint Sunday. The two lecturers are an American and an Australian. They were kidnapped from their vehicle in downtown Kabul.
There were protests on Monday at the office of New York’s State Parole Board in Albany after a prisoner was found dead at Fishkill Correctional Facility on Thursday. Seventy-year-old John MacKenzie reportedly hung himself days after being denied parole. MacKenzie had been in prison since 1975 after being sentenced to 25 years to life for killing a police officer during a robbery. MacKenzie first became eligible for parole in 2000. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court held the Parole Board in contempt of court for failing to acknowledge his remorse and rehabilitation. This is MacKenzie’s lawyer, Kathy Manley, reading a letter from his daughter, Danielle, at Monday’s protest.
Kathy Manley: “Many people have been positively influenced by my father and all the great work he did while incarcerated—something ignored by the Parole Board. Despite the odds, John MacKenzie found his own path to rehabilitation in the face of great adversity. He overcame. He did what was right. The Parole Board did not. They did not recognize his remorse. They chose to ignore his rehabilitation. And instead they focused on negativity, punishment and hate. Therefore, the Parole Board should be charged with my father’s death.”
More than 9,500 people over the age of 50 are held in New York’s prisons. Two-thirds are eligible for parole.
And today Japan marks the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated Japan’s commitment to nuclear nonproliferation at a ceremony marking the attack, the second of two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: “As the only country to be bombed by atomic bombs during wartime, I will strongly advocate the importance of maintaining and strengthening the stance of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, while maintaining the three non-nuclear principles.”
About 50,000 people held a moment of silence in the city of Hiroshima on Saturday, marking the dropping of the atomic bomb there.
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