As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory.
Filed under Weekly Column
Evo Morales knows about “change you can believe in.” He also knows what happens when a powerful elite is forced to make changes it doesn’t want.
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Alice Walker is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But Monday, I called her to talk about a true story. The Obamas had just visited the White House. The first African-American elected president of the United States had visited his soon-to-be residence, a house built by slaves.
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Democracy Now! producer Anjali Kamat writes, “To all those for whom America has represented generations of racial injustice, the election of America’s first Black president marks the beginning of a new era…But unless the inspired millions who brought him to power continue to believe their demands matter and insist on holding him accountable each step of the way, it will be Obama’s corporate and hawkish friends who determine the domestic and foreign policies of the coming administration and our collective future.”
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You could almost hear the world’s collective sigh of relief. This year’s U.S. presidential election was a global event in every sense. Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, represents to so many a living bridge—between continents and cultures.
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The legendary radio broadcaster, writer and oral historian Studs Terkel has died at the age of 96 in Chicago. Over the years Terkel has been a regular guest on Democracy Now!
In 2005, Studs Terkel appeared on Democracy Now! shortly after undergoing open heart surgery. He told Amy Goodman, “My curiosity is what saw me through. What would the world be like, or will there be a world? And so, that’s my epitaph. I have it all set. Curiosity did not kill this cat. And it’s curiosity, I think, that has saved me thus far.”
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Election Day approaches, and with it a test of our election system’s integrity. Who will be allowed to vote; who will be barred? Who will get paper ballots; who will use electronic voting machines? Will polls be open long enough to accommodate what is expected to be a historic turnout?
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In the first US war crimes tribunal since World War II, a jury of six senior military officers has convicted Osama bin Laden’s former driver of two charges of material support for terrorism but acquitted him of the most serious charges. Salim Hamdan is the first prisoner held at Guantanamo to be tried before a tribunal. He has been in custody since November 2001. We speak with Sahr MuhammedAlly, an attorney with Human Rights First. She was at Guantanamo last week observing part of the Hamdan war crimes tribunal. [includes rush transcript]
In a detailed report, the Rwandan government is accusing France of being complicit in the “preparation and execution” of the 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 people. The report released by the Rwandan Ministry of Justice Tuesday accuses top French officials, including former prime minister Dominique de Villepin and the late former president Francois Mitterrand, of playing a major role in the genocide. We speak with investigative journalist Linda Melvern, author of two books on Rwanda. Melvern testified in July 2007 before the Rwanda commission investigating France’s role in the genocide. [includes rush transcript]
South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is concluding the US military indiscriminately killed large groups of South Korean civilians during the Korean War in the early 1950s. The Commission has more than 200 cases on its docket, based on hundreds of citizens’ petitions recounting US bombing and strafing runs on South Korean refugee gatherings in 1950 and ’51. We speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter Charles Hanley, co-author of The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War. [includes rush transcript]
For the past two months, protesters have been filling the streets of Seoul condemning a decision to lift a ban on imported beef from the United States. We speak with Michael Hansen, senior scientist for Consumers Union. He is in Seoul, where he is testifying before the South Korean National Assembly at a special committee hearing on mad cow disease. [includes rush transcript]