Democracy Now Report
by Ronald Bleier
Editor, DESIP, http://desip.igc.org

Archive: http://dnreportcard.blogspot.com

Democracy Now’s website: www.democracynow.org

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Thursday, 2.13.03
Good report on NYC and U.S. efforts to inhibit the local February 15th antiwar protest by Leslie Cagan and Michael Rattner. The rest of the show was devoted to a recent speech by historian Howard Zinn, whose heart is in the right place but ufortunately he is not the most charismatic speaker. Apparently while Amy is fundraising for WBAI she finds it difficult to produce regular DN segments and relies on these tapes to fill the show. Understandable of course, but too bad all the same, since in the current crisis, more hard hitting programming would be welcomed.

Wednesday 2.12.03
Most of the program was devoted to a recent speech by noted Indian activist, Vandana Sheeva. She’s wonderful: a highlight was her able dissection of the NYT’s Thomas Friedman on globalization. At the same time there should be space on Pacifica to discuss and debate some of her premises. One contentious thing she said was that the communal violence experienced in India was a result of globalization!!! as if such violence has not gone back to before the beginning of the state. She also implicitly dismissed any discussion of the effects of overpopulation on communal violence, or the idea that such violence could be the form taken by struggles over scarcity issues. Ethnic tensions are the fault lines over which scarcity issues are most easily, and generally in the first instance, fought: Jew-Arab, Hindu-Muslim; Turk –Kurdish, Turk-Greek, etc, etc. Thus it can be predicted, for example, that if the Israelis ever “solve” their Palestinian problem (i.e,, by eliminating them) they will resume fighting amongst themselves over the same scarcity issues, and their leaders will look to foreign adventures –against Syria, Lebanon, etc – as a way of unifying the country.

The last twenty minutes were given over to fundraising.

Tuesday, 2.11.03
Good program on upcoming protests against the war and city council resolutions against the war. The last segment featured one of the protesters arrested blocking a tunnel in NYC. The strength and passion of the protests against the war reminded one of the Cambodian –Kent State protests of the Nixon era, and one has to go back to those days for a comparable sense of a U.S. administration out of control and determined to ignore the will of the people.

Monday, 2.10.03
Excellent program with segments on the Iraq crisis, a very good but brief discussion of the upcoming Patriot Act II which the administration evidently hopes to push through in connection with their threatened war on Iraq. Amy properly raised the question about the timing and motivation of the latest terror alert: did it have something to do with the upcoming mass mobilization against war in NYC February 15. The program Ended with a very good segment on the Blair government’s use of plagiarism in putting together its terror indictment of Saddam Hussein’s government.

Friday, 2.7.03
Program began with a poetry slam and I switched off and didn’t turn back on until the last 15 minutes when I managed to catch a very good discussion on the North Korean crisis. I also missed a segment on Laura Bush’s cancelled poetry session.

Thursday, 2.6.03
The program today was devoted to a dissection of the Powell speech at the UN Security Council yesterday where he presented evidence of Iraqi noncompliance with Resolution 1441. Assad Abu Khalil spoke well about U.S. deceptions in the first Gulf war. The program concluded with Leslie Cagan’s review of the NYC Bloomberg’s attempt to curtail the Feb 15 demonstration against the war.