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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Monday 2.24.03
Quibble: In the headlines, Amy repeated that “tens of millions” of people around the world demonstrated on Feb 15-16 against the war in Iraq. The estimates I’ve seen put the numbers at around 10 million. Tens of millions suggests at least twice that number. Why should Democracy Now risk its credibility over this issue?

Activist Bernadette Devlin spoke about her experience at Chicago’s airport on Feb 21st when she was denied entry to the U.S. and sent back home as a security threat.

The rest of the program was devoted to a speech by writer activist Arundhati Roy. See comment below about fundraising vs. original programming. In her speech, Roy reminded us that Bush has characterized the war on terror as the “the task that never ends.”

Friday 2.21.03
A good segment on recently jailed Florida professor Sami Al-Arian on terrorism charges.

The rest of the program was devoted to a speech by Malcolm X on the anniversary of his assassination. The speech was a reminder of how great a speaker and how great a mind we lost. His voice was so clear and so strong that it could not be tolerated. The government was lucky in this case that it had a Muslim faction do its dirty work.
The speech was also an indirect and sober commentary on how far away we are today from those relatively hopeful days, when the levers of government were controlled by relatively rational people.

Thursday 2.20.03
Brett Barber, a remarkably articulate 16 year old student in Michigan was sent home from his high school because he wore a T-shirt critical of President Bush. Brett is working with ACLU to challenge his high school administrators.
The rest of the show devoted to an excellent documentary on 1991 Gulf War, “Hidden Wars of Desert Storm.”