International Herald Tribute: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

Editor & Publisher: King Features Columnist Among ‘Alternative Nobel’ Winners

Associated Press: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

Common Dreams: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

The Local (Sweden): ‘Alternative Nobel’ to Indian, US, Somali and German activists

USA Today: ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to journalist, activists

The Star (South Africa): Women sweep ‘alternative Nobels’

The Hindu (India): ‘Alternative Nobels’ go to activists, journalist

One World (UK): Four named in ‘Alternative Nobel’ awards

Deutsche Welle (Germany): Peace and Social Justice Workers Receive Alternative Nobel Prize

Swedish radio: ‘Arbete för fattiga och utsatta belönas’

Uppsala Nya Tidning (Sweden): ‘Alternativa Nobelpriset’ delas på fyra’

German main television news website links to a number of radio interviews

German second TV channel website: ‘Alternativer Nobelpreis für Monika Hauser’

Spiegel Online (Germany): ‘Ich möchte, dass die Welt für Frauen anders wird’

ZEIT (Germany): ‘Kölner Frauenärztin ausgezeichnet’

Deutschlandradio: ‘Es geht wirklich um Demütigung und Zerstörung der Frauen’

Sindh Today (Pakistan): ‘Indians working for social justice get Alternate Nobel Prize’

Ultimo Segundo (Brazil): ‘Nobel Alternativo premia defesa de direitos femininos e idéias de Gandhi’

The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time”—time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment”—armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets.

The Army Times piece includes a correction stating that the forces would not use nonlethal weaponry domestically. I called Air Force Lt. Col. Jamie Goodpaster, a public-affairs officer for Northern Command. She told me that the overall mission was humanitarian, to save lives and help communities recover from catastrophic events. Nevertheless, the military forces would have weapons on-site, “containerized,” she said—that is, stored in containers—including both lethal and so-called nonlethal weapons. They would have mostly wheeled vehicles, but would also, she said, have access to tanks. She said that any decision to use weapons would be made at a higher level, perhaps at the secretary-of-defense level.

Talk of trouble on U.S. streets is omnipresent now, with the juxtaposition of Wall Street and Main Street. The financial crisis we face remains obscure to most people; titans of business and government officials assure us that the financial system is “on the brink,” that a massive bailout is necessary, immediately, to prevent a disaster. Conservative and progressive members of Congress, at the insistence of constituents, blocked the initial plan. If the economy does collapse, if people can’t go down to the bank to withdraw their savings, or get cash from an ATM, there may be serious “civil unrest,” and the “sea-smurfs” may be called upon sooner than we imagine to assist with “crowd control.”

The political and financial establishments seem completely galled that people would actually oppose their massive bailout, which rewards financiers for gambling. Normal people worry about paying their bills, buying groceries and gas, and paying rent or a mortgage in increasingly uncertain times. No one ever offers to bail them out. Wall Street’s house of cards has collapsed, and the rich bankers are getting little sympathy from working people.

That’s where the sea-smurfs come in. Officially formed to respond to major disasters, like a nuclear or biological attack, this combat brigade falls under the U.S. Northern Command, a military structure formed on Oct, 1, 2002, to “provide command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts.” Military participation in domestic operations was originally outlawed with the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, however, included a section that allowed the president to deploy the armed forces to “restore public order” or to suppress “any insurrection.” While a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal.

We are in a time of increasing economic disparity, with the largest gap between rich and poor of any wealthy industrialized country. We are witnessing a crackdown on dissent, most recently with $100 million spent on “security” at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. The massive paramilitary police forces deployed at the RNC in St. Paul, Minn., were complete overkill, discouraging protests and conducting mass arrests (National Guard troops just back from Fallujah were there). The arrest there of almost 50 journalists (myself included) showed a clear escalation in attempting to control the message (akin to the ban on photos of flag-draped coffins of soldiers). There are two ongoing, unpopular wars that are costing lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Nobel-winning economist Joe Stiglitz estimates that Iraq alone will cost more than $3 trillion.

In December 2001, in the midst of restricted access to bank accounts due to a financial crisis, respectable, middle-class Argentines rose up, took to the streets, smashed bank windows and ultimately forced the government out of power, despite a massive police crackdown and a failed attempt to control the media. Here in the U.S., with the prospect of a complete failure of our financial system, the people have spoken and do not want an unprecedented act of corporate welfare. We don’t know how close the system is to collapse, nor do we know how close the people are to taking to the streets. The creation of an active-duty military force, the sea-smurfs, that could be used to suppress public protest here at home is a very bad sign.

Birgit Jaeckel, Right Livelihood Foundation
T: +46 8 70 20 339
E: press@rightlivelihood.org

AMY GOODMAN, HOST OF DEMOCRACY NOW!, FIRST JOURNALIST TO RECEIVE RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD

New York City, NY – Award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely recognized as the world’s premier award for personal courage and social transformation. The annual prize, also known as the Alternative Nobel, will be awarded in the Swedish Parliament on December 8, 2008.

The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honor and support those “offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”. Goodman has been selected for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”

Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the country, Democracy Now! is a daily grassroots, global TV/radio/internet news hour airing on more than 750 public radio and television stations and at democracynow.org.

Goodman said, “I am deeply honored that grassroots, independent journalism and the hard work of my colleagues at Democracy Now! are being recognized in these critical times. I strongly believe that media can be a force for peace. It is the responsibility of journalists to give voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken and beaten down by the powerful. It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras and microphones out into the world. The media should be a sanctuary for dissent. It is our job to go to where the silence is.”

Goodman and two Democracy Now! producers were arrested last month at the Republican National Convention while reporting on street demonstrations. Charges were dropped after widespread public outcry. The video of Goodman’s arrest was among the most watched YouTube video’s during the convention week. It has now been viewed over 860,000 times.

Amy Goodman writes a weekly syndicated column with King Features which runs in major newspapers throughout North and South America. She is co-author with her brother, journalist David Goodman, of three New York Times bestsellers: Standing Up To the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times; Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back; and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.

Goodman’s reporting on East Timor and Nigeria won the George Polk Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award. Her other awards include the first ever Communication for Peace Award presented by the World Association of Christian Communication, the Puffin/Nation Institute Award for Creative Citizenship, The Paley Center for Media “She Made It” Award, and the Gracie Award for American Women in Radio and Television Public Broadcasting. Goodman has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Goodman shares the 2008 Right Livelihood Award with Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan of India, and their organisation, Land for the Tillers’ Freedom, for their work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development; Asha Hagi of Somalia “for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country.”; and Monika Hauser of Germany, gynaecologist and founder of medica mondiale, “for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualised violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation.”

For more information about the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, please visit rightlivelihood.org.

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Editor and Publisher Article

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Troy Anthony Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday. Two hours before the state of Georgia was to execute him, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay until Monday. It had earlier agreed to hear Davis’ case on Sept. 29, but Georgia set his execution date six days before the hearing.

Davis was charged with killing Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer, in Savannah, Ga., in 1989. Davis had gone to the aid of a homeless man who was being pistol-whipped in a parking lot. Seeing the gun, he said he fled. MacPhail, working security nearby, intervened next, and was killed. Davis, an African-American, claimed his innocence, but was found guilty and sentenced to death. Since his conviction, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, alleging police coercion and intimidation in obtaining their testimony. By coming forward and recanting, they face serious repercussions, possibly jail time. Some have identified a different man as the shooter. This man is one of Davis’ remaining accusers.

In July 2007, Davis faced his first execution date. Just a day before he was to be executed, the Georgia Pardons Board granted a stay of execution for up to 90 days. Then, Davis’ attorneys argued before the Georgia Supreme Court for a retrial or for a hearing to present new evidence. The requests were denied, by a 4-to-3 vote. In the same period, the U.S. Supreme Court was weighing whether death by lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment (the court ultimately allowed its use).

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Monday whether it will take on Davis’ case. If it decides not to, he very likely will be executed.

Among Davis’ defenders is former President Jimmy Carter. He said: “This case illustrates the deep flaws in the application of the death penalty in this country. Executing Troy Davis without a real examination of potentially exonerating evidence risks taking the life of an innocent man and would be a grave miscarriage of justice.” Georgia Congressman John Lewis also supports Davis. I spoke with Lewis at Invesco Field in Denver, just before Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. It was 45 years to the date after the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Lewis recalled that historic day: “We were in Washington, more than 250,000 of us, black and white, Protestant, Catholic, Jews, people of different background, rich and poor. … In many parts of the South, people could not register to vote, simply because of the color of their skin. And we changed that.”

Yet this week, in light of Davis’ plight, Lewis told me: “In spite of all of the progress that we’ve made as a nation and as a people, we still have so far to go. The scars and stains of racism are still deeply embedded in every corner, in every aspect of the American society.” He went on to say, when I pointed out that Sen. Obama himself supports the death penalty: “It is troublesome. You know … someplace along the way, some of us must have the courage to say—and I’m moving closer and closer to this point—that in good conscience, I cannot and will not support people who support the death penalty. I think it’s barbaric, and it represents the Dark Ages. …. I don’t think as human beings, I don’t think as a nation, I don’t think as a state, we have the right to take the life of another person. That should be left for the Almighty to do.”

The death penalty is a noxious and racist practice. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, of more than 3,300 people on death row in the U.S., over 41 percent are African-American—more than three times their representation in the general population. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973 there have been 130 people exonerated—people wrongly sentenced to death—in 26 different states, including five exonerated on death row in Georgia. Evidence even suggests that at least four innocent people have been executed in recent years. There is no physical evidence in the Troy Davis case. After the stay was announced, Davis asked his mother to have people pray for the MacPhail family, and to keep working to dismantle this unjust system. He told her he wouldn’t be fighting this hard for his life if he were guilty. This is a case of reasonable doubt. Troy Davis deserves a new trial.

Both announcements come two weeks after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention where over 40 journalists were arrested while reporting on protests taking place outside the convention center.

Upon learning of the news, Democracy Now! Host, Amy Goodman said, “It’s good that these false charges have finally been dropped, but we never should have been arrested to begin with. These violent and unlawful arrests disrupted our work and had a chilling effect on the reporting of dissent. Freedom of the press is also about the public’s right to know what is happening on their streets. There needs to be a full investigation of law enforcement activities during the convention.”

Goodman was arrested while asking police to release Kouddous and Salazar who had been violently arrested while reporting on street demonstrations. After being handcuffed and pushed to the ground, Goodman reiterated that she was was a credentialed reporter. Secret Service then ripped the credential from around her neck.

During demonstrations on the first day of the convention police used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were arrested, as was a photographer for the Associated Press.

John Lundquist, attorney for the Democracy Now! journalists, said, “The most notable lapse by law enforcement during the RNC was the record-breaking number of journalists indiscriminately arrested and detained for doing nothing more than performing in the best tradition of reporters who gather the news.”

In the weeks after the journalist arrests, tens of thousands of members of the public contacted St. Paul officials to protest the unlawful arrests of working journalists. Goodman said, “We were deeply moved by the outpouring of support. We thank everyone who called and wrote first to have us freed and then to have the charges dropped. We thank everyone who stood up for press freedom and the First Amendment.”

The YouTube video of Goodman’s arrest was the most watched YouTube video during the convention week. It has now been viewed over 830,000 times. Salazar’s video of her own violent arrest is also available on YouTube.

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Media coverage of RNC arrests

Amy Goodman Arrest

Nicole Salazar Arrest

By CHRIS WILLIAMS , Associated Press

September 19, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn.–Charges will be dropped against journalists who were arrested during the Republican National Convention protests and cited with unlawful assembly.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman said Friday that the city attorney’s office recommended against prosecuting reporters for the misdemeanor charge.

“This decision reflects the values we have in St. Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press,” Coleman said in a prepared statement.

He added, “At the scene, the police did their duty in protecting public safety. In this decision, we are serving the public’s interest to maintain the integrity of our democracy, system of justice and freedom of the press.”

He said the city doesn’t know yet how many cases the decision will affect, and he said the city will use a broad definition of journalists caught up in mass arrests.

City Attorney John Choi it would take a while for his office to review each case, do the paperwork and notify everyone involved.

More than 800 people were arrested in St. Paul and Minneapolis during the convention. Journalists among them included Associated Press reporters Amy Forliti and Jon Krawczynski.

City spokesman James Lockwood said charges against them will be dropped.

Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP, said, “It’s always good to learn that a bogus charge against you has been dropped. We’re still waiting for police to account for the unprovoked smackdowns of two of our photographers.”

The AP has sent the Police Department a letter asking for an accounting of police treatment of photographers Matt Rourke and Evan Vucci while they were covering violent protests during the convention.

Amy Goodman, host of the syndicated radio and television program Democracy Now!, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing the legal process during the protests. Two producers of the show were also arrested.

Choy said the city would also drop charges against the three of them.

After two of her producers were arrested while covering protests in St. Paul, program anchor Goodman (pictured) sought their release and was taken into custody, too. (Image: Democracy Now!, posted on YouTube.)

Journos arrested in St. Paul aren’t ‘willing to let this go’

Originally published in Current, Sept. 15, 2008
By Karen Everhart

Videos of the Sept. 1 arrests of Democracy Now! producers in St. Paul, Minn., spread chilling evidence that police were making no distinction between the protestors outside the Republican National Convention and working journalists covering their activities.

Among approximately 40 reporters and other media-makers caught up in police sweeps during the convention were Nicole Salazar, a multimedia producer for the daily progressive news program, and her colleague Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Salazar was filming a protest when riot police rushed up and knocked her down as she called out, “Press! Press!” She screamed as the police roughed her up.

Amy Goodman, host and e.p of Democracy Now!, was arrested shortly after when she rushed up to a line of riot police to demand that they release her producers.

Videos of both arrests, quickly posted on YouTube, stirred objections to the police tactic of rounding up credentialed journalists as they worked to clear the streets of rowdy protestors.

Salazar and Kouddous face felony charges of probable cause riot — meaning that police had a reasonable suspicion that they had participated in rioting — and Goodman, a misdemeanor of obstructing a legal process. Attorneys for the city of St. Paul and Ramsey County are weighing requests to have the charges dropped, according to John Lundquist of the Minneapolis law firm of Fredrikson & Byron, who represents the Democracy Now! trio.

“There have been a number of journalists swept up and charged with unlawful assembly, but the charge is not applicable to journalists,” Lundquist said. “It’s not as if they were parading without a permit. They were trying to gather the news of those who were.”

Journalists arrested during the RNC included Associated Press reporters Amy Forliti and Jon Krawczynski, AP photographer Matt Rourke, Variety Managing Editor Ted Johnson, photographers for two Twin Cities TV stations and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and representatives of several indie media organizations, according to the Minnesota Independent. Its list of 42 journalists arrested included college journalism students and documentarians with I-Witness Video, a group that videotaped police misconduct during the 2004 RNC in New York.

By the time the convention closed Sept. 4, some 60,000 people had signed online petitions calling on St. Paul officials to drop charges against the arrested journalists. Local media advocates delivered the petitions to City Hall Sept. 5.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman appointed two former federal prosecutors Sept. 9 to lead an independent investigation of public-safety planning and law enforcement tactics for the convention. The first tasks of former U.S. attorney Thomas Heffelfinger and former assistant U.S. attorney Andy Luger are to “complete the review team and set the scope of their work,” Coleman announced Sept. 8.

The Minnesota chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, which objected to the arrests during the RNC, is continuing to press the issue. SPJ scheduled a Sept. 22 panel discussion among law enforcement officials, city leaders and journalists. Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute will moderate the forum at the University of Minnesota.

“We’re going to talk about what happened and how journalists can do their job without fear,” said Nicole Garrison-Sprenger, Minnesota SPJ president and a reporter with the Pioneer Press. “We don’t want this to happen again.”

“Journalists aren’t willing to let this go and let police think they can treat working journalists the way they did,” said Art Hughes, a former Minnesota Public Radio reporter and board member for the Minnesota SPJ chapter. Hughes was among the journalists arrested Sept. 4, the closing night of the Republican convention.

Hughes was recording sound and photographing protestors who were marching and disrupting traffic after their permit had expired, but he moved to a nearby parking lot to observe the police action from a distance. He was caught in a police line that pushed him and other peaceful observers toward the protestors.

“I had my RNC credentials on me the whole time,” Hughes said. “It made no more difference to them than a driver’s license.” Hughes received a citation for unlawful assembly.
His foot on her back

Salazar’s video provides some particulars of her arrest. As officers approached, she can be heard asking, “Where do I go? Press! Press!” She continues filming even as the police knock her over. Salazar starts screaming, and the video ends.

In an appearance on Democracy Now! after her release, Salazar said one officer stomped on her back while another pulled her by the leg. All the while, she was being ordered to keep her face to the ground. Kouddous, whose arrest occurred off-camera, told Current that he was kicked in the chest, and his arm was scraped.

“The arrest itself was chaotic,” Kouddous said. “I was screaming ‘Press!’ the whole time and ‘Look at my credentials!’”

Goodman and Kouddous said their credentials were confiscated by a plainclothes officer. They said police told them he was from the Secret Service.

The video of Goodman’s arrest shows her approaching the police line as an officer points to direct her to step back. As someone shouts “Release the accredited journalists!” the officer grabs Goodman, pulls her behind the police line and takes her into custody as she objects, “Don’t arrest me!”

During the 2004 RNC in New York, Goodman had been able to talk to police and get her producers out of a similar situation, she told Current. That was her objective in St. Paul. She had been interviewing Republican delegates inside the convention site when she heard about the arrests and raced to the scene.

“If there was some confusion, I came to vouch for them and to say, ‘They are accredited journalists,’” Goodman said. “I was making sure that they were okay.”

The whole episode was frightening, she recalled, because she and other journalists were prevented from doing their jobs. “Our job is to be there to chronicle and monitor what is happening and to present that,” Goodman said. “We have to be able to put things on the record without getting a record.”

Hughes, now a freelance journalist, said the St. Paul convention arrests have put reporters on notice that police have changed their treatment of reporters covering street protests.

“There was a time when journalists would get into the thick of things, and there was recognition that they weren’t there to do harm and weren’t a threat to anything,” Hughes said. The ground began to shift after the 1999 street protests of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., he said. In recent years it’s become increasingly difficult to distinguish professional reporters from citizen journalists or media activists who bring cameras and political agendas to protests.

Link to article

Associated Press: ‘Reporters arrested at GOP convention: No charges’

Current: ‘Journos arrested in St. Paul aren’t ‘willing to let this go’’

Washington Post: ‘Democracy Now! Host and Producers Arrested at Republican Convention’

Los Angeles Times: ‘Amy Goodman, One of Four Journalists Arrested At An Anti-RNC Protest, Tells Her Story’

Pioneer Press: ‘Journalist Amy Goodman Confronts Police Chief Over Her Arrest’

Star Tribune: ‘Democracy Now! Host Back At Work Day After Arrest’

Committee To Protect Journalists: ‘Four Arrested Covering Protest at GOP Convention’

Associated Press: ‘AP Photog Arrested While Covering Anti-War protest’

The Nation: ‘Amy Goodman, Others Detained Outside RNC’

Huffington Post: ‘Amy Goodman Arrested At RNC’

Salon.com: ‘Scenes from St. Paul—Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman Arrested’

Fox9: ‘Democracy Now Journalists, AP Photog Released After Protest Arrests’

Denver Post: ‘Arrests of journalists questioned’

Hartford Courant: ‘Amy Goodman Arrested’

Editor and Publisher: ‘RNC Arrests Slammed as Goodman Arrest Video is Seen 500,000-Plus Times’

The Real News: ‘On Amy Goodman’s arrest’

St. Petersburg Times: ‘Reporters’ arrest hurts democracy ’

Philadelphia Daily News: ‘For journalists & photogs, it’s a rough convention’

PRESS TV: ‘Arrested journalists at RNC protest freed’

NY Daily News: ‘Amy Goodman busted covering RNC protest’

Amy Goodman On CNN

Amy Goodman Interviewed on Free Speech TV

Miro is dedicated to improving the quality of online video. They were able to improve the quality of Democracy Now’s online video output. The video was suffering from a condition known as interlace, which causes motion in the image to reveal a bunch of tiny sawtooth lines. Interlacing was a way that television manufacturers in the 1940’s could fake a high frame rate and avoid a visible flickering of the image. On high resolution displays (like computer monitors), the interlaced scan lines become visible and must be processed out (deinterlaced). The image below is an example.

In short, Miro is a free application that turns your computer into an internet TV video player but with higher quality images. Once you download Miro you can use it to watch free internet video channels and play any video file. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Democracy Now! channel!

The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver’s seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.

Tuesday, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department agreed to a massive, $85-billion bailout of AIG, the insurance giant. This follows the abrupt bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank; the distressed sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America; the bailout of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the collapse of retail bank IndyMac; and the federally guaranteed buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase. AIG was deemed “too big to fail,” with 103,000 employees and more than $1 trillion in assets. According to regulators, an unruly collapse could cause global financial turmoil. U.S. taxpayers now own close to 80 percent of AIG, so the orderly sale of AIG will allow the taxpayers to recoup their money, the theory goes.

It’s not so easy.

The financial crisis will most likely deepen. More banks and giant financial institutions could collapse. Millions of people bought houses with shady subprime mortgages and have already lost or will soon lose their homes. The financiers packaged these mortgages into complex “mortgage-backed securities” and other derivative investment schemes. Investors went hog-wild, buying these derivatives with more and more borrowed money.

Nomi Prins used to run the European analytics group at Bear Stearns and also worked at Lehman Brothers. “AIG was acting not simply as an insurance company,” she told me. “It was acting as a speculative investment bank/hedge fund, as was Bear Stearns, as was Lehman Brothers, as is what will become Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. So you have a situation where it’s [the U.S. government] … taking on the risk of items it cannot even begin to understand.”

She went on: “It’s about taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and borrowing again and borrowing again, 25 to 30 times the amount of capital. … They had to basically back the borrowing that they were doing. … There was no transparency to the Fed, to the SEC, to the Treasury, to anyone who would have even bothered to look as to how much of a catastrophe was being created, so that when anything fell, whether it was the subprime mortgage or whether it was a credit complex security, it was all below a pile of immense interlocked, incestuous borrowing, and that’s what is bringing down the entire banking system.”

As these high-rolling gamblers are losing all their banks’ money, it comes to the taxpayer to bail them out. A better use of the money, says Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an economic adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would be to “save these 4 million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they’re going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to [lose] property taxes, they’re going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers.”

Prins elaborated: “You’re nationalizing the worst portion of the banking system. … You’re taking on risk you won’t be able to understand. So it’s even more dangerous.” I asked Prins, in light of all this nationalization, to comment on the prospect of nationalizing health care into a single-payer system. She responded, “You could actually put some money into something that pre-empts a problem happening and helps people get health care.”

The meltdown is a bipartisan affair. Presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama each have received millions of dollars from these very companies that are collapsing and are receiving the corporate welfare. President Clinton and his treasury secretary, Robert Rubin (now an Obama economic adviser), presided over the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed after the 1929 start of the Great Depression to curb speculation that caused that calamity. The repeal was pushed through by former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, one of McCain’s former top advisers. Politicians are too dependent on Wall Street to do anything. The people who vote for them, and whose taxes are being handed over to these failed financiers, need to show their outrage and demand that their leaders truly put “country first” and bring about “change.”

Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.

The number of stations carrying Democracy Now! has currently reached a total of 39, including provinces that have never previously aired DN!, such as Quebec, Alberta and Nunavut. Our most recent, and by far our most impressive achievement so far, has been the full broadcast of Democracy Now! on CIUT, Toronto’s preeminent,
listener-supported presenter of leading-edge music and spoken-word programming in Ontario.

As well, among our most recent additions has also included the transmission of the DN! headlines on the French-based college station CKUT at McGill University in Montreal. While CKUT and CIUT have both been very supportive of Democracy Now! in the past, they have always been reluctant, up until recently, to air us. These recent acquisitions can be attributed to the incredible local support in all of these radio markets by DN! listeners.

David Aaron- Democracy Now! Outreach Canada

But the members of Neighbors for Peace were determined and they had a plan. The group paid for several members to join ECTV with the plan to have members submit videos to ECTV for broadcast. Later, Neighbors for Peace approached Evanston’s North Shore Coalition for Peace and Justice (NSCPJ) for support with a new request that ECTV broadcast Democracy Now.

Following positive but informal meetings with one of the directors at ECTV, members of Neighbors for Peace were able to set up a formal meeting with ECTV’s program director and production manager. This meeting ultimately led to the agreement to air Democracy Now! on ECTV three times per week. The three groups were able to come to an agreement to make the airing of the show work for all of them and within a few weeks the show was on the air.

Currently the show airs three times per week, but Democracy Now! supporters are confident that within a few months the growing support for the show will force ECTV to broadcast the show five times per week. Already, the dedication to the show in Evanston is strong and ECTV is making changes to their schedule accommodate their Democracy Now! viewers.

Thanks to Dale Lehman from Neighbors for Peace for submitting this success story!

The Democratic and Republican national conventions have passed, but controversy surrounds how they were funded and how they were run. Mass arrests of peaceful protesters, excessive police violence, wholesale disregard for the Bill of Rights and the targeting and arrest of journalists marred what should have been celebrations of democracy. The “host committees,” the legal entities that organize and pay for the conventions, act as large party slush funds, outside of campaign-finance restrictions. Scores of major corporations (and a couple of unions), barred from giving unlimited funds to political parties, could give whatever they wanted to the host committees of Denver and St. Paul, Minn.

According to a recent article in National Underwriter magazine, “Both the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee refused to comment on their insurance purchasing decisions, or even reveal who was providing coverage for their respective conventions.” Bruce Nestor, president of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who organized scores of legal observers around the Twin Cities to protect citizens’ legal rights, told me: “St. Paul actually negotiated a special insurance provision with the Republican host committee so that the first $10 million in liability for lawsuits arising from the convention will be covered by the host committee. The city is very proud of this negotiation. It’s the first time it’s been negotiated between a city and the host committee. But it basically means we [the city] can commit wrongdoing, and we won’t have to pay for it.” According to the Minnesota Independent, more than 40 journalists were arrested or detained during the Republican National Convention.

Like what happened to “Democracy Now!” producer Nicole Salazar, videotaping protests in downtown St. Paul. She was violently forced to the ground, her nose bloodied, was held down with a man’s knee or boot on her back, with another person pulling on her leg. Fellow producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous was thrown against a wall and kicked in the chest and back. The police might normally intervene and arrest the perpetrators. Except here, it was the police who were the assailants. And they arrested their victims. Arriving on the scene, I tried to have my colleagues freed, as we were all accredited journalists, and the police arrested me. And we were not the only ones.

As the mayors and police of St. Paul and Minneapolis patted each other on the back for a job well done, the nonprofit group FreePress, the head of the local chapter of the Newspaper Guild and other media advocates and reporters delivered more than 50,000 signatures to the mayor’s office demanding that the charges against the journalists be dropped. We were met by St. Paul Deputy Mayor Ann Mulholland. Free Speech TV CEO Denis Moynihan asked about the Republican host committee indemnification of the city, “Isn’t that just giving a $10 million ticket to the police to violate civil rights?” Mulholland countered, “We are very proud of that … the $10 million was critical for our city. We would not have been able to host the convention otherwise.”

The two major-party conventions have become protracted, expensive advertising spectacles for the presidential candidates. It makes sense that Democrats and Republicans would want to control the message. But democracy is not an advertisement, nor is it under the sole dominion of the two parties. People were engaged in Denver and St. Paul in a vast array of civic dialogue, public gatherings, marches, protests, concerts, art openings—in fact, there was more democracy happening outside the convention halls than inside them. The convention center names tell the story: It was the Pepsi Center in Denver, the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Xcel, which pushes nuclear power, gave $1 million to each convention. Both top candidates support nuclear power as a viable option.

In Denver, but particularly in St. Paul, dissent was crushed with a massive array of paramilitarized police, operating under the U.S. Secret Service, granted jurisdiction over the “National Special Security Events” that the conventions have been dubbed. Corporations pay millions to the host committees, earning exclusive access to lawmakers and candidates. The host committees, in turn, unleash police on the public, all but guaranteeing injuries, unlawful arrests and expensive civil litigation for years to come. More than just a campaign-finance loophole that must be closed, this is a national disgrace.

Throughout the convention week, one of the 25 remaining typeset copies of the Declaration of Independence was on display at St. Paul City Hall—not far from where crowds were pepper-sprayed, clubbed, tear-gassed and attacked by police with concussion grenades. As the clouds clear, it is instructive to remember the words of one of the Declaration’s signers, Benjamin Franklin:

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Aired on September 5, 2008 on NOW on PBS.

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists. I was arrested with my two colleagues, “Democracy Now!” producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while reporting on the first day of the RNC. I have been wrongly charged with a misdemeanor. My co-workers, who were simply reporting, may be charged with felony riot.

The Democratic and Republican national conventions have become very expensive and protracted acts of political theater, essentially four-day-long advertisements for the major presidential candidates. Outside the fences, they have become major gatherings for grass-roots movements—for people to come, amidst the banners, bunting, flags and confetti, to express the rights enumerated in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Behind all the patriotic hyperbole that accompanies the conventions, and the thousands of journalists and media workers who arrive to cover the staged events, there are serious violations of the basic right of freedom of the press. Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition their government, to protest.

It was Labor Day, and there was an anti-war march, with a huge turnout, with local families, students, veterans and people from around the country gathered to oppose the war. The protesters greatly outnumbered the Republican delegates.

There was a positive, festive feeling, coupled with a growing anxiety about the course that Hurricane Gustav was taking, and whether New Orleans would be devastated anew. Later in the day, there was a splinter march. The police—clad in full body armor, with helmets, face shields, batons and canisters of pepper spray—charged. They forced marchers, onlookers and working journalists into a nearby parking lot, then surrounded the people and began handcuffing them.

Nicole was videotaping. Her tape of her own violent arrest is chilling. Police in riot gear charged her, yelling, “Get down on your face.” You hear her voice, clearly and repeatedly announcing “Press! Press! Where are we supposed to go?” She was trapped between parked cars. The camera drops to the pavement amidst Nicole’s screams of pain. Her face was smashed into the pavement, and she was bleeding from the nose, with the heavy officer with a boot or knee on her back. Another officer was pulling on her leg. Sharif was thrown up against the wall and kicked in the chest, and he was bleeding from his arm.

I was at the Xcel Center on the convention floor, interviewing delegates. I had just made it to the Minnesota delegation when I got a call on my cell phone with news that Sharif and Nicole were being bloody arrested, in every sense. Filmmaker Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films and I raced on foot to the scene. Out of breath, we arrived at the parking lot. I went up to the line of riot police and asked to speak to a commanding officer, saying that they had arrested accredited journalists.

Within seconds, they grabbed me, pulled me behind the police line and forcibly twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me, the rigid plastic cuffs digging into my wrists. I saw Sharif, his arm bloody, his credentials hanging from his neck. I repeated we were accredited journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped my convention credential from my neck. I was taken to the St. Paul police garage where cages were set up for protesters. I was charged with obstruction of a peace officer. Nicole and Sharif were taken to jail, facing riot charges.

The attack on and arrest of me and the “Democracy Now!” producers was not an isolated event. A video group called I-Witness Video was raided two days earlier. Another video documentary group, the Glass Bead Collective, was detained, with its computers and video cameras confiscated. On Wednesday, I-Witness Video was again raided, forced out of its office location. When I asked St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere, he suggested, “By embedding reporters in our mobile field force.”

On Monday night, hours after we were arrested, after much public outcry, Nicole, Sharif and I were released. That was our Labor Day. It’s all in a day’s work.

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DENVER—Former Sen. John Edwards was supposed to speak in Denver at the Democratic National Convention. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, was to speak also. Poverty was their focus. But they are not here because John Edwards had an affair. Will the Democrats now forget about poverty?

Chris Chafe is a former senior adviser to the Edwards campaign. He is now the executive director of the Change to Win coalition, the group of unions well known for their early endorsement of Obama. They split from the AFL-CIO in 2005. I asked Chafe about the absence of Edwards and his message at the convention:

“We miss him being here. He is an important voice in our party. … It is certainly a loss. … We have to look within ourselves in a moment of crisis when we have somebody of symbolic and strong value and leadership who takes a fall … we have to continue moving forward with all of the values, strengths, priorities and leadership that he brought to the race, we have to carry that forward … far beyond this election season.”

Change to Win supports the unionization of workers at Wal-Mart. Last month, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Wal-Mart has been warning managers that a Barack Obama victory would lead to unionization. In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings discussing the downside of unionization and told that a vote for Obama is tantamount to inviting unions in. Chafe said: “The company had been holding what we would consider captive-audience meetings where they are on company time, they are paid but they are required to go to meetings. … This is going beyond the normal routine of intimidation. Now they are trying to deny workers rights at the ballot box, and that is something we felt we could not allow to take place and had to let the world know this is happening in the country’s largest employer. … You are not allowed to tell your employees how they are supposed to vote. It is the most sacred right in our democracy.” Change to Win and others have filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, challenging Wal-Mart’s actions.

During the primaries in the blue-collar battleground states, Obama effectively pointed out that Hillary Clinton served on the Wal-Mart board for six years, implying an anti-worker, anti-union association. Shortly after she dropped out of the race, however, the Obama campaign appointed Jason Furman as a senior economics adviser. Furman has rankled labor activists, writing that the benefits of Wal-Mart’s low prices outweigh its low wages. On that appointment, Chafe said, “We’ve met privately with [Obama] about it, and we’ve met privately with Jason. The senator brought Jason on to manage the day-to-day war-room operations of their message to illustrate contrast with [John] McCain. … We made it clear, as did the senator, that there were certainly differences of viewpoint between he and Jason on a series of issues. We believe that Barack Obama has stood firm and clear on our agenda and the [Wal-Mart] workers’ agenda.”

On low prices trumping low wages, Chafe chafed: “Absolute hogwash … Wal-Mart gets a pass because they pass along savings, they are passing along poverty. Poverty to workers across the world who are producing their goods. Poverty to the people that are working in their stores representing them who are trying to make a living, many of whom probably have multiple jobs to afford to raise their families. … You name it, they find every way to cut corners and cut their workers out of their success.”

The U.S. Census Bureau released a poverty report on Aug. 26. More than 37 million people are in poverty in the U.S. With Edwards iced out of the discussion, and free-trade economists advising the Obama campaign, the question remains: What of poverty?

Obama’s nomination acceptance speech comes on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” address. King related poverty and justice: “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check—a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. … Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

Denis Moynihan contributed to this column.