Articles by Amy Goodman
We found 253 results.
WikiLeaks Launches Campaign to Offer $100,000 “Bounty” for Leaked Drafts of Secret TPP Chapters
Amy Goodman & Julian Assange – Democracy NOW!,
8 Jun 2015
2 Jun 2015 – TPP will fuel inequality, kill jobs, and undermine health, environmental and financial regulations. The negotiations have been secret, and the public has never seen most of the deal’s text. Well, this morning the whistleblowing group WikiLeaks launched a campaign to change that.
→ read full articleThe Pre-charge Punishment of Julian Assange
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!,
1 Jun 2015
No charges, no trial, no ability to defend yourself … don’t even have the right to documents, because you’re not even a defendant.” His skin is pale from years without sunlight, matching his prematurely white hair. But his resolve is unbroken, and the leaks he originally sought to publish when he founded WikiLeaks almost 10 years ago are still reaching the light of day.
→ read full articleEx-U.N. Official John Dugard: Israel’s Crimes Are “Infinitely Worse” Than in Apartheid South Africa
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
11 May 2015
6 May 2015 – As Palestine joins the International Criminal Court, former U.N. Special Rapporteur John Dugard talks about how an apartheid case could be brought against Israel in the ICC. “I’m a South African who lived through apartheid,” Dugard said. “I have no hesitation in saying that Israel’s crimes are infinitely worse than those committed by the apartheid regime of South Africa.”
→ read full articleThe American Dream: Living to 18
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
11 May 2015
“What do you hope to accomplish with this protest,” I asked a 13-year-old girl marching in Staten Island, N.Y. “To live until I’m 18,” the young teen, named Aniya, replied. “You want to get older. You want to experience life. You don’t want to die in a matter of seconds because of cops.” It’s that sentiment that has fueled the Black Lives Matter movement across the country.
→ read full articleA Century of Women Working for Peace
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
4 May 2015
One hundred years ago, more than 1,000 women gathered here in The Hague during World War I, demanding peace. Britain denied passports to more than 120 women, forbidding them from making the trip to suppress their peaceful dissent. Now, a century later, nearly 1,000 women have gathered here again, this time from Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as Europe and North America.
→ read full articleOpen Veins, Healing Wounds, in Latin America [R.I.P. Eduardo Galeano]
Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!,
20 Apr 2015
As British writer John Berger has said of Eduardo Galeano, “To publish Eduardo Galeano is to publish the enemy: the enemy of lies, indifference, above all of forgetfulness. Thanks to him, our crimes will be remembered. His tenderness is devastating, his truthfulness furious.”
→ read full articleThe Costs of War, the Price of Peace
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
30 Mar 2015
What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday [25 Mar 2015] with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”
→ read full articleFlush the TPP
Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!,
23 Mar 2015
The TPP, if passed, would implement trade rules that make it illegal for governments to create and enforce regulations on everything from environmental standards, to wage and labor laws, to the duration of copyrights. A law prohibiting the sale of goods made in sweatshops in Vietnam could be ruled illegal, for example, as a barrier to trade.
→ read full articleFrom ‘Demos’ to ‘Podemos’: Popular Uprisings in Greece and Spain
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
23 Feb 2015
“Austerity in Greece means 50 percent increase in male suicides. It means real wages fell by 25 percent in five years … 300,000 families who can’t afford electricity.” Interviewed in Der Spiegel, Varoufakis called austerity “fiscal waterboarding.”
→ read full articleNet Neutrality, Back by Popular Demand
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
9 Feb 2015
More than 4 million people commented on the rules, making this the largest response to any federal request for public comment in history. The large Internet providers will be prevented from discriminating against people on the Internet regardless of race, color, beliefs and, perhaps most importantly, how rich they are.
→ read full article
Newly Discovered 1964 MLK Speech on Civil Rights, Segregation & Apartheid South Africa
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
26 Jan 2015
Jan 19, 2015 – The Entire Lost Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Speech from 1964 – 11 Min.
→ read full articleClose Guantanamo—Then Give It Back to Cuba
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
12 Jan 2015
7 Jan 2015 – This week marks the 13th anniversary of the arrival of the first post-9/11 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, the most notorious prison on the planet. This grim anniversary, and the beginning of normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S and Cuba, serves as a reminder that we need to permanently close the prison and return the land to its rightful owners, the Cuban people.
→ read full articleClimate Deniers, like Big Tobacco, Thrive behind a Smoke Screen of Doubt
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
5 Jan 2015
“Doubt is our product,” states a 1969 memo from the tobacco giant Brown and Williamson, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” It was a member of “Big Tobacco,” with Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard Tobacco Company, U.S. Tobacco, Liggett Group, and American Tobacco.
→ read full article
After Duo Created CIA Torture Methods, Did World’s Largest Group of Psychologists Enable Abuses?
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW! – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
Dec 16, 2014 – As a psychologist identified as the “architect” of the CIA’s torture program admits he personally waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we look at allegations that the American Psychological Association — the largest association of psychologists in the world — secretly colluded with U.S. abuses.
→ read full articleObama and the Beginning of the End of the Cuban Embargo
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
22 Dec 2014
It was President Dwight Eisenhower who severed relations with Cuba, on Jan. 3, 1961, two years after Fidel Castro took power. President John F. Kennedy then expanded the embargo, and his CIA invasion of the Bay of Pigs, intending to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro, went awry.
→ read full article
Jeremy Scahill on Obama’s Orwellian War in Iraq
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
24 Nov 2014
We Created the Very Threat We Claim to be Fighting
→ read full articleWe Need Medical Boots on the Ground Now
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
20 Oct 2014
We need tens of thousands of boots on the ground dealing with Ebola: boots of doctors, nurses, health professionals, dealing with this wholly preventable global health disaster.
→ read full articleGlobal Warming and Global Warring
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
29 Sep 2014
“In today’s wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.” These words were spoken on Dec. 10, 2009, by that year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Barack Obama. Five years later, his pronouncement reads like a daily headline. The peace group Code Pink is calling on President Obama to return his Nobel medal.
→ read full articleGet Ready for the ‘Internet Slowdown’
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
8 Sep 2014
Next Wednesday, Sept. 10 [2014], if your favorite website seems to load slowly, take a closer look: You might be experiencing the Battle for the Net’s “Internet Slowdown,” a global day of grass-roots action.
→ read full articleJames Risen, Surveillance and Obama’s Threat to Journalism
Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!,
18 Aug 2014
The Obama administration’s espionage case against alleged CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling is expected to come to trial soon, six years after he was indicted. In addition to Sterling, also on trial will be a central pillar of our democratic society: press freedom.
→ read full articleA Venerable Jewish Voice for Peace
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
4 Aug 2014
As the United States resupplies Israel with ammunition, more than 250 children in Gaza have been killed. Instead of providing weapons, the U.S. and the rest of the world should pressure Israel to stop the slaughter.
→ read full articleOvercoming the Media Blockade in Gaza
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
28 Jul 2014
“We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue. Look at how [much] airtime [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis, Andrea Mitchell and others. I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on these same issues.”
→ read full articleBorder Children: ‘They Don’t Speak English, but They Understand Hate’
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
21 Jul 2014
The United States has a long and sadly bloody history of destabilizing democratic governments in the very countries that are now the sources of this latest wave of migration: most notably in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. In the 1980s and 1990s, U.S.-supported military regimes and paramilitaries killed hundreds of thousands of citizens in those countries.
→ read full articleNomads of the Digital Age
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
14 Jul 2014
At the heart of his case, and of so many others, is the question of whether the Internet will remain a free and open platform for communication, or a commodity controlled by a few corporations, censored and surveilled by the U.S. national-security apparatus.
→ read full articleBergdahl, Afghanistan and the ‘Darkening of the American Soul’
Amy Goodman – The Union,
9 Jun 2014
Bob Bergdahl’s remark about the U.S. war in Afghanistan: “I think this is the darkening of the American soul. It is where the guilt comes from, because you are being told you are helping, but you know on the inside that you are not.”
→ read full articleMaya Angelou, Still She Rises
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
2 Jun 2014
In remembering Maya Angelou, it is important to recall her commitment to the struggle for equality, not just for herself, or for women, or for African-Americans. She was committed to peace and justice for all.
→ read full articleWilliam Worthy and Vincent Harding: Thank You and Goodbye
Amy Goodman - Aspen Daily News,
26 May 2014
The world lost two remarkable men in May, two African-Americans who helped shape modern history, yet whose names and achievements remain too little known. William Worthy, a journalist, died at the age of 92. Civil-rights activist Vincent Harding was 82.
→ read full articleThe Grand American Tradition of Violent White Supremacy
Amy Goodman – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Apr 2014
16 Apr 2014 – Another U.S. shooting spree has left bullet-riddled bodies in its wake, and refocused attention on violent, right-wing extremists. A former leader of the Ku Klux Klan is accused of killing three people outside two Jewish community centers in Kansas City. As he was hauled away in a police car, he shouted “Heil Hitler!”
→ read full articleClimate Science’s Dire Warning: Humans Are Baking the Planet
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
7 Apr 2014
The IPCC, over 1,800 scientists from around the world, collects, analyzes and synthesizes the best, solid science on climate and related fields. The prognosis is not good. Evidence is mounting that we will experience more extreme weather events, including hurricanes and droughts, mass extinctions and severe food shortages globally.
→ read full articleU.S. Sailors and Marines Allege Fukushima Radiation Sickness
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
24 Mar 2014
In an unusual development, more than 100 U.S. Marines and Navy sailors have joined a class action suit, charging TEPCO with lying about the severity of the disaster as they were rushing to the scene to provide humanitarian assistance.
→ read full articleCIA Spies and Tortured Lies
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
17 Mar 2014
“With Sen. Dianne Feinstein we’re seeing another ‘Merkel Effect,’ where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it’s a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them.”
→ read full article
Kids for Cash: Inside a US Shocking Juvenile Justice Scandal (Part 1 of 3)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
24 Feb 2014
Today a special on “kids for cash,” the shocking story of how thousands of children in Pennsylvania were jailed by two corrupt judges who received $2.6 million in kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities.
→ read full article
Kids for Cash: Inside a US Shocking Juvenile Justice Scandal (Part 2 of 3)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
24 Feb 2014
Second part of a special on “kids for cash,” the shocking story of how thousands of children in Pennsylvania were jailed by two corrupt judges who received $2.6 million in kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities.
→ read full article
Kids for Cash: Inside a US Shocking Juvenile Justice Scandal (Part 3 of 3)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
24 Feb 2014
Final segment of a special on ‘kids for cash,’ the shocking story of how thousands of children in Pennsylvania were jailed by two corrupt judges who received $2.6 million in kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities.
→ read full articleThe Comcast-Time Warner Merger Threatens Democracy
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
24 Feb 2014
The public has confronted monstrous mergers before, and blocked them. So, too, have they faced corporate attempts to stifle the fundamental freedom of the Internet. Freedom of speech, freedom to connect and communicate, is the lifeblood of a democracy. The fight to preserve and expand the diversity and vibrancy of our media system is one that cannot be left to bought-out regulators and corporate lobbyists.
→ read full articlePete Seeger: Troubadour of Truth and Justice
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
3 Feb 2014
Pete sang truth to power through the epic struggles of most of the last century, for social justice, for civil rights, for workers, for the environment and for peace. His songs, his wise words, his legacy will resonate for generations.
→ read full articleAaron Swartz: The Life We Lost and the Day We Fight Back
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
27 Jan 2014
A year after Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz’s suicide at the age of 26, a film about this remarkable young man has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film, titled “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz,” directed by Brian Knappenberger, follows the sadly short arc of Aaron’s life.
→ read full articleFukushima: An Ongoing Warning to the World
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
20 Jan 2014
The triple-edged disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and ongoing nuclear disaster will last for generations. The dangerous trajectory from nuclear weapons to nuclear power is now being challenged by a popular demand for peace and sustainability. It is a lesson for rest of the world as well.
→ read full articleObama’s New Normal: The Drone Strikes Continue
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
30 Dec 2013
There has been yet another violent attack with mass casualties. This was not the act of a lone gunman, or of an armed student rampaging through a school. It was a group of families en route to a wedding that was killed. The town was called Radda—not in Colorado, not in Connecticut, but in Yemen.
→ read full article
Vandana Shiva & Jane Goodall on Serving the Earth & How Women Can Address Climate Crisis (1 of 2)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
16 Dec 2013
Dec 4, 2013 – At the recent International Women’s Earth and Climate Initiative Summit, Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva discuss their decades of work devoted to protecting nature and saving future generations from the dangers of climate change.
→ read full article
Vandana Shiva & Jane Goodall on Serving the Earth & How Women Can Address Climate Crisis (2 of 2)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
16 Dec 2013
Dec 4, 2013 – At the recent International Women’s Earth and Climate Initiative Summit, Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva discuss their decades of work devoted to protecting nature and saving future generations from the dangers of climate change.
→ read full articleMandela: The Man and the Movement
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
16 Dec 2013
Mandela was a devoted friend of Fidel Castro, who always supported the ANC. The U.S., on the other hand, did not remove Mandela from its “terrorist watch list” until 2008, 14 years after he was elected president of South Africa.
→ read full articleCorporate Lobbyists Flood Warsaw Climate Talks
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
25 Nov 2013
“This is perhaps the most corporate climate talks we have ever experienced. But what’s different this time is the level of institutionalization, the degree to which the Polish government and the U.N., the UNFCCC, have welcomed this with open arms and have actively encouraged it.”
→ read full articleThe Rising Resistance to Obama’s Drone Wars
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
4 Nov 2013
Attacking rescuers is a war crime. Mustafa Qadri from Amnesty International explained: “For example, some laborers in a very impoverished village near the Afghanistan border, they get targeted, eight die instantly in a tent; those who come to rescue or to look for survivors are themselves targeted.
→ read full articleOil, Azerbaijan and the Strange Case of Rick Bourke
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
21 Oct 2013
As a senior investigator on the Senate Watergate Committee, Armstrong uncovered the existence of President Richard Nixon’s secret taping system. He considers Bourke a genuine whistle-blower and summed up the case: “This elaborate set of frauds that Kozeny was involved in were in essence covered up by the United States government, who chose instead to bring the full weight of their investigative enthusiasm against the whistle-blower. And that just shocks the conscience.”
→ read full articleClimate-Change Protests Heat Up
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
30 Sep 2013
25 Sep 2013 – Last week in the Arctic Ocean the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise approached a Gazprom oil-drilling platform and launched a nonviolent protest. The Russian government responded swiftly and with force, arresting 30 and towing the Greenpeace ship. This protest is remarkable for its sheer audacity but by no means the sole protest lately against runaway fossil-fuel extraction and consumption.
→ read full articleKerry, Kissinger, Allende, and the Other Sept. 11
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
16 Sep 2013
The Kerry-Kissinger meeting, and the public outcry against the proposed attack on Syria to which both men are publicly committed, should be viewed through the lens of another Sept. 11 … 1973. On that day, 40 years ago, the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was violently overthrown [and killed] in a U.S.-backed coup.
→ read full articleJust Say No to Nuclear Power – From Fukushima to Vermont
Amy Goodman – The Guardian,
2 Sep 2013
Fukushima showed us the intolerable costs of nuclear power. The citizens of Vermont show us the benefits of shutting it down.
→ read full articlePlease Read Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 on Your Vacation, Mr. President
Amy Goodman – The Guardian,
12 Aug 2013
Senator Obama’s objection to ‘a dumb war’ won him nomination. As commander-in-chief, he has reneged on opposing militarism.
→ read full articleManning, Snowden and Assange Were the Ones Who Took Risks to Expose Crime
Amy Goodman – The Guardian,
5 Aug 2013
But those who planned the wars, those who committed war crimes, those who conduct illegal spying, for now, walk free.
→ read full articleAmerica’s Real Subversives: FBI Spying Then, NSA Surveillance Now
Amy Goodman – The Guardian,
29 Jul 2013
As the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington approaches, commemorating that historic gathering where Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous “I have a dream” speech, it is important to recall the extent to which King was targeted by the government’s domestic spying apparatus.
→ read full articleLet the Light of Mandela Shine on U.S. Injustice
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
22 Jul 2013
Mandela was arrested in 1962, a year before Martin Luther King Jr. would give his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. After 27 years in prison, Mandela was released in 1990. Four years later, he would become the first democratically elected president of South Africa.
→ read full articleGlenn Greenwald on How NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Helped Expose a “Massive Surveillance Apparatus”
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
17 Jun 2013
10 June 2013 – Speaking from Hong Kong where he broke the story of Edward Snowden outing himself as the NSA whistleblower, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald joins us to discuss Snowden’s actions and the multiple disclosures he’s revealed about government surveillance.
→ read full articleTerror Bytes: Edward Snowden and the Architecture of Oppression
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!,
17 Jun 2013
Legendary whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg countered the criticism, writing, “In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material—and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an ‘executive coup’ against the U.S. Constitution.”
→ read full articleHammond, Manning, Assange and Obama’s Sledgehammer against Dissent
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
3 Jun 2013
One cyberactivist’s federal case wrapped up this week, and another’s is set to begin. While these two young men, Jeremy Hammond and Bradley Manning, are the two who were charged, it is the growing menace of government and corporate secrecy that should be on trial. The job of journalists is to hold those in power accountable. Our job is to be the fourth estate, not “for the state.” Let us be.
→ read full articleJeremy Scahill & Noam Chomsky on Secret U.S. Dirty Wars from Yemen to Pakistan to Laos
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
27 May 2013
Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and author Noam Chomsky recently sat down together at Harvard University to discuss Scahill’s groundbreaking new book, “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield.”
→ read full articleThe Three Heroines of Guatemala: The Judge, the Attorney General and the Nobel Peace Laureate
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
20 May 2013
Former Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt was hauled off to prison last Friday [10 May 2013]. It was a historic moment, the first time in history that a former leader of a country was tried for genocide in a national court. He was given an 80-year prison sentence. The case was inspired and pursued by three brave Guatemalan women: the judge, the attorney general and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks’ New Release: The Kissinger Cables and Bradley Manning
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
15 Apr 2013
One cable includes a transcribed conversation where Kissinger displays remarkable candor: “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.” While the illegal and the unconstitutional may be a laughing matter for Kissinger, it is deadly serious for Pvt. Bradley Manning.
→ read full articleIcelandic Lawmaker Birgitta Jonsdottir on Bradley Manning and More
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
15 Apr 2013
Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir played a critical role in WikiLeaks’ release of the “Collateral Murder” video. She joins us on her first trip to the United States since a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, began its investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
→ read full articleTomas Young and the End of the Body of War
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
25 Mar 2013
Tomas Young was in the fifth day of his first deployment to Iraq when he was struck by a sniper’s bullet in Baghdad’s Sadr City. The single bullet paralyzed him from the chest down, and changed his life forever. Now, nine years later, at the age of 33, Tomas has decided to end his life. He announced recently that he will soon stop his nourishment, which comes in the form of liquid through a feeding tube.
→ read full articleStarving for Justice at Guantanamo
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
18 Mar 2013
Reports are emerging from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay that a majority of the prisoners are on a hunger strike. One hundred sixty-six remain locked up, although more than half of them have been cleared by the Obama administration for release. Yet there they languish (in some cases now in their second decade) in a hellish legal limbo, uncharged yet imprisoned.
→ read full articleOperation Condor Trial Tackles Coordinated Campaign by Latin American Dictatorships to Kill Leftists
Amy Goodman & Juan González – Democracy NOW!,
11 Mar 2013
A historic trial underway in Argentina is set to reveal new details about how Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and ’80s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and evidence shows the CIA and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset. We’re joined by John Dinges, author of “The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents.”
→ read full article
Vandana Shiva on Int’l Women’s Day: “Capitalist Patriarchy Has Aggravated Violence against Women”
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
11 Mar 2013
TRANSCEND Member Prof. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers’ rights, winning the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993. She is executive director of the Navdanya Trust.
→ read full articleAlbert Woodfox’s 40 Years of Solitary Confinement
Amy Goodman – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2013
Albert Woodfox has been in solitary confinement for 40 years locked up in the maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary known as “Angola.” This week federal Judge James Brady agreed that racial bias tainted his trial’s grand-jury selection. “Accordingly, Woodfox’s habeas relief is GRANTED,” ordered Brady. This is the third time his conviction has been overturned. Nevertheless, Woodfox remains imprisoned.
→ read full articleIsrael, Palestine and the Oscars
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
25 Feb 2013
“5 Broken Cameras” is in competition at the Oscars with an Israeli documentary, “The Gatekeepers,” a film that features interviews with the six surviving former directors of Israel’s Shin Bet, the country’s secret internal security service, which functions as sort of hybrid of the U.S. FBI and CIA. In the film, all six condemn the current practices of Israeli occupation and settlement expansion.
→ read full articleBrennan and Kiriakou, Drones and Torture
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
11 Feb 2013
John Brennan and John Kiriakou worked together years ago, but their careers have dramatically diverged. Brennan is now on track to head the CIA, while Kiriakou is headed off to prison. Each of their fates is tied to the so-called war on terror.
→ read full articleObama’s Dirty Wars Exposed at Sundance
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
28 Jan 2013
As President Barack Obama prepared to be sworn in as the next US president, two courageous journalists premiered a documentary at the annual Sundance Film Festival. “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield” reaffirms the critical role played by independent journalists like the film’s director, Rick Rowley, and its narrator and central figure, Jeremy Scahill.
→ read full articleAaron Swartz and the Freedom to Connect
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
21 Jan 2013
Aaron Swartz wanted nothing more than to change the world. He was doing just that until he ended his own life, at the age of 26, on Jan. 11 [2013]. He took a lead role in defeating SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, a federal law that would have granted corporations sweeping online censorship powers. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, responded to the sad news with a tweet: “Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.”
→ read full articleJohn Brennan, Sami Al-Hajj and the Blight of Guantanamo
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
14 Jan 2013
Dec, 2001: Shackled and hooded, he was pushed off the transport plane [at Kandahar airport], when he fell and broke his kneecap. He was forced to march anyway, into a building where people were screaming. He was put in the middle of a circle of U.S. soldiers who held guns to his head. On June 13, 2002, al-Hajj was shackled, hooded and flown to Guantanamo. En route they were denied food, water and toilets, and were beaten if they tried to sleep. At Guantanamo, the interrogations continued.
→ read full articleA Carbon Tsunami in Doha
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
10 Dec 2012
The 18th U.N. climate-change summit is taking place in the small but immensely wealthy Gulf emirate of Qatar, the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Delegates, press, dignitaries and the legions of low-paid, foreign guest workers here at the opulent Qatar National Convention Center all pass under an enormous spider, a 30-foot-high cast-bronze statue chosen by the emir’s wife for a reported $10 million.
→ read full articleMea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
26 Nov 2012
“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” a new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, investigates how a charismatic priest in Milwaukee abused more than 200 deaf children in a Catholic boarding school under his control.
→ read full article
UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk Talks About the Slaughter in Gaza (Video of the Week)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
26 Nov 2012
[TRANSCEND Member] Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, calls on the international community to help defend the people of Gaza from the ongoing U.S.-backed Israeli assault.
→ read full articleNoam Chomsky on Gaza
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
19 Nov 2012
“It’s kind of amazing and inspiring to see people managing somehow to survive, as essentially caged animals, and subject to constant, random, sadistic punishment only to humiliate them”
→ read full articleThe Growing Global Movement against Austerity
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
19 Nov 2012
The general strike that swept across Europe Nov. 14 [2012] had its genesis in the deepening crisis in Spain, Portugal and Greece. As a result of the global economic collapse in 2008, Spain is in a deep financial crisis. Unemployment has surpassed 25 percent, and among young people is estimated at 50 percent. Large banks have enjoyed bailouts while they enforce mortgages that an increasing number of Spaniards are unable to meet, provoking increasing numbers of foreclosures and attempted evictions [suicides].
→ read full articleCalifornia’s Food Fight: To Label or Not to Label GMOs
Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan - Democracy NOW!,
5 Nov 2012
Of the 11 initiatives before the 2012 California electorate, one drawing perhaps the most attention is Proposition 37, on the labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Whether or not this ballot passes could have a significant impact on how our food system is organized, favoring small, local organic-food producers (if it passes), or allowing for the increased expansion of large, corporate agribusiness (if it fails).
→ read full article
Howard Zinn on Columbus, Mark Twain – Honesty in History (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW! – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Oct 2012
Segment from Democracy NOW! aired May 13, 2009 featuring the great late historian Howard Zinn.
→ read full articleDaniel Ellsberg: I Congratulate Ecuador for Standing Up to British Empire to Protect Julian Assange
Amy Goodman & Juan Gonzalez – Democracy NOW!,
21 Aug 2012
Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower in the United States, praises Ecuador for granting political asylum to Julian Assange to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crime accusations. “I congratulate Ecuador of course for standing up to the British Empire here, for insisting that they are not a British colony, and acting as a sovereign state ought to act,” said Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
→ read full articleThe Obama Administration Torpedoes the Arms Trade Treaty
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
6 Aug 2012
In late June [2012], activists gathered in New York’s Times Square to make the absurd point, that, unbelievably, “there are more rules governing your ability to trade a banana from one country to the next than governing your ability to trade an AK-47 or a military helicopter.” So said Amnesty International USA’s Suzanne Nossel at the protest.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks, War Crimes and the Pinochet Principle
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
4 Jun 2012
Judge Garzon and Julian Assange have taken on entrenched power, whether government, military or corporate. Bradley Manning stands accused of the same. In differing degrees, their lives have forever changed, their careers, their freedoms and their reputations threatened or destroyed. This week, Hillary Clinton will be making the first official trip to Sweden in years. Why? What role is the U.S. government playing in Assange’s case?
→ read full article
Johan Galtung Reflects on Norwegian Massacre, Afghan War (Part 1) (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
23 Apr 2012
Today [17 Apr 2012] is the second day of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the anti-Muslim Norwegian militant who massacred 77 people last summer. in a shooting spree at a summer youth camp on an island organized by the ruling Labour Party. As the trial continues in Norway, we are joined by Norwegian sociologist and mathematician, Johan Galtung who is regarded as the principal founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies. His granddaughter was on the island when Breivik attacked.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks: Leaked Emails Expose Inner Workings of Private Intelligence Firm Stratfor, a “Shadow CIA” (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
5 Mar 2012
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has begun publishing what it says are 5.5 million emails obtained from the servers of Stratfor, a private U.S.-based intelligence-gathering firm known to some as a “shadow CIA” for corporations and government agencies.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks vs. Stratfor: Pursue the Truth, Not Its Messenger
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
5 Mar 2012
The White House is holding a gala dinner this week, honoring Iraq War veterans. Bradley Manning is an Iraq War vet who won’t be there. He is being court-martialed, facing life in prison or possibly death, for allegedly releasing thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks revealing the casualties of war. President Barack Obama would better serve the country by also honoring Assange and Manning. We should pursue the truth, not its messengers.
→ read full article
U.S. Maintains Embargo of Cuba after 50 Years, Despite International Condemnation (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
13 Feb 2012
There are no commemorations planned in Washington, D.C., but today marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. embargo against Cuba — the longest-running embargo in the world. On February 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy formally expanded the harsh regime of commercial and financial sanctions against Cuba that have continued to the present day.
→ read full articleThe Day the Internet Roared
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
23 Jan 2012
Wednesday, Jan. 18 [2012], marked the largest online protest in the history of the Internet. Websites from large to small “went dark” in protest of proposed legislation before the U.S. House and Senate that could profoundly change the Internet.
→ read full articleBradley Manning and the Fog of War
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
26 Dec 2011
Accused whistle-blower Pvt. Bradley Manning turned 24 Saturday [17 Dec 2011]. He spent his birthday in a pretrial military hearing that could ultimately lead to a sentence of life … or death. The prosecution offered words Manning allegedly wrote to Assange as evidence of his guilt. In the email, Manning described the leak as “one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetrical warfare.” History will no doubt use the same words as irrefutable proof of Manning’s courage.
→ read full articleClimate Apartheid
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
19 Dec 2011
The countries in attendance agreed to a schedule that would lead to an agreement by 2015, which would commit all countries to reduce emissions starting no sooner than 2020, eight years into the future. Despite optimistic pronouncements to the contrary, many believe the Kyoto Protocol died in Durban. The largest polluter in world history, the United States, never ratified the Kyoto Protocol and remains defiant.
→ read full articleListen to the People, Not the Polluters
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
12 Dec 2011
The Dirty Dozen in Durban include Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and BASF, along with industry trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the WBCSD and the American Petroleum Institute. Greenpeace highlighted these corporations and corporate umbrella groups for their presence in Durban, and for their actions throughout the global-climate-change negotiating process, in undermining meaningful progress.
→ read full articleCry, the Beloved Climate
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
5 Dec 2011
The United Nations’ annual climate summit descended on Durban, South Africa, this week, but not in time to prevent the tragic death of Qodeni Ximba. The 17-year-old was one of 10 people killed in Durban on Sunday, the night before the U.N. conference opened. Torrential rains pummeled the seaside city of 3.5 million.
→ read full articlePulling Accounts from the Unaccountable
Amy Goodman – Nation of Change,
28 Nov 2011
Just after the financial crash in late 2008, activists in Oregon started looking into the creation of a state bank, modeled after the only state-owned bank in the United States, in North Dakota. The cities of Portland and Seattle are now looking into shifting their massive municipal accounts away from the Wall Street banks. According to one report, Bank of America may lose upward of $185 billion from customers closing accounts.
→ read full article
Deadly Monopolies: Medical Ethicist Harriet Washington on How Firms Are Taking Over Life
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
21 Nov 2011
(8-min Interview) Our guest, Harriet Washington, is a medical ethicist and has just published a book that examines the extent to which what she calls the medical-industrial complex has come to control human life. In the past 30 years, more than 40,000 patents have been granted on genes alone — many more patents are pending. Washington argues that the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies patenting these genes are more concerned with profit than with the health or medical needs of patients.
→ read full articleThe Brave New World of Occupy Wall Street
Amy Goodman – truthdig,
21 Nov 2011
We got word just after 1 a.m. Tuesday [15 Nov 2011] that New York City police were raiding the Occupy Wall Street encampment. Hundreds of riot police surrounded the area. As they ripped down the tents, city sanitation workers were throwing the protesters’ belongings into dump trucks. I spotted a single book on the ground. It was marked “OWSL,” for Occupy Wall Street Library, also known as the People’s Library. By the latest count, it had accumulated 5,000 donated books. The one I found, amidst the debris of democracy that was being hauled off to the dump, was “Brave New World Revisited,” by Aldous Huxley.
→ read full article
Arundhati Roy: “Occupy Wall Street Is So Important Because It Is In the Heart of Empire”
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
21 Nov 2011
Renowned Indian writer and global justice activist Arundhati Roy is preparing to address Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday [16 Nov 2011]. She recently joined us in the studio to talk about the Occupy movement. “What they are doing becomes so important because it is in the heart of empire, or what used to be empire,” Roy said. “And to criticize and to protest against the model that the rest of the world is aspiring to is a very important and very serious business.
→ read full articleA New Bush Era or a Push Era?
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
17 Oct 2011
Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.” He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph’s demand for civil rights for African-Americans.
→ read full articlePolicing the Prophets of Wall Street
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
10 Oct 2011
On Labor Day 2008, the “Democracy Now!” news team and I were covering the first day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Thousands protested outside. The riot police had encircled the area. I ran up to the police, my credentials hanging around my neck. It wasn’t seconds before they tore me through the police line, twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me, a Secret Service agent came over and ripped the credentials from around our necks. We filed suit. This past week, the St. Paul and Minneapolis police and the Secret Service have settled with us. In addition to paying out $100,000, the St. Paul police department has agreed…
→ read full article
U.S. “Occupy” Movement Grows as Protests Reported in 847 Cities; Obama Notes “Frustration”
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
10 Oct 2011
Democracynow.org – Parallel actions inspired by New York City’s Occupy Wall Street continue to spring up across the United States. As of Friday morning, the website “Occupy Together,” hub for nationwide events in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street reported gatherings in 847 cities.
→ read full article
Cornel West on Occupy Wall Street: It’s the Makings of a U.S. Autumn Responding to the Arab Spring
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW! – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Oct 2011
“It’s impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand, or two demands. We’re talking about a democratic awakening,” said Dr. Cornel West when he spoke with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman during a visit Tuesday night to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. Some critics have expressed frustration at the protest’s lack of a clear and unified message. But the Princeton University professor emphasized that “you’re talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what’s going on through a set of different lens, and then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be.
→ read full article99 Percenters Occupy Wall Street
Amy Goodman - Truthdig,
26 Sep 2011
David Graeber teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has authored “Debt: The First 5,000 Years.” Graeber points out that, in the midst of the financial crash of 2008, enormous debts between banks were renegotiated. He said: “Debts between the very wealthy or between governments can always be renegotiated and always have been throughout world history. … It’s when you have debts owed by the poor to the rich that suddenly debts become a sacred obligation, more important than anything else. The idea of renegotiating them becomes unthinkable.”
→ read full articleCheney, Rumsfeld and the Dark Art of Propaganda
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
5 Sep 2011
“When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it,” wrote Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s Reich minister of propaganda, in 1941. Former Vice President Dick Cheney seems to have taken the famous Nazi’s advice in his new book, “In My Time.”
→ read full articleDavid House on Bradley Manning, Secret WikiLeaks Grand Jury, and U.S. Surveillance
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW! - TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2011
On the eve of the extradition hearing for WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange in London, we spend an exclusive hour with David House, who co-founded the Bradley Manning Support Network after U.S. Army Private Manning was arrested for allegedly releasing classified U.S. military documents to WikiLeaks. House refused to testify last month in Alexandria, Virginia, before a grand jury hearing on WikiLeaks and the disclosure of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks, Wimbledon and War
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
11 Jul 2011
Last Saturday [2 Jul 2011] was sunny in London, and the crowds were flocking to Wimbledon and to the annual Henley Regatta. Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blower website Wikileaks.org, was making his way by train from house arrest in Norfolk, three hours away, to join me and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek for a public conversation about WikiLeaks, the power of information and the importance of transparency in democracies.
→ read full article