Check out all of our coverage of the first coup d’etat in Central America in more than a quarter-century.
Filed under News
The first coup d’etat in Central America in more than a quarter-century occurred last Sunday in Honduras. It was led by a graduate of the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, a military facility that has trained some of Latin America’s worst torturers, murderers and human rights abusers.
Filed under Weekly Column
Tools of mass communication that were once the province of governments and corporations now fit in your pocket. As these technologies have developed, so too has the ability to monitor, filter, censor and block them.
Filed under Weekly Column
The Environmental Protection Agency has declared a public health emergency in the town of Libby, Montana, where hundreds of people have died from asbestos contamination. It is the first time such a declaration has been made by the EPA. For decades, W.R. Grace and Co. mined asbestos-contaminated vermiculite in Libby.
See extended Democracy Now! coverage
Filed under DN Archives
As the Obama administration pushes for a vote on health-care reform before Congress recesses in August, has health-industry money too thoroughly polluted the process for anything good to come of it?
Filed under Weekly Column
Ken Saro-Wiwa and Alberto Pizango never met, but they are united by a passion for the preservation of their people and their land, and by the fervor with which they were targeted by their respective governments.
Filed under Weekly Column
Dr. Tiller was assassinated while in church in Wichita, Kan., on Sunday, targeted for legally performing abortions. His death might have been prevented simply through enforcement of existing laws.
Filed under Weekly Column
Profits are higher than ever at oil companies Chevron and Shell. Yet across the globe, from the Ecuadorian jungle, to the Niger Delta in Nigeria, to the courtrooms and streets of New York and San Ramon, Calif., people are fighting back against the world’s oil giants.
Filed under Weekly Column
More Blog Posts »
In many ways Victoria Clarke has become the voice of the Pentagon. As the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Clarke oversees daily press briefings. She has also been credited with forming the idea of embedded journalists.
Her ability to spin the news should come as little surprise. Clarke came to the Pentagon after a successful career at PR giant Hill and Knowlton.
You may recall Hill and Knowlton and its role before the first Gulf War. A decade ago, Hill & Knowlton crafted a PR campaign that purposely mislead Congress to help justify the bombing of Iraq.
At a Congressional hearing, Hill and Knowlton represented a woman who testified she saw Iraqi soldiers throw Kuwaiti babies out of hospital incubators. But what Hill and Knowlton didn’t say was that the 15-year-old girl identified as Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and that what she said wasn’t true. She had left Kuwaiti long before the Iraqi soldiers arrived.
The White House has also tapped another PR pro, Margaret Tutwiler, to serve as spokesperson to the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq.
Tutwiler served as the State Department’s spokesperson during the first Gulf War. She also helped shape the media strategy of the Bush/Cheney campaign during the recount of the presidential vote in Florida in 2000. She is currently ambassador to Morocco.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org
. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions,
contact us.