Check out all of our coverage of the first coup d’etat in Central America in more than a quarter-century.
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Brett Bursey goes on trial today for simply holding a sign that read “No War For Oil” outside a President Bush speech last October.
Bursey is being charged with the federal crime of threatening the president’s safety.
He is believed to be the first protester to ever be arrested on these charges for simply holding a sign.
He faces six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Back in October he was originally charged by the state with trespassing at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. But the state dropped the trespassing charges perhaps because they knew the courts would rule in Bursey’s favor.
In fact they did 33 years ago when he was also arrested at the same airport for protesting Richard Nixon. He was charged with trespassing. Bursey challeneged his arrest and the state Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
But much has changed since then.
After the state dropped the trespassing charges the local US Attorney, Strom Thurmond Jr., filed the much more severe charges of threatening the safety of the president.
The federal charges have not sat well with some members of Congress.
A few weeks ago Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank and 10 other members of Congress wrote a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft condemning the arrest. They wrote: “This prosecution smacks of the use of the Sedition Acts two hundred years ago to protect the President from political discomfort. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. We urge you to drop this prosecution based so clearly on the political views being expressed by the individual who is being prosecuted.”
Today Brett Bursey goes to trial. We spoke to him earlier this morning.
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