“Extraordinary rendition” is White House-speak for kidnapping. Just ask Maher Arar. He’s a Canadian citizen who was “rendered” by the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured for almost a year.
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U.S. Army Reserve Spc. Chancellor Keesling died in Iraq on June 19, 2009, from “a non-combat related incident,” according to the Pentagon. Keesling had killed himself.
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Climate-change activists, from pranksters to presidents, are stepping up the pressure by staging elaborate stunts.
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Lt. Dan Choi doesn’t want to lie. Choi, an Iraq war veteran and a graduate of West Point, declared last March 19 on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” “I am gay.” Under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” regulations, those three words are enough to get Choi kicked out of the military.
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A social worker from New York City was arrested last week while in Pittsburgh for the G-20 protests, then subjected to an FBI raid this week at home—all for using Twitter.
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Journalist Christian Parenti responds to our interview with Kevin Bales, founder of Free The Slaves
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South Africa has also expressed concerns. The country’s foreign affairs minister said if the U.S. did kidnap Aristide it will “have serious consequences and ramifications for the respect of the rule of law and democracy the world over.” [includes transcript]
New York Times reporter Steven Kinzer discusses how the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran. Kinzer says “I think it was the success of the Iran coup and the Guatamalan one the folllowed that sent the US off on this direction of covert action and regime change.” [includes transcript]
In April 2002, a team of Irish filmmakers were in Caracas, Venezuela working on a documentary about president Hugo Chavez. They got more than they expected: they captured on film an attempted coup of the Venezuelan government and highlighted the role of the media in the coup. We play an excerpt from “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
Pedro Pietri died on Wednesday at the age of 59. We hear him reading his work in 1968 and Democracy Now co-host Juan Gonzalez reads Pietri’s epic poem “Puerto Rican Obituary.”
Mayor Jason West talks about why he feels it is his constitutional duty to continue solemnizing same sex marriages even though he was arrested Wednesday for breaking the state’s marriage law. [includes transcript]