Democracy Now! December 11, 2002

9:00-9:01 Billboard 9:01-9:04 Headlines 9:04-9:05 One Minute Music Break 9:05-9:11: To mark International Human Rights Day, religious leaders and anti-war activists from across the country staged over 150 vigils, acts of civil disobedience and marches across some forty states, from Alaska to Florida. The day s actions were organized by United for Peace, a new national coalition of peace and social justice organizations. In New York City about 100 people were arrested in front of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. In Chicago 20 protesters were arrested outside a federal building. Nine more arrested in Sacramento California. Well, yesterday we received a call from a holding cell on 51st Street in Manhattan. Daniel Ellsberg was on the line. Ellsberg is a long-time peace activist who is best known for risking life in imprisonment by leaking the top-secret Pentagon Papers that exposed the truth about the Vietnam War. Democracy Now! producer Mike Burke answered the phone Tape: Daniel Ellsberg, in 1969, risked going to life for prison by smuggling out a 7,000 page top-secret study of U.S. decision making in Vietnam, known as the Pentagon Papers. Tape: Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center, a national network that draws on Jewish wisdom to seek peace, pursue justice, and heal the earth. Tape: Faiz Khan, member of the Board of Directors of the ASMA Society for Islamic Spirituality and serves as the Assistant Imam at the al-Farah Mosque in Manhattan and at the Islamic Center of Long Island. Tape: Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry s ice cream and a founding member of Businesses for Social Responsibility Tape: Rev. Peter Laarman, senior minister at Judson Memorial Church, NYC 9:12-9:20: Former President Jimmy Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday in Oslo. He became the third U.S. president to win the award, joining Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. In his acceptance speech, Carter warned a U.S. attack against Iraq will have catastrophic consequences. It is clear that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus. Imperfect as it may be, there is no doubt that this can best be done through the United Nations We must remember that today there are at least eight nuclear powers on earth, and three of them are threatening to their neighbors in areas of great international tension. For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences. The former president has repeatedly voiced opposition to the Bush administration s plans to attack Iraq. But some say Bush is merely carrying out the Carter Doctrine. Former Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy writes in the current issue of The Progressive: Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter helped set the stage for some of the terrorism and violence that plagues our world today. It was Carter who said that oil resources of the Persian Gulf War were vital to U.S. security and pledged in his Carter Doctrine to defend U.S interests there by any means necessary including military force. George W. Bush is merely carrying out that doctrine. Tape: Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner Phone Guest: Colman McCarthy, former editorial writer at the Washington Post and the founder of the Center for Teaching Peace, which helps schools begin or broaden peace studies programs. He wrote a piece titled St. Jimmy the Lesser in the December issue of the Progressive. 9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break 9:21-9:40: Emmy award-winning actor Martin Sheen, who starts in the West Wing joined over 100 Hollywood celebrities endorsing a declaration against a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. Yesterday Martin Sheen, Barbara Striesand, Kim Basinger, Harry Belafonte, Matt Damon, Uma Thurman and Danny Glover sent an anti-war letter to President George W. Bush. On Monday, Democracy Now! spoke to Sheen in Baltimore at the funeral of legendary anti-war and anti-nuclear activist Philip Berrigan, who died on Friday. Guest: Martin Sheen, West Wing actor and friend of the Berrigan family. 9:40-9:41 One-minute music break 9:41-9:58: The rich get richer. Fraud, corruption, intimidation. Buying politicians. The white man wins again. Those are some of the subject headings in a special report in this week s Time magazine. But the article is not about Enron, WorldCom, or Halliburton. It s not about our campaign finance system, and it s not about a new war in Iraq. The article is about how white men are making millions off the Indian casino industry, while hundreds of thousands of Native Americans continue living in poverty. The special report begins: Imagine if you will, Congress passing a bill to make Indian tribes more self-sufficient that gives billions of dollars to the white backers of Indian businesses and nothing to hundreds of thousands of Native Americans living in poverty. Or a bill that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to one Indian tribe with a few dozen members and not a penny to a tribe with hundreds of thousands of members. Or a bill that allows select Indian tribes to create businesses that reap millions of dollars in profits and pay no federal income tax at the same time that the tribes collect millions in aid from American taxpayers. Can t imagine Congress passing such a bill? It did. That s from the article Wheel of Misfortune. We re joined in our firehouse studio by the two journalists who did the investigation. Donald Barlett and James Steele are one of the most widely acclaimed investigative reporting teams in American journalism. Their work has earned them dozens of national awards and they are the only reporting team in history to have received two Pulitzer Prizes for newspaper reporting. They are also the authors of the best-selling book: America: What Went Wrong, which remained on The New York Times best seller list for eight months. [[They have worked together for over three decades and since 1997 have been at Time, Inc. as Editors-at-large.] Guest: Donald Barlett, editor-at-large, Time. Barlett co-authored the special report in this week s Time magazine, Wheel of Misfortune. He has received two Pulitzer prizes and is co-author of the book, America: What Went Wrong. Guest: James Steele, editor-at-large, Time. Steele co-authored the special report in this week s Time magazine, Wheel of Misfortune. He has received two Pulitzer prizes and is co-author of the book, America: What Went Wrong. Guest: Lyle Berman, Chairman and CEO of Lakes Entertainment, Inc., a casino development company. According to Barlett and Steele s report: Berman gambled on Indian gaming with his 1990 decision to join forces with a Minnesota tribe, the Mille Lacs band of Ojibwe Indians and build a casino on its reservation 70 miles north of Minneapolis. Tape: Russell Means, American Indian Movement leader. Recorded Nov. 20, 2002 on the Pine Ridge Reservation recorded by Bret Baer and Activist Media Project. Links: Wheel of Misfortune by Donald Barlett and James Steele 9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Ana Nogiera and Alex Wolfe. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer.