Home > Programs
> Democracy
Now! > Wed., May 5, 2004
Democracy Now!
ATTN: ALL STATIONS
From: Democracy Now!
Re: Rundown 5-5-04
PRSS Channel: A67.7
Rep. Maxine Waters Calls on Congress Not To Recognize New
Haitian Government
U.S. Assassinates Two Shiite Clerics Organizing Nonviolent
Resistance
Plutonium Files: How the U.S. Secretly Fed Radioactivity
to Thousands of Americans
Rep. Maxine Waters Calls on Congress Not To Recognize
New Haitian Government
The new US-supported Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue
arrived in Washington Tuesday for his visit since the U.S.
helped oust President Jean Bertand Aristide. Waters is calling
on members of Congress not to recognize the new prime minister.
In February, Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide was
removed from power in what he calls a modern kidnapping in
the service of a coup d'etat backed by the United States.
Now, government officials have brought the new US-supported
Prime Minister Gerard Latortue to Washington to meet with
members of Congress, top Bush administration officials, international
financial institutions and members of the Congressional Black
Caucus.
This comes as Haiti descends even deeper into poverty and
Aristide supporters are reportedly being killed in the streets.
- Rep. Maxine Waters, Democratic Congresswoman from California
serving in her seventh term. She is the Chief Deputy Whip
of the Democratic Party and serves as Co-Chair of the House
Democratic Steering Committee. She is the former chair of
the Congressional Black Caucus.
U.S. Assassinates Two Shiite Clerics Organizing Nonviolent
Resistance
As the tense standoff between the United States and radical
Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr continues in Iraq we go to Najaf
and Hilla to get a report from Aaron Glantz of Free Speech
Radio News on the killing of two Sheikhs by U.S. soldiers
in Hilla.
The tense standoff between the United States and radical
Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr continued this week in Iraq.
In the holy city of Karbala, militiamen of the Mahdi army
loyal to Sadr fired mortar bombs, rocket-propelled grenades
and machineguns at U.S. and Bulgarian positions. Hospital
sources said three gunmen were killed and nine wounded.
This followed similar clashes in Najaf earlier this week
in which at least five militiamen were killed.
The gun battle in Karbala came hours after rival Shiite political
leaders called on Sadr to disarm in favor of a political solution.
U.S. forces have vowed to capture or kill Sadr, whose Mahdi
army controls Najaf, nearby Kufa and Karbala and maintains
a presence in many other cities, including Baghdad.
In Najaf, two top ShIite clerics were assassinated this week,
Aaron Glanzt of Free Speech Radio News reports from Najaf
and Hilla.
Plutonium Files: How the U.S. Secretly Fed Radioactivity
to Thousands of Americans
Denver-based journalist Eileen Welsome reveals how as a
reporter for the tiny Albuquerque Tribune (circulation 35,000)
she uncovered one of the country's great Cold War secrets:
the U.S. government had knowingly exposed thousands of human
Guinea pigs with radiation poisoning including 18 Americans
who had plutonium injected directly into their bloodstream.
In a Massachusetts school, seventy-three disabled children
were spoon-fed oatmeal laced with radioactive isotopes.
In an upstate New York hospital, an eighteen-year-old woman
believing she was being treated for a pituitary disorder,
was injected with plutonium.
At a Tennessee clinic, 829 pregnant women were served "vitamin
cocktails" containing radioactive iron, as part of their
regular treatment.
No these are not acts of terrorism by common criminals.
These are just some of the secret human radiation experiments
that the U.S. government conducted on unsuspecting Americans
for decades as part of its atom bomb program.
In a gruesome plot that spanned 30 years, doctors and scientists
working with the US atomic weapons program, exposed thousands
of unwilling and unknowing Americans to radiation poisoning
to study its effects.
For years, the experiments by the U.S. government and the
identities of their human guinea pigs were covered up.
Then after a six-year investigation, investigative reporter
Eileen Welsome uncovered the names of 18 people who were injected
with plutonium in the 1940s without their knowledge by federal
government scientists. In 1993, she published her finding
in The Albuquerque Tribune and later received the Pulitzer
Prize for her work.
Another six years later, Welsome published "The Plutonium
Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War."
The book gives a detailed account of the unspeakable scientific
trials conducted by the U.S. government that reduced thousands
of American men, women, and even children to nameless specimens.
- Eileen Welsome, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and author
of "The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments
in the Cold War."
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
|
Listen
to the show
Help
whole
show
