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Top Journalist Killed in Lebanon, Opposition Calls For President
to Quit
Indigenous Uprising: The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia
Famed Brazilian Artist Augusto Boal on the "Theater
of the Oppressed"
Top Journalist Killed in Lebanon, Opposition Calls
For President to Quit
It is being called the highest profile assassination in
Lebanon since the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Journalist Samir Qasir died after his car exploded. Now, calls
are increasing for the country's president to step down. We'll
speak for a colleague of Qasir's, Hisham Melhem, correspondent
for an Nahar newspaper.
A prominent anti-Syrian journalist was killed by a car bomb
yesterday in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Samir Qasir was
a longtime columnist at the major daily newspaper an Nahar.
In 2001, Syrian security forces seized Qasir's passport and
threatened to arrest him for criticizing Syria and the police
state in Lebanon. Today, journalists, politicians and supporters
held an hour-long silent sit-in in central Beirut's main square.
Qasir was the highest profile assassination target since
Labanese former Prime Minister Rafik al Hariri was killed
in February of this year. Massive protests following Hariri's
death forced Syria to remove its troops stationed in Lebanon,
ending a 29-year military occupation.
Opposition leaders accuse the Syrian government and its supporters
in Lebanon of carrying out the killings of both Hariri and
Qasir.
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud is a strong supporter of
the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Parliamentary elections going
on now will likely make Hariri's son, Saad, prime minister,
but will not go far to encourage Lahoud to resign.
Indigenous Uprising: The Rebellion Grows in Bolivia
Rebellion is in the air in Latin America's poorest country,
Bolivia. For weeks, indigenous-led protests have rocked the
country and have brought the government to a near shutdown.
The protests began as demonstrations calling for nationalization
of the country's natural gas resources but that was just the
spark for a much bigger war; a war over the rights of the
country's majority indigenous population. We go to Cochabamba
for a report from human rights activist Jim Shultz of the
Democracy Center.
Bolivia's US-backed President, Carlos Mesa, is scrapping
to maintain control of the government and there are rumors
in the air of coup plots.
Late yesterday, Mesa signed an emergency decree ordering
a referendum on greater autonomy for the richest area of the
country and a vote in mid-October to elect members for an
assembly to rewrite the constitution. The protests have cut
off the capital from the airport and blockades have shut down
two-thirds of the country's highways.
Famed Brazilian Artist Augusto Boal on the "Theater
of the Oppressed"
We are joined in our studio by one of Latin America's most
famed dissident artists, Brazilian Augusto Boal. He reflects
back on his life in exile and his use of theater as a tool
of resistance.
Brazilian artist and activist Augusto Boal sees theater as
a dialogue and an opportunity to act out social change. Drawing
on Paulo Friere's pedagogy of the oppressed, Boal developed
Theater of the Oppressed out of his experimental work at the
Arena Theater in Sao Paulo during the 1950s and 60s. Boal
took the theater to factories and farms throughout Brazil
and developed plays around the experiences of people silenced
by poverty and oppression.
Boal's plays were increasingly censored by the government
and in 1971, the military dictatorship imprisoned him for
four months. When he was released he was forced into exile
and spent fifteen years in Argentina, Portugal and France
before returning to Rio.
Theater of the Oppressed techniques--from QUOTE "Invisible
Theater" on the streets to solution-oriented "Forum
Theater"--spread around the world. Boal is in New York
this week running a theater workshop at the Brecht Forum and
he joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy
Now.
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.
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