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> Fri., Sept. 5, 2003
FSRN
FREE SPEECH RADIO NEWS
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Today's lead stories:
A Pay Raise for Congress
Verizon Workers Win Job Security
More Kashmir Violence - 61 Dead
Constant Fear for Iraqis in Daily Life
Part 3: Peru: Lori Berenson Speaks to FSRN
Free Speech Radio News Headlines
Conscientious Objector Facing Military Prosecution - Sara
Olson
UN Petition to Stop Pushing Poor Nations into Bad Trade Deals
- Haider Rizvi
President Bush Signed into Law the Prison Rape Elimination
Act - Renee Feltz
U.S. Senate Takes Step Towards Curbing the New Media Ownership
Rules - Craig Murphy
[top]
A Pay Raise for Congress (3:43)
After a closed Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill, Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz confirmed recent reports
that the further occupation of Iraq is going to cost billions
of dollars more. Reports say that possibly as early as next
week the Bush administration will propose to Congress an appropriation
for Iraq of somewhere between 60 and 70 billion dollars. Republican
Congressional leaders say they will approve whatever money
is needed as they equated the so called War on Terrorism with
World War II. And while the additional 60 to 70 billions dollar
request would push the nation’s budget deficit over
a half trillion dollars, Congress is about to give itself
a pay raise, this as it stalls on raising the federal minimum
wage as Mitch Jeserich reports from Capitol Hill.
[top]
Verizon Workers Win Job Security (3:46)
Unions representing nearly eighty thousand employees with
telephone giant Verizon have a tentative new contract. The
deal, which was reached last night more than a month after
a previous labor agreement expired, will help maintain health
benefits for workers, will boost wages and pensions, and most
importantly for union members, will maintain job security.
John Hamilton has details.
[top]
More Kashmir Violence - 61 Dead (3:50)
Sixteen people were killed in continuing violence in Indian-administered
Kashmir yesterday. These latest deaths brings to at least
61 the number of people killed in a wave of violence in Kashmir
since Saturday when Indian troops gunned down rebel commander
Gazi Baba. India and Pakistan’s recent overtures toward
peace have been broken by this fresh wave of attacks in the
Kashmir valley, the flashpoint of Indo-Pak tension. Since
Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee made his peace offering to
Pakistan from Kashmir this spring, the two countries have
been encouraged by a decline in violence in Indian administered
Kashmir. But as Shahnawaz Khan reports from Srinigar, Kashmir's
capital, the motions towards peace have now almost wholly
disintegrated.
[top]
Constant Fear for Iraqis in Daily Life (3:57)
The London Telegraph reported today that German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder says that calls from within his country
for German troops to join any U.N. force in Iraq make him,
"want to puke." This as today, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld helicoptered into Tikrit. Rumsfeld’s
unannounced tour is being reported as a morale booster for
US troops and an evaluation of the pressing security needs
for American troops and Iraqi civilians. Iraqis face the threat
of being killed, harmed or imprisoned by American forces,
and families report hiding their precious properties if American
soldiers enter their houses searching for weapons. Iraqis
driving their cars have learned to take extra care to evade
moving American military vehicles, fearing that they may crash
their cars. According to many accounts, this sort of constant
fear and caution has become a part of daily life in Iraq as
FSRN correspondent Ahmed Al-Rawi reports.
[top]
Part 3: Peru: Lori Berenson Speaks to FSRN (3:54)
In it’s final report, Peru’s Truth And Reconciliation
Commission condemned the massacres in Lima prisons committed
in 1986 by armed forces who killed hundreds of political prisoners.
Today, approximately 2, 000 political prisoners still remain
behind bars. Lori Berenson, a US citizen and political prisoner
herself, told FSRN that the they are living relics of Peru’s
political violence. Prison life from 1992-2000 meant being
enclosed in the cell for 23 and a half hours a day. Trays
of food were slid through a small opening at the bottom of
the bars, and the guards who delivered it wore ski masks.
Only immediate family members could visit prisoners for 1/2
an hour each month, and visits were divided by partitions
so that prisoners could not touch or hug family members. From
Lima, Peru, Nicole Karsin has this final report in our three
part special examining the findings of Peru’s Truth
and Reconciliation Commission.
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