Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested At the RNC

OR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

www.democracynow.org

 

September 1, 2008

 

Contact:

Denis Moynihan 917-549-5000

Mike Burke 646-552-5107, mike@democracynow.org

 

ST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul , Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

 

Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfully detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman's crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

 

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul .

 

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar.  These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman's office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

 

Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

 

During the demonstration in which they were arrested law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. Several dozen others were also arrested during this action.

 

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States . She has received journalism's top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar  is a transparent attempt to intimidate  journalists from the nation's leading independent news outlet.

 

Democracy Now! is a nationally syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.

 

Video of Amy Goodman's Arrest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

##

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/08/26/new-evidence-contradicts-official-explanation-for-us-spy-satellite-shoot-down.html

New Evidence Contradicts Official Explanation for U.S. Spy Satellite Shoot-Down

Newly released documents show that officials knew a satellite falling towards Earth posed no threat

 

By Kevin Whitelaw

Posted August 26, 2008

 

When the Pentagon ordered a Navy ship to shoot down a crippled U.S. spy satellite last February, it claimed the operation was necessary to prevent a harmful fuel from being dispersed in the atmosphere. At the time, critics charged that the Bush administration was using the toxic fuel as an excuse to demonstrate missile-defense and antisatellite capabilities.

 

Now, there is new evidence that the critics were very likely right.

 

Astrophysicist Yousaf Butt obtained U.S. government documents showing that NASA's own analysis concluded that the satellite's fuel tank was expected to burn up completely during re-entry—even though NASA probably overestimated the tank's chances of survival. "Despite its optimistic oversimplifications, the released study indicates that the tank would certainly have demised high up in the atmosphere," Butt, a staff scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, writes in an article for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

 

Up to now, U.S. officials had refused to release any of the prelaunch analyses regarding the fuel tank, claiming they contained sensitive information.

 

But Butt says that the newly released documents clearly contradict the official explanation for the shoot-down, which was seen at the time as provocative and risky. The Bush administration had protested loudly when China conducted its own antisatellite weapons test by shooting down an aging weather satellite in January 2007. One major concern was the amount of space debris generated by the fragmented satellite.

 

Beyond the stated concern about the toxic fuel, U.S. officials also were probably trying to prevent any fragments of the highly classified National Reconnaissance Agency imagery satellite from falling into the hands of U.S. adversaries.

 

There were some additional inconsistencies surrounding government officials' accounts of the operation. In the days before the launch, several U.S. officials warned that bad weather could delay the mission.

But when U.S. News interviewed the captain of the guided-missile cruiser that fired the sophisticated Aegis missile into space, he was puzzled by those reports. "I'm not sure where all of the heavy weather reports came. It was never really heavy weather," Capt. R. M. Hendrickson said at the time.