Democracy Now! television program for Thursday, December 13, 2001
Community Radio Advocates Regain Control of Pacifica Network, As a Legally Binding Agreementis Reached to Transfer Board Majority Control A historic agreement was reached yesterday between all plaintiffs in four lawsuits against the five-station PacificaRadio network and the Pacifica foundation’s board of directors. The agreement returns official control of thePacifica network, the nation’s oldest public broadcaster, to community radio advocates. Yesterday’s settlement callsfor an interim board, controlled by the current minority, to serve for fifteen months while new, democraticstructures are implemented for an elected national Pacifica board.
As the World Pays New Attention to Women in Afghanistan, Muslim Women Debate Feminism Andfundamentalism In the last three months, as the US-led war in Afghanistan has escalated, the situation of Muslim women has taken theworld’s center stage. With many Afghan men killed in fighting, women now make up 54 percent of Afghanistan’spopulation. Many Afghan women have led lives constrained by both ancient customs and poverty: the female literacyrate is less than 5 percent. But before the country was devoured by violence, Afghan women were granted the vote in1929 in a constitutional monarchy. The Afghan king made the head scarf, sometimes known as a burka, optional in 1959.The country’s constitution institutionalized women’s right to education. By 1979, some 50 percent of college studentsin Kabul were female. Before the mujahideen took over the country in 1992, women accounted for 70 percent ofteachers, 50 percent of government workers, and 40 percent of medical doctors, according to the UN.
The CIA and U.S. and British Special Forces Move Into Kandahar As in-Fighting Betweenanti-Taliban Forces Continues British and US special forces, along with CIA operatives, entered Kandahar yesterday, after staffing checkpointsoutside the city to search for al-Qaida fighters and senior Taliban members.
U.N. Accuses U.S. Ally Pakistan of Forcing Refugees Back to Afghanistan, in Violation Ofinternational Law A potential humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Afghanistan’s largest refugee camp as new arrivals from outlyingvillages pour daily into a camp already filled with more than 200,000 refugees.
Community Radio Advocates Regain Control of Pacifica Network, As a Legally Binding Agreementis Reached to Transfer Board Majority Control 1:25:27.6
As Two Leaders of the Jewish Defense League Are Arrested for Plotting to Bomb a Los Angelesmosque and An Arsonist Hits the Arab American Action Network, a Debate On Media Coverage of the Middle East 10 Israelis were killed and up to 30 wounded, many critically, when Palestinian gunmen ambushed their bus as it waspassing the ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement of Emmanuel, near Nablus.