Democracy Now! Thursday, July 24, 2008

Today's Headlines

• House OKs Housing Aid After Bush Drops Opposition
• Military Town Foreclosures 4 Times the US Average
• Woman Commits Suicide Before Foreclosure
• Inflation Offsets New Minimum Wage Increase
• Dems Push Withdrawal of Workplace Toxin Rules
• Obama Avoids Gaza Strip on Mideast Trip
• Senate Drops Pressure on Chevron in Burma
• Bolivia Presses US on Interference Charges
• Oil Tanker Spills Near New Orleans
• Cancer Researcher Warns on Cell Phone Use
• Appeals Court Rejects Abu-Jamal Re-Trial
• Protesters Target Fox News for Coverage of African Americans

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  Death by Taser: Police Accused of Cover-Up in Death of African American Man Shocked Nine Times While in Handcuffs

  Police in the city of Winnfield, Louisiana are being accused of covering up the death of twenty-one-year-old Baron Pikes. He died in police custody on January 21 after being shot nine times with a taser gun while in handcuffs. The city police chief initially claimed that Pikes was high on crack cocaine and PCP at the time of his death. But the coroner recently ruled Pikes’ death to be a homicide, after an autopsy determined there were no drugs in his system. The coroner also determined that the police shot Pikes twice after he lost consciousness. We speak with Chicago Tribune reporter Howard Witt, who broke the story nationally; Kayshon Collins, Baron Pikes’ stepmother; and Winnfield Police Lieutenant Charles Curry. [includes rush transcript–partial]

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  Friend of Mexican Immigrant Beaten to Death in Pennsylvania Gives Eyewitness Account of Attack

  Luis Ramirez, a twenty-five-year-old Mexican immigrant, was beaten to death last week by a group of teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. He was walking home last Monday night when six white high school students brutally beat him while yelling racial slurs. Despite eyewitness testimony, no charges have been filed. We speak with Arielle Garcia, a friend of Ramirez who witnessed the attack.

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  The Forgotten War: Sonali Kolhatkar on Why Afghanistan is "Just as Bad as Iraq"

  Coming on the heels of Barack Obama’s highly publicized visit to Afghanistan—what he calls a central front in the so-called war on terror—we play an address by Pacifica radio host Sonali Kolhatkar, one of this country’s leading voices against the occupation of Afghanistan and co-author of the book Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence. She spoke last month at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis about what she called widespread misconceptions about the occupation of Afghanistan.