Democracy Now! Monday, March 23, 2009

Today's Headlines

• Report: US Will Appoint “Afghan PM” to Bypass Hamid Karzai
• Obama: Exit Strategy Needed for Afghanistan
• Obama: Bush-Cheney Policies Haven’t Made Us Safer
• Geithner to Unveil Plan to Purchase $1 Trillion in Toxic Assets
• White House Officials Oppose Tax on Wall Street Bonuses
• World Bank: 2009 Will Be “Very Dangerous” Year
• Israel Accused of Targeting Medical Personnel in Gaza
• IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot at Gaza Rescuers
• Soldier: Israeli Rabbis Turned Gaza Invasion into Religious War
• Antiwar British MP Barred from Canada
• Family of Slain Iraqi Guard Sues Blackwater
• Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods Fight Proposed Labor Law
• NYC Pays $1.5 Million to Families of Two Killed by NYPD
• Four Oakland Police Officers Killed in Shoot-Out
• Protests Mark 6th Anniversary of US Invasion of Iraq

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  "The Zombie Ideas Have Won" - Paul Krugman on $1 Trillion Geithner Plan to Buy Toxic Bank Assets

  Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is preparing to unveil a plan today to purchase as much as $1 trillion in troubled mortgages and other assets from banks. The government is reaching out to hedge funds, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds to help buy the toxic assets. The Obama administration has described the plan as a public-private partnership, but most of the actual money will be put up by the government. We speak with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman. [includes rush transcript–partial]

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  Water Rights Activists Blast Istanbul World Water Forum as "Corporate Trade Show to Promote Privatization"

  Sunday was World Water Day and marked the close of a week-long gathering held in Istanbul, Turkey to discuss water policy at a time when over a billion people lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion people lack water for proper sanitation. Activists from the People’s Water Forum, an alternative formation representing the rural poor, the environment and organized labor, slammed the official event as a non-inclusive, corporate-driven fraud pushing for water privatization and called for a more open, democratic and transparent forum.

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  Dam Politics: India's Leading Activist Medha Patkar Takes on Corporate Control of Water

  We speak with Medha Patkar, one of India’s best-known and best-loved social activists. She is the iconic founder of the Save the Narmada Movement and the National Alliance of People’s Movements. She led the nonviolent struggle against the Sardar Sarovar dam project over the Narmada River for more than two decades and continues to fight for the rights of some 300,000 people, those already made homeless and those facing displacement by the dam. Patkar has organized several mass rallies, demonstrations and hunger strikes, survived numerous jail terms and police violence, and won many important victories.