Democracy Now! is an independent, daily global news hour anchored by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. We air live weekdays 8-9AM ET and rebroadcast throughout the day on nearly 1,400 TV & radio stations in 43 countries. Here we post excerpts from our interviews and key moments from our daily show.
I call Hollywood the unofficial ministry of propaganda for this country. We don’t need an official ministry of propaganda, because the American dream ideology is so powerful. No one has to force Hollywood executives to make propaganda. They do it because they’re basically in agreement with the Pentagon.
“There are very powerful forces in our country who stand for denial, not just climate denial, but generational denial, Vietnam denial. There are forces that stand for ethnic cleansing, but not just ethnic cleansing, but also for historic cleansing. And that is what has happened. It serves their purpose because they have no interest in the true history of a war in which they sent thousands to their deaths and, almost before the blood had dried, were moving up the national security ladder and showing up for television interviews to advertise what they called the next cakewalks. Only the blood was caked. …
“Our systems—politics, media, culture—are totally out of balance today because of our collective refusal to admit that the Vietnam War was wrong and that the peace movement was right. In the absence of an established voice for peace in all the institutions, the neoconservatives will fill the foreign policy vacuum.”
- Legendary civil rights and antiwar activist Tom Hayden, who spent decades shaping movements against war and for social justice, speaking in 2015. Hayden died in October 2016 after a lengthy illness.
Playing the national anthem and having the teams line up before games, it has a long and hallowed history that goes back to the days of Jersey Shore and Justin Bieber. I mean, we’re talking 2009. I mean, Fast & Furious 4 came out in 2009. That’s how long players have lined up for the anthem. And, yes, it comes out of a partnership between the Department of Defense and the National Football League.
Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation magazine, speaking with Democracy Now! Monday. Find the full interview and transcript here.
The last time we had this kind of rhetoric was George W. Bush with the axis of evil. It was immediately followed by the Iraq War, which was the most disastrous single step of American military action and, quote, ‘diplomacy,’ or anti-diplomacy, in modern times. So this is a setup, again, for war, for conflict. And it is extraordinarily ignorant and dangerous. Iran is in compliance with the agreement that was reached.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs responds to Trump’s remarks on Iran at the United Nations General Assembly. Read the full story here.
Why is Iran regarded here as the greatest threat to world peace? Well, we have an authoritative answer to that from the intelligence community, which provides regular assessments to Congress on the global strategic situation. And a couple of years ago, their report—of course, they always discuss Iran. And the reports are pretty consistent. They say Iran has very low military spending, even by the standards of the region, much lower than Saudi Arabia, Israel, others. Its strategy is defensive. They want to deter attacks long enough for diplomacy to be entertained. The conclusion, intelligence conclusion—this is a couple years ago—is: If they are developing nuclear weapons, which we don’t know, but if they are, it would be part of their deterrent strategy. Now, why is the United States and Israel even more so concerned about a deterrent? Who’s concerned about a deterrent? Those who want to use force. Those who want to be free to use force are deeply concerned about a potential deterrent. So, yes, Iran is the greatest threat to world peace, might deter our use of force.
In Japan, tens of thousands of people gathered on the island of Okinawa Sunday to demand the ouster of U.S. military bases. Activists said 65,000 people attended what they called the largest protest in two decades against the U.S. military presence.
In Germany, thousands of people formed a human chain around a U.S. Air Force base to protest the U.S. drone wars. Ramstein Air Base hosts a station that relays communications between drone operators in the United States and the drones they pilot abroad.
“I don’t agree with American weapons, American rockets being directed toward other countries from German soil,” said protester Clement Walter. “We do not have to tolerate that.”
ISIS is a monstrosity. It didn’t come from nowhere. It’s one of the results of the U.S. hitting a very vulnerable society — Iraq — with a sledgehammer.
Meet the whistleblower speaking out against the government’s claims about the mysterious deaths of three Guantánamo prisoners on June 9, 2006.
The Pentagon said all three committed suicide, but were they actually actually tortured to death at a secret CIA black site at the base? Watch the Democracy Now! interview with Guantánamo whistleblower Joseph Hickman, a former Army staff sergeant and author of the new book, “Murder at Camp Delta: A Staff Sergeant’s Pursuit of the Truth About Guantánamo Bay.”
The United States doesn’t want to acknowledge that what went on over the last 13 years, at a cost of $1 trillion, has been not only a defeat, but, as one British commentator said, also a disgrace.
Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. She appeared on Democracy Now! to discuss the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Find 13 years of reports on the Afghan war in our online archive.