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Robin Lovitt Wins Clemency
GUESTS: Kent Willis, Director of ACLU-Virginia, Jack Payden-Travers, Director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Robin Lovitt would have been the 1000th prisoner to be executed since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Instead his sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole last week. Lovitt was convicted for stabbing a man to death with a pair of scissors during a 1988 pool hall robbery. Citing that evidence from his trial had been “improperly destroyed” Virginia’s governor, Mark Warner, commuted Lovitt’s death sentence. On Friday December 2nd, 57 year old Kenneth Lee Boyd was executed in North Carolina, making him the 1000th to be executed. Over the past 28 years, the U.S. has executed one person every 10 days on average. On December 13th Nobel prize nominee Stanley “Tookie” Williams is due to be executed in California, unless Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger grants him clemency.
For more information visit www.vadp.org, www.acluva.org, and www.1000executions.org.

Empire Notes
GUEST: Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade

We go now to our weekly commentary Empire Notes by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is about the British “remember Fallujah” Tour.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

10th Anniversary of Lori Berenson’s Arrest
GUEST: Aura Bogado, Free Speech Radio News Anchor

On November 30, 1995, a young American woman named Lori Berenson was pulled off of a public bus in Lima, Perú. Like thousands of Peruvians, she was detained by the Peruvian anti-terrorist police, tried for treason by a secretive military tribunal under anti-terrorism laws and condemned to life in prison. On the tenth anniversary of her arrest, Lori Berenson remains imprisoned in Peru. She released a commentary to mark this day, read by Free Speech Radio News Anchor, Aura Bogado.

The recording was produced by Noelle Hanrahan and is available online at prisonradio.org. For more information visit www.freelori.org.

Black Commentator
GUEST: Glen Ford, co-publisher of The Black Commentator

The Black Commentator is an online political magazine bringing you commentary, analysis and investigation from a black perspective. Today’s commentary is about “Hispanic” as an ethnic category.

The Black Commentator is online at www.blackcommentator.com.

Repression of Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca
GUEST: Raul Gatica, founding member of CIPO-RFM Party, poet, Angela Thielen-Martin, interpreter

Since 1997, indigenous communities in the south western state of Oaxaca, Mexico, have been facing serious repression and human rights violations by government and paramilitary forces. About 70 percent of Oaxaca’s population is indigenous. One of the most targeted groups is a grassroots, non-violent organization formed of various indigenous communities, founded in 1997. It’s called CIPO-RFM which stands for Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca – Ricardo Flores Magon. They struggle against extreme poverty, deforestation, privatization of their land, and the presence of paramilitary forces. Since their formation there have been hundreds of people detained and/or tortured; raids by the military, police and paramilitaries, assassinations and serious injuries. Today we end the show with an interview with one of the founding members of CIPO-RFM, Raul Gatica. After surviving numerous attempts on his life, Raul went into exile in June 2005 in Vancouver, Canada. He has been arrested, imprisoned and tortured many times. I had the chance to speak with Raul Gatica yesterday on the phone from Vancouver. Angela Theilan-Martin volunteered as interpreter.
For more information visit www.nodo50.org/cipo.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“We learned a long time ago that we should never subject ourselves to the schedules of the powerful, … We had to follow our own calendar and impose it on those above.” — Subcomandante Marcos.