U.S. forces close in on Baghdad from two directions: We go to the Iraqi capital to talk with umembedded reporter May Ying Welsh; Kesbeh family arrives in Jordan after being deported from Houston: We talk with them from a refugee camp where the family of nine now lives near penniless in a single bedroom; Green you go, yellow you are questioned and red you don t fly: As Delta prepares to rate the terror threat of every passenger, we host a debate on privacy and security.
8:00-8:01 Billboard 8:10-8:11 One Minute Music Break 8:11-8:20: US troops have reached the Baghdad airport after fierce fighting with Iraqi forces. US troops are closing in on Baghdad from two directions. The Pentagon says they are just six miles from the edge of the city. US commanders claimed they have effectively destroyed the Medina and Baghdad Republican Guard divisions defending the approaches to Baghdad. Casualty figures are not known. Iraqi forces shot down a Black Hawk helicopter near Karbala. The Pentagon says it appears seven people were killed. A fighter plane also went down; the fate of the pilot is not known. Two US soldiers were killed in an apparent Iraqi rocket-propelled grenade attack. A BBC reporter said he saw American dead being tended on stretchers near the Euphrates. US officers said some 500 Iraqi troops were killed including members of the Special Republican Guard, in fighting for a key bridge some 20 miles southwest of Baghdad. * May Ying Welsh, independent reporter in Baghdad 8:20-8:21 One Minute Music Break 8:21-8:30: As the U.S.-led invasion rages in Iraq, the persecution of Arabs and Muslims continues at home. For the past six months we have been following the story of the the Kesbeh family. The Kesbehs are Palestinian. They came to the U.S. after fleeing Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. They lived in Houston, Texas for 11 years but last year armed INS agents raided their house. The father and eldest son were arrested and detained for several months on immigration violations. When we last spoke with the Kesbeh family on Friday, they were outside a Houston immigration center. They were deported last week. Today we speak with the eldest daughter Noor Kesbeh joining us from a refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. * Noor Kesbeh. Was deported with her family to Jordan this Monday and is living in a refugee camp in Amman. 8:30-8:58: There is a new website that you might have heard of. Its address is boycottdelta.org. Its logo is Less leg room. No privacy. It was recently created after news reports that Delta Airlines would become the first airline to test a new passenger screening system that attempts to rate the terror threat of each passenger. The system is called CAPPS II, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System. CAPPS II would require background checks on all airline passengers when they book a ticket, including checking credit reports, banking and criminal record. Based on this information, every passenger would be assigned a color-coded threat level. Greens will pass through security as normal. Yellows would require additional screening. Reds would be barred from flying. The screening program is expected to begin a trial run at three Delta airports. Today we are going to have a debate on this and other issues related to privacy and surveillance. * David Sobel, general counsel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, http://www.epic.org * Barbara Simons, fellow and former president at the Association for Computing Machinery, http://www.acm.org * Michael Scardaville, policy analyst with the The Heritage Foundation and Davis Institute for International Policy Studies, http://www.heritage.org 8:40-8:41 One-minute music break 8:41-8:58 Privacy Cont d 8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Ana Nogueira and Elizabeth Press. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer.
PRA metadata view