"The review of media ownership rules underway at the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) will have an enormous impact on the future of
broadcasting and on media diversity. The FCC is considering repealing or
altering a number of key rules that limit media consolidation. But you wouldn't
know any of this from watching network television news. Media companies stand to
gain a lot from a relaxation of the ownership caps. So it is no surprise that
NBC/General Electric, ABC/Disney and CBS/Viacom have all
filed comments with the FCC. It's what they haven't done that is more
troubling: None of the big three networks have found the story worth reporting
in depth."
from FAIR ^
"Israeli forces staged two major operations in the West Bank today, fatally
shooting two Palestinians in Tulkarm and sending scores of soldiers into this battered
city, where they closed television stations and demolished a block-long fruit
and vegetable market."
by Frank Bruni ^
"Need some extra cash? The folks at Nestlé have a novel idea: file a claim against a
third-world country. Which is exactly what the Swiss food conglomerate did when
it recently demanded that poverty-stricken Ethiopia fork over $6 million. Back
in 1975, Ethiopia's government nationalized a small Nestlé subsidiary. Recently,
the company tried to exact compensation for the matter despite the fact that
Nestlé raked in a cool $5.5 billion in profits in the past fiscal year.
Meanwhile Ethiopians eked out a meager living in one of the poorest countries on
the planet."
by Nicholas Klassen ^
"Sitting at a computer for long periods of time could kill you, according to
a new study reported in the February 2003 edition of the European Respiratory Journal. It
says there is a risk of developing life-threatening blood clots from sitting for
long periods at a computer, similar to a problem that has injured or killed some
airline passengers on long flights."
from American City Business Journals
Inc. ^
"In his State of the Union address, President Bush laced his hard-right
policy agenda with a couple of compassionate conservatisms, like a modest plan
for AIDS relief in Africa. Of course this is the same administration that cut
international family planning and condom distribution. The President took
Americans' silent grief over 9/11 as a policy mandate. But there is no mandate
for war, or tax cuts for the rich, or ending abortion or most other Bush-era
initiatives. Voters in the center are waking up and realizing they've been
had."
by Farai Chideya ^
"Bush's speech, if one can dignify same with a word intended to designate
ordered rhetoric, was a backhanded compliment to David Frum, the former White
House speech writer who was fired last year after his wife proudly disclosed
that he had invented the phrase 'Axis of Evil.' No such exciting phrases adorned
Bush's second State of the Union address. In the first half of the address Bush
stumbled through his prescriptions to make the rich richer with the timbre of an
inexperienced waiter reciting the Daily Specials. He even blew the opening and
most outrageous lie of all, that 'We will not pass along problems' to future
generations, a pledge launched amid a vista of red ink as far as the eye can
see, as those future generations pick up the tab for Bush's hand-outs to the
super-rich today, to the arms companies, the drug industry and other prime
contributors."
by Alexander Cockburn ^
"Several hundred protesters voiced their opposition to the president's State
of the Union address last night in a boisterous evening of demonstrations that
began with a concert at the Capitol and ended with an unpermitted march through
downtown Washington. Protesters gathered in the cold at the West Front of the
Capitol near Third Street NW for an evening rally, waving signs reading 'Drop
Bush, Not Bombs' and denouncing a possible U.S. military strike against Iraq. As
President Bush delivered his address to Congress, activists huddled near patio
heaters and read captions from the speech on a giant projection screen as local
electronica duo Thievery Corporation performed on a
stage."
by Manny Fernandez ^
"Military planes have flown hundreds of Thai citizens out of Phnom Penh after
demonstrations about the Angkor Wat temple complex turned violent... Angry
crowds gathered and then attacked the embassy after comments [allegedly]
attributed to a Thai actress demanded control of the famed complex be returned
to Bangkok."
from BBC News World Edition ^
"'Criminal justice policy in the U.S. is about race,' says Professor Michael
Welch. 'Most anyone who has really examined the situation has reached that
conclusion.' Silja Talvi interviews Welch about his new book, Detained:
Immigration Laws and the Expanding I.N.S. Complex, and explores how
anti-immigrant sentiment - and crisis legislation - feeds off ethnic
stereotyping, notions of cultural supremacy, and moral panic."
by Michael
Wech interviewed by Silja Talvi ^
"AOL Time
Warner reported an unexpectedly large fourth-quarter loss yesterday as
it continued to absorb the disastrous consequences of AOL's acquisition
of Time Warner two years ago, and Ted Turner said he would step down as the
company's vice chairman. In the darkest indication yet of the lopsided terms of
the deal, AOL Time Warner said that it was writing down the value of the
AOL division by about $35 billion and its cable division by about $10
billion, for a total of $45 billion. The new write-downs follow a previous $54
billion write-down taken in the first quarter of last year and bring the total
reduction in the value of its assets since the merger to nearly $100
billion."
by David D. Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg ^
"The federal agency that insures the pensions of some 44 million Americans
has been pounded by a succession of big corporate bankruptcies and has burned
through its entire $8 billion surplus in one year. The agency, the Pension
Benefit Guaranty Corporation, provides protection to retirees in case of
a failure, much as the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation protects depositors when a bank fails. Though it can
continue to make its current payments, the agency is expected to disclose a
deficit of $1 billion to $2 billion at the end of this month."
by Mary
Williams Walsh ^
"It was all in a day's work for jurors in the ongoing, and often surreal,
federal drug trial of former High Times advice columnist 'Ask Ed' Rosenthal, who
is facing 20 years in prison for cultivating medical cannabis. Federal
prosecutors have built their case against Rosenthal by barring pre-trial
testimony of Oakland city officials who said Rosenthal grew the plants for the
city's medical marijuana program. But the government has subpoenaed testimony
from an array of people who simply saw the plants, including a fellow grower,
the proprietor of a medical cannabis club, Rosenthal's landlord, an electrician
and even a fireman... Federal prosecutors contend that marijuana is illegal and
do not recognize California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act (Prop.
215) which permits patients to possess, grow and consume cannabis with a
doctor's recommendation."
by Ann Harrison ^
"In a move that is raising eyebrows statewide, [California] Gov. Gray Davis
is proposing sizable cuts in education, health services and other major programs
except one: The nation's largest prison system would remain largely untouched.
Nearly $5.3 billion would go to the state Department
of Corrections, a $40 million boost. Under the budget plan announced
earlier this month, money would be drained from nearly every other department to
help address the biggest deficit in California history. College fees and taxes
would swell, while some government services would be trimmed or cut."
by
Steve Schmidt ^
"U.S. shares have tumbled for the seventh time in eight sessions, as fears
over a war with Iraq continued to haunt investors. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped below
8,000 for the first time in three months. Investors continued to unload shares
after a speech by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to the U.N. Security Council failed to calm
war jitters... Wall Street's poor performance compounded a day of gloom on
European stock markets, with key indexes in London, Paris and Frankfurt all
moving substantially lower."
from BBC News World Edition ^
"Patients in Cook County without health insurance are expected to pay more
than double what those with coverage pay for hospital medical care, according to
a study set for release this week in Chicago by the nation's largest union of
health-care workers. The new data underscores the plight of the uninsured. It
shows that people who are least able to pay for medical care are at an even
greater disadvantage than those with coverage, say the study's sponsors, the
Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), which recently launched the Chicago-based
Hospital Accountability Project. Because the uninsured do not have the
leverage of a large health insurer negotiating their rates, they are left to pay
full charges, something akin to a sticker price on a new car."
by Bruce
Japsen ^
"To secure early warning of a bioterror attack, the government is building a
computerized network that will collect and analyze health data of people in
eight major cities, administration officials say... The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention is to lead the multimillion-dollar surveillance effort...
Officials would not disclose the program's cost or which cities will be
involved... Other civilian surveillance systems are emerging quickly. In Boston,
the Harvard Medical School faculty and the
Massachusetts Department of
Public Health are working closely with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a
health maintenance organization. For more than a year, the team has studied data
from 175,000 people in eastern Massachusetts, and it will soon cover as many as
20 million people coast to coast."
by William J. Broad and Judity
Miller ^
"The national smallpox vaccination plan rolled out with a whimper last week.
Part of the Bush administration's effort to stave off a bioterrorism attack, the
vaccination plan was to begin with a strong start in the state of Connecticut by
vaccinating 20 or more first-line medical responders who would then fan out and
vaccinate thousands of other doctors, nurses, and emergency room personnel
around the state... But in Connecticut, only 4 people showed up to get the shot,
and 3 of those were administrative personnel -- the state epidemiologist and 2
administrators at the University of Connecticut Health
Center. The numbers willing to volunteer for the shots had been
dwindling all week, as hospital associations, nursing unions, and other
professional groups balked at the risk of the smallpox vaccine itself and raised
important questions about the true potential for a smallpox terrorist attack. At
last count, more than 80 hospitals around the nation, including major teaching
hospitals and medical centers in urban areas, have opted out of the vaccination
program."
by Maria Tomchick ^
"When the federal government scrambled to remove vast amounts of information
from official libraries and websites in the wake of September 11, most assumed
that access would be restored after officials had a chance to carefully evaluate
security risks. But instead, many observers now say, the administration has used
a string of laws and executive orders to reverse a decades-long trend toward
government openness. The new measures are so broad, critics warn, it's
impossible to say whether officials are protecting national security or simply
expanding their power to operate without public scrutiny."
by Daniel
Franklin ^
"On October 2, 2001, the weight of the global entertainment industry came
crashing down on Niklas Zennström, cofounder of Kazaa, the wildly popular
file-sharing service. That was the day every major American music label and
movie studio filed suit against his company. Their goal was to shutter the
service and shut down the tens of millions of people sharing billions of
copyrighted music, video, and software files. Only problem: Stopping
Napster, which indexed songs on its servers, was easy - the recording
industry took the company to court for copyright infringement, and a judge
pulled the plug. With Kazaa, users trade files through thousands of anonymous
'supernodes.' There is no plug to pull."
by Todd Woody ^
"The feelgood and feelbad blockbusters of the moment, Chicago and Gangs of New
York, may have dominated yesterday's announcement of the BAFTA Film Awards
nominations, but the hitherto lower profile enjoyed by Stephen Daldry's second
film The
Hours got a significant boost ahead of the Oscars... The
BAFTAs, which are officially called the Orange British Academy Film
Awards, will be held at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square, London, on
February 23."
by Matt Wells ^
"The Palestine National Authority
(PNA) accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of launching a massive
deadly raid against the people of Gaza City on Saturday night, early Sunday in
an attempt to improve his chances to win in Tuesday's general elections. Chief
Palestinian negotiator Sa'eb Erekat accused Sharon of seeking victory at
Tuesday's general election through a 'show of force'... At least 12 Palestinian
citizens were killed in the raid while at least 51 others were wounded, some of
them critically, Palestinian medical sources said."
from Palestine Media
Center ^
"Well, it could have been true. That's what Senator Hillary Clinton had to
say after finding out that five Pakistani men did not actually sneak into the
United States through Canada so they could blow up New York on New Year's Eve.
Because they were never in the United States at all, and they weren't
terrorists, and the whole thing was dreamed up by a man who forges passports for
a living... It was, in other words, a useful hoax, helping U.S. citizens to see
how unsafe they really are. And that is useful, especially if you are among the
growing number of free-market economists, politicians and military strategists
pushing for the creation of 'Fortress NAFTA,' a continental security perimeter
stretching from Mexico's southern border to Canada's northern one."
by
Naomi Klein ^
"Imagine this headline: Baptists Now Outnumber Blacks in Louisiana, Says
New Study. Doesn,t work right? The reason: Any such study would have to
count black Baptists against themselves to compare overlapping categories of
race and religious belief. It's like comparing organic apples with red apples.
Now consider this headline, which The Associated Press ran Tuesday:
Hispanics Now Outnumber Blacks As Largest U.S. Minority Group. Similar
versions ran in papers and on web sites all over the country. Hispanics Have
Edged Past Blacks As The Nation's Largest Minority Group, said The New
York Times. Can that be true? Unlike blacks, Hispanics do not make up a
racial group."
by Michael Scherer ^
"'A few thousand' Network Solutions customers received e-mail
messages that contained more than 85,000 e-mail addresses of other Network
Solutions customers, said spokesman Patrick Burns of VeriSign Inc., the
parent company of Network Solutions. 'We made a mistake, and we'll
apologize to our customers,' Burns said."
by David McGuire ^
"Richard Powers's eighth novel, The Time of Our Singing, is his first to
focus on the world of classical music, but harmonies of one sort or another have
always been his subject."
by Daniel Mendelsohn ^
"Walking the streets of Ramallah these days has become an act of reflection,
uncertainty and force of will. Having just returned from a break from Cairo,
where I was reminded what it was like to walk the streets of an Arab country
without apprehension, with its bustle and life, its smells, shouts, laughter and
systematized chaos, I could not help but mourn the loss of those walks in
Ramallah. I walk the streets now, wondering what will happen during each
journey. Hanan Elmasu writes from Ramallah."
by Hanan Elmasu ^
"A United
Nations assessment team has found 'alarming' evidence of environmental
degradation in the Palestinian Territories, and has made 136 recommendations for
protecting the environment there. After studying the region at the request of
the U.N. Environment
Programme's Governing Council, the so-called desk study team issued an
advisory report [Desk
Study on the Environment in the Occuied Palestinian Territories (.pdf)]
on Thursday."
from ENS ^
"The Bush administration plans to allow religious groups for the first time
to use federal housing money to help build centers where religious worship is
held, as long as part of the building is also used for social services. The
policy shift, which was made in a rule that the Department of Housing and
Urban Development proposed this month, significantly expands the
administration's contentious religion-based initiative... Civil rights
advocates, legal experts and Congressional critics attacked the change. They
said it moved the government dangerously close to financing the building of
houses of worship in violation of the separation of church and state."
by
Eric Lichtbau ^
"A former fashion model now in charge of the Broward County elections
office, Miriam M. Oliphant is used to being in
the spotlight. What she had not counted on was being under a microscope after
overseeing two troubled elections, running up a budget deficit and reviving
memories of the 2000 election fiasco in Florida... Things have become so bad
that officials from one city say they have decided against putting several
referendums before voters next month because they have so little confidence in
the voting process. This week, the Broward County state attorney's office found
a box of 100 absentee ballots from the September primary that had never been
opened."
by Dana Canedy ^
"New York City's economy ended 2002 in steep decline, with an unemployment
rate far above the national average and an accelerating loss of private sector
jobs, according to data released today by the state and city governments. The
jobless rate jumped to 8.4 percent in December, up from 8 percent in November,
after adjustment for seasonal factors, according to the New York State Department of
Labor."
by Leslie Eaton ^
"The economic slowdown of the past two years is taking a toll on workers
around the globe, according to a new report. Worldwide, about 20 million people
have lost their jobs in the period, bringing the jobless total to about 180
million worldwide, the International Labor
Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency, said in a report on
employment trends to be released today. That's about a 12.5 percent increase at
a time world population growth is about 1.2 percent a year."
by Kirstin
Downey ^
"This is the 6th year of the Business Week/Architectural Record awards
program... Coverage of winners, finalists, and the unbuilt award winners
follows."
from Architectural Record ^
"In the largest ever class action lawsuit against the federal government,
Indians demand an end to insult, theft and broken promises... the federal judge
overseeing this landmark case, Cobell v. Norton, has called
the Bureau of Indian Affairs the most 'historically mismanaged federal
program' in the U.S."
by Silja Talvi and Brian Awehali ^
"Have you ever visited sites that have news headlines on them? Have you ever
thought 'I have some cool stuff on my site, I wonder how I can get my site
listed?' Well wonder no more."
from Funio.com ^
"On 22 January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that artists Christo and
Jeanne-Claude will be permitted to install their temporary work The
Gates in Central Park for two weeks in February 2005. The
huge project will consist of 7,500 16-foot-high gateways straddling the park's
paved pathways, each to be constructed of recyclable vinyl poles with synthetic
yellow fabric suspended from its horizontal crossbar to about 7 feet above the
ground. Spaced every 10 or 15 feet, the fabric-flapping portals will follow 23
miles of park paths..."
by Jason Edward Kaufman ^
"It was a bad week for the Bush administration, and it's likely to get worse.
The American people are beginning to understand the folly and greed that inform
its economic policy. And most of the civilized world has turned decisively
against the Iraqi adventure. The great coalition that George W. Bush proposes to
lead against Saddam Hussein is now a coalition of two, and British prime
minister Tony Blair has lost the support of his own people, most especially
members of his own Labor Party, who warn of a political revolt if Britain goes
to war without a new UN resolution. In France, 75 percent oppose
Bush's policy; in Germany the number is 76, in Italy it's 61. In Turkey, a
country crucial to the Administration's military effort, opposition to the war,
according to the Wall Street Journal, registers at between 80 and 90
percent."
by Marty Jezer ^
"Dissenters have failed to come to terms with the enormity of the
totalitarian revolution underway in the U.S. Radicals, leftists, progressives,
liberals have all chosen, for the most part, different forms of denial and
escapism. But now the time is at hand to decide once and for all how our
individual lives must change in response to the beast that has arisen in this
country. None of us can wait anymore, to see what will happen next, nor can any
of us remain fence-straddlers, quiet objectionists. There should be no more
reason to be surprised at events that are scheduled to happen, if there ever was
any justification for being caught unawares."
by Anis Shivani ^
"Relations between Mexico and America have become strained over the latter's
enthusiasm for the death penalty - in particularly over the high numbers of
Mexicans sentenced to death in America's courts. Last year, President Vicente
Fox cancelled a summit with George Bush, furious that a Mexican national had
been executed despite the Fox government's appeals for clemency. And, on January
21st, Mexico went to the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) in the Hague, seeking urgent stays of execution for the 51
Mexicans on death row in American jails, on the grounds that its nationals, when
arrested in America, are systematically denied their rights under the 1963
Vienna Convention to get help from their consulate. America said the move was an
unwarranted intrusion into the running of its justice system."
from The
Economist Global Agenda ^
"In commuting the death sentences of all current capital prisoners in
Illinois, Governor George Ryan said he was motivated in part by the failure of
the Illinois State Assembly to enact any
reforms in the death penalty system, despite a governor's commission that
exposed a system rife with misconduct on the part of police and prosecutors...
But while the governor's commission presented overwhelming evidence of
corruption and outright criminality, state legislators - many driven by the
desire to be seen as 'tough on crime' - refused to enact any of the commission's
85 recommendations. Ryan commented in his January 11 speech that he had 'to
watch in frustration as members of the Illinois General Assembly failed
to pass even one substantive death penalty reform. Not one.'"
by Kate
Randall ^
"Some 30 countries throughout eastern and western Europe have no intact
ancient forest left. Finland retains only about five percent of the old-growth
boreal forests that once covered most of the country, but now even that is under
threat, and by the government's own forestry company. The Finnish state owned
forestry enterprise Metsahallitus is planning to start logging the
old-growth forests of Malahvia, in the north eastern part of Finland close to
the Russian border. Metsahallitus plans to commence both clearcutting and
selective logging in the area despite clear scientific evidence about the high
biological value of the Malahvia forest."
from Greenpeace ^
"After months of fierce debate, the finance ministers of the 15 European Union
nations reached agreement today on a plan to phase out bank secrecy and to deter
the union's citizens from trying to hide assets from tax authorities by
depositing them abroad... Swiss officials have said they are willing to
negotiate a deal with the union [Switzerland is not an EU member] based
on a withholding tax provided that it does not put Swiss financial institutions
at a disadvantage to foreign rivals. About $3 trillion, or an estimated
one-third of the world's private savings, is managed in Switzerland. Swiss
officials have been adamant about preserving secrecy, arguing that a banker's
relationship with a client should be as privileged as a doctor's with a
patient."
by Paul Meller with Alison Langley ^
"Seven in 10 Americans would give U.N. weapons inspectors months more to pursue
their arms search in Iraq, according to a new Washington
Post-ABC News poll that found growing doubts about an attack on Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein. In addition to the public's skepticism about military
action against Iraq, the poll found that a majority of Americans disapproved of
President Bush's handling of the economy for the first time in his presidency.
The number of Americans who regard the economy as healthy has not been lower in
the past nine years, and fewer than half supported the tax cut plan Bush has
proposed as a remedy."
by Dana Milbank and Richard Morin ^
"To help protect against the threat of bioterrorism, the Bush administration
on Wednesday will start deploying a national system of environmental monitors
that is intended to tell within 24 hours whether anthrax, smallpox and other
deadly germs have been released into the air, senior administration officials
said today."
by Judith Miller ^
'For the first time since 1973, when the court issued its ruling, Republicans
hold the White House and majorities in both the House and Senate. They are going
after reproductive rights,' said Paige Johnson, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of
Central North Carolina. Abortion opponents will not overturn Roe v. Wade, but instead will
chip away at it with legislation that makes second-trimester abortions and
crossing state lines for abortions illegal, Johnson said. If second-trimester
procedures are banned, it will deter doctors from performing any abortions for
fear of accusations or prosecution, she said."
by Virginia Bridges ^
"Globalization foes were flocking to Brazil for the World
Social Forum, the annual protest against the World Economic
Forum held simultaneously at a Swiss ski resort. The six-day event
begins Thursday in the far southern city of Porto
Alegre. As many as 100,000 activists are expected to attend from
countries as diverse as Egypt, India and the United States."
by Alan
Clendenning ^
"The people who run this city [Houston, TX] recently heard a familiar pitch
from Microsoft: Sign up for a multiyear, $12
million software licensing plan or face an audit exposing the city's use of
software it hadn't paid for. Microsoft warned that the city could be
slapped with stiff fines for using any Microsoft software for which it
could not produce receipts. Scores of other businesses and public agencies,
facing a similar dilemma, have agreed to the new licensing deals - a linchpin of
Microsoft's growth strategy. Not Houston. The nation's fourth-largest city
rebuffed the offer and has embraced an obscure competitor called SimDesk."
by Byron
Acohido ^
"I am writing this in an attempt to provide an accurate (albeit admittedly
emotional) firsthand account of the Jan. 18th peace rally in San Francisco.
After reading national news accounts of the event, (CNN, NBC ABC, CBS
etc.) I have come to the not-so-surprising conclusion that our corporate media
is reaching new lows in an attempt to delude citizens about the size, scope and
commitment of the opposition to the Bush war agenda."
by Paul Dean ^
"The current crisis between the U.S. and Iraq continues more than a decade of
antagonism between Washington and Baghdad, involving three U.S. administrations.
To truly understand why we stand now at the brink of war, however, one must look
closely at the goals of the current Bush administration, which is drawn to
conflict by Iraq's massive oil reserves and the goal of expanding U.S. military
power around the world."
by Phyllis Bennis ^
"Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Tuesday that France would try to
rally the European
Union to 'speak with a single voice' and oppose any hasty decision by
the United States to unleash a military assault against Iraq. He said no action
should be taken while UN inspectors are seeking more time - perhaps many months
- to pursue their search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq."
by Brian Knowlton ^
"'Day after day on television, Mr. Bush comes on and goes after [Iraqi
President] Saddam Hussein,' Nader said. 'But have you heard him speak about
health care for 50 million Americans? Have you heard him speak about hunger?
About homelessness? Have you heard him speak about the criminal injustice
system? Have you heard him speak about the massive child poverty? Have you heard
him speak about cracking down on corporate crime that steals trillions of
dollars from millions of Americans?' Nader said."
from CNN ^
"On the rare occasion when a mainstream news program interviews a forthright
critic of U.S. policy, the interviewer often seems less like a journalist and
more like a government spokesperson. That's what happened when CNN's Wolf
Blitzer (11/7/02) interviewed Dr. Helen Caldicott, a nuclear critic (and a
member of FAIR's advisory board), about the connection between the U.S.'s
use of so-called depleted uranium in anti-tank shells during the 1991 Gulf War,
and the dramatic rise in birth defects in southern Iraq."
from Extra!
^
"'It looks like the Bush Administration is astroturfing, trying to
artificially create the appearance of a grassroots movement supporting their
policies,' writes Jules Agee. 'A Google
search on the phrase demonstrating genuine leadership returns a
number of nearly
identical letters sent to the editors of various newspapers and
publications this month, each one with the name of a different individual
attached.' Some alert bloggers traced the letters to a Republican
party website that offers gifts such as coolers, tote bags and mouse
pads in exchange for sending letters to the editor. When asked about the form
letters, one newspaper editor
commented,'The practice of mass submitting letters is old. We have been
receiving these types of letters for some time. ... I'm just shocked that it has
taken so long for others to expose it. This fad begun over three years ago.' But
some newspapers liked the letters so much that they published them more than
once, over the signatures of different local residents."
from Spin of the
Day ^
"We are soliciting comments to help us develop an approach to control risks
associated with disposal of nonambulatory and dead livestock. These animals
could serve as potential pathways for the spread of bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), if that disease should ever be
introduced into the United States. It is well established that domestic and wild
animals may contract diseases -- especially viral and bacterial diseases -- from
animals that die on the farm and do not receive proper disposal."
from
Federal Register (Volume 68, Number 13) ^
"Mr. Bush and his war cabinet would be wise to see the demonstrators as a
clear sign that noticeable numbers of Americans no longer feel obliged to salute
the administration's plans because of the shock of Sept. 11 and that many harbor
serious doubts about his march toward war. The protesters are raising some
nuanced questions in the name of patriotism about the premises, cost and
aftermath of the war the president is contemplating. Millions of Americans who
did not march share the concerns and have yet to hear Mr. Bush make a persuasive
case that combat operations are the only way to respond to Saddam
Hussein."
from NYT Editorial/Op-Ed ^
"Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for demonstrations in Washington
D.C., San Francisco and other cities across the U.S. and Canada on Saturday to
protest the Bush administration's impending war against Iraq... The protests in
the U.S. shattered the myth promoted by the media of political consensus and
mass support for the Bush administration and its war policies. The large turnout
occurred despite the fact that the media gave virtually no advance publicity to
the protests, and has systematically suppressed reports of domestic opposition
to the government's war plans."
by Kate Randall ^
"The cases of 'enemy combatants' detained in naval brigs in Virginia and
South Carolina, and on the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo, are gradually making
their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court."
by Joanne
Mariner ^
"Get out your wallet. Big business has found another way to tighten the
screws on customers, in league with its new partner: the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright
Act."
by Lauren Weinstein ^
"U.S. software giant Microsoft on Monday unveiled a new tool that could give
the music industry a powerful weapon in its fight against piracy. Microsoft Windows Media
Data Session Toolkit gives record companies the means of putting music
onto CDs and DVDs in various secured layers, which can then be
played on a computer... Record labels will be able to use the "locking" software
to control users' access to music, for example by stopping them from burning or
copying them onto another CD."
from Sify ^
"Although many hypothetical questions about what King would do today cannot
be answered because so much has changed since his death 35 years ago, King's
track record against militarism was so strong and stark that the position he
would have taken in 2003 is unquestionable. Even before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
1964, King believed that any ethic of nonviolence had to apply
internationally as well as domestically and to government policies as well as
personal conduct. Receipt of the prize, however, significantly intensified
King's belief that he had an obligation to speak the prophetic truth about
nonviolence and social justice, irrespective of whether his truths would be
popular with Americans in general or even with African Americans."
by
David J. Garrow ^
"A military hearing into the deaths of four Canadians in an airstrike by two
American pilots in Afghanistan has focused attention on the military's long-held
but little-known practice of using drugs to keep its weary forces awake and
alert -- or to help them sleep off the stress of combat. Amphetamines and
tranquilizers -- 'go pills' and 'no-go pills' -- are considered useful tools for
a modern American military that likes to fight at night, given its technological
superiority in finding targets in the dark, and to an Air Force that
must order its pilots to fly longer missions from fewer overseas
bases."
by Thom Shanker with Mary Duenwald ^
"The Bush administration sacrificed truth for political gain this week when
it filed legal briefs urging the Supreme Court to overturn the University
of Michigan's use of racial 'quotas' in admissions. Michigan's
admissions system does not use racial quotas. But the administration has clearly
decided the best way to appease its right-wing supporters without alienating the
rest of the country is to disguise its anti-affirmative-action agenda as an
anti-quota crusade. The administration should start leveling with the American
people about race, and it should stop trying to turn back the clock."
from
NYT Editorial/Op-Ed ^
"The Bush administration undermined America's landmark environmental laws on
almost a daily basis in 2001, two new reports suggest. The reports document more
than 100 anti-environmental actions by the administration last year, and point
to ongoing efforts to undermine existing protections and delay proposed new
rules that could help the environment."
from ENS ^
"The U.S. Army
wants to get to and maneuver within trouble spots faster, and over the next six
years it will spend $91 billion figuring out how to do that. The goal sounds
simple: be able to send a brigade anywhere in the world within 96 hours, a
division within 120 hours and five divisions within 30 days. Achieving that
goal, however, means transforming the army from a ponderous force built around
the use of tanks and other heavy vehicles to one that is comprised of lighter,
less heavily armored vehicles that can sprint across the battlefield at speeds
of 60 mph and that can deliver the same dose of lethality as their bigger
predecessors."
by Frank Vizard ^
"Chicago
co-stars Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere won Golden Globes for best
comedy/musical acting on Sunday while Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper received
supporting performer honors for Adaptation."
from AP ^
"The collective itself, as a social unit, was an important element in the
60's utopian equation. Whatever form the concept took -- the commune, the band,
the cult -- its implications of shared resources, dynamic interchange and egos
put on hold made it a model for change... The collective impulse has never died
out in American art; and now it is surfacing again, for the most part outside
New York. In cities like Milwaukee, Providence, R. I., St. Louis and
Philadelphia, as well as several in Canada, an old countercultural model, often
much changed, is being revived, in some cases by artists barely out of their
teens."
by Holland Cotter ^
"In the jagged cities of science fiction, there is a God -- or at least a
Wizard of Oz -- and his name is Thomas Pynchon. 'Pynchon is a kind of mythic
hero of mine,' William Gibson has proclaimed. Gibson, who must be tired of
hearing himself identified as 'coiner of the term cyberspace,' has gone
to worlds not yet reached under Commander Pynchon's rule."
by Lisa
Zeidner ^
"Here's a good cause for the New Year: a design by Enríque Norten/TEN Arquitectos for the
proposed Brooklyn
Library for the Visual and Performing Arts. Sleek, curvaceous, colorful
and alive, this is New York's first full-fledged masterwork for the information
age. More than any other recent New York project, Norten's design captures the
spirit of the contemporary city. Its relationship to the history of urban space
is profound. In short, the project crystallizes the restless energies coalescing
around the culture of cities worldwide."
by Herbert Muschamp ^
"Throughout a morning rally on the National Mall and an afternoon march to the Washington Navy Yard,
activists criticized the Bush administration for rushing into a war with Iraq
that they claimed would kill thousands of Iraqi civilians, spell disaster for
the national economy and set a dangerous and unjustified first-strike precedent
for U.S. foreign policy... Organizers of the demonstration, the activist
coalition International
A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), said the protest was
larger than one they sponsored in Washington in October. District police
officials suggested then that about 100,000 attended, and although some
organizers agreed, they have since put the number closer to 200,000. This time,
they said, the turnout was 500,000... Antiwar demonstrations continue tomorrow
in Washington. Youth and students who took part in today's march plan their own
demonstration, with an 11 a.m. rally and march from the Department of
Justice to the White House. Civil disobedience is planned at the
White House by Iraq Pledge of Resistance and United for
Peace. Following an 11:30 a.m. rally at Farragut Square, hundreds will
risk arrest to show their opposition to war, organizers said."
by Manny
Fernandez and Justin Blum ^
"Pictures of the event, one of the largest protests in San Francisco in
recent memory."
from SF IMC ^
"An enormous, deliberately intimidating force is being built up by America
overseas, while inside the country, economic and social bad news multiply with a
joint relentlessness. The huge capitalist machine seems to be faltering, even as
it grinds down the vast majority of citizens. Nonetheless, George Bush proposes
another large tax cut for the one per cent of the population that is
comparatively rich. The public education system is in a major crisis, and health
insurance for 50 million Americans simply does not exist. Israel asks for 15
billion dollars in additional loan guarantees and military aid. And the
unemployment rates in the U.S. mount inexorably, as more jobs are lost every
day."
by Edward Said ^
"The U.S. Department of Energy announced at
the beginning of this month that by 2025, U.S. oil imports will account for
perhaps 70 per cent of total US domestic demand. (It was 55 per cent two years
ago.) As Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute put it bleakly this
week, "U.S. oil deposits are increasingly depleted, and many other non-OPEC
fields are beginning to run dry. The bulk of future supplies will have to come
from the Gulf region." No wonder the whole Bush energy policy is based on the
increasing consumption of oil. Some 70 per cent of the world's proven oil
reserves are in the Middle East. And this forthcoming war isn't about
oil?"
by Robert Fisk ^
"After 22 years at the helm of the Durham-based Divers Alert Network (DAN), Peter
Bennett is being forced out. Board members of the $14 million nonprofit say that
in addition to helping divers, DAN's leader and his allies also were
helping themselves."
by Jennifer Strom ^
"Several shark species have declined steeply in the north-west Atlantic over
the last 15 years, scientists say. The populations of some sharks have fallen to
less than a quarter of their former size. With sharks high in the marine food
chain, there is concern their fate may affect other creatures."
by Alex
Kirby ^
"When scientists at the Gulf of the Farallones
National Marine Sanctuary tried to kill Lawrence Groth's ecotourism
business, the captain bit back. That's when things really got mean."
by
Jim Rendon ^
"When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday
[see Eldred et al. v.
Ashcroft (.pdf); decided 15 Jan 03] that Congress was within its
constitutional bounds to extend the duration of all copyrights by 20 years -- up
to 70 years beyond the life of the author and potentially infinitely -- many saw
the ruling as a knockout blow to the movement to reform copyright... So out of
despair some might see civil disobedience -- hacking and freely distributing
songs and films over digital networks -- as the only remaining response to the
excesses of the copyright regimes and the hold they have over courts and
Congress... the best rallying cry [however] came from a dissenter in the
case. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: 'It is easy to understand how the statute
might benefit the private financial interests of corporations or heirs who won
existing copyrights. But I cannot find any constitutionally legitimate,
copyright-related way in which the statute will benefit the public.' This is the
key to any public interest movement: Show that narrow special interests are
getting away with everything and the public interest is suffering."
by
Siva Vaidhyanathan ^
"The scenario for the National March in Washington D.C. includes a
brief rally on the West side of the Capitol starting at 11 a.m.
followed by a march to the Washington Navy Yard, a huge
military complex located in the heart of one of Washington's working class
communities, walking distance from the Capitol."
from Act Now to
Stop War & End Racism ^
"Assemble 11 a.m. at the foot of Market St. at Embarcadero. Rally then
march to Civic Center Plaza (Grove
& Larkin) adjacent to City Hall for a closing rally with
speakers, entertainment and cultural performances."
from Act Now to Stop
War & End Racism ^
"Live coverage of the January 18th anti-war rally will be available on the
KU/Left Channel at 11:00 a.m. eastern time. Laura Flanders, host of Working Assets Radio, daily on KALW 91.7 FM in San
Francisco and WBAI 99.5
FM in New York General Manager Don Rohas will join Verna Avery Brown at
the anchor desk for the International
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Rally on the Washington, D.C. Mall,
Saturday, January 18, 2003. The Pacifica Radio Network will be airing five hours
of the rally from 11:00 a.m. eastern tme till 4:00 p.m. eastern time. The
program will broadcast the events from the stage as well as on-set interviews...
Coverage of the San Francisco rally will be available on the KU satellite
immediately following the Washington broadcast."
from Pacifica Radio
^
"The protests were called to coincide with the Martin Luther King Jr.
Holiday, invoking his legacy to mobilize people from all walks of life to
take action. People are planning to turn out across the world to march on
January 18... In Washington D.C., hundreds of thousands of marchers are expected
on Saturday, January 18 in the largest U.S. anti-war demonstration since the
Vietnam War. A concurrent protest in San Francisco the same day is expected to
draw crowds not seen in the city in a generation."
from IMC ^
"It is necessary and correct to protest against the war policies of the Bush
administration. But anti-war rallies such as those taking place on January 18 in
Washington and other cities are only the first step. The foundations must be
laid to transform popular protest into a mass political struggle, based on the
working class, against not only the Bush administration but also, and above all,
the ruling social and economic interests of which Bush's war policies are an
expression."
Statement of the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board
^
"Chicago's city council today voted and passed an anti-Iraq war resolution
making Chicago the 42nd American city to pass similiar resolutions. Other cities
include: Albuquerque, Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Des Moines, Detroit, Evanston,
Madison, New Haven, Oakland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle,
Washington D.C."
from Cities for Peace ^
"Almost one in four people employed in the UK now works for the state,
according to figures from the Office of National
Statistics. The number of public sector jobs has risen to more than
seven million in the past year after the government hired an extra 142,000
people."
by BBC News World Edition ^
"One of the most important votes of 2003 will be cast not in Congress or in
voting booths across the country but at the Federal Communications
Commission. At stake is how TV, radio, newspapers and the Internet will
look in the next generation and beyond. At stake are core values of localism,
competition, diversity and maintaining the vitality of America's marketplace of
ideas. And at stake is the ability of consumers to enjoy creative, diverse and
enriching entertainment. But most people and most journalists are ignoring this
momentous vote."
by Michael Copps ^
"There was a glorious moment on MSNBC's Donahue
program the other night. The topic up for discussion was: 'Is there a
conservative bias in the media?'"
by Bill Berkowitz ^
"It was with a distinct air of celebration that the Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture and its director, Howard Dodson, formally
accepted custody January 7 of two huge crates of documents and artifacts
belonging to Malcolm X. Permission for the transfer came from Ilyasah Shabazz
and Malaak Shabazz - the administrators of the estate of Malcolm's widow, Betty
Shabazz, and two of the couple's six daughters. The body of work in the
collection will surely allow for a revision of the prevalent mainstream notion
that the African American leader's legacy is more as an orator and organizer
than as a writer and analyst."
by Thulani Davis ^
"On this day 110 years ago, U.S. Marines, acting at the invitation of wealthy
haole (white) sugar planters, invaded the Kingdom of Hawai'i and
overthrew Queen Lili'uokalani, eighth monarch in the line of King Kamehameha I.
A day, to coin a phrase, that lives in infamy. Five years later, Hawai'i was
formally annexed by the U.S.; it became a U.S. 'territory' in 1900, and the
fiftieth state in 1959."
by Gary Leupp ^
"The dictionary defines 'diversity' as 'difference, variety.' But is just
having more, by itself, better? And is the near-sacrosanct ideal of free
expression served if many alternatives are controlled by only a few? A debate
over those two basic questions, as applied to television news and entertainment
programs, is behind the thousands of pages filed with the Federal Communications
Commission regarding the future of U.S. media ownership rules. These
issues will also be at the heart of a forum Thursday at Columbia
Law School in New York, with others to follow in Richmond, Va., and at
USC."
by Brian
Lowry ^
"As two Air
Force pilots looked on silently, their careers and their freedom on the
line, the Canadian soldiers who survived their errant bombing run in Afghanistan
began taking the stand today to describe how a friendly fire mistake from 20,000
feet up translated into carnage on the ground."
by David M. Halfnger
^
"George W. Bush wants to give a big gift to the rich. One that will cost the
country $600 billion over 10 years, even as we are preparing to pour billions
into the war against Iraq, and social programs that serve the poor and working
people are being cut right and left. It should come as no surprise. Even so,
eyebrows were raised by the 'economic stimulus' proposal that Bush unveiled Jan.
7 during a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago. The Wall Street
Journal called it 'audacious.' Labor, community and anti-war groups are
calling it unethical, unworkable ... and typical."
by Kari Lydersen ^
"The American Civil Liberties
Union announced today that Peter B. Lewis, chairman of The
Progressive Corporation and a long-time ACLU member and donor,
has made an unprecedented gift of $8 million. A significant portion of the gift
will be used to fight Bush Administration policies that trample on civil
liberties."
from ACLU ^
"Policies virtually identical to President George W. Bush's national security
strategy paper of last September, with its ambitious military, economic and
political goals, have been produced since the late 1940s. After all, the U.S.
has attempted to define the contours of politics in every part of the world for
the past half-century."
by Gabriel Kolko ^
"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is
the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and
in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."
by
John le Carré ^
"In her own day, the Russian-born anarchist Emma Goldman roused emotions
including considerable fear with her advocacy of radical causes like organized
labor, atheism, sexual freedom and opposition to military conscription.. Goldman
died in 1940, more than two decades after being deported to Russia with other
anarchists in the United States who opposed World War I. Now her words are the
source of deep consternation once again, this time at the University of
California, Berkeley, which has housed Goldman's papers for the past 23
years. In an unusual showdown over freedom of expression, university officials
have refused to allow a fund-raising appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be
mailed because it quoted Goldman on the subjects of suppression of free speech
and her opposition to war. The university deemed the topics too political as the
country prepares for possible military action against Iraq."
by Dean E.
Murphy ^
"Despite depictions of North Korea as a dangerous, unpredictable country
playing its nuclear cards seemingly out of the blue, the fact is that the United
States forced its hand."
by Gavan McCormack ^
"Global support for the war on terrorism is diminishing partly because the
United States too often neglects human rights in its conduct of the war, Human
Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2003... The 558-page Human Rights Watch World Report
2003 covers human rights in 58 countries in 2002. It identifies positive
trends such as the formal end to wars in Angola, Sudan, and Sierra Leone, as
well as peace talks in Sri Lanka. But negative developments included the
outbreak of serious communal violence in Gujarat, India, and the continued
killing of civilians in wars from Colombia to Chechnya, from the Democratic
Republic of Congo to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Meanwhile, governments
continued highly repressive policies in Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Liberia
and Vietnam."
from Human Rights ^
"This is a 'best available' order-of-battle of forces deployed in CENTCOM's part of Southwest
Asia, as well as EUCOM forces in Turkey
participating in Operation Northern
Watch."
from Global Security.org ^
"When a large group of Greenpeace volunteers strolled into a nuclear power
station under the early morning cover of darkness, you might expect they would
meet some opposition. Shouldn't alarm bells being ringing loudly across the
facility, guards running out to greet them, with at least a friendly 'hello,
what are you doing here?' No, it was an easy task to reach the control building
and the reactor dome this morning proving that there is a serious security
breach at Britain's flagship nuclear facility. If a large group of activists in
bright red suits can get in so easily, so can anyone else. Just after six this
morning 19 Greenpeace volunteers peacefully gained access to British
Energy's Sizewell plant by cutting a hole in the two-wire
fences, which are all that separate the nuclear facility from a public beach.
The fence is just a few metres from the door to the control building, which the
volunteers managed to gain access to by using a ladder to reach a door on the
side of the building 10 metres off the ground. Nine of these volunteers then
used ladders to climb onto the reactor dome. No alarm was heard when the fences
were breached and it took five minutes for three unarmed private security guards
to appear on the scene."
from Greenpeace ^
"While the Bush White House has now downgraded its 'corporate responsibility
portal' into a mere link to uninspiring content on the White House webpage, and
although the prospect of war has largely bumped the issue off the front pages,
the cascade of corporate financial and accounting scandals continues."
by
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman ^
"The United
States Navy has begun what is expected to be the last round of military
exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques... About 8,000 sailors are
participating in the latest exercise, many of whom are preparing for deployment
later this year to the Mediterranean. Vieques' 8,000 residents have long
objected to the use of their island as a bombing range, especially as depleted
uranium (DU) shells have been linked to soaring cancer rates on the
island."
from BBC News AMericas ^
"Iraq has experienced a dramatic increase in child cancers, leukemia and
birth defects in recent years. Emad Wisam, Iraqi medical authorities, and
growing numbers of American activists cast blame on the U.S. weapons containing
depleted uranium that were used in the 1991 Gulf War and in the 1998 missile
attacks on Baghdad and other major cities. They also assert that such munitions
-- which were also used by U.S. forces in Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia in far
smaller quantities -- may be a cause of Gulf War diseases, elusive maladies that
have affected 50,000 to 80,000 U.S. veterans of the 1991 conflict. The Pentagon
says studies it has sponsored have found no evidence that depleted uranium,
known as DU, causes serious illnesses..."
by Robert Collier ^
"Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, a worried group of officials
from the 15 European
Union governments held an emergency meeting to discuss Europe's
readiness to handle the effects of chemical or biological terrorist attacks...
Yet today, 16 months later, the European Union has yet to reach formal
agreement on cooperation in case of a chemical or biological attack... Experts
say it is crucial for European governments to cooperate in this field because no
single EU country has enough trained personnel, equipment or specialized
hospital beds to handle on its own the effects of a major attack."
by
Thomas Fuller ^
"Pentagon dark lord Donald Rumsfeld is shoveling billions
of tax dollars into the research furnaces of federal laboratories and private
universities across the land in the wide-ranging effort to spawn 'super
soldiers,' fired by drugs and electromagnetic 'brain zaps' to fight without
ceasing for days on end. The work is being directed by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA)... The DARPA 'war fighter
enhancement' programs -- an acceleration of bipartisan biotinkering that's been
going on for years -- will involve injecting young men and women with hormonal,
neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in
their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying
them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for
sleep, the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow human
beings."
by Chris Floyd ^
"Enron
Corp., which ran a formidable lobbying machine in Washington and state
capitals, gained favorable treatment from Congress, federal and state
governments and various regulatory agencies on no fewer than 49 occasions from
the late 1980s to the company's bankruptcy in December 2001, a Center
for Public Integrity analysis shows... The six-month analysis was based
on federal and state lobby disclosure reports, documents obtained under the
federal Freedom of Information
Act and its state-level counterparts, thousands of news accounts from
the Lexis-Nexis and Dow Jones databases, and other sources. The
Center identified hundreds of issues on which Enron lobbied over
the course of more than a decade and then analyzed the legislative and
regulatory actions that followed the lobbying efforts."
by M. Asif
Ismail ^
"The leader of the Transportation Security
Administration took action today to block an effort to unionize 56,000
federal screeners at airports, saying collective bargaining for them was 'not
compatible' with the fight against terrorism. The official, Adm.
James Loy, the under secretary of transportation for security, said he
was authorized by Congress to thwart unionizing activity in the interest
of national security."
by Christopher Marquis ^
"Scholars are arguing over attributions, translating texts, and using
scientific tools to learn more about Leonardo da Vinci's techniques."
by
Melinda Henneberger ^
"The company which claims it has produced the world's first cloned human has
been ordered by a U.S. court to reveal the whereabouts of the baby girl and her
mother. An executive with the company, Clonaid, was also summoned to appear in court in
Florida, after lawyers demanded that the state authorities appoint a guardian
for the child."
from BBC News Americas ^
"When Aleksander Kwasniewski, the president of Poland, visits with President
Bush at the White House on Tuesday, talk will inevitably turn to the F-16 fighter jet. Over
the Christmas season, almost unnoticed, Poland announced it was accepting a $3.8
billion loan from Congress, the largest military loan in memory, to buy
48 of those Fighting Falcons... critics say the loan is a perfect example
of corporate welfare and of how the 'Iron Triangle' of Congress, the
Pentagon and military contractors work hand in glove to
get what they want. Others question whether Poland can afford fancy military
hardware when its economy is in its worst shape since the end of Communism there
13 years ago."
by Leslie Wayne ^
"Declaring the state's capital punishment system 'haunted by the demon of
error,' Gov. George Ryan on Saturday commuted the sentences of every inmate on
Illinois' Death Row, the most dramatic step by a governor on the issue in U.S.
history."
by Monica Davey and Steve Mills ^
"Police in Genoa, Italy have admitted to fabricating evidence against
globalization activists in an attempt to justify police brutality during
protests at the July 2001 G8 Summit. In searches of the Nexis database, FAIR has been unable
to find a single mention of this development in any major U.S. newspapers or
magazines, national television news shows or wire service stories. According to
reports from the BBC and the German wire service Deutsche
Presse-Agentur (07 Jan 03, 08 Jan 03), a senior Genoa police officer, Pietro
Troiani, has admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails in a school that
was serving as a dormitory for activists from the Genoa Social Forum. The
bombs were apparently planted in order to justify the police force's brutal July
22 raid on the school. According to the BBC, the bombs had in fact been
found elsewhere in the city, and Troijani now says planting them at the school
was a 'silly' thing to do. The BBC and DPA also report that
another senior officer has admitted to faking the stabbing of a police officer
in order to frame protesters. These revelations have emerged over the course of
a parliamentary inquiry into police conduct that was initiated by the Italian
government under pressure from 'domestic and international outrage over the
blood-soaked G8 summit in Genoa' (Guardian-UK, 31 Jul
01)."
from FAIR ^
"The Colorado branch of the ACLU
announced last March that it had learned that the Denver Police Department had conducted
surveillance and maintained 'criminal intelligence files' since the 1950s (!) on
people engaged in constitutionally protected political activities. Soon after,
Mayor Wellington Webb admitted that
'the issues that have been raised by the ACLU as well as others are
legitimate' and that files existed on 3,200 individuals and 208 organizations...
These days, local authorities are eager to jettison longstanding restraints
imposed after abuses in the 1970s and go back to their old-fashioned ways. The
New York City Police Department,
for example, announced that it wants to be able to spy on citizens without
having to persuade an official three-member panel that it has just cause -- even
though it cited no examples of this process hindering an investigation. In a
fine twist, the NYPD plans to use an updated version of the Orion
software employed to such notable effect by the Denver PD."
by
Katha Pollit ^
"President Bush's new, $647 billion tax cut plan would boost the size of his
2001 tax cuts by more than half over this decade, sending our country even
deeper in debt and endangering important public programs, while doing little to
stimulate the economy. ... Despite some tax changes slightly lowering taxes on
average families in the short run, three-fifths of Bush's proposed tax
reductions for this year would go to the best-off 10 percent of all taxpayers...
By the end of the decade, more than half of the President's proposed new tax
reductions would go to the top one percent."
from Citizens for Tax
Justice ^
"The European
Union (EU) agreed in December to major cutbacks in catch quotas for the
North Sea fishing industry. From February 2003 additional limits will be placed
on the amount of fish caught by North Sea trawlers, and those boats catching the
most endangered species will have the number of days they can go out to sea each
month reduced to 15. The EU claim the reductions will help overfished
species replenish, but the quotas have been set at levels designed to allow the
largest fishing concerns and the fish processing industry to continue making
profits. The scheme will come at the price of thousands of jobs losses among
small-scale owner operators, their crews, and associated on-shore
workers."
by Niall Green ^
"ACLU presents civil liberties
issues online through the eyes of political cartoonists and other
artists."
from ACLU ^
"The first major upgrade since 1999, IBM
Lotus Notes 6 ($70 per user), paired with Lotus
Domino 6 Enterprise Server ($2,308 per server) offers an impressive mix
of features that will lower the administrative effort with this messaging
platform while improving the experience of everyday users."
by Richard V.
Dragan ^
"Outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan will issue a 'blanket commutation' on
Saturday to almost all of the 156 imates on the state's death row -- reducing
their sentences to life with parole -- according to a source in the governor's
office. The governor's office has not confirmed the information, but sources
said letters have already been sent to inform inmates' families that their lives
will be spared. None of the prisoners, whose sentences are commuted, will be
eligible for release... On Friday, Ryan pardoned four other death row inmates
that he believed were tortured into confessing to crimes they did not
commit..."
by Jeff Flock ^
"North Korea has decided to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, invoking its legal right to do so. The move increases international tension and the risk of Japan reconsidering its position on nuclear weapons. But it is in line with the new approach to global security adopted by the Bush administration. President George W. Bush has either withdrawn from or expressed his opposition to implementing a number of key global arms control agreements. These include:
by Daniel Plesch ^
"Mr Sharon promised to give the public 'documents and facts' about the $1.5m
(£1m) loan given to his son by Cyril Kern, a British friend of the prime
minister who lives in South Africa. The loan was to help the family pay back
illegal contributions used to help Mr Sharon beat Benjamin Netanyahu in the
Likud leadership contest in 1999. When questioned by police, the prime minister
claimed that the family ranch had been mortgaged to repay contributions, but it
transpired later that the Sharon family did not own it... The accusation that he
tried to cover up a loan followed a police investigation into Likud for
vote-buying in its internal elections."
by Conal Urquhart ^
"On the eve of its 50th anniversary, the UK's Export Reviewing
Committee has issued a stark warning. The committee was set up to protect
Britain's heritage by offering museums and galleries the chance to buy major
artworks which would otherwise be exported. 'Through a lack of funding, the
system has failed totally to achieve this objective,' the reviewing committee
admits in its annual report."
by Martin Bailey ^
"The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission has ruled that the threat of terrorism cannot be considered
when licensing reactors or other nuclear installations because the risk is too
speculative. The commission also said discussing the issue in licensing hearings
would give too much information to terrorists and might 'unduly alarm the
public.'"
by Matthew L. Wald ^
"The Navy
routinely tests a weapon by firing radioactive, toxic ammunition in prime
fishing areas off the coast of Washington, raising concerns from scientists,
fishermen and activists. The Navy insists the use of depleted uranium off
the coast poses no threat to the environment. Depleted uranium, known as
DU, is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during
which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is
separated from natural uranium. DU remains radioactive for about 4.5
billion years... a coalition of Northwest environmental and anti-war activists
say they are considering seeking an injunction to halt the tests."
by
Larry Johnson ^
"A $2.25 billion federal program that helps schools and libraries connect to
the Internet is honeycombed with fraud and financial shenanigans, but the
government officials in charge say they don't have the resources to fix it. A
Center for Public Integrity
investigation reveals the huge program, funded by everyone who pays a phone
bill, is in financial disarray. A new report to Congress on the fund by
the FCC Inspector General's office
says the program, known as the E-Rate fund, is virtually out of
control."
by Bob Williams ^
"A hugely ambitious project to find and name every species on Earth within
the next 25 years has been launched by scientists. The Internet and the
development of DNA sequencing technology make the goal achievable... the
ALL
Species Foundation aims to find every unknown species on Earth within
the next 25 years."
by Alex Kirby ^
"A federal appeals court handed the Bush administration a major victory today
in ruling that a wartime president has the authority to detain indefinitely a
United States citizen captured as an enemy combatant on the battlefield and deny
that person access to a lawyer. The closely watched case that set up a stark
clash between the nation's security interests and its citizens' civil liberties,
resulted in an expansion of the power of the presidency as the three-judge panel
ruled unanimously that Mr. Bush was due great deference in conducting the war
against terrorism. The judges of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., said that it
was improper for courts to probe too deeply into the detention of Yasser Esam
Hamdi, a 22-year-old American-born Saudi Arabian who was captured on the
battlefield in Afghanistan and is imprisoned in a military brig in Norfolk,
Va."
by Neil A. Lewis ^
"House Republicans weakened their own ethics rules yesterday, pushing through
language that would allow lobbyists to cater meals to members' offices and let
charities pay for lawmakers to travel and stay at golf resorts and other
locales."
by Juliet Eilperin ^
"When ExxonMobil and BP need millions to pay for their oil projects, who do they
turn to? The U.S. government."
by Daphne Eviatar ^
"It's now increasingly obvious the Bushites want to lock us up in a
hermetically sealed informational box and throw away the key. All the
information they consider worthwhile will be pumped in through a one-way hole...
Enter Dubya's Critical
Infrastructure Protection Board (CIPB), which the unelected one created
with a flourish of his pen (another executive order, a most popular way to rule
vassals). The men and women around Bush want to require internet service
providers, ISPs, to build a centralized network capable of monitoring where you
go, what you look at and read, what you write in your email -- and all in
real-time. Of course, they don't say this. What they say is they want to protect
you against viruses and terrorist attacks. They want to shield you from Osama
bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, who are everywhere, ready to attack, even on the
internet."
by Kurt Nimmo ^
"The tax cut plan announced Tuesday by President Bush is a transparent scheme
to plunder the federal treasury and enrich the financial oligarchy. Nearly all
of the $664 billion in tax cuts go to the top income brackets, while working
class families, and especially the poor and unemployed, will receive little or
nothing. The centerpiece of Bush's program is the abolition of all taxation of
corporate dividends, income that goes almost entirely by the wealthiest
individuals in America. This huge tax break for the wealthy accounts for more
than half the total, $364 billion over ten years."
by Patrick Martin
^
"Doctors have been warned to look out for signs of exposure to the
potentially lethal poison ricin, after it was found
by anti-terrorist police at an address in north London."
from BBC News
World Edition ^
"Asked how he's doing, Kurt Vonnegut says, 'I'm mad about being old and I'm
mad about being American. Apart from that, OK.' Vonnegut has just turned 80.
Although he claims he's retired from writing, he has just finished an
introduction for a book of anti-war posters by artist Micah Ian
Wright. Publishing aside, Vonnegut continues to be a cultural presence,
speaking out against war with Iraq to 10,000 protestors at a rally in New York's
Central Park and making a spoken-word contribution to the new multimedia world
music production One
Giant Leap."
Kurt Vonnegut interviewed by David Hoppe ^
"The year 2003 opens against the backdrop of impending war and deepening
economic crisis. Within a matter of weeks the U.S. will be raining bombs on a
defenseless Iraqi population. The claims that the Bush administration has not
yet decided on war are as false as they are cynical. The White House has
already signed off on a military attack, as is patently clear from the massive
deployment of American forces in the Persian Gulf... Whatever the immediate
military outcome of the war, the Bush administration is setting into motion
processes that will have the most convulsive impact, affecting not only the
Middle East, but every part of the globe."
by the Editorial Board ^
"Following are the ten most alarming theories about September 11, the 'war on
terror,' and the future of the world. Feel free to accept them as gospel, study
them as symptoms of a traumatized culture, or scoff at them as anti-American
propaganda: I'm only the messenger."
by Mike Ward ^
"Responding to a devastating suicide attack that left at least 23 people dead
in Tel Aviv, Israeli helicopters shelled Palestinian targets in Gaza, troops
tightened the grip on occupied territories and the government banned a
Palestinian delegation from traveling to London for discussions on reforming the
Palestinian Authority."
by
Serge Schmemann ^
"The Republican National Committee
tentatively designated New York City today as the site of the party's 2004
political convention, selecting one of the most heavily Democratic cities in the
nation as the place to renominate President Bush next summer. It would be the
first time in the history of New York that the city played host to a Republican
convention."
by Adam Nagourney ^
"And so it begins, as predictable as clockwork. Just hours after Sen. John
Edwards said he is setting up an exploratory committee as the likely start of a
presidential run, the right-wing attack machine was already in gear, grinding
out a caricature of the North Carolina Democrat, an early glimpse of what's to
come not just for Edwards but for all the Democratic hopefuls... The immediate
lambasting of Edwards - like early attacks on Sen. John Kerry - is only the
start of a coordinated campaign by the Republican National Committee and
its allies in the powerful right-wing media to tear down any Democrat who may
pose a threat to Bush... The Democrats had better expect a lot of mud - and
ridicule - to be heaped on their 'fresh face' candidates."
by Sam
Perry ^
"Mississippi is due this week to execute a man convicted of murdering a shop
assistant at the age of 17, while the supreme court contemplates whether the
U.S. should remain almost the last country to execute juvenile
offenders."
by Julian Borger ^
"Following several less than stellar musical years, 2002 shaped up to be the
best year for new music since 1997. Hip-hop was vastly reinvigorated by
ambitious and grand albums like Common's Electric Circus, Blackalicious'
Blazing Arrow, and Talib Kweli's Quality. UK garage fulfilled its
promise and went global with The Streets' Original Pirate Material and
the rocketing stardom of North London's Ms. Dynamite. Rock 'n' roll was
in very good health and surged ahead with Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
scoring major critical acclaim, Coldplay's massive A Rush of Blood to the
Head, and the emergence of The Hives and The Vines.
Alt-country reached new heights and touched the U.S. national consciousness with
Steve Earle's Jerusalem and Ryan Adams' continued artistic prolificness.
Only dance and electronic music seemed to shine less brightly with few classic
records this year."
by PopMatters Music Staff ^
"Paranoia, hubris, and hatred - the unraveling of the greatest chess player
ever."
by Rene Chun ^
"Enclosed is a Grand Jury subpoena requiring that Cryptome produce certain
records..."
from The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of the Attorney
General ^
"As more U.S. troops get orders to head for the Persian Gulf region and the
Pentagon readies its battle plans, humanitarian groups are preparing for
what they call a massive crisis in the making. Ruud Lubbers, the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees, recently declared that war 'will be a
disaster from a humanitarian perspective' for a country where conditions have
already deteriorated dramatically during two decades of war, strife, repression
and, for the past dozen years, economic sanctions."
by Peter Baker ^
"At least 23 people were killed and 100 others wounded in a double suicide
bombing at 6:33 P.M. yesterday in the old central bus station in south Tel
Aviv... The two suicide bombers - both from Nablus, said the Al Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade, which claimed responsibility for the attack - blew themselves up within
less than a minute of one another, at the corner of G'dud Ha'ivri and Neve
She'anan streets at the two ends of a pedestrian promenade lined with small pubs
and shops frequented by local residents."
by Ha'aretz Staff ^
"A British peace and human rights activist was expelled from Israel Thursday,
January 2, under the pretext that her presence was a threat to national
security, her lawyer said... The 52-year-old activist, who founded the UK-based
anti-nuclear organization Trident Ploughshares and is now involved in
setting up the International Women Peace
Service-Palestine, arrived in Israel on Sunday to testify in a criminal
trial against a settler who assaulted her near Hebron in August... 'When she was
denied entry at the airport, she tried to fight the deportation order, but
airport security wrapped her up in a blanket and she was forced onto a departing
airplane,' Leibowitz said."
from IslamOnline & News Agencies ^
"On 2 January 2003, RSF
strongly condemned the sentencing of cyber-dissident Nguyen Khac Toan to 12
years in prison, as well as the flagrant violation of his right to a fair trial.
The organisation called on Justice Minister Uong Chu Luu to free him at once.
RSF noted that the prison term is the heaviest ever imposed on a
cyber-dissident in Vietnam. Moreover, this attack on freedom of expression
confirms the government's determination to follow China's policy of widespread
repression of Internet users."
from RSF/IFEX ^
"Three of the nation's top television networks urged the federal government
Thursday to scrap all remaining media-ownership rules, which they said are no
longer needed to spur competition among broadcasters and ensure diversity on
television... In a lengthy filing with the Federal Communications
Commission, Fox Entertainment, NBC and Viacom Inc., parent of CBS, took a strong stance against the
long-standing rules, citing eight privately funded studies that they said showed
consolidation of television and radio stations spurs more diversity of
programming and local news, not less... Consumer groups and entertainment unions
hotly disputed such assertions, saying that media consolidation is putting TV
news and programming into the hands of a few conglomerates. In their own
filings, groups including the Center for Digital Democracy,
Writers Guild
of America, and Consumer Federation of
America urged the FCC to strengthen media-ownership rules...
'We've already winnowed it down to six big entertainment companies,' said
Victoria Riskin, president of the Writers Guild of America, West. 'If we
deregulate more, will that become three, or two or one?'"
by Edmund
Sanders ^
"Lying dormant in virtually every digital cable box in America is technology
that can prevent viewers from recording certain programs to watch them later.
Soon, several Hollywood studios are planning to tell cable operators to flip the
switch... If DirecTV
detects that a customer's equipment would allow certain shows to be transmitted
over the Internet, the viewer is informed that the material can be seen only in
standard format... Hollywood's next move is an attempt to impose new electronic
rules about recording and copying on digital broadcast television... This year,
several of the major music companies have said they plan to begin embedding
copy-protection technologies on a sizable percentage of their CD's.
DVD's are already protected by a digital wrapper that prevents them from
being copied."
by Amy Harmon ^
"Internet users send millions of e-mail messages every day, oblivious to
their lack of confidentiality... PGP offers several versions of PGP
8, starting with PGP Freeware."
by Kevin Savetz ^
"North Korea breaks all its nuclear agreements with the United States, throws
out United
Nations inspectors and sets off to make a bomb a year, and President
Bush says it's 'a diplomatic issue.' Iraq hands over a 12,000-page account of
its weapons production and allows UN inspectors to roam all over the
country, and - after they've found not a jam-jar of dangerous chemicals in 230
raids - President Bush announces that Iraq is a threat to America, has not
disarmed and may have to be invaded. So that's it, then."
by Robert
Fisk ^
"Once treated with reverence, universities and colleges are now receiving
more skeptical and probing coverage. But the economic downturn has prompted some
news organizations to scale back their commitment to the beat."
by Carl
Sessions Stepp ^
"The first rule for a cult of personality is ubiquity. The presence of the
ruler must permeate the lives of the ruled. And so Turkmenistan, a country
situated uneasily between Afghanistan and Iran, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, is
carpet-bombed with the image of its strange, kleptomaniac president, Saparmurat
Niyazov. His face appears on every denomination of Turkmenistan's
currency. A golden profile of the man is broadcast on a corner of the two
national television stations at all times. Large stone Niyazovs guard the
vestibules and walkways leading into every government building. Billboards of
Niyazov's image plaster almost anything vertical and are planted upright at
intersections. In the mid-90's Niyazov changed his name to the more
all-encompassing Turkmenbashi, which translates into 'father of all
Turkmen.'"
by Ilan Greenberg ^
"Gioconda Belli talks about
leaving her marriage for Nicaragua's Sandinistas and a tumultuous life of love
affairs, espionage and power struggles."
Gioconda Belli interviewed by
Suzy Hansen ^
"From the hundreds of stories that Scientific American featured over the
past year, it has selected the 25 that most impressed them - some with their
importance, others with their gee-whiz appeal."
from editors of Scientific
American ^
"On the posthumous trail of W.G. Sebald and William Gaddis..."
by Ed
Park ^
"Analysis from Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico, Venezuela and
more."
by Jeff Nygaard ^
"As the world economy struggles to exit a downturn, the prospect of a
sustained rise in oil prices is coming at the worst possible time for some of
the least resilient regions, threatening to crimp already fragile growth. Fears
of military conflict in Iraq and a waning supply of oil to the United States
from Venezuela have pushed the price of a barrel of crude to around $30 - up
more than 40 percent from a year ago."
by Eric Pfanner ^
"The death of Mr. Hook, a 54-year-old British supervisor for the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency, has laid bare a remarkable breakdown of trust between the
Israeli government and the United Nations, the very organization which gave
birth to Israel almost 55 years ago. Since Mr. Hook's death, on Nov. 22, furious
United Nations workers in the West Bank and Gaza have accused the Israeli
Army in an open letter of 'senseless' and 'wanton' behavior and cataloged what
they say are repeated abuses and humiliations at the hands of its troops. 'U.N.
staff - international and Palestinian alike - have been verbally abused,
stripped, beaten, shot at and killed by Israeli soldiers,' more than 60 foreign
workers for the agency wrote in their letter, written days after Mr. Hook's
death."
by Michael Wines ^
"While Nike was
conducting a huge and expensive PR blitz to tell people that it had cleaned up
its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, an alert consumer advocate and
activist in California named Marc Kasky caught them in what he alleges are a
number of specific deceptions. Citing a California law that forbids corporations
from intentionally deceiving people in their commercial statements, Kasky sued
the multi-billion-dollar corporation. Instead of refuting Kasky's charge by
proving in court that they didn't lie, however, Nike instead chose to argue that
corporations should enjoy the same 'free speech' right to deceive that
individual human citizens have in their personal lives... They took this
argument all the way to the California Supreme Court, where they
lost. The next stop may be the U.S. Supreme Court in early January,
and the battle lines are already forming. For example, in a column in the New
York Times supporting Nike's position, Bob Herbert wrote, 'In a real
democracy, even the people you disagree with get to have their say.' True
enough. But Nike isn't a person - it's a corporation. And it's not their
'say' they're asking for: it's the right to deceive people."
by Thom
Hartmann ^
"The corporate sponsored creation of a disease is not a new phenomenon, but
the making of female sexual dysfunction is the freshest, clearest example
we have. A cohort of researchers with close ties to drug companies are working
with colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry to develop and define a new
category of human illness at meetings heavily sponsored by companies racing to
develop new drugs. The most recent gathering, featured Pfizer as chief sponsor and
Pfizer-friendly researchers as chief speakers. The venue? The Pfizer
Foundation Hall for Humanism in Medicine at New York University Medical
School."
by Ray Moynihan ^
"A recent story in the Los Angeles Times reports that at least 10
percent of the 625 war prisoners captured in Afghanistan and now held at the
notorious U.S .naval base prison in Guantanamo Bay have 'no meaningful connection'
with the Taliban or Al Qaeda... While the Los Angeles Times referred to only 59 of the
hundreds imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, it failed to mention that the
detainees, most of whom are in their early 20s, are being held without charge
and in contravention of their democratic and legal rights. The prisoners have
been deemed 'unlawful combatants' by the U.S. authorities in order to deny them
official prisoner-of-war status and the most rudimentary human rights. They have
no access to their families or lawyers and the U.S. government has given no
indication when or if the prisoners, some of whom are only 16 years of age, will
ever be charged or brought to trial. Under their current status, the prisoners
can be held as long as the U.S. government decrees."
by Richard
Phillips ^
"China hopes to launch its first manned spacecraft later this year, a senior
official has said. This would make it only the third country to put humans into
space."
from BBC News World Edition ^
"Republican Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, a close ally to President Bush and
the probable successor to Sen. Trent Lott as the next Senate Republican leader,
would ascend to the top Congressional post with his own history of race-related
controversy. "
by Robert Moore ^
"The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology is looking into accusations that its premier laboratory lied
to cover up serious problems with the technology at the heart of the
administration's proposed antimissile defense system."
by William J.
Broad ^
"West Coast dockers negotiate a contract despite federal intervention on the
side of business. But the Bush administration has fired a warning shot at
labor."
by David Bacon ^
"European copyright protection is expiring on a collector's trove of 1950's
jazz, opera and early rock 'n' roll albums, forcing major American record
companies to consider deals with bootleg labels and demand new customs barriers.
Already reeling from a stagnant economy and the illegal but widespread
downloading of copyrighted music from the Internet, the recording companies will
now face a perfectly legal influx of European recordings of popular works.
Copyright protection lasts only 50 years in European Union countries, compared with 95 years
in the United States, even if the recordings were originally made and released
in America. So recordings made in the early- to mid-1950's -- by figures like
Maria Callas, Elvis Presley and Ella Fitzgerald -- are entering the public
domain in Europe, opening the way for any European recording company to release
albums that had been owned exclusively by particular labels."
by Anthony
Tommasini ^
"Natacha Merritt prefers to deliberate over the digital images she publishes,
sometimes over a months period, at which point she selects those which have a
certain beauty or meaning - it could be the significance of the 'other' she was
with, the light straining through the curtains or the visual residue of a
certain moment in time. After scrutinized deliberation she uploads them onto her
website where the explicit edits of her sex life are forever preserved in
digital space for anyone to view, contemplate or engage."
by Adrian
Gargett ^
"For half a century the United States has had no more stalwart ally in Asia
than South Korea, where 37,000 American troops are stationed to protect against
an invasion from the north, and as a symbol of the unity of purpose between the
two countries. Now South Korea has become one of the Bush administration's
biggest foreign policy problems. Years of resentments on a variety of issues are
boiling over in the form of anti-American demonstrations in Seoul and
pronouncements by the outgoing and incoming presidents challenging American
policies on dealing with North Korea's nuclear ambitions."
by Steven R.
Weisman ^
"Brazil's first left-wing president for 40 years, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,
has been sworn into office amid euphoric scenes and popular expectation that he
will transform the country. Two-hundred-thousand people thronged the centre of
the capital, Brasilia, for the inauguration of the former trade union leader
known universally as Lula. Leaders and representatives of 119 countries
attended the ceremony on Wednesday."
from BBC News World Edition ^
"On one hand, the Right's long-held conviction that the media is the enemy
helps explain the chip-on-the-shoulder attitude of many conservatives, plus
their motivation for investing billions of dollars to build a dedicated
conservative media. That well-oiled media machine now stretches from TV networks
to talk radio to newspapers to magazines to books to the Internet - and helps
set the U.S. political agenda. On the other hand, the endless repetition of the
'liberal media' myth has sedated liberals who have avoided a commitment to
develop a comparable media infrastructure, apparently out of a hope that one is
not needed. Indeed, if an honest history of this era is ever written, one of the
most puzzling mysteries may be why the American liberal community - with all its
wealth and expertise in communications - sat back while conservatives turned
media into a potent weapon for dominating U.S. politics."
by Robert
Parry ^
"These days days, the biggest hurdle for international artists who want to
perform in the U.S. is getting their passport stamped. Even Grammy-award winning
musicians have become prime victims of America's post-9/11 Enhanced
Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act. The U.S. now routinely denies
artists visas based on their ethnicity. Visa applications have become a
long-form for censorship, and an expensive fee is pocketed by Uncle Sam
in the process."
by Susan Martinez ^
"On 19 December 2002, Israeli activists held an event at Tzavta Hall in Tel
Aviv to protest the indefinitely extended prison sentences currently being
handed to the young men refusing conscription. The event was sponsored by
conscientious objector organisations Yesh Gvul and Shministim, the latter a
group of high school seniors who have declared their refusal to serve in the
Israeli army. The following is the text of a speech made at this event by Anat
Matar, a veteran anti-occupation activist and the mother of Haggai Matar, one of
the men in prison for refusing to serve."
by Anat Matar ^
"General Electric Co. plans to increase the
share of medical costs paid by its workers starting today -- setting the stage
for the first strike against the industrial giant in three decades. The dispute
highlights what is expected to be the major issue this year in labor
negotiations -- the battle over who will pay for rapidly increasing health care
costs."
by Martha McNeil Hamilton ^
"The Fourth Annual Voice Film Critics' Poll."
from The Village
Voice ^
"The Shanghai Transrapid Maglev Line made its inaugural 'VIP' test run
in this rising modern metropolis in east China with Premier Zhu Rongji and his
German counterpart, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on board. The 10-billion-yuan
(1.2-billion-US-dollar) project is the first-ever magnetic levitation (maglev)
system for commercial use in the world."
from People's Daily ^
"If we take into account such factors as pollution and the depletion of
natural capital, we see that the quality of life peaked in the UK in 1974 and in
the U.S. in 1968, and has been falling ever since. We are going
backwards."
by George Monbiot ^
"A state appeals court ruled Monday that the California
Coastal Act is unconstitutional because it wrongly gives state lawmakers
the power to appoint -- and fire -- a majority of the commissioners who enforce
development restrictions along the state's 1,100-mile coastline. In a unanimous
decision, a three-judge panel of the District Court of Appeal in
Sacramento [see Marine Forests v. Coastal
Com. 30 Dec 02 CA3 (.pdf)] ruled that the act is legally flawed because
it gives lawmakers too much power over decisions by the state's Coastal
Commission, a 12-member board that controls building permits in the
state's coastal zone. The decision goes into effect in 30 days, state Attorney
General Bill Lockyer said."
by Lance Williams ^
"Can accounting that follows the stated rules still be unreliable? In other
words, is there a gap in GAAP?
After a year of corporate scandals in which some of the most outrageous
financial reporting appears to have complied with generally accepted accounting
principles, or GAAP, the answer appears to be yes."
by Kurt
Eichenwald ^
"On 30 December 2002, RSF protested the closure of the
independent daily newspaper Al Watan, which the authorities say was shut
down based on national security and state of emergency regulations. RSF
also protested that the editions of two other independent newspapers, Al
Horriya and As Sahafa, failed to appear after having received threats
from state security officials... The authorities have censored independent
newspapers more than a dozen times so far this year for their coverage of topics
including circumcision, AIDS, peace talks with the rebel Sudan People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) and discussion of the former power behind the
regime, Hassan el-Turabi."
from RSF ^
"The U.S.' largest AIDS organization today awarded its 2002 'Heart of Stone'
to British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline for 'putting profit above human
decency while 8,500 die every day of AIDS.'... Glaxo controls the largest
share of the global market in HIV medications through exclusive licensing and
patent protections on the key AIDS drugs AZT, abacavir, 3TC, and the combination
formulations Combivir and Trizivir. According to Terri Ford, AHF's
director of advocacy, three developments over the last twelve months earned
GSK the 'Heart of Stone'..."
from AHF ^
"Giuseppe Colombo helped NASA go to Mercury. Now it's his turn. The Italian
mathematician, who died in 1984, performed the orbital calculations that allowed
the Mariner 10 spacecraft to visit Mercury, the
innermost planet. In his honor, the European Space Agency (ESA) has
named a craft planned for a trip to the rocky planet BepiColombo. The mission is designed to withstand the
rigors of a trip to the planet closest to the Sun, in search of its hot secrets
and also to look for ice."
by Diana Jong ^
"The physical condition of London's theatreland, a unique treasury of mainly
Victorian and Edwardian theatres, is beginning to cause anguish among the people
who earn their living there. One estimate is that the buildings need well over
£200m spent to bring them up to the modern standards that audiences increasingly
expect, and to faintly humane working conditions for staff."
by Maev
Kennedy ^
"In a stunning example of corporate insensibility, Dow Chemical,
the worlds largest chemical company, and new owners of Union Carbide is
to sue survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in
Bhopal, India. While the site of the disaster lies covered in toxic waste and
survivors struggle with continuing ill health and deadly pollution from the
site, Dow has decided to add to their woes with a Indian lawsuit... Why
are they acting in such an amazingly perverse manner? On December 2nd a peaceful
march of 200 women survivors from Bhopal delivered toxic waste from the
abandoned Carbide factory back to Dow's Indian headquarters in
Bombay with the demand that Dow take responsibility for the disaster and
clean up the site. Dow obviously has other ideas because they are suing
survivors for about US$10,000 for 'loss of work.' That's US$10,000 compensation
demanded for a two hour peaceful protest where only one Dow employee
briefly ventured out of the Mumbai corporate business park to meet the women
protestors."
from Greenpeace ^
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"Powers is a genuine artist, a thinker of rare synthetic gifts, maybe the
only writer working... who can render the intricate dazzle of it all and at the
same time plumb its philosophical implications." - Sven Birkerts,
Esquire
"Through an overview of Powers's career and close readings of his novels,
which include Galatea
2.2, Prisoner's Dilemma, The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Soul, Gain, and Plowing the Dark, Dewey explores each of the
novelist's defining metaphors." - Book Description
"A precursor to Colin Laney, the 'netrunner' of Gibson's sf novels, Idoru (1996) and All Tomorrow's Parties (1999), Cayce
Pollard is a coolhunter, a 'sensitive' of some kind, a dowser in the
world of global marketing, able to recognize trends (patterns) before anyone
else... Gibson's usual themes are still intact - globalism, constant
surveillance, paranoia, and pattern recognition - only with the added presence
of real-world elements (Pilates, Google, Bibendum, Echelon, Buzz
Rickson's). With evocative prose, Gibson masterfully captures the essence of
a specific time and place and the often chaotic sense of disorientation
experienced while globe hopping ('soul delay,' as Pollard calls it, referring to
the time it takes for the soul to catch up to the body)." - Benjamin Segedin,
Booklist
"From the author of two Village Voice Books of the Year comes a
ruthless exposé of the raptors at Enron. Behind the screams over workers' disappearing
pensions, disappearing jobs, and disappearing CEO responsibility lies a bigger
story: what Enron has done to the world. Included is 'A Manual for
Corporate Terrestrial Conquest,' complete with juicy tips for imperialist
globalization: how to fix prices using ADM as a model; how to enlist the
henchmen of the imperial state (such as the CIA's economic espionage
division and USAID); and
how to use terrorism and the drug war to push for more corporate control." -
Book Description
"For a quarter of a century, Bill Pepper conducted an independent
investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He opened his
files to our family, encouraged us to speak with the witnesses, and represented
our family in the civil trial against the conspirators. The jury affirmed his
findings, providing our family with a long-sought sense of closure and peace,
which had been denied by official disinformation and cover-ups. Now the findings
of his exhaustive investigation and additional revelations from the trial are
presented in the pages of this important book. We recommend it highly to
everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King's assassination." - Coretta Scott
King
"…a compelling piece of work, strongly evocative of an era that seems, more
and more, to have been one of the most extraordinary periods in our history. The
unions, the mobs, the plots, the characters." - Don DeLillo
"He is a devastating witness to the failure of politics to guard mankind
against itself." - Sunday Times (UK)
"Robert Coover's new novel is dedicated to 'Saint Buster, Saint Luis, and
Saint Jean-Luc, who kept the light burning in a dark century.' These spirits
preside over The Adventures of Lucky Pierre, his remarkable, perverse
take on the history of narrative cinema, seen through the lens of pornography.
The comic pratfalls of Buster Keaton, the surreal displacements and anxieties of
Luis Buñuel, and the political and formal radicalism of Jean-Luc Godard are all
in evidence. The novel is set in a science-fictional future or alternative
universe where film, not content with reflecting reality, has come to replace
it, and where film's lowest common denominator, porn, has risen inexorably to
the top, subsuming all other genres and erasing the cultural memory of
everything else in an entirely eroticized universe." - Paul Quinn, Times Literary Supplement
"Strange, unquenchable, and serious originality... A brilliantly allusive
study of England's imperial past and the nature of decline and fall, of loss and
decay... It is hard to imagine a stranger or more compelling work." - Robert
McCrum, The London Observer
"First published in 1955 and considered one of the most profound works of
fiction of this century, The Recognitions tells the story of a
painter-counterfeiter who forges out of love, not larceny, in an age when the
fakes have become indistinguishable from the real. " - Book
Description
"For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the
mechanization of the arts, told via a social history of the player piano in
America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into
a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. This
'man in the bed' lies dying, thinking anxiously about the book he still plans to
write, grumbling about the deterioration of civilization and trying to explain
his obsession to the world before he passes away or goes mad." - Book
Description
"Rock Steady's delegate of stalwart producers perfectly decorate the
disc with their respective expertise; Ric Ocasek (new wave), Prince (R&B),
Nellee Hooper (trip-hop), Sly & Robbie (dub), and William Orbit (trance)
offer some staying power to music that's always been on the edge of disposable.
Despite their disparate styles, the songs complement each other like stars and
stripes. This is No
Doubt's best album to date, and as they continue to expand their
influences, the party only gets bigger." - Beth Massa
"This is a bracing collection of high-energy, old-school bluegrass that will
please the most hardline traditionalist. Songs include the criminally
underrecorded murder song Poor Ellen Smith (in a rendition that almost
rivals Joe Val's), the classic You Don't Know My Mind and the Galax
fiddle tune Sally in the Turnip Patch, as well as a few more unusual
selections - an adapted Leadbelly tune, for instance, and another one associated
with venerable country crooner George Jones." - Internet All-Music
Guide
"Countless trumpeters cite the Miles Davis influence; few embody,
transmogrify and infuse it with such creativity as longtime AACM
member Smith, a living master of tone... A quartet with Jack DeJohnette on
drums, Malachi Favors Maghostut on bass and Anthony Davis on piano and keyboards
deserves to be called golden." - Derk Richardson, San Francisco Bay
Guardian
"Ware & Co. render Sonny Rollins' exposition in a style that is
just as invigorating as the original hard bop standard. The instrumentation is
near perfect in its construction and deconstruction of rhythm and melody, and
the waves of sound that swim throughout this record make it one of the more
invigorating jazz releases in recent years." - Action Man
Magazine
"There have been numerous John Coltrane introductions, surveys, and best-ofs
through the years, but never one quite like Legacy. It draws on
Coltrane's recordings for several labels - including Prestige, Blue
Note, Atlantic, Impulse! - and as a result it's able to
present both his early and late work... the set takes a gently theoretical
approach to Coltrane's music, with each CD a chronological journey through a
different aspect of his music. Disc one emphasizes Coltrane's approaches to
harmony and melody; disc two features his innovative approach to rhythm. Disc
three concentrates on the creative relationship between Coltrane and drummer
Elvin Jones, while disc four is a collection of bristling live performances." -
Stuart Broomer
"The Yardbirds were the forerunners of heavy metal, psychedelic music,
the extended guitar solo, and that staple of rock improvisation, the 'jam.' In
their latter days the 'new' Yardbirds, led by Jimmy Page, morphed into
Led Zeppelin, while cofounders Keith Relf and Jim McCarty put together
the classical-rock group Renaissance. Eric Clapton went on to form
Cream before going solo. Jeff Beck formed The Jeff Beck Group with
frontman and future-Face Rod Stewart. Amazingly, the Yardbirds-era
work of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page had never been united under a
single collection; so Rhino did what needed to be done - compile the ultimate
Yardbirds anthology." - Rhino Description
"It all started back in 1971 when music aficionado and future Patti Smith
Group guitarist Lenny Kaye lovingly compiled the now-classic 2-LP collection
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968...
Rhino's new Nuggets box set not only contains the original Kaye-compiled
album in its entirety, but completes the picture with three more CDs worth of
essential psychedelic tunes that were left off the first time around...
Painstakingly remastered from the original single mixes for best-ever sound, the
box also features an extensive booklet containing original and new Kaye-penned
liner notes, rare photos, and track-by-track annotations." - Rhino
Description
"Covering the nether regions of 1964-69, Nuggets II is a virtually
hitless, yet absolutely priceless, collection of mod, psychedelic, British
R&B, freakbeat, twee-pop, and countless other momentary genres... [along
with] a massive 100-page book with new essays from Bomp editor Greg Shaw
and Nuggets II producers Alec Palao and Gary Stewart, plus complete track
info by Ugly Things editor Mike Stax, and a lorry-load of rare pix." -
Rhino Description
"Gripping 1977 American thriller from Wim Wenders that turns back on itself
with deadly European irony. Dennis Hopper is an international art smuggler,
Bruno Ganz is a Hamburg craftsman. Together they commit a murder and briefly
become friends. The film has a fine grasp of tenuous emotional connections in
the midst of a crumbling moral universe. Wenders's films (Kings of the
Road, Alice in the Cities) are about life on the edge; this is one of
his edgiest." - Dave Kehr, The Chicago Reader
"Described by its maker, Jean-Luc Godard, as 'Alice in Wonderland meets Franz
Kafka,' this 1964 film noir stars Anna Karina as a naive woman who takes up with
couple of would-be bad guys (Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey) in a disastrous effort
to rob her aunt of a fortune. Along the way, the motley group joins the
Godardian (and Hollywood gangster) tradition of characters who walk a line
between reality and invention, in this case distracting themselves by running
around the Louvre, taking a stab at learning English, stumbling through some
dance steps, and reenacting the death of Billy the Kid." - Jack
Keogh
"The hugely ambitious Beckett on Film project gathered together 19
different directors to turn the 19 stage works written by Samuel Beckett into
films... Waiting for Godot (in which two tramps pass the time while they
wait for someone who may never come), Endgame (in which a blind man and
his lame servant bicker and joke as the world declines), and Play (in
which a love triangle is bitterly recalled by two women and a man in urns) are
astonishing in both their potent humor and piercing grief." - Bret
Fetzer
"The reason this film has art is because you are forced back into its
symbolic subtext in order to understand its logic. The courtroom scene is
absurd, obeying its own protocol. The judge plays chess on a huge board that
makes San Francisco a mere landscape extension. The defending lawyer is allowed
to interrogate himself as a friendly witness. O'Hara escapes by mingling with
the jury. Where does he hide? In a theatre in Chinatown where a traditional
Chinese play is in progress." - Lawrence Russell, Film
Court
"He was, quite simply, one of the greatest actors of all time. And while Sir
Alec Guinness may be best known for his legendary dramatic roles, his true
genius may lay in his incomparable comedy performances. This collection of
classic Alec Guinness comedies includes Kind Hearts and Coronets, The
Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit,
and The Captain's Paradise." - DVD Description
"Humphrey Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy
socialite (Lauren Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young
sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler
had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and
atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction.
William Faulkner wrote the screenplay." - Tom Keogh
"Humphrey Bogart is Dashiell Hammett's definitive private eye, Sam Spade,
struggling to keep his hard-boiled cool as the double-crosses pile up around his
ankles. The plot, which dances all around the stolen Middle Eastern statuette of
the title, is too baroque to try to follow, and it doesn't make a bit of
difference. The dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Hammett, is delivered
with whip-crack speed and sneering ferocity, as Bogie faces off against Peter
Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, fends off the duplicitous advances of Mary Astor,
and roughs up a cringing 'gunsel' played by Elisha Cook Jr." - David
Chute