Whatever its end goal, the Bush administration is utilizing the same tactics, accusations and propaganda in preparing the U.S. public for a possible attack on Iran... read more »

Bloomberg backed banks in 2002; What other cities are doing; From New Deal to raw deal. read more »

The number of stories about Iraq in all U.S. newspapers declined by almost half in 2008 as compared to 2007, according to an analysis of the news cycle during a single 24-hour period. read more »

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As the year draws to a close Jane Jacobs, Moses’ greatest political antagonist, finally gets her chance to reply in the form of a museum exhibit. Given the current wave of Moses-mania, what might the woman who consistently counseled activists “not to feel helpless,” say to us today? - A review of "Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York" at the Municipal Arts Society of New York, 457 Madison Ave at East 50th Street, through Jan. 5, 2008.) read more »

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement: Although King and others in the early Civil Rights movement are lauded today as “apostles of nonviolence,” their tactics were more than just symbolic. read more »

Over the past five years, perhaps no college campus has been the scene of as much controversy over academic “freedom of speech” as Columbia University in New York City. The reasons for this are partly geographical — Columbia is an Ivy League school in the heart of the media capital of the world, which inherently magnifies events there. Columbia can also be seen as an early-stage testing ground for the right’s campaign to cleanse the academy of “pernicious” influences. More than abstract principles are at stake in these recent Columbia free-speech dust-ups. Universities represent one the last institutional bastions of independent thinking in the face of a post-9/11 conservative ascendancy, and their subordination to a narrow political ideology would mark yet another victory for the right. read more »

First they came for the Palestinian professors. Then the Minutemen arrived on campus, gunning for the immigrants. In early October, someone hung a noose from the door of a black professor’s office. Following the slew of racial attacks at their university, a coalition of Columbia students banded together to pre-empt the latest offensive, which the right dubbed “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” read more »

NYU Expansion New York University (NYU) recently announced plans to expand by more than a third in the next 25 years, adding an additional six million square feet in service of an extra 5,500 students, prompting concern about the continued growth of the already sprawling campus. According to architect Leo Blackman, a member of the Manhattan borough president’s NYU task force quoted by The Villager, “NYU has de facto taken over Union Square, because it’s built so many dorms around Union Square … There’s not an empty bench in Union Square — it’s sort of been absorbed by NYU. They’ve borrowed Washington Square for centuries.” It is currently unclear how much of the growth will occur in the West Village and how much will take place elsewhere in the City. read more »

As the news broke that one of the six people arrested for the Aug. 4 killings was Jose Carranza, an undocumented immigrant from Peru, anti-immigrant forces trumpeted the revelation. On Aug. 20, fringe Republican candidate Tom Trancedo parachuted into Newark to allege that “the fact that New Jersey — that Newark, New Jersey, is a sanctuary city for illegal aliens is well known … and Newark and its political leadership share a degree of culpability” for the murders. Sensing traction in the Republican base following Trancredo’s charges, leading candidate Mitt Romney echoed the line two days later. And on Aug. 28, Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt invoked the Newark slayings when he announced that people arrested by state law enforcement would undergo immigration status checks. read more »

The country mired in an endless war, rising dissent, creative direct action — Camden 28 director Anthony Giacchino, much like the directors of the 2002 film The Weather Underground, obviously hopes to strike a chord in sympathetic viewers of a new antiwar era by reminding us of the tactics of an earlier generation of activists. Unfortunately, the upshot of his conventional but moving documentary is to demonstrate the vast gulf that separates the Vietnam Era from our own. read more »

1987: Hamas Founded Sheik Ahmed Yassin of the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood founds Hamas (“The Islamic Resistance Movement”) According to the Israeli weekly Koteret Rashit and UPI, the Islamic associations that incubated Hamas were supported by Mossad throughout the 1980’s, as a “counterbalance to the Palestine Liberation Organization.” read more »

“The journalistic concept [of balance] causes problems when it is applied to issues of science,” write media researchers Jules and Maxwell Boykoff for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. “It seems to demand that journalists present competing points of view on a scientific question as though they had equal scientific weight, when they actually do not.” During the decade-long media debate over the existence and causes of global warming, many journalists tried to balance the mass consensus of thousands of peerreviewed scientists with dissenting views from fringe figures with little background in atmospheric physics but plenty of ties to energy companies (see page 9). read more »

How did an innocuous class trip become front-page news and dominate the local media market for days? It’s more complex than simple anti-Castro sentiment. read more »

1998: The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) notes that there are 2,397 surveillance cameras in Manhattan alone. read more »

There are eerie parallels between the administration’s media strategy in pushing confrontation with Iran – relying on a series of anonymous leaks to administrationfriendly reporters and off-the-record background briefings – and the behavior of the press in the days during the run up to the Iraq war, who displayed an unfailing willingness to vaunt unproven and hawkish claims. read more »

In 2002, when the Times chose to hype stories about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and “smoking guns as mushroom clouds,” that was a green light for the rest of the media to follow suit. The Times’ alleged liberalism, ironically, often aids the pro-war crowd. If the liberal Times says Saddam Hussein (or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for that matter) is trying to build a nuclear bomb, well, then, it must be true. After all, it isn’t as if Fox News is saying it. read more »

2002: In an editorial titled “Hugo Chavez Departs,” the Times’ editorial board salutes the American backed coup that briefly drove the democratically elected President from power. “With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator,” the Times writes on April 13. Once the coup fails, the Times writes again on April 16 that the paper somehow “overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed.” read more »

Responding to litigation filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and the New York Times, a federal judge rejected New York City's efforts to block voluminous RNC-related materials – including police videotapes, Pier 57 environmental and “police exposure” reports and NYPD pre-convention training manuals – from public view. read more »

Emerging from of the ‘zine scene of the late 1980s, and fueled by the rising tide of activism that emerged in full force at the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, Clamor Magazine was small, scrappy and widely loved. In 2006 the glossy quarterly – whose professional looks didn’t stop it from embracing and even seeking out first-time writers – expanded its operations to include the Clamor Infoshop, a consignment and distribution service that helped other lefty projects merchandise their materials. read more »

Even as its parent organization disintegrates, the IPA-New York hopes not only to survive, but to thrive. “On a personal level, I am very sorry that the organization in San Francisco is closing,” says Tomaz Deptula, a business editor with Nowy Dziennik (Polish Daily News) and an IPA-NY steering committee member. read more »

Although the NYPD withdrew an earlier assembly and parade proposal in August in the face of widespread public outrage, the new rules “are no more reasonable than the first,” and would limit funeral processions, impromptu bike rides of more than 30 people and city walking tours, according to Councilman Tony Avella (D-Bayside). read more »

Nearly two months after Brad Will was gunned down on the streets of Oaxaca City while chronicling a popular revolution against the State governor, and more than two weeks after that uprising suffered a brutal wave of repression, the investigation into the murder of the NYC Indymedia journalist appears to be hostage to internal Mexican politics. read more »

The vitriol spilled in the most recent WBAI Local Station Board (LSB) election campaigns has created one of the nastiest political contests north of New Jersey. read more »

The U.S Has Tried To Take Voting Into The Digital Age In Recent Years Even As Concerns Grow About The New Technology. read more »

When anti-war candidate Jonathan Tasini soundly lost his Sept. 12 primary bid to unseat Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton – and yet still managed to double his expected percentage of the vote with 17 percent – most of the liberal blogosphere reacted with a giant yawn. read more »

Within hours of the launch of the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, the photos of dead Lebanese raced across the Internet. Shot by AP photographers and released by Hanady Salman of the As- Safir newspaper in Beirut, they are heart wrenching and stomach churning. Children’s blackened bodies lie in the wreckage of a burned-out jeep (see centerfold). A man with a blossom of blood running down his face staggers out of rubble. An eight-year-old girl is roughly lifted up by her ankles, her lifeless head hanging limply and her small mouth partially open. read more »

“i” is a galloping, careening, tornado of a film, often pausing briefly to listen in on one collective debate about the nature of Indymedia before moving on to the next crisis. read more »

Over the past few months, newly energized immigrants-rights protesters have received a lesson in corporate media manipulation. Keeping history in mind, and drawing upon actual media coverage of the immigrant-rights protests, here are some easy rules on how to cover a mass movement. read more »

The data collection program, called the Program Evaluation and Monitoring System (PEMS), will mandate the reporting of highly personal information about every person who participates in federally funded HIV prevention programs. read more »

Anderson Cooper interrupted pontificating Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu on CNN, saying, “Senator, I’m sorry. For the last four days, I have been seeing dead bodies here in the streets of Mississippi and to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other – I have to tell you, there are people here who are very upset and angry.” The fact that such examples of journalistic spine are even noteworthy says much about the debased state of the news. read more »

Still We Ride, a gripping new documentary by Andrew Lynn, Elizabeth Press, and Christopher J. Ryan, chronicles the NYPD crackdown on Critical Mass that began in August 2004. While the story is well known to the movie’s core audience, Still We Ride succeeds in adding dramatic visuals to a storyline that has mostly became a depressing litany of monthly arrest statistics. read more »

The extraordinary scene that unfolded on July 30, 2004, was the culmination of six years of rides and community organizing. Coming four weeks before the Republican National Convention (RNC), last summer’s Critical Mass rides tapped into the political energy of a city waiting anxiously for protesters and conservative conventioneers to arrive. read more »

At the 2nd National Conference on Media Reform, the argument was simple: Every progressive organization should make national media reform its “second issue,” because the success of other liberal and leftist efforts depends on democratizing an increasingly corporatized and commercialized media. read more »

After receiving testimony from more than 120 Columbia University students, faculty members, administrators and alumni, an ad-hoc committee charged by university President Lee Bollinger to investigate claims of in-class intimidation of pro-Israel students found, “no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic.” read more »

The introduction of the videotape once again demonstrates the growing importance of video activism in the legal arena. Videos shot by members of Indymedia and other media groups have been extremely useful pieces of evidence during activist trials. read more »

Not content to simply send its young men (and later young women) off to fight and die in foreign wars, the U.S. government has frequently ignored its returning veterans. While the 1944 G.I. Bill has assumed mythical status, other government policies toward returning vets have been less inspiring read more »

A faculty committee is investigating charges that MEALAC Professor Joseph Massad intimidated Israeli and Jewish students in his classroom. The investigation has in turn sparked an outcry as Columbia University admitted that no formal student complaint has been “initiated through any of the formal processes at the university” against Massad. read more »

The 500 or so bicyclists who converged on Union Square for the Nov. 26 Critical Mass had probably become resigned to the presence of the NYPD at their monthly event... Little could have prepared the Critical Mass riders for what awaited them in November, however. read more »

Western reports scooped by Iraqi stringers. Between the three first-person reports, probably, lies the truth of what is happening in Falluja. With levels of military confrontation in Iraq still on the rise, embedded reporters are once again America’s eyes and ears on the battlefield. read more »

In the end, there will probably be two ways to determine ultimate victors in the battle over Fahrenheit 9/11. The first will come at the box office. The second, of course, will come on the first Tuesday in November. read more »

In the end, there will probably be two ways to determine ultimate victors in the battle over Fahrenheit 9/11. The first will come at the box office. The second, of course, will come on the first Tuesday in November. read more »

Many leftist intellectuals over the age of, say, forty, probably cannot hear the names “Camus” and “Sartre” without being immediately plunged into an ideological drama freighted with symbolic meaning. Those old enough to remember the quarrel between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, and even many of those old enough to remember the Soviet Union, most likely have their minds made up about which larger-than-life protagonist was right and which was wrong, which philosopher won the argument and which philosopher lost. For these readers, Raymond Aronson’s excellent Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel That Ended It will serve as history burdened by memories of a distant yet dramatic past. read more »

The rise and decline of the Bush presidency can be traced out across the pages of The New York Times bestseller list. In the months after September 11, 2001, the top selling titles in the Times were a literal shopping list of conservative hagiography, from The Right Man, by David Frum to Bush Country by John Podhoretz. read more »

In other words: a bogus WMD claim is still bogus, no matter how it’s spun; a lie is a lie. read more »

In other words: a bogus WMD claim is still bogus, no matter how it’s spun; a lie is a lie. read more »

Historic listener elections to the Local Station Board for WBAI-99.5 FM ended Feb. 5 without any of four competing slates controlling a majority of the 24-member board. The Justice and Unity slate, which centered its campaign on the need for more diversity at the station, earned eight seats. Advocates for more internal democracy at WBAI [...] read more »

Historic listener elections to the Local Station Board for WBAI-99.5 FM ended Feb. 5 without any of four competing slates controlling a majority of the 24-member board. The Justice and Unity slate, which centered its campaign on the need for more diversity at the station, earned eight seats. Advocates for more internal democracy at WBAI [...] read more »

In effect, the new owner of the Nets is the New York Times Corporation’s most trusted real estate partner. With Ratner as the primary dealmaker on the Brooklyn arena, can New Yorkers be naïve enough to assume that the paper will cover the Nets story honestly? read more »

In effect, the new owner of the Nets is the New York Times Corporation’s most trusted real estate partner. With Ratner as the primary dealmaker on the Brooklyn arena, can New Yorkers be naïve enough to assume that the paper will cover the Nets story honestly? read more »

After Cointelpro was exposed in the early 1970s, the FBI was ordered to stop spying in churches and at political meetings. Is this still true? read more »

Fifty issues and almost four years later, Unst8ed is not The Indypendent, a sixteen-page, full-color biweekly. The critical feedback hasn’t diminished much, though. “I know all the stories on age three are related,” says Catriona Stuart at a recent review meeting for the 49th issue. “But do we really need to have multiple articles by the same author on the same page?” Donald Paneth asks, “What’s the big picture in this issue? Why do we have so much trouble managing our information?” read more »

Fifty issues and almost four years later, Unst8ed is not The Indypendent, a sixteen-page, full-color biweekly. The critical feedback hasn’t diminished much, though. “I know all the stories on age three are related,” says Catriona Stuart at a recent review meeting for the 49th issue. “But do we really need to have multiple articles by the same author on the same page?” Donald Paneth asks, “What’s the big picture in this issue? Why do we have so much trouble managing our information?” read more »