LiP Media Blog

This Week's Picks:

1. Uprising in Bolivia
   Gualberto Choque, leader of the peasant farmers of the Department of La Paz and, as such, leader of the rural Aymara people, said it yesterday: "This is a time of war." Although nobody listened to him, it was a warning. This morning at 9:30 more than 10,000 Aymara peasant farmers, from the twenty highland provinces, came down from El Alto's Ceja neighborhood into La Paz. "This is not about demonstrations or speeches, brother," Choque told Narco News. "Now we are going to take the Palace of Government."

   Luis Gomez | Narco News
   http://narcosphere.narcon ews.com/story/2005/5/24/174716/841
   
   Narco News is regularly updating their website with breaking news on the situation in Bolivia: http://www.narconews.com
   
   Great pictures are up on Bolivia Indymedia (and updates en español): http://bolivia.indymedia.org/es



2. The Newsweek Retraction
   Why the spirit, if not the substance, of the Newsweek Koran-flushing story was on the mark after all—and how the mainstream media is ignoring the truth about American religious violence against Muslim prisoners.

   Matthew Rothschild | The Progressive/Common Dreams
   http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0 518-29.htm



3. Flushed With Enthusiasm
   Document from an interview with a twenty-one-year-old Afghan man whose name is withheld for his protection, conducted last summer in Gardez by Daniel Rothenberg, an American human-rights researcher. The interviewee, who was upset when his interrogators placed a copy of the Koran into a latrine, showed a Department of Defense discharge letter stating that he was detained from December 2002 through May 2004.

   Harper's
   http://harpers.org/TheArmyWeHave.html



4. VIDEO | Indigenous Community in Columbia Fears Start of Dirty War
   Indigenous communities in rural Colombia are facing increasing violence and under-handed political maneuvering, carried out by Colombian government and para-military organizations and instigated by government and corporate interests from abroad. In this interview, Ezequiel Vitonas, former mayor of Toribio, Colombia, and an Elder Councellor of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, and Manuel Rozental, a surgeon and human rights activist from Toribio, Colombia who represents the community and its struggles internationally, explain their plight.

   Democracy Now!
   256K Video: http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2005/may/video/dnB20050520a.rm& proto=rtsp&start=46:35
   Transcript: http://www.democracynow.o rg/article.pl?sid=05/05/20/1425246



5. Monkey Trial or Kangaroo Court?
   Once again, evolution has been pitted against intelligent design—a thin psuedo-scientific veil for Christian fundamentalism—in the courts of the United States.

   Stan Cox / AlterNet
   http://www.alternet.org/story/22042



6. CARTOON | The War on Rationality
   About those stork-hating secular reproductionists.

   Tom Tomorrow | This Modern World
   http://www.workingforchange.co m/comic.cfm?itemid=19060



7. Waste Lines
   Since 2003, Freecycle has been the place to go to get rid of still useful junk without sending it to the dumpster. Recently however, executive director Deron Beal accepted the group's first corporate support—a $130,000 sponsorship from none other than the largest garbage company in the US, Waste Management, Inc. He claims the move was necessary, but others are abandoning Freecycle with cries of "hypocrisy."

   Matt Weiser | Grist
   http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/05/19/weiser-freecycle/index.html?source=daily
   
   Check out Freecycle: http://freecycle.org
   and the splinter group Freeshare (also includes Foodshare, which encourages backyard gardeners to put their excess harvest up for grabs): http://freesharing.org



8. Not a Pretty Picture
   Looking this war in the face proves difficult when the press itself won't even put in an appearance. Sydney Schanberg argues: "There will always be differences of view, about war photographs and stories, over matters of taste and "shock" issues. But, while the reporter or photographer must consider these impact and shock issues his primary mission has to be one of getting the story right. And getting it right means not omitting anything important out of timidity or squeamishness."

   Sydney H. Schanberg | Village Voice/Information Clearinghouse
   http://www.informationcleari nghouse.info/article8895.htm



9. Rainforest Loss Shocks Brazil
   This year was the second worst in Brazilian history for deforestation. Some blame the new popularity of soy farming.

   John Vidal | The Guardian
   http://www.guardian.co .uk/brazil/story/0,12462,1488468,00.html



10. The Scourge of Nationalism
    Is not nationalism—that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking—cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on—have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

    Howard Zinn | The Progressive
    http://www.progressive.org/june05/zinn 0605.php



11. Houston, We Still Have A Problem
    An alternative annual report on Halliburton.

    Andrea Buffa and Pratap Chatterjee | CorpWatch
    http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id =12259



12. Virginity or Death!
    Imagine a vaccine that would protect women from a serious gynecological cancer. Wouldn't that be great? Well, both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that they have conducted successful trials of vaccines that protect against the human papilloma virus. HPV is not only an incredibly widespread sexually transmitted infection but is responsible for at least 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer, which is diagnosed in 10,000 American women a year and kills 4,000. Wonderful, you are probably thinking, all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty, and HPV—and, in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer—goes poof. Not so fast: We're living in God's country now.

    Katha Pollit | The Nation
    http://www.thenation.com/doc. mhtml?i=20050530&s=pollitt



13. Landless Peasants March in Brazil, Build a New Road by Walking
    On May 17th, Brazilian news media reported that 50 people were injured as landless peasants clashed with police. Like our corporate media in the U.S., this focus overshadowed the real story; that 12,000 poor landless peasants had recently completed a Herculean 150 mile, 17 day-long march across the country to raise awareness about the crucial need for land reform in Brazil.

    Deborah James | Common Dreams
    http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0 520-20.htm



14. Is "Craigsnews" Coming Soon?
    Collaborative citizen journalism (CCJ) may be the next step up from the world of blogging—unlike blogging, CCJ incorporates collaborative journalism, editing, and fact-checking to make posted stories as complete as possible.

    Eric Hellweg | Technology Review
    http://technologyr eview.com/articles/05/05/wo/wo_052005hellweg.asp
    
    Check out WikiNews, a great example of CCJ in action: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page



15. Revealed: Health Fears Over Secret Study into GM Food
    Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed abnormalities to internal organs and changes to their blood, raising fears that human health could be affected by eating GM food.

    Geoffrey Lean | UK Independent
    http:// news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=640430



16. Cuba, the US, and the Farce of Geneva
    As the US continues the decade long political assault on Cuba, allies are increasingly hard to come by. Now the American government has resorted to strongarm tactics to bring other nations in line. The only thing more dismaying than the American tactics is the list of countries who have capitulated, including France and the Ukraine.

    Salim Lamrani | ZNet
    http://www.zmag. org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=60&ItemID=7904

- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Rebecca Onion, Adam Barker, and Erica Wetter
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

Posted by erin at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

05.17.05 Edition | Store Wars; David Graeber Fired; It Ain't All About the Down Low

	May 17, 2005 Edition
"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

THiS WEEK: Journalist Seymour Hersh reports on the Iraqi resistance; anarchist anthropologist David Graeber given the boot from Yale; why all the fuss about African-American men living "on the down low" doesn't really explain rising HIV rates among women of color; Max Uhlenbeck exchanges words with anti-racist activists; Venezuela launches a South American Al Jazeera; the tragic legacy of Dole, Del Monte, and Chiquita in Nicaragua; Cuke Skywalker and Chewbroccoli fight in the organic rebellion against pesticides; lawmakers launch a new assault on 'ecoterrorism'; an interview with John Francis, who lived car-free and silent for 17 years to protest the oil industry; and much more, of course.

This Week's Picks

1. AUDIO | Seymour Hersh: Iraq "Moving Towards Open Civil War"
   Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal last year, and is the author of the book Chain of Command: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib. Hersh speaks on the resistance in Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, and media consolidation.

   Amy Goodman | Democracy Now!
   mp3: http://audio43.archive.org/1/audio/dn2005-0511/dn2005-0511-1_64kb.mp3



2. INTERVIEW | Without Cause: Yale Fires Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar David Graeber
   David Graeber, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, and the author of Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, among many other scholarly publications. Last week Prof. Graeber was informed that his teaching contract at Yale would not be extended. However, it was not Graeber's scholarship that was ever in question; rather it was his political philosophies that may have played a heavy hand in the administration's unwarranted decision. Graeber, a renowned anarchist scholar, recently spoke with Joshua Frank about the fiasco. As anthropologist David Price put it, this "is a ghastly look under the hood at how academic knowledge is manufactured at America's 'finest' institutions."

   Joshua Frank | Counterpunch
   http://www.counterpunch.org/frank05132005.html



3. It Ain't All About the Down Low
   Youth health educators and activists go beyond the juicy headlines of closeted lives in black communities and look at the many factors behind the rising HIV epidemic among women of color.

   Celina R. De Leon | WireTap
   http://www.alternet.org/wiretap/21962



4. Anti-Racism for Global Justice: An Activist Forum
   In the aftermath of the 1999 Seattle protests, long time Chicana activist Elizabeth 'Betita' Martinez wrote an important essay titled 'Where Was the Color in Seattle: Looking for Reasons Why the Great Battle Was so White,' which was widely circulated throughout various activist communities and its wide-ranging impacts continue to be felt to this day. In the wake of the 5th year anniversary of the Seattle protests, a new generation of activists and organizers have continued to struggle with the questions raised by Betita and others working for racial justice throughout history. The following forum—in which Max Uhlenbeck asked several activists and organizers to share their views—is an attempt to contribute to, and help further the ongoing, dialogue within the global justice movement around issues of race and racism.

   Max Uhlenbeck | Colours of Resistance / Left Turn
   http://www.colours.mahost.org/articles/forum.html



5. 'El' Jazeera
   To balance the anti-Chavez local press and pro-American CNN, Venezuela is launching a South American Al Jazeera. With journalistic heavyweights and an non-corporate vibe, the channel arrives on the scene as a number of Latin American nations are leaning politically left.

   Kelly Hearn | AlterNet
   http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21988



6. Chiquita's Children
   In the '70s and '80s, the banana companies Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita used a carcinogenic pesticide, Nemagon, to protect their crops in Nicaragua. Today, the men and women who worked on those plantations suffer from incurable illnesses. Their children are deformed. The companies feign innocence. What ethical principles guided those involved in the product's development? The answers may never be clear, but a comment by Clyde McBeth, one of the chemists behind Nemagon, is telling. In response to a question about the sterility caused by the pesticide in certain Central American workers, he told a Mother Jones reporter: "From what I hear, they could use a little birth control down there."

   Nicolas Berube and Benoit Aquin | In These Times
   http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2096



7. VIDEO | Grocery Store Wars
   Watch Chewbroccoli, C3Peanuts, Tofu D2, and Cuke Skywalker as they fight in an organic rebellion against Lord Tader and pesticide heavy farming methods in this new spoof of Star Wars.

   Organic Trade Association and Free Range Graphics
   http://www.storewars.org



8. Conservatives Push Ecoterror Laws
   Though arson, vandalism, assault, break-ins and other tactics by radical animal rights activists and environmentalists are already illegal, some officials want to take punishments a step further. A national group of conservative state lawmakers has been promoting laws creating a separate offense of ecoterrorism since 2003, when California passed such a law. Similar bills have died in Texas and Arizona, and others are pending in Pennsylvania, New York and Missouri.

   AP | Truthout.org
   http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/051105EA.shtml



9. The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid
   Why Social Security won't be enough to save Wall Street.

   Michael Hudson | Harpers
   http://www.harpers.org/The4.7TrillionPyramid.html



10. India and Antacids-Warning: Side Effects May Be Severe
    What if the pharma industry was forced to put fully truthful labels on their products?

    Stan Cox | The Providence Journal/Common Dreams
    http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0512-26.htm



11. Smoking Gun Memo?
    Journalists typically condemn attempts to force their colleagues to disclose anonymous sources, saying that subpoenaing reporters will discourage efforts to expose government wrongdoing. But such warnings seem like mere self-congratulation when clear evidence of wrongdoing emerges, with no anonymous sources required—and major news outlets virtually ignore it. A leaked document that appeared in a British newspaper offered clear new evidence that U.S. intelligence was shaped to support the drive for war. Though the information rocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign when it was revealed, it has received little attention in the U.S. press.

    Staff | FAIR
    http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2511



12. Ped Dispenser
    A conversation with John Francis, a 'planetwalker' who lived car-free and silent for 17 years.

    Mark Hertsgaard | Grist
    http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/05/10/hertsgaard-francis/index.html

- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Rebecca Onion and Erica Wetter
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

Posted by erin at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2005

05.10.05 Edition | Conspiracy Theory Rock; National Masturbation Month; Why to Ditch Cheap Air Travel

	May 10, 2005 Edition
"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

THiS WEEK: Robert Smigel's suppressed "Conspiracy Theory Rock" short; Tamil hip hop artist M.I.A. on immigration, art, life, and liberation; the government is poisoning poor kids in housing projects; May is National Masturbation Month, so surrender yourself to self-pleasure, dear readers; A Daily Show spoof of Bush's energy plan; the modern day analog to the Scopes Monkey trial of 1925 kicks off in Kansas, pitting evolutionists and creationists against each other; Why flying is... well, just bad; Mike Davis looks at the ugly history of vigilantism in the United States; seeing Chile in Nepal; a look back at Bob Hunter, Greenpeace founder and pioneer of modern environmental activism; and more.

This Week's Picks:

1. VIDEO | Conspiracy Theory Rock
   Robert Smigel's spoof of "Schoolhouse Rock" only aired once on Saturday Night Live before it was cut from the episode, and omitted from all future rebroadcasts. Evidentially, the particular conspiracy theories tackled in this satirical video hit a little too close to home.

   Robert Smigel | Saturday Night Live
   http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video /conspiracy.php



2. INTERVIEW | M.I.A.
   Hip hop artist M.I.A. (Maya Arulpragasam), the daughter of a Tamil freedom fighter, speaks about the cultural politics of immigration, her role as an artist, and the global sound of London.

   Robert Wheaton | Pop Matters
   http://www.popmatters.com /music/interviews/mia-050506.shtml



3. Harlem's Toxic Nightmare
   Black and Latino children are paying the price for the mismanagement that has many public housing projects saturated in pesticides and literally crawling with rats.

   Kai Wright | Alternet
   http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21917



4. May: National Masturbation Month
   Grab your balls and testify! Grab 'em right now, Brother! Don't grab 'em too hard. But don't be too soft on yourself either. And Sister, you just grab your holy vulva right where it feels good. Feel the power, the glory and the truth of solo sexual revelation! Finger yourself with joy! Stroke yourself into rapture! Surrender to self-pleasure. Testify to the truth of autoerotic ecstasy.

   Dr. Susan Block | Counterpunch
   http://www.counterpunch.org/block05072 005.html



5. VIDEO | Bush's Energy Plan
   

   Jon Stewart | The Daily Show
   http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thedailyshowwithjonstewart/videos_headlines.jhtml



6. Vigilante Man
   The vigilantes are back. In the 1850s, they lynched Irishmen; in the 1870s, they terrorized the Chinese; in the first decade of the twentieth century, they murdered striking Wobblies; in the 1920s, they organized "Bash a Jap" campaigns; and in the 1930s, they welcomed the Joads and other Dust Bowl refugees with tear gas and buckshot. Their wrath has almost always been directed against the poorest, most powerless, and hardest-working segment of the population: recent migrants from Donegal, Guangdong, Oklahoma, or, now, Oaxaca.

   Mike Davis | Tom Dispatch
   http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtm l?pid=2378



7. Kansas Begins Hearings on Diluting Teaching of Evolution
   In the first of three daylong hearings characterized here as the direct descendant of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a parade of Ph.D.'s testified today about the flaws they find in Darwin's theory of evolution, transforming a small auditorium into a forum on one of the most controversial questions in education and politics: How to teach about the origin of life?

   Jodi Wilgoren | Truthout/New York Times
   http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050 605F.shtml



8. Rising Number of Greens Ditch Cheap Air Travel
   Campaigners focus on environmental impact of flights.

   Anushka Asthana and Robin McKie | The Guardian
   http://observer.g uardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1474219,00.html



9. Support for Iraq War at Lowest Level
   In a USA Today/CNN/Gallup run poll, 57% of the US public said that the Iraq War was not worthwhile; nearly half said that it was a mistake. Support for the war is now at the lowest level since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.

   Bill Nichols and Mona Mahmoud | USA Today / Truthout
   http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050 405B.shtml



10. Seeing Chile in Nepal
    "I am Chilean. Gagan [Thapa] is Nepali. Despite the distance between our countries, Gagan and I have a lot in common. I, too, became a student activist during a democratic transition, in Chile, a country that made the term "disappeared" famous because of the ability of Augusto Pinochet's government to make a person disappear from public view without a trace. If they turned up at all, they often turned up dead. Now Gagan is in danger of joining the list of what we in Chile called the 'desaparecidos,' the 'disappeared.' And I am seeing Chile in Nepal."

    Daniela Ponce | FreeNepal.org
    http://www.freenepal.org:8080/FreeNepal/action/discu ssion.do;jsessionid=3D31F275D60CA8291890CBD0545E8637?currentContentId=68



11. The Original Mr. Green
    In 1971 he sailed a dilapidated vessel towards a US nuclear test to 'wake up the world'. With that stunt, Bob Hunter, who died last week, changed the face of environmental protest.

    John Vidal | The Guardian
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/g 2/story/0,3604,1475733,00.html

- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Rebecca Onion and Erica Wetter
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

Posted by erin at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2005

05.06.05 | Medicating Aliah; USDA Food Pyramid; Army "Bends" Rules, Desperate for Recruits

	May 6, 2005 Edition
"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

THiS WEEK: 5500 U.S. military deserters can't all be wrong; new food pyramid seeks to help Americans help Big Agribusiness; Yes Men via bittorrent; a high school journalist gets the goods on shady army recruiters; Colombia's role in the rising U.S. campaign against Venezuela; how alternative media like Conscious Choice sold out labor in the struggle to unionize Whole Foods; an interview with Paul Buhle, the co-author of a new graphic history of the IWW; The Bitch Spring reading list reveals some gems; Surprise! U.S. contractors misused Iraq reconstruction funds!; in Burma, Bitch reviews books; Unocal finds out that some lawsuits targeting corporations in human rights abuse cases can be very costly.

This Week's Picks: