[IMC-US] using other feeds/other independent media on imc-us

Fri May 13 13:56:24 CDT 2005

hi,

see below for the selves/others digest i just got - it inspired me to send it here cause i think it would be cool to include it somehow in our site.  a place for the work of allies and other good independent media.  

perhaps we can create a place/space for highlighting the good work of other independent media (i mean we are in a larger network) and this would be one way of (1) supporting the work of our allies (2) highlighting important stories that we're not covering (3) broadening the network and (4) i'm sure other good reasons.

i believe it comes down to what is the vision for the site and what we consider our role to be.  i think indymedia tends toward a kind of separatism that i think can be harmful to the movement and to our work.  if you don't know what i mean, i'm happy to elaborate but i'll just leave it at that for the moment. i'm just being honest and having reflected on our evolution over the past 5 years, and trying to be an observer and not just an insider intimately engaged, i think that what i'm saying is NOT bogus or false.  and maybe sometimes separatism  is necesary and a good thing, but how we collaborate with others who are in the "ever expanding field of independent media" is i believe somehow a key to changing how people think and that is how social change really happens.

i'm just hoping for some healthy dialogue about the idea :))

love
sheri

-----Original Message-----
From: SaO's Daily Digest [mailto:newsletter at selvesandothers.org]
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 06:11 PM
To: '', ''
Subject: SaO -- May 9-13, 2005

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Selves and Others 
http://www.selvesandothers.org

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Friday, May 13th, 2005 

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London Review of Books
DIARY FROM MOSUL: "THEY DESTROYED EVERYTHING"
 Patrick Cockburn reports from a divided Iraq 
by Patrick Cockburn 

"The sectarian geography of this no man's land between Arabs and Kurds is 
intricate. Kurdish control peters out in the west and south of the province. 
Around the town of Hawaijah, a notorious Baathist stronghold to the west, the 
farmers working in the fields are Arabs. When the US tried to sack Baath 
Party members here after the invasion, the local hospital almost closed down: 
all its doctors were members. The headmaster of a secondary school was fired 
for being a Baathist. His pupils offered to burn down the school in 
retaliation but he persuaded them not to. The new headmaster, sent from 
Kirkuk, was too frightened to take up his post. The situation is even more 
unstable in Mosul, a city of 1.75 million people on the Tigris. Some 70 per 
cent of its population are Arabs, mostly living on the west bank of the 
river; the rest are Kurds, who live mostly on the east bank. It's a 
traditional centre of Arab nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Saadi 
Pira, until recently the leader in Mosul of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, 
claims that 'Mosul was always the true centre of the resistance to the 
Americans, much more than Fallujah.' The Kurds in Mosul don't even bother to 
pretend that it is anything other than extremely dangerous."

-> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n10/cock01_.html

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MediaChannel
THE MEDIA CARTEL

by Ben H. Bagdikian 

The half-dozen media conglomerates on which the majority of Americans depend 
or their news, views and entertainment, behave more like a cartel than 
independent competitors, says media critic Ben Bagdikian.

-> http://www.mediachannel.org/reform/indy117.php

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Progreso Weekly
LESSONS FROM VIETNAM: WARS KILL EMPIRES AS WELL AS PEOPLE

by Saul Landau 

 In 2005, the United States has become Communist Vietnam's single-largest 
trading partner. Vietnam's products permeate U.S. stores. But the "Vietnam 
War trauma" remains central to U.S. politics. Note how the Vietnam service 
record of presidential candidates became a contentious issue in the 2004 
elections. People don't overcome traumas unless they understand them. 

Since public education provides citizens with minimal context, we rely on 
mass media to reach into its collective attic and drag out "Fall of Saigon" 
stories. However, when the commercial press pushes the anniversary method of 
history teaching, the public tends to divorce rather than engage with its 
past connections. 

Personal anecdotes overwhelm analysis. (...)

-> 
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Landau&otherweek=1115960400

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TomDispatch
THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR ISSUE IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

by Dilip Hiro 

With the Iranians threatening to resume some nuclear activities in the near 
future, their European Union (EU) interlocutors are threatening to break off 
their six-month long negotiations to resolve the nuclear issue 
diplomatically. They have called an emergency meeting of the 35 member Board 
of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna at 
which they are likely to join the United States in recommending that the 
Iranian situation be referred to the United Nations Security Council. (...)

-> http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2452

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The Independent
TARUN TEJPAL: SECRETS AND SENSATIONS

by Priyanka Gill 

 As a fearless online sleuth, he shook the Delhi government. Now Tarun 
Tejpal, India's journalist hero, has turned from fact to fiction. Priyanka 
Gill meets him 

"This is my greatest achievement," says Tarun Tejpal, gesturing towards a 
copy of The Alchemy of Desire, his first novel, that lies on his office table 
in New Delhi - "personally, that is." This is exactly what one expects from a 
debut author, but coming from Tejpal it is a bit of a surprise. Tall, 
long-haired and full of restless energy, the 42-year-old is, arguably, 
India's best known journalist. As editor-in-chief of the online newsmagazine 
Tehelka.com, in 2001 he broke a story on national television exposing the 
high-level corruption that was the ugly, corrupt underbelly of defence 
purchases in the country. Hailed as the Indian equivalent of the Watergate 
scandal, the sting was India's biggest news story since independence. As 
journalistic achievements go, not much comes close. (...)

-> http://www.selvesandothers.org/article9548.html

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Thursday, May 12th, 2005 

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In These Times
 DEMOCRACY'S DEATH
 Haitian dissidents find themselves the targets of massive repression 
by Ben Terrall 

In sync with its grandiose claims about building democracy in the Middle 
East, the Bush administration is promoting new elections in Haiti in October 
and November as the great hope for the poorest nation in the Western 
Hemisphere. Yet, while Washington provides diplomatic, political and military 
support for the Haitian government of Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, 
hooded police and death squads are systematically repressing political 
supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. (...)

-> http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2094/

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The Nation
TORTURE'S DIRTY SECRET: IT WORKS

by Naomi Klein 

 I recently caught a glimpse of the effects of torture in action at an event 
honoring Maher Arar. The Syrian-born Canadian is the world's most famous 
victim of "rendition," the process by which US officials outsource torture to 
foreign countries. Arar was switching planes in New York when US 
interrogators detained him and "rendered" him to Syria, where he was held for 
ten months in a cell slightly larger than a grave and taken out periodically 
for beatings. (...) 

[from the May 30, 2005 issue]

-> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050530&s=klein

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New Statesman
LET'S FACE IT - THE STATE HAS LOST ITS MIND

by John Pilger 

 The media coverage of this past election was a pastiche. Our right to know 
what our rulers are doing to people the world over is being lost in the new 
propaganda consensus. 

In 1987, the sociologist Alex Carey, a second Orwell in his prophesies, wrote 
"Managing Public Opinion: the corporate offensive". He described how in the 
United States "great progress [had been] made towards the ideal of a 
propaganda-managed democracy", whose principal aim was to identify a 
rapacious business state "with every cherished human value". The power and 
meaning of true democracy, of the franchise itself, would be "transferred" to 
the propaganda of advertising, public relations and corporate-run news. This 
"model of ideological control", he predicted, would be adopted by other 
countries, such as Britain. (...)

-> http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm

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Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 

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Global Resistance Network
AGAINST THE WAR MACHINE
Military Recruiters Face Youth and Student Resistance 
by Ian Thompson 

Student activism to keep young people out of the U.S. military serves the 
worthy goals of diminishing military numbers and building resistance to its 
hegemonic aims. Those who do not enlist in the military because of these 
efforts should join the ranks of the people's movement against imperialist 
war, racism and bigotry.

-> http://www.globalresistancenetwork.com/IT_AgainstTheWarMachine.html

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Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 

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Inter Press Service
 FORMER PM'S HUNGER STRIKE HIGHLIGHTS SENSE OF CHAOS

by Jim Lobe 

 WASHINGTON, May 10 (IPS) - A three-week hunger strike that now threatens the 
life of Haiti's jailed former prime minister, Yvon Neptune, is drawing 
international attention to the increasingly chaotic situation in the 
Americas' poorest nation. 

Neptune, who served as prime minister under exiled President Jean-Bertrand 
Aristide, began taking liquids at the request of his closest friends and 
family last weekend but remains in an extremely weak condition, according to 
reports from Port-au-Prince, where he has been held in a government house 
since March. 

Neptune has not seen a judge since shortly after his arrest last June on 
charges that he masterminded a mass killing in St. Marc in February 2004. The 
government, which has failed to disclose evidence against him, last week 
offered to drop all charges on condition that he fly to the Dominican 
Republic. But he turned it down, declaring that the move was an ill-disguised 
effort to exile him from Haiti permanently. (...)

-> http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28612

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Inter Press Service
INDEPENDENT ACCESS TO KHUZESTAN URGED IN WAKE OF VIOLENCE

by Jim Lobe 

 WASHINGTON, May 10 (IPS) - Amid rising tension between Iran and the United 
States, a major U.S. human rights group said Tuesday that at least 50 people 
were killed during week-long protests in southwestern Khuzestan province last 
month and urged Iran to permit independent journalists and rights monitors to 
go to the strife-torn region across the border from Iraq. 

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) also called for the immediate release 
of Yusuf Azizi Banitaraf, an Iranian journalist of Arab descent who was 
arrested in Teheran Apr. 25 during a press conference to call attention to 
government abuses in Khuzestan by the independent Centre for the Defence of 
Human Rights. 

"The Iranian authorities have again displayed their readiness to silence 
those who denounce human rights violations," said Joe Stork, Washington 
director of HRW's Middle East division. "We have serious allegations the 
government used excessive lethal force, arbitrary arrests, and torture in 
Khuzestan." (...)

-> http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28625

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Monday, May 9th, 2005 

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Covert Action Quarterly
THE SUPREME COURT AND "ENEMY COMBATANTS"

by Marc Norton 

 This is an updated article and expanded version of The Felonious Five Ride 
Again: The Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants, CounterPunch, July 6, 2004. 

Both the corporate media and the pundits of the left claim to see a "major 
victory" for the "rule of law" in the June 28, 2004 Supreme Court rulings on 
Guantánamo and "enemy combatants." 

But the fundamental aspect of these decisions is that they have enshrined the 
concept of enemy combatants into our legal system. 

>From now on, anybody deemed an enemy combatant -- citizen and non-citizen 
alike -- can be imprisoned and stripped of their constitutional "due process" 
rights, including the presumption of innocence and the right to a jury trial. 
Indefinite detention remains an option. The military will be running the 
show, not the courts. 

A few more victories like this, and we will all be eating prison gruel... 

[Spring 2005, #78]

-> http://www.marcnorton.us/13001/51314.html

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UT Watch
INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR OF UNIVERSITY INC.

by Nick Schwellenbach 

 March 2005 

Interview of Jennifer Washburn, author of the book, University Inc: The 
Corporate Corruption of Higher Education and New America Foundation fellow, 
by Nick Schwellenbach. Schwellenbach is a former member of the university 
watchdog group, University of Texas Watch (www.utwatch.org), and currently an 
investigator at the Project On Government Oversight (www.pogo.org). 

Can you tell us a little about your background? 

I've been a freelance journalist since 1995. Some years ago I received a 
grant from the Open Society Institute to research the growing privatization 
of various different areas of public life. So I wound up looking at various 
government services that were being contracted out to private companies. And 
then I stumbled upon an article about what was happening in the universities 
with the Bayh-Dole Act and intellectual property. Having gone to a smaller 
liberal arts college, I was astonished at the degree which universities 
themselves were engaging in commercial activities that I had no idea that 
they were involved in. That grew into a cover story for the Atlantic Monthly 
in March 2000 called "The Kept University." (...)

-> http://www.utwatch.org/archives/jwashburn_interview.html

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The Independent
THE TRIUMPH OF UNCLE TOMS (AND WORSE)
To have the son of an African and a Ugandan Asian reiterate this obscene 
prejudice made me suicidal 
by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 

 [...] The bigger politics is what concerns us activists much more than the 
race and/or gender profile of an MP. And so to the Tories. The election 
ushers in the first "black" Tory MP, Adam Afriye (half Ghanaian and half 
English) and Shailash Vara, the Ugandan Asian who has done time as deputy 
chairman for a party which has always repudiated equality and diversity 
policies and produced a string of racist politicians, including Winston 
Churchill. 

So is this the nasty party shedding its repulsive past? Not a bit of it. 
These results, for me, are a damning manifestation of the splintering of the 
anti-racist struggle, a triumph of uncle Tomism and worse. To witness the son 
of illegal Jewish immigrants strategically mobilising mob instincts against 
immigrants was bad enough. To then have the sons of an African and a Ugandan 
Asian reiterate these obscene prejudices made me suicidal. (...)

-> http://www.selvesandothers.org/article9539.html

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The Guardian
THE JOB IS DONE
The prime minister must accept that most British people want the troops out 
of Iraq 
by Jonathan Steele 

 Tony Blair insists British troops cannot leave Iraq until Iraq's own police 
and army can guarantee security. It is, of course, the same argument that 
George Bush uses to justify keeping close to 150,000 US soldiers in the 
country. 

Never mind the fact that pulling foreign troops out would almost certainly 
improve Iraq's security, since much of the violence is directed against the 
occupation. Without the occupation, the insurgency would decline 
dramatically. (...) [ page 19 | Comment]

-> http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1479411,00.html

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War on Want
CATERPILLAR: MAKING A KILLING

by Joe Zacune and Nick Dearden 

 Frequently in the global economy, it seems that corporations are able to get 
away with activities which would see an individual locked up in the Hague for 
decades. 

Take the case of Caterpillar. Without selling a single bomb, gun or F16 
fighter, Caterpillar has been supplying the Israeli military with its "key 
weapon", in the words one Israeli commander, in its illegal and brutal 
occupation of Palestine. In the words of the United Nations Special 
Rapporteur on the right to food, Caterpillar's D-9 bulldozers have been 
responsible for destroying "agricultural farms, greenhouses, ancient olive 
groves... numerous Palestinian homes and sometimes human lives". (...)

-> http://www.selvesandothers.org/article9541.html

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Sent on May 13, 2005 at 20:11 CET

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