Big Media Are Bad for Democracy

The segment of the Thursday, July 3rd episode will wind up focusing on the Big Media issue as led by Stop Big Media. We want to encourage as many viewers as we can to pick up the phone, call their Congressperson, and weigh in to say NO to the FCCs ruling expanding cross-ownership rights.

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Now That Was A Speech!

Yesterday evening, Sen. Chris Dodd gave a ripping speech on the Senate floor regarding FISA, the rule of law, and the disrespect for the institutions of government that supporters of telecom immunity have shown. It was the best speech anyone has given since this whole illegal domestic spying program was revealed.

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Big Oil Firms Ready to Sign Agreements With Iraq

BAGHDAD, June 19 -- Iraq is preparing to award contracts to several Western energy companies to help develop its vast oil resources, allowing them to consolidate their positions in a country that has seemed less threatening in recent months as security has improved.

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Senate Set to Clear Supplemental

Everybody's caving to BushCo and the war machine. The Senate is set to bow to the House in their long battle over whose plan for the supplemental spending bill will reach the president's desk. The House on Thursday evening approved its latest version of the measure (HR 2642), which would provide $161.8 billion in war funding, an expanded veterans' education.

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Tentative accord on spy bill, immunity

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House and congressional negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on an anti-terror spy bill that would permit court dismissal of potentially billions of dollars in lawsuits against phone companies, sources familiar with the talks said on Friday.

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Media Reform and Social Change

Communication and access to technology are central to the success of all social change efforts.

Amalia Anderson, Main Street Project, talks about going t]into local communities and giving the common people--immigrants and indigenous people--the skills to tell their stories digitally in lieu of the opportunities offered (or not) by mainstream media.

Structure is the theme--structural change, not just for indigenous people, but all people with local or common interests.

Mark Lloyd: User generated media should be fully funded by taxes on corporate media.

Platforms and structures: give local people ownership, propriety, viewership and trickle-up direction--start with local empowerment.

MNN--go out and get locals and bring them into the operation--and turn the platform into a venue for locals and then work to expand the whole operation onto the internet.

Then the presenters pulled hte rug out from under the audience by taking the microphone at the head table and talking about what is bias and how to recognize unfair reporting.

Media bias examples--war, Katrina, immigration.

Democratic Primary Boosts U.S. Image Around the World

LONDON, June 4 -- For much of the world, Sen. Barack Obama's victory in the Democratic primaries was a moment to admire the United States, at a time when the nation's image abroad is in tatters.

"Although no one will admit it, Israeli leaders are worried about Obama," said Eytan Gilboa, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. "The feeling is that this is the time to be tough in foreign policy toward the Middle East, and he's going to be soft."

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