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Mainstream Media

September 26, 2004 - 10:40am -- jim
Mainstream Media

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Heated Debate Over Spiking of 'Boondocks' Strips"

Greg Mitchell

NEW YORK — The decision by several newspapers, including a few major ones, to drop Aaron McGruder's popular "Boondocks" comic strip this week has set off sparks, possibly as the artist intended.

The series of daily strips this week imagines a new reality TV show hosted by rap impressario Russell Simmons, called "Can a N***a Get a Job?", with the missing letters pretty easy to discern. It includes panels showing a woman who would rather sleep than apply for a job, a knife fight between two women and a black man smoking marijuana in a board room, in a takeoff on "The Apprentice."

September 16, 2004 - 8:02am -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

"In Chicago, An Ambiguous Memorial to the Haymarket Attack"

Stephen Kinzer, The New York Times

CHICAGO, Sept. 14 — A bomb thrown into a crowd at a Chicago labor rally 118 years ago incited such intense passions that until now, people here were unable to agree on how to memorialize the victims.


The calamity that unfolded near a cluster of produce stalls called Haymarket remains a crucial episode in American history. To this day, labor leaders and social activists revere the memory of the anarchists who were unjustly executed for the crime. Police organizations and their supporters, however, have insisted that the true martyrs were the seven officers killed in the blast.


The debate raged for an astonishingly long time. Now, as it finally appears to be fading, the victims have their memorial, an imposing semi-abstract sculpture at the site of the explosion.

September 13, 2004 - 1:41pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

"No Fears: Laptop D.J.'s Have a Feast"

Jon Pareles, NY Times

Downloading music from the Internet is not illegal. Plenty of music available online is not just free but also easily available, legal and — most important — worth hearing.

That fact may come as a surprise after highly publicized lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America, representing major labels, against fans using peer-to-peer programs like Grokster and EDonkey to collect music on the Web. But the fine print of those lawsuits makes clear that fans are being sued not for downloading but for unauthorized distribution: leaving music in a shared folder for other peer-to-peer users to take. As copyright holders, the labels have the exclusive legal right to distribute the music recorded for them, even if technology now makes that right nearly impossible to enforce.

August 21, 2004 - 1:39pm -- nolympics
News
Mainstream Media

Unwilling participants
Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads


From Sports Illustrated


PATRAS, Greece -- Iraqi midfielder Salih Sadir scored a goal here on Wednesday night, setting off a rousing celebration among the 1,500 Iraqi soccer supporters at Pampeloponnisiako Stadium. Though Iraq -- the surprise team of the Olympics -- would lose to Morocco 2-1, it hardly mattered as the Iraqis won Group D with a 2-1 record and now face Australia in the quarterfinals on Sunday.

Afterward, Sadir had a message for U.S. president George W. Bush, who is using the Iraqi Olympic team in his latest re-election campaign advertisements.

In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."

August 19, 2004 - 8:07am -- jim
Mainstream Media

"FBI Expects Violence at GOP Convention"

Ted Bridis, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI anticipates violent protests at the upcoming Republican National Convention in New York but does not have enough evidence to move against any group or person, the bureau's top terrorism official said Wednesday.


New York officials have said they expect hundreds of thousands of people to stage demonstrations around the convention, which begins Aug. 30.

August 13, 2004 - 12:46pm -- hydrarchist
Reviews
Mainstream Media



Outfoxed is available for download here using bit torrent.
This review is from Alternet.


"OutFoxed: How Rupert Murdoch Is Destroying American Journalism"

"Outfoxed" demonstrates in painful detail how one media empire, making full use of the public airwaves, can reject any semblance of fairness or perspective, and serve as the mouthpiece of right-wing conservatives, fully relishing its role. Media critic Jeffrey Chester describes the Fox News operation most succinctly in the film: "Fox News Channel is a 24/7 commercial for the conservatives and the Republican Party."

August 3, 2004 - 5:56pm -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

Tape of Kennedy's Killing Is Getting Digital Analysis

Michael Janofsky, New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 — About a year from now, one of the most
vexing mysteries in American history may finally be solved:
Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?


Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
have begun work on a digital scanning apparatus that they
believe will be able to reproduce sound from the only known
audio recording of the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.

July 31, 2004 - 4:14pm -- nolympics
News
Mainstream Media

Iraqi Witness Tells of Torture
Test Case on Deaths May Curb British Army Abroad
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian

Families of Iraqi civilians allegedly killed by British troops yesterday began a legal battle which has serious implications for future military operations in foreign countries.

In an important test case, lawyers for the families argued that the soldiers' actions in Iraq are covered by the Human Rights Act and that an independent inquiry must be set up to decide whether the killings were unlawful.

Rabinder Singh QC, counsel for the families, yesterday referred the high court to six, out of a total of more than 30, deaths of Iraqi civilians following the end of the war in May last year.

July 21, 2004 - 2:10pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

"Finding Journalists' Political Donations"

David Folkenflik, Baltimore Sun

Michael Petrelis has been angry at The New York Times for a long,
long time. Since the 1980s, Petrelis, a Green Party volunteer and
longtime AIDS activist now based in San Francisco, has felt that The
Times is insufficiently attentive to what he believes are the
government's shortcomings in fighting the disease. Since March,
however, Petrelis has become an online gadfly, seeking to force The
Times to reveal what he says are its political entanglements and
sympathies toward the Democratic Party. And he is beginning to get
noticed.

July 19, 2004 - 8:01pm -- jim
Mainstream Media

"Big Apple To Turn Protest Capital for Republican Convention"

Agence France Presse

NEW YORK, July 1 (AFP) — "Make nice!" former mayor Ed Koch tells fellow New
Yorkers in a television promotion for the Republican Party national
convention that is to be held in this intensely Democratic city.


Never before have the Republicans chosen New York for their nominating
conclave and some detect in Koch's remark a note of desperate appeal rather
than fatherly recommendation.

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