At the huge peace demonstration in November in Florence, Italy, together with “No” to war on Iraq, were “No’s,” to globalization, genetically modified foods, commercial control of the Internet, copyright laws, and Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. While the mainstream media have trouble connecting the dots between these demands, the demonstration of a half-million people in the street was the culmination of a week of European Social Forum workshops, in which activists had been meeting to do exactly that: connect the demands of peace, media justice and anti-globalization. Continue reading STAYING HOME TO ORGANIZE THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR INFORMATION JUSTICE. By Dorothy Kidd.→
“Yesterday had to be one of the worst days,” begins the email from Dalia, a 21-year-old Palestinian-American journalist, to her friends. “Israelis have gone into all media stations and either taken them over or searched them.”
Dalia works in Ramallah for Al-Jazeera–the popular Qatar-based satellite news channel and one of the few international news media that could continue news coverage in Ramallah during the Israeli-imposed 24-hour curfew that lasted almost a month (March 29-April 24). Continue reading Palestinian Media Bulldozed – by Cherine Badawi and Marc Sapir→
Famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was one of the featured speakers at the August 4th anti-spying protest. Ellsberg was joined by Jennider Granick, AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein and author Norman Solomon at the rally in the heart of San Francisco.
Update 8/19: The FCC rejected Verizon’s “fast track” request to not rebuild phone lines on Fire Island and forcibly transition residents to Voice-Link “wireless-only” service. Had the Commission not done so, Verizon’s request would have been automatically granted. Continue reading Verizon Abandons Fire Island: Not Yet Says The FCC→
Having a mother, father, brother or a sister in jail is an upsetting and scary experience. What makes it worse are sky-high special phone rates for calls from prisons that bust the family budget. That’s the reason California passed a law in 2007 phasing in reductions in the cost of prison phone calls. In state-run facilities, that is. If your mom, dad, son or daughter happens to be in a county-run juvenile facility, immigration detention center or county jail, then state law doesn’t apply. Continue reading County Allows Outrageous Charges for Inmate Phone Calls→
When a Pacific Gas and Electric pipeline exploded in San Bruno, CA in 2010, pundits all over the nation called out for more aggressive supervision of the energy company, so Californians needn’t fear having their homes burst into fireballs.
Wildfires and windstorms resulted in long-term outages across Southern California in recent years, caused largely by aging lines and overloaded power poles. At the insistence of legislators, millions of dollars in fines have been assessed.
