January 2006 - Page 2 of 4

The Crisis in US and World Media and the Growing Movement for Media Democracy

Super User January 25, 2006 Super User

Information on TF’s panel tomorrow: If you’re in Caracas, we hope to see you there. If not, please send this info. to friends at the forum.

La Crisis de los Medios de Comunicación en EEUU., el Mundo, y el Movimiento a Favor de la Democracia en los Medios.

The Crisis in US and World Media and the Growing Movement for Media Democracy.

Panel – Taller

Jueves/Thursday – 26, Enero/January – 2006

Parque del Este, Estacionamiento este;

PE-06; 3:30 PM – Caracas,Venezuela

Participants – Participantes: read more

The Streets and the Forum in Caracas

Ben Dangl January 25, 2006 Ben Dangl

Talking with people in the streets here in Venezuela makes me realize that the best way to get news is talking with people, face to face. It’s better than any newspaper or analytical essay. This way you can see expressions, hand gestures, clothes – people are living forms of media, transferring information and ideas better than any website ever could.

Today we met a couple of Argentines who had been traveling across the continent since October 2005. They went by boat from Asuncion, Paraguay up to Bolivia and Brazil, traveling mainly through jungle areas; they made conscious decisions to travel off the beaten path. This has taken them through almost every country in South America. From Venezuela, they’re heading to Suriname. read more

Dispatch from Venezuela: The Threat of Hope

Ben Dangl January 25, 2006 Ben Dangl

Right outside of the subway stop in the barrio (neighborhood) called El 23 de Enero, the hillside is covered with brick houses built on land which was initially private property "taken" by the people that now live on it. With the new government, a lot of the "squatters" have been given titles to their land and houses so that now they are the owners and can sell the space, build onto it, or rent it out. Neighborhoods like this cling to the hillsides around the city, in a vast waterfall of tin roofs, orange bricks and cement. Steep alleyways and stairs weave through these areas. Jutting out of the barrios are gigantic rectangular apartment buildings from the 1960s that have laundry hanging out the window and waving in the wind. Hugo Chavez and the new Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela receives most of its support and participants from areas like this. read more

Interview with Letters From Young Activists Co-Editor Dan Berger

Bob Feldman January 25, 2006 Bob Feldman

Avalon Publishing Group/Nation Books firm published in November 2005 a book of letters from various younger Movement activists, titled Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out. The book was co-edited by Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin and Kenyon Farrow. It also contains a preface by former Weather Underground fugitive Bernardine Dohrn, who was one of the 1960s anti-war activists interviewed in the Oscar-nominated documentary film of a few years ago, The Weather Underground. (Co-editor Boudin’s still-imprisoned father, David Gilbert, was another of the 1960s anti-war activists interviewed in The Weather Underground movie). Toward Freedom recently interviewed Dan Berger about the Letters From Young Activists book project. read more

Why We Fight

Rob Williams January 24, 2006 Rob Williams

Documentary director Eugene Jarecki, director of the "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," has hit a triple with his new film "Why We Fight." There are many compelling reasons why the Sundance Film Festival may have decided to bestow the Jury Prize on "Why We Fight" last year. Jarecki is a talented filmmaker, with a keen aesthetic sense (his celluloid mojo - lighting, camera work, sound, artistic delivery - makes a film like Robert Greenwalt's recent "Wal-Mart" adventure look downright sloppy by comparison). He also is not afraid to serve up controversy.

Remembering the Day They Kicked Khrushchev Out of the Kremlin

Jack Goldfarb January 23, 2006 Jack Goldfarb

Castro & Khruschchev

October has ever been a fateful month in Russian history: the October Revolution (1917), launching of Sputnik I, world's first space satellite (1957), Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), and that startling day, 61 years ago, on October 16, 1964, when the Soviets announced the astonishing ouster of their top leader, Nikita Khruschchev. Khruschchev thus became the first Soviet boss removed from power in a bloodless coup.