Month: September 2006

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Independent News Site Makes Final Plea for Support, May Close Up Shop

The NewStandard September 18, 2006 The NewStandard

One of the only reader-funded, collectively run, professional hard-news sites on the Worldwide Web says it will close its doors on Saturday, September 30 if it does not secure the funding needed to continue daily publishing.  For the past three years, The NewStandard has provided a refreshing alternative to the corporate media, fearlessly tackling the underreported, misreported, ignored and buried stories of our times, always from a public-interest perspective.

Examples of TNS original articles include: read more

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Rapping in Aymara: Bolivian Hip Hop as an Instrument of Struggle

Benjamin Dangl September 14, 2006 Benjamin Dangl

At 13,000 feet, the hip hop movement in El Alto, Bolivia is probably the highest in the world. The music blends ancient Andean folk styles and new hip hop beats with lyrics about revolution and social change. As the sun set over the nearby snow capped mountains, I sat down with Abraham Bojorquez, a well known El Alto hip hop artist. We opened up a bag of coca leaves and began to talk about what he calls a new “instrument of struggle.”

We were at Wayna Tambo, a radio station, cultural center and unofficial base of the city’s hip hop scene. Bojorquez pulled a leaf out of the bag to chew and said, “We want to preserve our culture through our music. With hip hop, we’re always looking back to our indigenous ancestors, the Aymaras, Quechuas, Guarani.” He works with other hip hop artists in El Alto to show “the reality of what is happening in our country. Through our lyrics we criticize the bad politicians that take advantage of us. With this style of hip hop, we’re an instrument of struggle, an instrument of the people.” read more

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Bilaterals.org: Everything That’s Not Happening at the WTO

Bilaterals.org September 12, 2006 Bilaterals.org

(Versions in español and français available below)

In September 2004, a number of organisations initiated a collaborative website to support peoples’ struggles against bilateral free trade and investment agreements: http://www.bilaterals.org. The initiators included the Asia-Pacific Research Network, GATT Watchdog, Global Justice Ecology Project, GRAIN, IBON Foundation and XminY Solidariteitsfonds.

When the site was set up, the collapse of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in Cancún and the stalling of the US-driven Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) were being celebrated by numerous opponents of neoliberal globalisation. But behind the scenes, powerful governments — especially the US and Europe — were quietly moving to sign far-reaching bilateral free trade and investment deals in order to achieve what they and their transnational corporations (TNCs) had not been able to get at the multilateral level. read more

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Overthrow: A Pre-emptive History of the United States

April Howard September 7, 2006 April Howard

"Why does a strong nation strike against a weaker one?," Stephen Kinzer asks in the first line of his book Overthrow. "Usually because it seeks to impose its ideology, increase its power, or gain control of valuable resources." In this case, Kinzer is referring to the aggressive foreign policy of the United States in the last century, and specifically to the habitual, if extreme cases in which it has deposed foreign leaders in order to create a government more favorable to its own interests.

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Oaxaca, Mexico: Free Speech in the “Dirty War”

Kelly Komenda and Sara Yassky September 6, 2006 Kelly Komenda and Sara Yassky

Since May 22, Oaxacan teachers have been occupying the main plaza in the city of Oaxaca. In the beginning of the occupation, the teachers' demands from the government were simple: fair wages to adjust for their cost of living and the guarantee of a better educational environment for their students, which to the teachers meant funding for books, supplies, uniforms and food.