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Dispatches from the World Social Forum in Venezuela

Toward Freedom is in Caracas at the World Social Forum to organize a panel on the hopes and challenges of independent media, to participate in the forum’s events and learn more about Venezuela’s political process. On this page we’ll be posting regular dispatches and photos from this experience.

12/30: Fireworks, Politics, Globalized Stew

1/25: The Social Architecture of Caracas

1/25: Information on Panelists, Time and Location of Toward Freedom’s Panel on Independent Media  read more

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

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 ComunicaciĆ³n 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

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Business mobilizing to stop Kyoto

LONDON – A detailed and disturbing strategy document reveals an extraordinary corporate plan to destroy Europe‘s support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change. The ambitious scheme was passed to the UK‘s Independent just as 189 countries were trying to agree on the second stage of the Kyoto climate treaty at the UN climate conference in Montreal. It was pitched to companies such as Ford Europe, Lufthansa, and the German utility giant RWE.

Put together by Chris Horner, a senior official with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group partly funded by Exxon Mobil, the plan seeks to draw together major international companies, academics, think tanks, commentators, journalists and lobbyists from across Europe into the a pressure group, the European Sound Climate Policy Coalition. read more

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Israel likes March for Iran strikes

TEL AVIV/WASHINGTON – March is shaping up as “go time” for Israel. With a general election looming on March 28, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is eager to look strong, and has ordered the armed forces to be ready that month for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have told the UK Times.

"Israel – and not only Israel – cannot accept a nuclear Iran," Sharon proclaimed recently. "We have the ability to deal with this and we’re making all the necessary preparations to be ready for such a situation." read more

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French warned CIA on Iraq bogus intel

PARIS – More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Niger, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation. The previously undisclosed exchanges, described in a Los Angeles Times interview with Alain Chouet, the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service, happened on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002. read more

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Protesters get FBI terrorism treatment

COLORADO SPRINGS – Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) confirm what many activists and civil libertarians have been claiming for several years – that the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) collect information on nonviolent protest activities and consider them part of domestic terrorism investigations.

The documents, discovered due to a request by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Colorado, show that the names and license plate numbers of about 30 people who protested in Colorado Springs during 2003 and 2003 were put into FBI domestic terrorism files. read more