Democracy Now!

For my first real post I'd like to make a suggestion: Democracy Now! is a great source for news. Far removed from the corporate media (New York Times, Fox, MSNBC, Rush Limbaugh...) Democracy Now! receives no funds from the government, private corporations or even the Corporation for Public Broadcasting like PBS. Instead it is funded by listeners, viewers and various foundations (read about it), this allows a level of independence not usually available from many news sources.

Hosted by Amy Goodman the show, broadcasted on numerous radio stations across the country and on its website, covers stories that the vast majority of the media either ignores or covers from a perspective far removed from the experiences of the masses in the United States and around the world.

For example, just yesterday, on the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the invasion of Afghanistan the show hosted an interview with Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California), the only Congressperson in either chamber of congress who stood up after 9/11 and asked Congress to step back and question what it was doing as it granted the President unprecedented powers to use the military. In the interview Lee states her opposition to any troop surges in Afghanistan and support of a plan for troop reduction and an eventual end to the occupation of Afghanistan.

Right now I'm listening to a talk Noam Chomsky gave in New York City on June 12 called Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours in which he discusses various topics including the financial crisis and global warming. The general thesis of his talk is that in Western (read: rich) countries when "the crisis" is discussed it is quite clear what we are talking about (the financial crisis). However when one talks about a crisis in other poorer countries it is very difficult to use the definite article as they face numerous crises even more severe than the financial crisis in the west, namely the food and AIDS crises. I'd really recommend giving it a listen or reading it.

Democracy Now! obviously cannot serve as ones only source of news, but it is a powerful supplement to the all too hegemonic mass media.