Meen Erhabe/Who's the terrorist?
Interesting rap video that raises a vitally important question about Israeli treatment of Palestinians and the double standard involved in the way we in the West discuss "terrorism"...

Burn in Hell, Jerry Falwell, Burn in Hell
If there is a Hell, Jerry Falwell's stunted, blackened, hate-filled little soul is at this moment almost certainly smoldering away in its deepest, hottest pit. How could a just God possibly spare a man who was an unapologetic segregationist (until the political winds started to shift), who supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, who gave his blessing to one U.S.-backed imperialist bloodbath after another, who callously applauded as the government slashed funding for the poor and the homeless, who saw the 9/11 attacks as divine retribution for "sins" committed by secular groups like the ACLU and People for the American way, who equated feminism with witchcraft, whose homophobic tirades (at least implicitly) legitimized hatred of and violence towards gays and lesbians, and who rarely missed an opportunity to spew demagogic misinformation about everything from children's TV characters to global warming in the national media? Unfortunately, as an atheist who is skeptical of the whole notion of an "afterlife," I strongly suspect that Falwell in death has evaded any sort of final reckoning for all the lives he destroyed in the course of his mean-spirited sanctimonious career. He now sleeps the blissful, eternal sleep of nonexistence. We, sadly, have to live with the legacy of evil he has left behind.

Here's to the State of Missouri...*
According to Free Exchange on Campus, on April 12, "the Missouri House passed HB 213, the ACTA-inspired bill that mandates annual reporting to the coordinating board of higher education on issues of 'intellectual diversity' including protecting the viewpoint that 'the Bible is inerrant.' Rep. Jane Cunningham, the sponsor of the bill, wants the good folks of Missouri to believe this is based on the views of students because she has an individual case that she misrepresents as a systemic problem."

Every academic in the country ought to write a nasty letter to the speaker of the Missouri House and to every major newspaper in the the Show Me state protesting this nonsense. And we should be vigilant about this bill becoming a template for other states around the country. Among other things, the act opens the door to the teaching of so-called "intelligent design" as science and legitimates "monitoring" of the content of university classes. Of course, those of us on the socialist left could perhaps use the mandate for "intellectual diversity" in this legislation to protest the pro-business propaganda that often passes for scholarship and teaching in economics and business departments (where many faculty treat, not the Bible, but the equally loony pronouncements of Milton Friedman as "inerrant").

[ * Phil Ochs, at the height of the civil rights struggle in the south, penned a delightfully pointed little ditty called "Here's to the State of Mississippi" skewering that state for clinging to its racist, segregationist policies. The title of this post is an allusion to that song. Below is a choice snippet from Ochs' lyrics:

And here's to the schools of Mississippi
Where they're teaching all the children that they don't have to care
All the rudiments of hatred are present everywhere
And every single classroom is a factory of despair
There's nobody learning such a foreign word as fair
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of]

The Death Knell of the Little Magazine?
Bob McChesney sent out an urgent letter earlier today alerting media reform activists and media studies scholars alike to the U.S. Post Office's impending rate hike and what it will do to "little magazines" like In These Times, The Nation, Monthly Review, Z Magazine and, for that matter, right wing publications like The National Review.

Here's some of the more important bits:

The U.S. Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its rates for magazines, such that smaller periodicals will be hit with a much much larger increase than the largest magazines.

Because the Post Office is a monopoly, and because magazines must use it, the postal rates always have been skewed to make it cheaper for smaller publications to get launched and to survive. The whole idea has been to use the postal rates to keep publishing as competitive and wide open as possible. This bedrock principle was put in place by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. They considered it mandatory to create the press system, the Fourth Estate necessary for self-government.

It was postal policy that converted the free press clause in the First Amendment from an abstract principle into a living breathing reality for Americans. And it has served that role throughout our history.

What the Post Office is now proposing goes directly against 215 years of postal policy. The Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its mailing rates for magazines. Under the plan, smaller periodicals will be hit with a much larger increase than the big magazines, as much as 30 percent. Some of the largest circulation magazines will face hikes of less than 10 percent.

The new rates, which go into effect on July 15, were developed with no public involvement or congressional oversight, and the increased costs could damage hundreds, even thousands, of smaller publications, possibly putting many out of business. This includes nearly every political journal in the nation. These are the magazines that often provide the most original journalism and analysis. These are the magazines that provide much of the content on Common Dreams. We desperately need them.

What the Post Office is planning to do now, in the dark of night, is implement a rate structure that gives the best prices to the biggest publishers, hence letting them lock in their market position and lessen the threat of any new competition. The new rates could make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine, unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate.

Not surprisingly, the new scheme was drafted by Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the nation. All evidence available suggests the bureaucrats responsible have never considered the implications of their draconian reforms for small and independent publishers, or for citizens who depend upon a free press.

The corruption and sleaziness of this process is difficult to exaggerate. As one lawyer who works for a large magazine publisher admits, “It takes a publishing company several hundred thousand dollars to even participate in these rate cases. Some large corporations spend millions to influence these rates.” Little guys, and the general public who depend upon these magazines, are not at the table when the deal is being made.

The genius of the postal rate structure over the past 215 years was that it did not favor a particular viewpoint; it simply made it easier for smaller magazines to be launched and to survive. That is why the publications opposing the secretive Post Office rate hikes cross the political spectrum. This is not a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it is a democracy issue. And it is about having competitive media markets that benefit all Americans. This reform will have disastrous effects for all small and mid-sized publications, be they on politics, music, sports or gardening.

This process was conducted with such little publicity and pitched only at the dominant players that we only learned about it a few weeks ago and it is very late in the game. But there is something you can do. Please go to www.stoppostalratehikes.com and sign the letter to the Postal Board protesting the new rate system and demanding a congressional hearing before any radical changes are made. The deadline for comments is April 23

I want to reiterate Bob's call to action here. The disappearance of "little magazines" would be a huge blow to the left because-- in the absence of strong left political parties and militant unions--they are among the few institutions that give the left in the U.S. a national identity. And without them, I'd be forced to read Newsweek, Time, the New Republic, U.S. News and World Report, Foreign Policy and other such pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist, pop-culture-obsessed dreck. Please save me from this mind-numbing fate. Log onto www.stoppostalratehikes.com and make your voice heard....

Check this out. Powerful stuff....

On November 22nd 1987, someone hacked into the signals of Chicago TV stations WGN and WTTW and used the hijacked airwaves to broadcast a short piece of absurdist theater featuring a performer in an oversized Max Headroom mask. The people responsible for this bizarre little incident were never caught, despite the best efforts of the FBI and the FCC.




You can watch the video here
And you can read more about this strange episode in Chicago's media history here.

Here's the latest stinking heap of bad news about the Bush administration's illegal and increasingly savage occupation of Iraq. So far this bloody misadventure has claimed the lives of over 150,000 Iraqi civilians (and 3,000 American GIs), caused countless more serious injuries and, according to a recent UN report, created some 3.7 million Iraqi refugees. The price tag for all this senseless mayhem? In the neighborhood of $ 2 trillion.

It is worth remembering that back in 2002, on the eve of the invasion, White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey was fired for predicting that an Iraq war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion.

For more on the true cost of the war, read on...

Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning
economist
Jamie Wilson in Washington
Saturday January 7, 2006
The Guardian

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1
trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than
previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel
prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such
costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the
conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that
the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1681119,00.html

More than a year ago lefty webzine Third Coast Press -- along with several members of Chicago Media Action and the local peace and justice movement-- challenged the licenses of every TV station in the Chicago market. Their petition to the FCC cited the stations' failure to adequately cover the debate over the war in Iraq and their chronic lack of attention to the city's African American, Latino and working class residents. Today, the FCC finally did what we always predicted they would do: they rejected the TCP petition. Indeed, those of us in the media reform/media democracy movement would have been shocked had that corrupt and venal agency actually done the right thing and launched further inquiries into TCP's complaints.

But this is not the end of this issue. Far from it. If the FCC had accepted the TCP petition, they would have had to hold a public hearing -- in Chicago-- about the stations' performance and their service to the public interest . Well, I can tell you that plans are already afoot to hold a public hearing, or perhaps even a series of public hearings, without the sanction of Bush's FCC. Chicago's TV broadcasters will not be able to escape public, democratic accountability so easily....

FCC Rejects Call for Chicago Stations' License Denial

By Ira Teinowitz

The Federal Communications Commission today rejected Third Coast Press' attempt to halt the license renewal of all 18 Chicago market TV stations, saying the progressive newspaper didn't prove its charge that the stations have been "systematically negligent" in serving the public service.
Read the whole story here: http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=11228

Urban Communication Foundation

Press Release

23 October 2006

The Urban Communication Foundation announces the recipients of

the 2006 Jane Jacobs Publication Award.

First Prize: Urban Nightmares: The Media and the Moral Panic over the City by Steve Macek (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

The University of Minnesota describes Urban Nightmares:

For the past twenty-five years, American culture has been marked by an almost palpable sense of anxiety about the nation's inner cities. Urban America has been consistently depicted as a site of moral decay and uncontrollable violence, held in stark contrast to the allegedly moral and orderly suburbs and exurbs.

In Urban Nightmares, Steve Macek documents the scope of these alarmist representations of the city, examines the ideologies that informed them, and exposes the interests they ultimately served. From exploring the conservative analysis of the urban poverty, joblessness, and crime that became entrenched during the post-Vietnam War era to how Hollywood filmmakers, advertisers, and journalists validate the right-wing discourse on the urban crisis, popularizing its vocabulary, Macek takes a hard-hitting look at the role of right-wing ideologues and the mass media in demonizing urban America.

The UCF Jane Jacobs Awards Committee in announcing its choice noted:

Steve Macek weaves a range of rich examples (from government reports to popular film to newspaper accounts) in an effort to show how public opinions have been formed about the inner city and the people who live there. The book challenges our preconceived notions of urban life and challenges us to re-think how we represent others and how we accept and/or reject representations put forth by public officials and mass media. The book is an outstanding representation of urban communication scholarship.

This recognition carries with it a $1500 award that will be presented at the Urban Communication Foundation reception at the National Communication Associations’ Annual meeting in San Antonio on Thursday, November 16 at 6:30 p.m.

Second Prize: More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell by Jane Golden, Robin Rice, and Natalie Pompilio. With Photographs by David Graham and Jack Ramsdale (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006). In their description of this volume Temple University Press said

More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell continues the remarkable
story of an unlikely artistic collaboration that began as part of
Philadelphia's Anti-Graffiti Network. In June 1984, Jane Golden, a young
muralist headed up a project that was originally planned as a six-week youth
program in the fledgling Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network. This small
exercise in fighting graffiti grew into the Philadelphia Murals Arts Program
(MAP), one of the most vibrant public art projects in the United States. Two
decades later, MAP is now partnering with the criminal justice system, the
Department of Human Services, and the Philadelphia School District to work
with students in public schools who have truancy issues or criminal records.
This collaboration has helped bolster the ways in which public art helps
transform lives-one of the goals of MAP

The UCF Jane Jacobs Awards Committee in citing this work stated:

Philadelphia Murals: More Philadelphia Mural and the Stories They Tell describes and shows how art and community building can be interconnected. The murals discussed in this book and presented through beautiful photographs are representations of efforts made by artists and everyday people to communicate pride and joy, hopes and fears, and to protest injustice in a fashion that simultaneously reflects on-going public conversations and helps shape those conversations. The author's discussion and description of the Philadelphia murals foregrounds the mural as a communal communicative artifact.

This recognition is accompanied by a monetary award of $500 and will be presented at the Urban Communication Foundation reception on Thursday, November 16 at the National Communication Association’s annual meeting in San Antonio at 6:30 p.m.

6 Fourth Road

Great Neck, New York 11021-1506

www.urbancommunicationfoundation.com

Tel: 516.466.0136 Fax: 516.466.1782

Mobile: 516.567.9220 e-mail: listra@optonline.net

“Black Writing” and “Urban Nightmares” authors to hold book-signing

NAPERVILLE, Ill. (Oct. 18, 2006) — North Central faculty authors and Naperville residents, Richard Guzman, professor of English, and Steve Macek, assistant professor of speech communication, will hold a joint book talk and signing on Thursday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. The public is invited to attend this free event at Barnes and Noble Booksellers, 47 E. Chicago Ave., where the authors will read excerpts, followed by a discussion and signing.

Guzman will discuss his newest book, “Black Writing from Chicago: In the World, Not of It?” The book combines poems, stories, memoirs, analysis, newspaper writing and radio drama, taking readers on a fascinating literary journey through Chicago’s rich cultural history. He collected the literature of more than 60 Black authors representing the 19th century through current day. “[It’s] a book of great importance and a sheer delight to read,” says Carolyn Rodgers, a poet and National Book Award nominee.

Macek’s “Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right and the Moral Panic Over the City” explores alarmist representations of the inner city and the urban poor created by the media, intellectuals and mainstream politicians. He analyzes Hollywood film, advertisements and television news in an attempt to find the sources of the negative perceptions of urban areas. One reviewer called the book’s approach “. . . a refreshing change of pace . . . in our current political environment.”

In addition, on Saturday, Oct. 21, Macek will be speaking about his book at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison, Wis. For more information: http://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/presenters/presenters.php

Guzman may be reached at rrguzman@noctrl.edu or 630-637-5280 and Macek may be reached at shmacek@noctrl.edu or 630-637-5369.

Ok. So it has been a good two or even three months since I've posted anything to this blog. And I've got lots and lots of issues I want to sound off about when I manage to find the time (the Kevin Barrett episode and the future of academic freedom, for one). For the time being, though, I just want to point out that a number of media policy battles that will have a profound impact on the future shape of the communication landscape have been heating up this August and, though the forces of democracy and the common good stand a decent chance of winning in each case, disaster is still not out of the question.

First of all, there is the on-going battle to insert some sort of protection for the principal of Internet "network neutrality" into the omnibus telecommunications legislation that has passed the House and is now under consideration in the Senate. As Mitchell Szczepanczyk and I detail in an op-ed we wrote for the Illinois Editorial Forum (that was published initially in La Raza), if the big telecomm companies (Comcast, ATT, etc.) get their way, they'll be allowed to grant preferential treatment to their own web-based services (streaming video, long distance telephony, etc.) and to those customers willing to pay for the privledge and will be more or less allowed to block or stifle their competitors.

Second, the same bill that is poised to destroy the Internet will also do immesurable damage to cable access TV (which is the one place on TV that most people can have a chance to see truly radical programming, like "Labor Beat" or the nationally syndicated "Democracy Now"). Essentially, it will reduse the funding base for cable access stations AND limit their future growth by fixing the number of channels set allocated for public access at its current (l980s, pre-digital) levels. Mitchell Szczepanczyk and I have written about this in yet another op-ed syndicated by the Illinois Editorial Forum; this one was published first in the Rock River Times.

Finally, the FCC has at long decided to revist its broadcast ownership rules for the first time since a groundswell of opposition forced it to back off of its proposed deregulation back in 2003. As Scott Sanders details in his July 24th post on the Chicago Media Action website:

Just a few hours ago, the 3-2 Republican-dominated Federal Communications Commission released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on broadcast ownership and broadcast/newspaper cross-ownership. At last, here is the required followup to the broadly rejected 2003 attempt under the agency's former chair Michael Powell (son of Colin) to eliminate virtually all remaining broadcast ownership rules. Those proposed rule changes were ultimately discarded by the courts and the Senate too. According to Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein's mostly dissenting response, we may be heading in the direction of another fiasco similar to the one in 2003...

The public has until Friday September 22nd to file comments with the FCC.

In any case, I strongly encourage everyone out there in the blogosphere to weigh in on each of these issues. The most important thing people can do about net neutrality and cable access at this point is contact their U.S. Senators and demand they take a stand in favor of a democratic media system by protecting current levels of funding for cable access TV and passing legislation that ensures a "neutral" internet free of corporate censorship and control. And in the case of media ownership regulations, it is vital not only to file comments with the FCC but to prepare for protests and other forms of popular pressure in the likely even that the Republican-dominated FCC once again ignores the public will.

Out this month on U of MN Press, finally, at long last, my first book:

Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right and the Moral Panic over the City. ISBN 0-8166-4361-X.

Click on the cover at left for more information.
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/M/macek_urban.html

And I've got another book coming out this year, on Peter Lang, about Marxism and Communication Studies. When it rains, it pours...

Giant Corporations Attack Net Freedom!
The big telecom giants are pressuring Congress to destroy the Internet as we know it. If they get their way, they'll be able to use their control over our access to the net to steer us all to their content and software and services and freeze out everything else. Read more about it here:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060220/wexler


To do something about it, go here:
http://netfreedomnow.org/

If you care at all about the future of freedom on the net, act now.

ILO Director-General Juan Somavia warns of "unprecedented jobs crisis"Wednesday 25 January 2006 (ILO/06/02)DAVOS, Switzerland (ILO News) - The world is facing an "unprecedented globaljobs crisis of mammoth proportions", the Director-General of theInternational Labour Organization (ILO) said today in a statement issued forthe annual World Economic Forum (WEF) taking place here.ILO Director-General Juan Somavia hailed the decision of the WEF to place onits 2006 agenda an item on creating future jobs, and urged the world's topbusiness and government leaders attending the Forum to consider urgent stepsfor tackling a worsening global jobs situation. (...)The ILO Director-General said the global jobs crisis was illustrated by anumber of factors:* Half of all the workers in the world - some 1.4 billion working poor -currently live in families that survive on less than US$2 a day per person.They work in the vast informal sector - from farms to fishing, fromagriculture to urban alleyways - without benefits, social security or healthcare.*Unemployment in terms of actual people out of work is at its highest pointever and continues to rise. In the last ten years, official unemployment hasgrown by more than 25 per cent and now stands at nearly 192 millionworldwide, or about 6 per cent of the global workforce.*Of these unemployed, the ILO estimates that 86 million, or about half theglobal total, are young people aged 15 to 24.*When people cannot find work at home in their communities and societiesthey look elsewhere. In the present environment, labour migration easilybecomes a source of tension, not to speak of trafficking and other similaractivities.Complete text at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/inf/pr/2006/2.htm

QUAKER ORGANIZATION CALLS FOR END TO GOVERNMENT SPYING

AFSC Says Surveillance of Peace Groups is "Outrageous"

PHILADELPHIA - An organization at the forefront of combating illegal FBI surveillance tactics in the seventies now urges Congress to undertake a complete and thorough review of reports that the Pentagon is spying on "peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups."

Calling it a "new McCarthyism," the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) also likened the troublesome revelation to the notorious COINTELPRO, an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program - the covert FBI project aimed at undercutting Vietnam anti-war organizing and the civil rights movement. COINTELPRO was publicly unmasked through congressional hearings in 1975, leading to stronger congressional oversight of federal law enforcement. Many of the protections instituted then have been eroded in recent years under the USA PATRIOT Act and other domestic surveillance activities authorized by the President. Concerned Americans are encouraged to write their Congressional representatives in Washington.

"Clearly the constitutional right of free speech and peaceful assembly is not a criminal offense," states Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of AFSC, an international social justice organization and co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. "It's an outrage."

Early last week, NBC reported the existence of a secret Department of Defense (DOD) database related to "potential terrorist threats." One example of identified "threats" is a group in Lake Worth, Florida that included five Quakers and a 79-year old grandmother who met at their local Quaker meeting house to discuss how to protest military recruiting at an area high school. Other examples of "threatening" events in the database included handing out literature in front of military recruiting stations and commemorating the second anniversary of the Iraq War.

At least four of the events listed were activities coordinated or supported by AFSC.

The report by NBC News was followed last Friday by a story in the New York Times that President Bush has secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the U.S. without court-approved warrants. The President and the DOD now admit they've been spying on thousands of people in this country for simply exercising their constitutional rights.

Additionally, the ACLU recently released documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that show the FBI 'Joint Terrorism Task Force' is recording the names and license plate numbers of peaceful protesters.

"We must not forget that it was not so long ago that COINTELPRO was infiltrating student groups illegally and plotting against 'radical' activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.," states Joyce Miller, AFSC assistant general secretary for justice and human rights. "We must take action now to see that history doesn't repeat itself."

"This new wave of spying can only be seen as a threat to our constitutional rights to free speech and the freedom of assembly," McNish adds. "We have a fundamental right to speak our minds and organize on the issues of the day."

Recently AFSC legally challenged similar surveillance activities in Denver, Colorado, Chicago and other communities.

"In Denver, the courts agreed with us then that spying, not free speech, is a threat, as they did during the Vietnam War, when we helped win guarantees that our military will not spy on Americans," McNish observes.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, AFSC secured hundreds of federal files detailing government surveillance projects and intelligence documents targeting U.S. peace groups in the early 70s. Public exposure of the Pentagon papers, FBI files and other documents gave a glimpse of the vast extent of surveillance, record keeping and disruptive (and sometimes lethal) activity carried on by government intelligence agencies, from the CIA and FBI down to local police against large numbers of American citizens.

"It is imperative that we uphold the Bill of Rights and not trample the very principles upon which our country was founded, especially now - when war rages on in Iraq, and anxiety about terrorism causes fear and suspicion of our fellow citizens," McNish commented. "This is the great lesson learned from the mistakes of World War II and the unjust internment of our Japanese neighbors and fellow citizens."

Historically, members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) have been known for 'speaking truth to power,' hence becoming the subject of suspicion and at times violence because of their pacifism. Friends have worked to assist runaway slaves and have been prominent in the civil rights movement. The American Friends Service Committee, along with the British Friends Service Council, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the humanitarian work of Quakers during and after World Wars I and II. With national headquarters in Philadelphia, AFSC has offices across the United States and in 22 countries of the world working for peace, indigenous and immigrant rights and a host of social and economic justice issues.

For more information, including ways to write Congressional representatives to vocalize concerns about government spying, visit the AFSC web at afsc.org.

# # #

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

Your Homeland Security dollars hard at work...harassing intellectually curious college students!

UMass student visited by Feds for requesting Mao's Little Red Book from library
Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federalagents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tomeon Communism called "The Little Red Book."

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams andRobert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the bookthrough the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism forProfessor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled outa form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number andSocial Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in NewBedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, theprofessors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book ison a "watch list," and that his background, which included significanttime abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said."Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoringinter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."

Although The Standard-Times knows the name of the student, he is not coming forward because he fears repercussions should his name become public. He has not spoken to The Standard-Times.

The professors had been asked to comment on a report that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to spy on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country. The eavesdropping was apparently done without warrants.

The Little Red Book, is a collection of quotations and speech excerpts from Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung. In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book.

The student told Professor Pontbriand and Dr. Williams that theHomeland Security agents told him the book was on a "watch list." They brought the book with them, but did not leave it with the student, the professors said.

Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that someof his calls are monitored. "My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think," he said.

Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk. "I shudder to think of all the students I've had monitoring al-Qaeda Websites, what the government must think of that," he said. "Mao Tse-Tungis completely harmless."

Contact Aaron Nicodemus at anicodemus@s-t.com From http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm.

Citizens Push FCC to Improve TV, Then and Now
By Stephen Macek and Mitchell Szczepanczyk

In 1961, Newton Minow, then chair of the Federal Communications Commission,
famously decried television programming at the time as a "vast wasteland."
Many citizens including area educators, religious groups, community
organizations, and unions agreed and complained that our TV stations were
consistently ignoring local issues.

In 1962, the FCC responded to these concerns by convening a landmark series
of hearings in Chicago to determine if television stations were fulfilling
their legal obligations to serve the public interest.

While the hearings didn't forge any key policy changes, they did reaffirm
the FCC's commitment to require TV broadcasters to reflect community
concerns and showcase community voices in at least some programming.

After more than four decades of rampant commercialism and lax FCC oversight,
television today is much worse than it was in the early 1960s.

Exhibit A: Chicago TV stations' horribly inadequate coverage of nonfederal
elections in 2004. The Center for Media and Public Affairs, a media research
group, found that the five highest-rated TV stations in the Chicago market
devoted less than 8 percent of their newscasts to election coverage in the
month before Election Day 2004.

Some 66 percent of that coverage dealt exclusively with the presidential
campaign, while less than 1 percent covered state legislative races. This
mirrors a pattern in local media across the country; the Lear Center's local
news archive at the University of Southern California studied 11 media
markets during this same time and found that a given half-hour of local news
averaged a mere 2.4 minutes devoted to local electoral coverage.

Exhibit B: Chicago's TV stations consistently ignore news about and
perspectives from communities of color. Chicago's population is 37 percent
African-American and 26 percent Latino, yet no person of color hosts any
locally-produced public affairs shows on the city's English-language
stations. A study of the guests appearing on one flagship news show found
that more than 79 percent of guests were white, only 12 percent were African
American, and less than 3 percent were Latino. Multiple studies also confirm
that local TV news coverage of predominately African-American and Latino
neighborhoods in Chicago overwhelmingly focus on crime and social
dysfunction and exclude all other topics.

Clearly, another FCC investigation into the inadequacies of television is
long overdue.
Fortunately, media reform activists may provide a glimpse of hope. TV
broadcasters must renew their broadcast licenses every eight years, at which
time citizens can file objections with the FCC. All of the TV licenses in
the state are up for renewal in 2005, and the growing media reform movement
has seized on this opportunity to force broadcasters to pay attention to
their concerns.

On November 1, Chicago Media Action -- the city's leading media reform group
-- petitioned the FCC to deny the license renewals of nine English-language
TV stations in Chicago. The petition pointed to the paucity of TV coverage
of local elections as its basis for complaint.

At the same time, Third Coast Press, a Chicago-based community newspaper and
web-site, filed its own petition asking the FCC to revoke the licenses of
nearly 20 Chicago-area stations. Their filing addressed a number of
concerns, including scant and dismissive news coverage of antiwar protests
and increasing violence against women on TV.

The FCC should take these petitions seriously. The performance of the
stations in question has been deplorable and their license renewal
applications should be closely scrutinized. Moreover, the problems with
Illinois' TV broadcasters are symptomatic of the shortcomings of American
television in general. Acting on the complaints raised by media reform
groups would send a powerful message to TV stations around the country.

If the FCC accepts either or both of these petitions, the license renewal
applications of the affected stations would be subject to a hearing.
Ultimately, the issues raised in these petitions deserve to be discussed in
an open and public forum so that area residents can finally weigh in on the
dismal service they receive from their TV outlets.

Forty-three years have elapsed since those 1962 hearings and the public has
been forced to endure a continuing "vast wasteland" with nary an oasis in
sight. It is high time citizens were given a chance to talk back to their TV
sets again.
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Macek is an assistant professor of speech communication at North Central
College. Szczepanczyk is an organizer with Chicago Media Action and a
frequent contributor to assorted Chicago-area independent media efforts in
print, web, radio and television.
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Copyright (C) 2005 by the Illinois Editorial Forum. Letters should be sent
to the Forum, P.O. Box 82, Springfield, IL 62705-0082 11/05

CHICAGO MEDIA REFORM GROUP FILES FCC PETITION TO DENY RENEWAL OF ALL COMMERCIAL TV STATION LICENSES IN CHICAGO

GROUP CITES STATIONS' SYSTEMATIC FAILURE TO COVER STATE AND LOCAL ELECTIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 2, 2005

CONTACTS:Washington, DC:Andrew Jay Schwartzman (President, Media Access Project)202-232-4300andys@mediaaccess.org Chicago:Mitchell Szczepanczyk (Chicago Media Action)773-753-0818mitchell@chicagomediaaction.org Steve Macek (Chicago Media Action)630-995-6374 (cell)shmacek@noctrl.edu

Washington, DC -- On Tuesday, November 1st, lawyers for media reform group Chicago Media Action (CMA) filed a formal petition with the Federal Communication Commission requesting that it deny the pending license renewal applications of nine Chicago television stations. The petition charges that the stations in question -- WBBM, WMAQ, WLS, WGN, WCIU, WFLD, WCPX, WSNS and WPWR -- fell far short of their obligations to serve the public interest by failing to provide adequate coverage of local and state elections during the 2004 campaign.

Under the terms of their licenses, television broadcasters are required to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity. Stations must renew their licenses every eight years, at which time citizens can file objections with the FCC. All of the television licenses in the state of Illinois are up for renewal this year. If the FCC grants CMA's petition, the license renewals for the nine stations would be subject to a hearing, at least part of which would be held in or near Chicago.

Chicago Media Action's petition cites a study of locally produced news programming conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs in support of its claims about the lack coverage of local elections in 2004. Based on a systematic review of all news and public affairs programming aired by the five highest-rated stations in the Chicago media market, the CMPA study found that just 7.8 percent of the station's newscasts during the last month of the 2004 campaign focused on elections. Some 79 percent of that election reporting dealt exclusively with the Presidential and Senate races. By contrast, U.S. House races accounted for just four percent of the stations' election coverage and Illinois House races accounted for less than one percent.

CMA's lawyer, Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Washington, DC-based public interest law firm Media Access Project, remarked, "The FCC has repeatedly affirmed the importance of broadcasters' service to the local community. It's impossible to reconcile this emphasis on localism with the paucity of local election coverage available to Chicago voters."

"These broadcasters get to use the public airwaves for free and rake in millions of dollars every year in advertising revenue," explained CMA board member Mitchell Szczepanczyk. "The least they can do in return is provide us with the news and information we need as citizens. Yet television news in Chicago consistently ignores state and local politics. Last year, for instance, WGN-TV did not air a single story about the many hotly contested races for the Illinois State Legislature. It's a disgrace. They simply don't deserve to stay on the air."

The document filed by CMA was not the only complaint the FCC received this week against Chicago's television outlets. Also on Tuesday, Third Coast Press, a Chicago-based community newspaper and website, submitted a "petition to deny" of its own one that challenged the license renewal applications of the city's commercial television stations as well as public broadcasters WTTW and WYCC on the grounds that, among other things, the stations' news programming marginalized the voices of anti-war activists in the lea—up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

ABOUT CHICAGO MEDIA ACTION. Chicago Media Action (CMA) is a Chicago area-group dedicated to analyzing and broadening Chicago's major media and to building Chicago s independent media. In 2004, CMA issued a widely-covered study of bias on WTTW's nightly news show, "Chicago Tonight." For more information about CMA, visit www.chicagomediaaction.org

For a copy of the CMA's petition, complete with supporting documents, please visit www.chicagomediaaction.org/pdffiles/2005petition.pdf

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