Resources

News & Views: Another Way of Truthtelling

It becomes clearer and clearer that the mainstream media too often is unable to represent stories in their complexity and does not support actual broad-based discussion about the goals and direction of the War on Terrorism. Here are a few links to news sources beyond the mainstream.

News sources beyond the mainstream

• The Indymedia network of journalists is David to the Goliath of mainstream media. Features on-the-ground news reports from all over the world. www.indymedia.org
• "Common Dreams" provides daily headlines and direct links to news sources all over the world. www.commondreams.org "Common Dreams is a national non-profit citizens' organization working to bring progressive Americans together to promote progressive visions for America's future. Founded in 1997, we are committed to being on the cutting-edge of using the internet as a political organizing tool - and creating new models for internet activism."
• Z Magazine The website for Z Magazine provides hundreds and hundreds of articles and news reports from around the world."Z is an independent political magazine of critical thinking on political, cultural, social, and economic life in the United States. It sees the racial, sexual, political, and class dimensions of personal life as fundamental to understanding and improving contemporary circumstances and it aims to assist activist efforts to attain a better future."
• Fairness and Accuracy in Media www.fair.org "FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information."
  FAIR's List of Online News Sources: www.fair.org/resources.html
• The Nation (a weekly newsmagazine). From their founding statement in 1865: The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred. Homepage, for weekly news: www.thenation.com

Why do they hate us? And what else could we do?

• "Why America is Hated." Bill Thomson, Ph.D., has collected 8 brief articles, available for download in one text document.
  Download in ASCII format (56K)
• "The Challenge of Terror: A Traveling Essay" by Mennonite conflict scholar John Paul Lederach. "Though natural, the cry for revenge and the call for the unleashing of the first war of this century, prolonged or not, seems more connected to social and psychological processes of finding a way to release deep emotional anguish, a sense of powerlessness, and our collective loss than it does as a plan of action seeking to redress the injustice, promote change and prevent it from ever happening again."
• The Conflict Transformation Program of Eastern Mennonite University is continually writing new articles providing excellent analysis and insight into the conflict. More than 25 articles are available on their website.
• "Peace Church Response to Terrorism", Message from Christian Peacemaker Congress 2001, North Manchester, Indiana -- 200 Christian Peacemakers gathered in northern Indiana two weeks after the WTC attacks. Here's what they had to say.