Protester Scare Stories
Belief:
Atheists, It's Time to Stand Up to Jesus
Russell Blackford, Udo Schuklenk
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence?
Scott Thill
DrugReporter:
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug -- Booze
Steve Fox
Environment:
Why We Need Bees and More People Becoming Organic Beekeepers
Makenna Goodman
Food:
Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food
Health and Wellness:
New York May Stop Heartless Health Insurers from Dropping Coverage When It Stops Being Profitable
William Ehart
Immigration:
NYC Marathon Raises Question of Who Is American Enough?
James E. Johnson, Jr.
Media and Technology:
Focusing on Fort Hood Killer's Beliefs Is an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
What Michelle and Barack's Marriage Has in Common with 56 Million Other Ones
Annabelle Gurwitch
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Fetus-Shaped Potatoes? Going Undercover Inside the Weird World of Right-Wing Abortion Foes
Ann Neumann
Rights and Liberties:
"My Kids Want to Hide Their Identity; They're Scared Someone Will Attack Us": U.S. Muslims Being Targeted
Jaisal Noor
Sex and Relationships:
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better?
Vanessa Richmond
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Why Natural Gas Is Not a Clean Energy Panacea
Stan Cox
World:
With Unemployment at 40 Percent, Afghan Teens Enlist in Army, Police
Lal Aqa Sherin
"Anarchists Emerge as the Convention's Wild Card." That was the headline of a front page piece of the August 20 New York Times. The story by Randal C. Archibold kicked off this way:
Their reputation precedes them. Self-described anarchists were blamed for inciting the violence in Seattle at a 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in which 500 people were arrested and several businesses damaged. They have been accused by the police of throwing rocks or threatening officers with liquid substances at demonstrations against the Republican convention in Philadelphia in 2000 and at an economic summit meeting in Miami last year. Now, as the Republican National Convention is about to begin in New York City, the police are bracing for the actions of this loosely aligned and often shadowy group of protesters, and consider them the great unknown factor in whether the demonstrations remain under control or veer toward violence."For many readers, the story won't raise any eyebrows. Archibold's narrative goes down easy because it's the story we've been hearing for years: Violence at demonstrations is the fault of shadowy anarchists, a group with a habit of disrupting protests and attacking police. Their reputation precedes them. It's true, but it's a reputation brought to you by the status quo media machine. We the Constitution-loving public would be a whole lot better prepared these days, if we actually had the facts.
Laura Flanders is the host of "The Laura Flanders Show" heard on weekends on Air America Radio. She is the author of "Bushwomen, tales of a cynical species (Verso).
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| More Opinion: | ||
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Atheists, It's Time to Stand Up to Jesus Belief: Civility has its uses, but atheists should not be afraid to mock faith to undermine religious power. By Russell Blackford, Udo Schuklenk, Comment Is Free. November 9, 2009. |
As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence? World: The economic crisis revealed late-capitalism's central offense: Human beings are being transparently treated if they were mere transactions. And they're going postal over it. By Scott Thill, AlterNet. November 9, 2009. |
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better? Sex and Relationships: Digitally-enabled mating culture has opened up the mate-finding process while also generating a whole new set of dating anxieties. By Vanessa Richmond, AlterNet. November 7, 2009. |
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