Sites such as Alternet are needed, in these times more than ever. Discussion and dialogue and exchanges of ideas are necessities these days; forces of 'deep', significant and immense import are at work today in the USA in all aspects of our daily lives.

Madeleine Albright referred once to a "battle of ideas" and, in some respects this is so. But more significant than that is that we are also finding a very powerful "war ON ideas" and it emanates from very profoundly conservative sources, cultural, social, economic and political. It favors a small, very small, proportion of our population and converts the most of us into means for their ends.

And, as is usual, when economic times are in a 'down-turn' (that happy capitalist phrase!) are when the views of a very broad and multifarious "left" tend to diminish and become very difficult to access. How can it be otherwise? "We are the Poors"!!

There are many strong intellects at work countering the outright propaganda assault (both as to fact and as to value) being visited upon us daily these days. They need as many outlets as possible these days. They are Necessary to issues of justice, dignity, equity and a better world than that on offer presently.

Best wishes to Alternet.

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I am a Canadian resident, although I hold an American citizenship from being born in Minneapolis and growing up in my beloved Luverne, Minnesota.

I also hold Canadian Citizenship due to the fact that my mother was Canadian at the time of my birth.

I live on a disability payment of $760/month. My Rent just went up to $600/month. My electric bill is about $30/month as is my Cable (I have to have it or no teleevison, yes, I NEED George Stephanopoulous and NASCAR). My telephone and internet are $50/month.

I recently took in a university student who has a propensity to cooking cheesecake at Midnight! but the extra $300/month helps.

Now, I do not get to take advantage of the Tax Credit, you do.

As a COMPLETELY Poverty Stricken individual, I gave $10 to Alternet for Christmas.

I challenge EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU to Give ALTERNET 25% of ONE DAY's INCOME. For most of you, that means leaving out a movie for the month or missing an art opening for next month.

ALTERNET comes to your door, EVERYDAY, and with the quality of information and entertainment we get from reading and putting in our 2 cents worth on the comment board, I think we owe it the price of a Movie night out for two, dinner, movie and the cost of a babysitter for the night.

It most certainly is more entertaining than the movie was, although I cannot vouch for the food or company; I bet a night away from the kids was worth the $30 for the Babysitter though, eh?

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I save so much money by ignoring the mainstream media and refusing to buy the crap they advertise that I can certainly afford to support Alternet.

It's a sad truth, but in our corporate consumer culture, where you spend your money is the most powerful statement you can make. If more Americans would contribute to the causes they believe in and boycott companies that work against the interest of the American people--well, we wouldn't exactly starve the bastards out, but we'd certainly hit them where it hurts the most.

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information isn't power. It really bugs me when people use that phrase. In and of itself, it's actually neutral, till we make a decision to use it.

The instructions to make the atomic bomb, for example, that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't do any damage in and of themselves; it's only the men who decided to put those plans and ideas into action that brought us to the perilous world we live in now.

That is not to criticize the human desire to learn, grow, and explore (partially driven, I am convinced, by the fact that we are relatively discontent with wherever we are, or believe ourselves to be), but we have more control over our destinies that "information is power" meme would lead us to believe.

In short, information is information. What we do with it determines if it manifested as power (which I define as the ability to shape and influence events).

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On behalf of team The Big Raven we would like to thank you for providing a true service and leaving stories for us your readers decide. Thank you for not bluring the lines of common sence. We find your service passes all the other so called alternet news sites by far.
And I really like your comment section for it is fair and not so full of racebaitors like other so-called news sites like "raw story" or "informationclearinghouse" both are full of crap and lead the reader instead of letting us make up our own minds. Allso if you write horrible racist things about israel or jews they let those comments stands but if you dare speak out against racism and fire back you get banned. By the way both are ran by people who claim to be jewish but hate israels policies.
YEAH RIGHT.

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*reaches for credit card*

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... your other income stream.

How about making buying ads a bit easier? Currently you post an email address to contact for more info. How about something more direct, like a page with pricing options?

Then people could support the site by buying "vanity" ads for their own homepages or whatever. (I'd plug my music.)

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And all ya get back is THIER FEARS AND BULLSHIT

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Call me a Zionist when it was your people who killed off as many of mine so your white ass would have a place to go and in fact YOU who are living in NORTH AMERICA just by this fact alone you support MANIFESTED DESTINY the same shit the israelis are pulling in the middle east so go play your troll games somewhere else.

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There has been much ink spilt, and angst over the
fact that the MSM is taking our country on a road
to fascism (very true!).

Luckily there is a simple solution: we as citizens
can cancel our cable, stop buying newspapers and
magazines that act as Republican propaganda, and
instead put that money towards supporting Alternative
Media such as Alternet.

If you click on the Alternet donation button it
gives you the option of having your credit card
dinged every month. Instead of a painful lump sum,
the $10 (or $15 or $20) a month is pretty painless
(that's what I do).

To keep our Democracy democratic, we need to pay
our dues...

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Alternet publishes coal company propaganda because Alternet is
unable to independently understand reality.

A big part of the problem is that the journalists are not qualified to
be citizens of a technological society. Alternet is no exception.
Journalism was invented during Tofflers' Wave 1, the Agrarian
[pre-industrial] Age. We are now in Wave 3, the Information
Age. During the first 10,000 years of the Agrarian Age, science
did not exist. Now, science is everything, and if you don't
understand it you are lost. Science, and therefore true knowledge
and truth, were invented by Galileo. Everything that came before
Galileo is nonsense. Everything outside of science is nonsense.
That nonsense includes the methods of journalism.

What is needed is for all high schools in the US or world to
require 4 years of physics, 4 years of chemistry, 4 years of biology
and 8 years of math for all students. That is what you need to be
a good common citizen of a technological society. All colleges
should require all majors, even English, drama and painting,
design and sculpture students, to take the "Engineering and
Science Core Cirriculum." Why? Haven't you read the nonsense
that gets into the articles written by the innumerate
humanitologists? They need some contact with reality. Contact
with reality means laboratory courses. They need to learn the
language of science, especially journalism students. An
innumerate journalist interviewing a scientist is like a blind person
"watching" a movie. Neither one gets the message. We are
living in a technological society. In a technological society,
scientific literacy [numeracy] is a requirement of citizenship.
Anything less will lead to disaster. Disasters loom ahead. The
evidence indicates that Alternet does not learn the lesson easily.
Articles still contain foolish ideas. Many comments indicate
great ignorance. Most people are intellectually lazy. They don't
want to do the hard work, the math. They want to live in a dream
world.

Nature isn't just the final authority on truth, Nature is the Only
authority. There are zero human authorities. Scientists do not
vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature owns
it. We find out what Nature's vote is by doing Scientific [public
and replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable]
experiments are the only source of truth. [To be public, it has to
be visible to other people in the room. What goes on inside one
person's head isn't public unless it can be seen on an X-ray or
another instrument.]
Science is a simple faith in Scientific experiments and a simple
absolute lack of faith in everything else.

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