Emergency for IMC in Athens and Patras (Greece)

The fourth edition of the Rochester IMC newspaper has hit the streets! Get yourself a copy, or better yet get 10 copies and distribute them to your friends. You can find the IMC paper at the Anti-War Storefront at 658 Monroe Avenue, or at various locations around town. The paper is anti-copyright: please make many copies!

• Online PDF of the paper
• Printer-ready PDF

Check out the new issue of the Defenestrator, just released!

There will be a fundraiser/party on Friday, July 10 in West Philadelphia, at 4707 Hazel, starting at 10pm.

Recently, Rochester Indy Media interviewed journalist and media critic, Jeff Cohen. Mr. Cohen was the founder of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), a media watchdog group offering documented criticism of media bias and inaccuracy. He appeared as a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC usually challenging the right wing commentators on their biased and inaccurate information.

In the interview, Jeff Cohen speaks about the increasing importance and influence of independent media, his views about the corporate media model and issues that need the public’s attention.

Video: Watch the interview!

It is with mixed emotions that we are announcing the temporary closure of the Denver Zine Library (DZL) which has been housed at The Other Side Arts on Platte St. for the past few years. There are several factors contributing to this temporary closure that we’d like to share with you. read more

Like the original Transformers movie of 2007, Transformers 2 is unapologetic about its role as a recruiting tool (as discussed in this commentary from CAMS (Coalition for Alternatives to Militarism in Our Schools) and in this critique from the Newswire:

“This weekend I saw the new Michael Bay film. The only thing that deserves prominence in TRANSFORMERS 2 is the careful valorization of military disobedience. . . . Militarism is a terrible phenomenon which is reinforced in all of the social institutions. Media and culture can turn to create slaves faithful of the military values. Is that not what happened in Nazi Germany?” Full story: TRANSFORMERS 2 by Fabio de Oliveira Ribeiro

Teaching Rebellion does just that: it teaches us why the 2006 rebellion in Oaxaca, Mexico was so impressive, and is something we can all learn from. Edited by Diana Denham and the CASA Collective, Teaching Rebellion provides an overview of the Oaxaca rebellion. It also gives numerous first-hand interviews from participants, including longtime organizers, teachers, students, housewives, religious leaders, union members, schoolchildren, indigenous community activists, artists and journalists. The diverse interviews allow some of those who led themselves in rebellion to also speak for themselves.

Indymedia presents the June 2009 Indymedia NewsReal. The NewsReal is a joint effort of Indymedia and Free Speech TV. The idea is that independent videographers send in their short news videos, which are edited into a monthly show. We carry the resulting show on Indymedia Presents each month.

On Sunday June 28th, the first-ever Atheist Film Festival will be held at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District from 12pm to midnight. Feature-length films will be shown in the 240-seat theater, short films in the small 46-seat screening room. The festival is sponsored by San Francisco Atheists.

On the US State's feigned "outrage" over the Iranian State's suppression of the "Twitter Revolution".

Recently, members of Rochester Indymedia sat in on the latest iteration of Tyquan Rivera's court case. We were moved to witness this process because of the disturbing imbalance in the corporate media coverage of the proceedings we'd seen thus far. We found the experience to be a strange brew of truth being lost between the lines of the prosecution’s witness testimonies mixed up with absurdly dysfunctional, if not incompetent, corporate media behavior. We'd like to share some of our observations that day with our Indymedia readers.

June 11, 2009—Tyquan Rivera was in Judge Joseph Valentino’s Supreme Court for a pretrial hearing regarding testimony from witnesses who saw Rivera near the scene of the shooting of Rochester police officer Anthony DiPonzio on January 31, 2009, or knew him before the shooting. Rivera, 15-years-old, was charged earlier this year with attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the first degree. If convicted, Rivera could be imprisoned for up to 10 years. By virtue of being 14-years-old when the shooting occurred, he was spared being tried as an adult. District Attorney Mike Green was arguing the case for the state; Defense Attorney Culver Bar was present to represent Rivera... Read More

Additional Information: Digging for Truth in the Tyquan Rivera Case | Let’s Not Retreat into Cocoons of Expedient Simplicity and Pretentiousness | | | Audio: Eye-witness account of police brutality before Tyquan Rivera allegedly shot into police as read on WDKX on February 4th, 2009 | | | Related: AARM Holds Second Event on the Media and Racism | Racism and the Media Community Discussion a Success | Facts about Juvenile Injustice | Rally Against Gang Enhancements and the Overcriminalization of Youth

Friday 6/26: Special 2 hour broadcast! The show is being aired live from Noon to 2 PM (Eastern) on WNYE (91.5 FM) in New York, an NPR-affiliated station.

Some of the line of of speakers include (but not limited to are)
Rod Knoll
Michael Geiger
John Hankins
Edward Murphy

The shows are archived on the PRN site: click "Archives" on the vertical menu and then Gary Null. Shows usually get loaded up by the end of the working day or the following morning at the latest http://www.aidsmythexposed.com | http://www.wewebmagic.com

Richard Silverstein Writes:, YouTube may have banned Max Blumenthal's Feel the Hate video, but I guess the hasbara (pro-Israel propaganda) crowd hasn't yet gotten around to complaining about the multiple YouTube abuse videos documenting verbal and emotional abuse of innocent Palestinian civilians by thuggish Israeli Border Police.

If I learned one thing from the recent rebellions in Iran, it is this: the Iranian people have a lot of heart. These are folks you would want with you when times get tough. Strong folks, to be sure, particularly the women. They have endured beatings from the Ayatollah’s paramilitary motorcycle gang, the Basij. And some took bullets for the cause for which they were fighting. The graphic videotaped killing of a young woman, 26-year old Neda Soltan, by sniper fire became a painful symbol of the struggle for democracy in that country.

ALSO WRITTEN BY DAVID LOVE: To The Fathers Who Lost Their Child II Will Obama Save the Mideast from Itself?

It’s not like the US intervenes in elections in the Middle East. This week the US Department of State asked Twitter to suspend its expected service shutdown, explicitly in reference to the crisis in Iran. This in itself is evidence of an attempt to influence events in Iran’s domestic crisis, even though the US Department of State has no presence in Iran.

On June 21st, the Israeli State Prosecutor ordered police to start an investigation of Indymedia Israel. At the heart of the investigation is an article posted to the site with a picture of a soldier who, according to witnesses, murdered protest organizer Abu Rahma on April 17th. The posting with the heading "murderer" asks for the name and any other relevant information of that soldier so that he can face murder charges.

There will be a Q&A with directors Sarah and Emily Kunstler, Phil Donahue, Liz Fink, and Yusef Salaam, moderated by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman after the screening of "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe"
Saturday, June 20 at 12:30 pm
BAM, 30 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

To read review of the film, see below.

In May 2007, the battle between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army broke out in Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp in northern Lebanon. Amidst heavy fighting, the Lebanese army had systematically destroyed the entire camp by September 2007. Two years later, nearly all the rubble has been cleared from the "old camp", the core of Nahr al-Bared. However, though the displaced residents grow increasingly desperate, reconstruction has yet to begin.

[New short film "A Sip of Coffee" from the destroyed Nahr al-Bared Refugee Camp in northern Lebanon, released by anarchist media collective a-films]

This last week both the towns of Gates and Chili voted to turn control of public access over to Time Warner. Greece, although they do not post their agenda before the time of the town board meetings, is expected to follow suit this Tuesday, June 16th.

Here is what citizens will no longer get if Time Warner becomes the provider:
1) There will be no local facility for the creation of public and governmental access programs, no studio and no studio equipment. Residents will effectively be disenfranchised.
2) There is no equipment such as video cameras available for loan to residents to tape programs and no editing equipment for residents to produce their own programs and shows.
3) There will be no full time staff to assist and advise residents. No one to answer calls and questions and to help facilitate local public programming. The question of scheduling programs on the people's channel is unclear. There will also be no staff to provide community service and outreach or to do video recording of local community events.

On Tuesday June 16, 2009 at 6:00pm, come out to the Greece Town board meeting and defend the people’s station. If we do not speak up now, it might be your town or city next.

Additional Information: Time Warner to renew push for internet caps

Ten bus shelter billboards advertising the University of California's "Study in Israel" campaign were remade into "Boycott Israel" ads and placed around Berkeley and San Francisco in May.