Interview with Sameh A. Habeeb–Gaza-based Independent Journalist

Twenty-three-year-old Sameh A. Habeeb, a photojournalist based in Gaza City, hardly sleeps. The sounds of the bombings keep him awake. Habeeb seldom leaves his home for fear of being killed by sporadic bombing, but he has slipped out several times to take pictures and to obtain chilling first hand accounts of daily life ever since the [...] Read more »

Economic Crisis Slideshow

From the IndyBlog

National

• Obamanomics: Why the Stimulus Plan Will Not Revive the Economy
  By Arun Gupta, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  Shortly after his Jan. 20 inauguration, if all goes according to plan, President Barack Obama will submit an economic stimulus plan to Congress. The plan will be of such historic proportions that the media will compare it incessantly to the New Deal; it will probably come with an eye-popping price tag of more than $500 billion; free-market ideologues will wail about the end of capitalism but will be almost powerless to stop it; Congress will jockey to lard it with pet projects as the price of approval. (8 comments)
• Female Priests Altar the Rules
  By Katrin Redfern, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  On Nov. 22, Fr. Roy Bourgeois addressed 12,000 people gathered outside Fort Benning, Ga., to protest the Pentagon’s training of Latin American militaries. It was the nineteenth year in a row Bourgeois was present at the School of the Americas Watch demonstration he founded in 1990. But this year was different. It was his first appearance as a layperson, not as a priest. (6 comments)
• Zeroing in on Obama’s Hawks
  By Jeremy Scahill, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. (3 comments)
• In Final Days of Congressional Campaign, Green Party Candidate Fights Local Media Blackout in New Orleans
  By Jason Neville, in the Jan 6, 2009 issue
  In the three years since Hurrican Katrina devastated New Orleans, Malik Rahim has helped lead grassroots efforts to rebuild New Orleans. The Common Ground Collective, which he co-founded, has brought more than 10,000 volunteers to New Orleans. Now, Rahim is now running as a Green Party candidate for Congress in Louisiana's Second Congressional District. Voters go to the polls on Saturday. (3 comments)
• Change We Can Really Believe In
  By John Tarleton, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  Barack Obama has inspired millions to believe that change is possible. But, what kind of change? And to whose benefit? Our country and our world are in crisis, and the tepid, incremental reforms Obama has been peddling aren’t going to cut it. It’s time to think outside the box. (19 comments)
• Future Perfect
  By Nicholas Powers, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  "YES WE CAN,” we sang, our voices like a flag blowing through the street. We raised our chant to the sky as men with drums hammered out rhythms. And we danced our victory dance. Faces blurred into faces. Eyes reflected the same brilliance. (6 comments)
• Scandalicious: Why Political Reporting Feasts on Drama and Trivia
  By Arun Gupta, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  During the 2008 election cycle, which dragged on for almost two years, every week seemed to bring a new scandal: Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Pastor John Hagee, $400 haircuts, fist bumps, flag flaps, lipstick on a pig, ACORN, palling around with terrorists, $150,000 wardrobes and many more. (3 comments)
• “ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE ENOUGH” An Interview with Howard Zinn
  By Jessica Lee and John Tarleton, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  The election of President-elect Barack Obama is a historic moment pinned between an energizing rhetoric and a dire reality. To help put the occasion in perspective, The Indypendent reached out to renowned U.S. historian Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States. (10 comments)

Local

• Blacklist Blues: Landlords Use Dodgy Database to Fend off Feisty Tenants
  By Susan Lippman, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  I had been a tenant activist for years and had never before heard about the tenant blacklist. Neither had Adam White, who withheld rent to protest a leaky roof. Although he prevailed in court and got a rent abatement, he was denied an apartment based on the report from a tenant-screening agency, which indicated only that the landlord had initiated a case against him. (0 comments)
• Lawsuit Takes on NYPD Press Credential Policy
  By Alex Kane, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  The New York Police Department’s system for issuing annual press credentials to journalists is unconstitutional and arbitrary, a federal lawsuit filed Nov. 12 alleges. (0 comments)
• Tapping the System: How to Navigate New York’s Stringent Unemployment Law
  By Melody S. Wells, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  Unemployment rates are climbing toward the highest levels in a quarter century. Yet, only 60 percent of eligible New Yorkers are applying for state unemployment insurance benefits, according to Andy Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project. (0 comments)
• From Baghdad to Brooklyn: My Journey with an Iraqi Refugee
  By Jennifer Utz, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  That one sounds like mortar fire,” Mohamed said. “And that was definitely a sniper.” My Iraqi friend and I were at Coney Island for the summer fireworks. As we rode the Wonder Wheel and listening to the explosions over the water, memories of life in war-torn Iraq inevitably came to mind. Just two weeks before, Mohamed had been a refugee living in the slums of Damascus, Syria. (0 comments)
• Wilting Wages: Money Sent Home to Mexico Declines as U.S. Economy Deteriorates
  By Jennifer Janisch, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  The National Bureau of Economic Research recently announced the U.S. economy entered a recession in December 2007. But Mexican immigrants have felt the ever tightening grip of financial hardship for far longer. (5 comments)
• A Lesson in Class: CUNY Students Stand Up to Tuition Increase
  By Jamie Lehane, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  Chanting “Foreclose Wall Street, bail out the students!” about 100 City University of New York (CUNY) students and faculty and City Councilperson Charles Barron rallied in the cold outside Baruch College Dec. 8. (0 comments)
• WEB EXCLUSIVE: 47 E. Third St. Tenants Concede, Take Buyout
  By Steven Wishnia, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  Fearing that they would lose in court after evidence crucial to their case was barred, the remaining tenants of 47 East Third Street have agreed to take a buyout and move out of their building. (0 comments)
• The Indy Sweeps the Ippies
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  With a total of five Ippies, The Indypendent garnered more awards than any other newspaper in the city for the fifth time in six years. (0 comments)

International

• Ecuador Drops the Money Ball: President Correa Threatens to Stiff Banks, Pay Social Debt First
  By Daniel Denvir, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  QUITO, Ecuador—Amidst the spreading global financial crisis, a special debt audit commission released a report on Nov. 20 charging that much of Ecuador’s foreign debt was illegitimate or illegal. (2 comments)
• International Briefs
  By Indypendent Staff, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  U.S. Says Yes to Cluster Bombs; Violence Spreads in Palestine; Online Reporters Behind Bars; Chevron Off the Hook in Nigeria. (0 comments)
• Change from Below: Dutch Socialists Build a Grassroots Movement
  By Aron Guy, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  Three days before the presidential election, Dutch Socialist Party member of the European Parliament Kartika Liotard met with the New York City chapter of the Socialist Party USA at the A.J. Muste Institute in lower Manhattan to share her experience of building a widespread grassroots movement. (7 comments)
• Gazans Resist by Surviving
  By Ramzi Kysia, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  GAZA STRIP, PALESTINE — In a small cafe in Gaza City, Amjad Shawa, the coordinator for the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), sips black coffee and ruminates on the Israeli blockade of Gaza. “This siege isn’t about ‘security’ or even about Hamas,” he says. “Israel’s ultimate aim is to separate Gaza from the West Bank and kill the Palestinian national project.” (6 comments)
• Propaganda War: Magic Laptops hit FARC, Chavez
  By Daniel Denvir, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  Since the Colombian government bombed a guerrilla camp on Ecuadoran soil March 1, it has orchestrated a highly effective media campaign backed by material allegedly found on laptops and hard drives belonging to a high-ranking member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group in Latin America. The laptops were used almost immediately after the raid to implicate both the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan governments in drug-trafficking and “terrorist” connections to the FARC. (6 comments)
• The Rule of Impunity: Mexican Government Ignores Overwhelming Evidence, Charges Oaxacan Activists with Brad Will’s Murder
  By John Gibler, in the Oct 27, 2008 issue
  More than a dozen protesters and press photographers surrounded Brad when he was shot. All those interviewed said that the bullets came from down the street. Moments before Brad was killed, the Milenio newspaper photographer Oswaldo Ramirez was shot in the leg. The Mexican Office of the Federal Attorney General, or PGR, however, has neither interviewed Mr. Ramirez nor investigated the shooting. (0 comments)
• O Canada
  By Jacob Scheier, in the Oct 27, 2008 issue
  For those of you thinking of moving to Canada if John McCain wins the presidential election ... not so fast. You would be moving to a country ruled by a party similar to the Republicans. The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, strengthened their minority government in a federal election Oct. 14 and came just 12 seats short of having control of more than 50 percent of the parliament. (2 comments)
• The Rule of Impunity: Mexican Government Ignores Overwhelming Evidence, Charges Oaxacan Activists with Brad Will’s Murder
  By John Gibler, in the Jan 6, 2009 issue
  Mexican prosecutors are charging Oaxacan activists with murdering NYC Indymedia journalist Brad Will during anti-government protests he was covering in October 2006. In this special report, John Gibler goes inside a deliberately botched investigation and looks at why justice is an elusive goal for victims of political violence in Mexico. (11 comments)

Culture

• Fun with Dick and Che
  By Judith Mahoney Pasternak, in the Jan 6, 2009 issue
  Frost/Nixon Directed by Ron Howard Imagine Entertainment et al. Che Parts 1 and 2 Directed by Steven Soderbergh Telecinco Cinema, et al. Fun? Yes, but not quite with either former President Richard Milhous Nixon or Marxist revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara in the two current movies carrying their names. Both films, however, are well worth seeing.   Frost/Nixon is lots of fun—just not [...] (0 comments)
• Climate Change Exhibit Falls Gravely Short
  By Jessica Lee, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  The American Museum of Natural History has taken a stand in the debate on climate change. It’s about time that a premier science museum has stepped forward to present to the public what scientists have been sure about for decades. (3 comments)
• Returning to Lebanon: Waltz with Bashir Animates the Brutality of War
  By Judith Mahoney Pasternak, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  In September 1982, there was a massacre at the neighboring Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut. Militia forces of the right-wing Christian Phalangist party slaughtered some 3,000 Palestinian refugees, most of them unarmed. (0 comments)
• Labor on the Move: David Bacon’s “Illegal People” Explores Ties Between Repression and Migration
  By Renee Feltz, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  Government repression in Mexico rarely makes headlines in the United States, and the few stories published almost never mention the northern migration patterns it sets in motion. This is the context David Bacon provides in Illegal People. (0 comments)
• Fearless Cinema: Here’s the Best of This Year’s NYC Horror Film Festival
  By Frank Reynoso, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  Halloween may have come and gone, but as movie ticket sales and rising rentals point out, horror is timeless. And this year’s New York City Horror Film Festival, now in its eighth year, showcased a cornucopia of the interesting, unexpected and the traditional. (0 comments)
• Frontline Testimonies: Winter Soldier Vets Portray the Reality of Combat
  By Eleanor J. Bader, in the Dec 12, 2008 issue
  The cliché tells us that war is hell and dozens of books and films attest to the magnitude of the horror and carnage that define armed conflict. Now, two new texts drive the point home by focusing on U.S. aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. (0 comments)
• Where’s Harvey Milk When We Need Him?
  By Judith Mahoney Pasternak, in the Jan 6, 2009 issue
  Milk Directed By Gus Van Sant Focus Features, 2008 There was a special poignancy in seeing Milk the day after waking up to find that the same electorate that had chosen Barack Obama as the country’s next president had banned gay marriage in California, Arizona, and Florida. The story of Harvey Milk, the country’s first openly gay elected [...] (2 comments)
• A Threat to Justice Everywhere: Chaney, Goodman, Schwerner Murders Haunt Filmmakers
  By Eleanor J. Bader, in the Nov 17, 2008 issue
  Emmy-winning filmmaker Micki Dickoff was 17 in 1964, the year Freedom Summer sent people south to register African-American voters. “I wanted to go but my father wouldn’t let me,” Dickoff told a packed audience at the New York premiere of NESHOBA, a gripping 90-minute documentary about the murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, Mississippi. “When the three boys were killed, it haunted me.” (0 comments)