Author Michael Hastings: What I got from the protesters was that this money could be better spent at home.
Michael Deutsch of the NLG: "We believe these are fabricated charges that are based on police informants."
Journalists march in Mexico City against the killing of reporters. Sign reads: "I am enraged by being silenced." (Photo: Knight Foundation) Mexico is undergoing an ongoing assault on journalists, including the killing in the last few years of at least 45 reporters and photographers, as estimated by CPJ's Mike O'Connor. However, O'Connor, who reports from Mexico, explained to Truthout that the figure might be on the low side because the CPJ has rigorous standards for identifying who constitutes a working journalist. Furthermore, due to the lack of police investigations in the vast majority of murder cases, it is not clear how many journalists are killed for what they have revealed in print or just for knowing too much information. O'Connor must investigate much of the scant details available about the killings himself. Even then, doubt often lingers as to why a reporter or photographer died.
As hundreds of protesters slowly marched to Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Ravenswood neighborhood in Chicago, news trickled in over Twitter that three young NATO protesters recently arrested had their bail set at $1.5 million and were being charged with terrorism-related offences. The marching protesters were angry and disappointed. Some feared the media's attention would focus solely on the act of three young men instead of the acts of hundreds who were marching to oppose the closings of six mental health facilities all across the city. Hosting NATO will likely cost the city an estimated $55 million, and health advocates claim only a fraction of that bill, around $2-3 million, is needed to keep these facilities open.
The [2000 U.S. National Assessment Synthesis Report] noted that climate change was already affecting life in Alaska Native villages. In December 2003, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) went on to report that most of Alaska's more than two hundred native villages were affected to some degree by flooding and erosion, with thirty-one facing imminent threats "due in part to rising temperatures that cause protective shore ice to form later in the year, leaving the villages vulnerable to storms." The people of Kivalina had reported the effects of warming temperatures, but had not received any concrete assistance to mitigate risks to their safety from erosion.
