Derek Powazek writes about how he and Heather, the founders of the hugely successful JPG Magazine, were forced out and erased from existence:

In one evening, Paul removed issues 1-6 from the JPG website, removed Heather from the About page, and deleted the “Letter from the Editors” that had lived on the site since day one. Paul informed me that we were inventing a new story about how JPG came to be that was all about 8020. He told me not to speak of that walk in Buena Vista, my wife, or anything that came before 8020.

Here’s where the whole “not lying” thing comes in. I just could not agree to this new story. It didn’t, and still doesn’t, make any business sense to me. Good publishing companies embrace their founding editors and community, not erase them. Besides, we’d published six issues with participation from thousands of people. There’s no good reason to be anything but proud of that.

Read the whole story of JPG Magazine here

Via ThinkProgress: “U.S. intelligence recently undertook a ’significant’ covert action without notifying Congress, as required by law, the House Intelligence Committee disclosed in a new report on the 2008 intelligence authorization bill,” Steve Aftergood reports.

“The Committee was dismayed at a recent incident wherein the Intelligence Community failed to inform the Congress of a significant covert action activity. This failure to notify Congress constitutes a violation of the National Security Act of 1947.”

“Despite agency explanations that the failure was inadvertent, the Committee is deeply troubled over the fact that such an oversight could occur, whether intentionally or inadvertently.” […]

In response to this lapse, the Committee adopted a provision in its authorization bill that would require the CIA Inspector General to audit each covert action program at least once every three years.

3 years?? A lot can happen in 3 years. That is not a solution.

2,176 secret warrants were approved by the FISA court targeting people in the United States in 2006, a record high. The secrety court “approved all but one of the government’s requests.”

From Time’s Up!, Some Assembly Required: “A documentary about the March 2007 NYC Critical Mass. Shot with more than 30 cameras the film follows the first critical mass bike flash mob held under the new NYC parade permit rules that prohibits citizens from assembling in groups of more than 50 people without getting previous authorizion from the police department.”

Over a month ago, the Coalition for the Homeless released its eighth “State of the Homeless” report, an annual assessment of homelessness in New York City. The report “finds that increasing housing costs, low wages and flaws in the city’s Housing Stability Plus program are leading more families than ever before into New York City’s shelter system.”

The report finds that in the past year the number of homeless New Yorkers in shelters increased by 11.1% (to 35,113), the number of homeless families in New York City shelters increased by 17.6% (to 9,190) and the number of homeless children increased by 18.1% (14,219). Most striking, the report finds that the average number of families in shelters hit an all-time record high last month – with the Department of Homeless Services reporting a monthly average of 9,287 families in the city’s shelters in February. These numbers come less than a month after the Mayor’s Management Report documented a 24% increase in the number of new families entering the shelter system.

Honeybees around the world are vanishing, tens of thousands at a time, and scientists don’t know why.

If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat — which they have been known to do — they wouldn’t leave without the queen.

Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service.

This is not a new problem. From 2004: “Bees, via pollination, are responsible for 15 to 30 percent of the food U.S. consumers eat. But in the last 50 years the domesticated honeybee population—which most farmers depend on for pollination—has declined by about 50 percent, scientists say.”

Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that “if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001. But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.”

Alberto Gonzales used the phrase “I don’t recall” and its variants 64 times during the five-hour hearing, “treat[ing] the committee to a mixture of arrogance, combativeness and amnesia. Even his would-be defenders on the Republican side were appalled.”

Check out the Daily Show coverage.

Presidential candidate McCain is getting even scarier these days:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in South Carolina: “Another man — wondering if an attack on Iran is in the works — wanted to know when America is going to ’send an air mail message to Tehran.’ McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song. ‘Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,’ he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann. … He stopped short of answering the actual question.”

(via ThinkProgress)

On April 13th, 2007 Tonic was forced to close after more than 9 years as a home for avant-garde, creative, and experimental music in dowtown NYC. I have seen some of the greatest concerts of my life at Tonic.

From Tonic’s website:

We simply can no longer afford the rent and all of the other costs associated with doing business on the Lower East Side.

The neighborhood around us has been increasingly consumed by “luxury condominiums”, boutique hotels and glass towers, all making the value of our salvaged space worth more then our business could ever realistically support. We have also been repeatedly harassed by the city’s Quality of Life Task Force which resulted in the debilitating closing of the ))sub((tonic lounge in January. Coincidentally, this campaign began as our immediate neighbor, the Blue Condominium building - a symbol of the new Lower East Side - prepared to open its doors.

As Gothamist reports, there was a press conference on the steps of City Hall yesterday “in response to the eviction and closing of Tonic, the downtown venue that shut its doors after nine years. A committee of musicians, cultural activists, and supporters made a call for public and political intervention to protect new music/indie/avant/jazz in New York City and to ask the city to provide a minimum 200 capacity, centrally located venue for experimental music.” From the press release, the coalition is asking:

1. that the city council adopt a general principle similar to European cultural policy: that NYC’s new music and experimental jazz/indie musical culture is a unique asset, an essential part of the city’s history, economy, and identity, and not to be left entirely at the mercy of market forces.

2. that the city recognize the damage done to its cultural heritage and status as a ‘cultural capitol’ by the displacement of venues central to experimental musics, and act now to protect those venues still left from displacement either by providing funding sufficient to allow them to withstand the explosion of commercial rents, or by legislation forcing landlords to restrict rents of culturally valuable venues, or both.

3. that New York City intervene to preserve 107 Norfolk Street as an experimental music venue, or make available a comparably sized and centrally located space for that purpose.

Sign the petition here.