Media Action Network has started a Kickstarter project to raise money for thier latest project, the medes. The medes is an exciting new magazine poised to hit the shelves in late spring. You can read more about on either the medes website or on Media Action Networks' site but in a nutshell, the medes returns to the roots of journalism when you could believe what you were reading.

OTP readers are no strangers to the battle for First Amendment rights. We represent the front line in the battle to reclaim our rights to speech, press, assembly, and petition. Less lethal police forces muscle peaceful protesters from their encampments in New York, Denver, Seattle and all over the nation while corporations are celebrating a big First Amendment victory.

The press is often referred to as the Fourth Estate. This is a reference attributed first to Edmund Burke, and it speaks to the three branches of government – judicial, legislative and executive – which are hemmed round and limited by the unofficial fourth branch – a free press. As the theory goes, the ultimate check and balance to government is an informed populace, and it is the press which keeps them so informed. The Founding Fathers felt the free flow of information was so vital to a wise government that they addressed it first in the Bill of Rights, and spoke often on the subject.

People today are in a battle. The only way to fight is to know what is being fought against. There is a common thread that connects people of the United States together. Oppression.

According to Iris Young’s Five Faces of Oppression, in order to be considered an oppressed group five criteria must be met. The group must be exploited, marginalized, powerless, and has to be affected by violence and cultural imperialism.

On January 4 the Federal Drug Administration announced new restrictions on the use of antibiotics in livestock. The clampdown is intended to curb threats of bacterial infections in people as microbes become more resistant to the antibiotics used by farmers and ranchers. 

Thanks to the ‘Green Revolution’ we have fair trade coffee. We have fair trade fruit and produce. We have fair trade apparel, sugar, spices, tea and even wine. We do not have fair trade tobacco. Tobacco has become a profitable venture for the select few companies who control the vast majority of production. Profitable and addicting - keeping their consumers in constant need which keeps the demand high and the desire for cheap costs even higher. The result is harmful to laborers and applies pressure on tobacco companies to maintain the profitable status quo.