To Whom It May Concern:

I've spent the past couple of years trying to stay abreast of world events, which for obvious reasons requires enormous amounts of time to sift through various news sources looking for important, yet underreported, news stories. The New York Times is not going to publish a story on the front page about how the IMF is trying to screw the world, but there might be a three-column story every once and a long while on page 37 that provides useful information for activists and intellectuals seeking progressive social change.

But it's all been WAY too much. I can't do it anymore. It's impossible. That is why I am now looking for other activists and left-wing intellectuals who are willing to divide up the work. I would like to start-up a geocities web site with articles on the following topics: the United States domestic politics -- maybe with subcategories specializing in civil liberties, racism, police brutality, and corporate welfare -- South America, Mexico and Canada, CIA/FBI/NSA/INS, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Labor, Globalization, militarization, etc.

Whenever we would stumble on an article relating to one of the topics, we would just post it on geocities, along with a the name of the article, a brief description, and a link to the actual article, which would be saved on geocities' server. I'm primarily interested in 'national security' and the Middle East... but at the end of the week, I could scan down the descriptions of underreported articles on South America, and read those that were of interest to me. Similarly, someone primarily interested in South America could read the articles that interested her/him on the Middle East, etc. Naturally if I happened to run across on article on South America, I would go ahead and post it.

I'm not interested in conspiracy theories, and would want to stick to "reliable" sources that could be cited in a paper handed over to a professor. I'm interested in underreported stories from newspapers like the NY Times, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, etc., scholarly journals, magazines like Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly, foreign publications like Le Monde Diplomatique, alternative or left-liberal sources like The Nation, Monthly Review, CounterPunch, The Humanist, Z Magazine, etc., reports from human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, B'Tselem, etc., and other NGOs like Public Integrity, Public Citizen, Common Cause, the ACLU, etc.

I've belonged to several listservs where enormous conversations have erupted whenever someone decides to post an article. Either everyone feels compelled to give their input, or a huge "discussion" breaks out complete with ad hominems, etc. This is something I would like to avoid.

Those interested in this project -- the posting of underreported stories on events happening around the world, should contact me at pythag3 (at) yahoo.de.

Peace,
Joe