Which sources do you subscribe to? Which would you recommend?

Obviously we're all a lot better informed around here than our fellow countrymen (and women!) who rely solely on the SCLM. . . let alone those who rely on the so called "fair and balanced" media, let alone on Rush (I don't know whether those who are "informed" by the latter two can even be said to be informed of anything at all, but that's another story. . .)

What I would like to know is what sources --apart from dKos itself-- other readers of dKos read regularly and would recommend.  The title of this diary refers to listserves, but actually I'd be interested to hear about any other good sources as well.

Okay, I'll go first.  In the beginning, I started to read the Guardian and some other foreign presses.  But that involved wading through a lot of stuff that wasn't all that useful and I realized that I was missing a lot. So what I did. . .

. . . was try out various listserves, blogs and websites.  There are a few I've settled on, but I'm always on the lookout for more.

At present I subscribe to  FAIR's newsletter, which I'm sure most of you are familiar with.  They do great work, but I suppose not much needs to be said about them since they are already so well know.  

For a while I subscribed to Spinsanity, a truly non-partisan listserve which would debunk distortions from both sides. I think they began to find it increasingly hard-pressed to give equal time to spin from both sides, though, because the Republicans just produced so much more of it.  But Spinsanity tried mighty hard, even if it meant digging up some minor inaccuracy in a Kerry speech and giving it equal space along some GOP whopper.  Unfortunately, Spinsanity closed shop recently, god bless their souls.  I believe, their archive are still available however.

Another fantastic resource I've discovered is Information Clearing House.  They send out an email about once week with links to a massive array of neglected stories along with brief summaries.  They seem to be culled from just about everywhere and I frankly don't know how the hell they do it (or rather how he --or she-- does it. . . as it is apparently the work of a single individual).  The only drawback to it is that it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, but the pithy summaries do help.  Oh yeah, the other cool thing is that each post begins with some really amazing quotes from various historical and contemporary figures.  These are the sort of pithy thought-provoking quotes that make brilliant signatures when attached to the bottom of emails (unfortunately they are usually contain slightly too many characters to be used as signatures on dKos comments).  Also, if you do try out their listserve and you click on the links some browsers (mine for instance) will often give me a message saying "this site looks suspicious" --don't worry about that; it's just because the pages on the site have no names, only numbers.  Anyway, I highly recommend this one --it's truly a motherload.

I also subscribe to http://www.tompaine.com/'s "Daily Dispatch" but actually, it's a bit too basic for me these days and I suspect I'm keeping the subscription now only for sentimental reasons.  Still, they do usually have great articles, by the likes of Krugman as well as reposting good selections from The Nation.  The other advantage to it is that it is very select. . . just four or five links per week as well as a selection of 5 or 6 under-reported stories.

And of course I read http://www.juancole.com/ fairly regularly, as well as the http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ --though I've drifted away from the latter because although it is an extremely high quality blog, I find that it's a gotten a bit one-issue focused for my taste and it seems to stay entirely within the beltway.  But I get the feeling that Juan Cole and Josh Marshall (TalkingPointsMemo) are already very well known around here, so I  won't waste any more space on them.

Getting a bit more specialized, I also subscribe to PMWatch, which basically models itself on FAIR but with an eye to reportage on the Palestinians.  They tend to highlight such things as racist cartoons, blatantly distorting and often quite racist editorials, as well as cases where newspapers will all of a sudden start referring to the occupied territories as the "disputed territories" or some such nonsense --which actually seems to happen with shocking frequency.

But on the topic of Israel and Palestine, I --apart from PMWatch-- make a point of getting all my sources from Israeli and/or Jewish sources.  This is not because I buy into the myth that only Jews have a right to criticize Israel, but simply that there are some awesome Jewish sources on this issue and when someone demands: "what are your sources??" it's always easier to cite someone who can't be so easily dismissed as an anti-Semite (not that there aren't real anti-Semites out there!).  Oh, the (Jewish) philosopher Judith Butler just recently produced a  splendid piece in the London Review of Books discussing this very issue and, in particular, how it relates to the recent assaults on academic freedom.  Anyway, if anyone is interested in finding a good source on this issue, I'd recommend Gush Shalom (the Israeli peace bloc).  There is a bunch of stuff related to extremely local stuff (in Israel), but they also produce some damn good essays and analyses that top anything I've found elsewhere.  Also, if you happen to read Hebrew, it's available in Hebrew as well as English.  How to subscribe to their listserve is not entirely clear from the website, so if you have any trouble, you can go here.

What else?  Well, this is getting even more specialized, but on the topic of academic freedom and the recent assaults it has been subjected to, I subscribe to a small list serve originally organized around HR3077 (if you're an academic and don't know what that is. . . you should!) but recently has been carrying stuff on a wider range of academic freedom issues.  They've made it kinda hard to subscribe too, because their list has been subjected to a lot of harassment recently.  For this one you have to go to http://www.stophr3077.org/ and click on the link and then follow some rather complicated instructions!

Another thing that I used to use was a forum within http://www.gnn.tv/ called "quotable sources" where people would post things they'd culled from all over.  Unlike all the other forums at gnn, though, this particular page was not dominated by lunatics, flamers, and trolls.  It was great, actually, but they reorganized their forums some months back and I haven't checked it out since.  I hope it's still alive, but I don't think so.  [There was one person, who was particularly good, with the tag smkngman. . . I wonder if he's migrated to dKos by now?  Or another very smart guy had the tag Sean.  I hope he's here now too. . . oh, well, you can never track these things on the web so I guess it's best not to give in to nostalgia!]

Finally, for those who are a bit more inclined towards the left than the average Kossack, the ultimate clearing house for non-Communist party leftism is: ZNet (associated with Z Magazine).  Lots of Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali, Robert Fisk, Howard Zinn. . . those type of cats.  And for no matter what specific area of activism or part of the world you might be interested in monitoring, they will have a page devoted to it.  So it's a great resource for that.  But I get the feeling that most of that crowd differs from us Kossacks in not paying quite as close attention to --or putting quite as much stake on-- electoral politics.  They're certainly not the stereotype of the leftist who won't vote on the grounds that it's all  bullshit --I think the rise of Bushism has make that stance pretty indefensible these days.  In fact, they are --in principle at least-- strongly committed to democracy.  But their focus tends to be on other things.  As for me, I like to keep a foot in both worlds.  One keeps me honest, the other keeps me realistic.  The riddle, I guess, is which does which!

So that's my two bits.  I could go on, but I'd really be much more interested in hearing what sources other Kossacks have to say and/or recommend!

[And please recommend this diary --and this is the first time I've ever requested readers to recommend a diary that I've posted-- if you also think it would be interesting and useful to find out more about what sources other Kossacks are using.]