EYE ON THE NETROOTS: We are excited to announce a new department for the magazine: Net Movement, led by Nation contributor Ari Melber. Dedicated to assessing how people use the Internet to affect public policy and organize political and social change, Net Movement will take a special interest in progressive innovations that can empower the disenfranchised, create and connect communities, inform public discourse and strengthen meaningful democracy. Melber has written about politics, activism and public policy for a variety of publications and websites. He is a contributing editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, which analyzes technology's impact on democracy, and has been a featured speaker at Blogging Liberally and YearlyKos, the national netroots convention, where he served on the advisory committee of the first netroots debate for Democratic presidential candidates in 2007.

TAXI WINS: The "dark side" infamously referred to by Dick Cheney as a euphemism for torture has come into the light--the spotlight of the Oscars. Taxi to the Dark Side, directed and produced by Alex Gibney, was named Best Documentary of the year at the eightieth Academy Awards. Following the case of Dilawar--an Afghan taxi driver who was captured, tortured and murdered by American interrogators at Bagram in 2002--Taxi searingly documents the use of interrogation tactics like sleep deprivation and waterboarding. Dilawar's ordeal, sadly, was a harbinger of things to come, as such techniques migrated to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, with approval from the highest echelons of the White House.

But while palatable enough for Oscar accolades, Taxi has been deemed too controversial by the Discovery Channel, which had purchased rights to broadcast the film. Just before his Oscar win, Gibney was notified that Taxi "doesn't fit into Discovery's plans" and that the film's content might damage Discovery's public offering. Gibney responded by calling the move "tantamount to political censorship." Fortunately, HBO has been only too happy to pick up the slack. Look for Taxi to the Dark Side in theaters nationwide (distributed by THINKFilm) and on HBO in September.   BRETT STORY

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