Ian Thomas

After student visas were discovered to be the device used by several of the September 11 terrorists, the FBI has been snooping around Middle Eastern college kids. A survey released before Thanksgiving by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers found that the FBI has contacted more than 200 colleges and universities around […]

The Willamette Week, a Portland, OR weekly newspaper, has always presented itself as the guardian of journalist ethics. But last week, a reader discovered that one of the weekly paper’s music reviewers had blatantly plagiarized a review for a well-known reggae band. What’s even more alarming, was the paper’s hush-hush response to accusations. In a […]

In what may be a case of doing their job too well, migrant workers in Oregon who have been trying to organize a labor union are now facing unemployment. After a year-long struggle to raise awareness about poor wages and safety concerns at Pictsweet–a mushroom picking farm and plant in Salem–the company has announced it […]

Almost a year ago to the day, David Beebe, the director of the Oregon bureau for the INS, resigned in disgrace. After complaints piled up that local agents were abusing its power, indefinitely locking up immigrants, and hassling foreign travelers, local politicians said enough was enough. The final straw was when a Japanese businesswoman, passing […]

Around midnight on March 29, a small house party in Northeast Portland disintegrated into a free-for-all between cops and residents. With Prince blaring in the background, about 40 police officers–roughly the same number as revelers–handcuffed, pepper-sprayed, and arrested partygoers. In the days following the tangle, accusations and criminal charges emerged that two of the hosts […]

Although four weeks have passed since the bloody romp by Italian police at the G8 Summit in Genoa, the fervor is only intensifying. The original protests were held to draw attention to what many see as a subversion of individual rights to economic interests of major countries. But since then, in protests from Portland to […]

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, Stuart Miller and his wife, Becky, bought an investment property with the intent of subdividing it. A year later, though, to protect a watershed, the City of Portland changed the zoning of the property so that it could not be subdivided. The Millers bemoaned this change, claiming this lowered their property value […]