[LAAMN] 09 12 Birthday celebration fundraiser for Leonard Peltier
Birthday Celebration Fundraiser for Leonard Peltier in LA 09/12/06 Axis of Justice L.A. will be holding a benefit concert for political prisoner Leonard Peltier September 12, 2006. The show will feature our pal The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello), Aztlan Un-Earthed (acoustic Aztlan Underground), Mujeres de Son, Spaceylisa, and more. For information about Leonard Peltier, go to leonardpeltier.net. Details: September 12, 2006 8pm On the Rox (upstairs from The Roxy) 9009 W. Sunset Blvd Hollywood, CA $8 to get in, money goes to the Leonard Peltier Defense Fund --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Digest: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] Zinn / War Is Not A Solution, Cable News Confidential
Hi. Jeff Cohen is a friend and news junkie who left LA to found For Accuracy In Reporting, the nation's premier media watchdog. He's also spent years in and around the raptors of cable news, combining passionate beliefs and debate skills with knowledge and a great sense of humor. He's just written a book about it and them, which is insightful, delightful and totally unique. Here’s what others think, and the rest is attached. Read it, and pass it on. I'll let you know when he gets to LA for a book signing. Ed MOLLY IVINS says: Jeff Cohen's dissection of cable TV news is both irresistibly funny and civically painful. It goes from uproarious anecdotes to those that make you wince. IF YOU LIKED OUTFOXED, YOU'LL LOVE CABLE NEWS CONFIDENTIAL. The book has won praise from Robert Greenwald, Tim Robbins, Studs Terkel, Bob McChesney and others. BARBARA EHRENREICH: A deliciously funny expose. HOWARD ZINN: “Future historians will have this book as a primary text. AMY GOODMAN: Read this book and fight for change. == ZNet Commentary War Is Not A Solution For Terrorism September 07, 2006 By Howard Zinn THERE IS SOMETHING important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out. The United States, in three years of war, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, has been an utter failure in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. The Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon has not brought security to Israel; indeed it has increased the number of its enemies, whether in Hezbollah or Hamas or among Arabs who belong to neither of those groups. I remember John Hersey's novel, The War Lover, in which a macho American pilot, who loves to drop bombs on people and also to boast about his sexual conquests, turns out to be impotent. President Bush, strutting in his flight jacket on an aircraft carrier and announcing victory in Iraq, has turned out to be much like the Hersey character, his words equally boastful, his military machine impotent. The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations -- the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan -- and were forced to withdraw. Even the victories of great military powers turn out to be elusive. Presumably, after attacking and invading Afghanistan, the president was able to declare that the Taliban were defeated. But more than four years later, Afghanistan is rife with violence, and the Taliban are active in much of the country. The two most powerful nations after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, with all their military might, have not been able to control events in countries that they considered to be in their sphere of influence -- the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the United States in Latin America. Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a war on terrorism is a contradiction in terms. Wars waged by nations, whether by the United States or Israel, are a hundred times more deadly for innocent people than the attacks by terrorists, vicious as they are. The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate. This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a suspected terrorist is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is inevitable. So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in accidental events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism. For instance, more than a million civilians in Vietnam were killed by US bombs, presumably by ``accident. Add up all the terrorist attacks throughout the world in the 20th century and they do not equal that awful toll. If
[LAAMN] Support Crenshaw High School Teacher Alex Caputo-Pearl
Bill Gallegos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) is a very special organization working to organize parents, students, and teachers (primarily oppressed people of color) to achieve a radical transformation of Los Angeles public education. CEJ was the first organization in Los Angeles to firmly, consistently, and loudly challenge the racist standardized testing system that has become the insane measure for educational equity, quality knowledge acquisition, and critical thinking skills. CEJ is a special and explicitly radical social experiment seeking to build the leadership of working class people of color in alliance with a mostly Euro-American teaching core. CEJ has worked consistently to challenge racism and white supremacy within its own ranks and that of the LA Unified School District. Of all the demands that CEJ has fought for none is more precious and difficult to achieve than the genuine empowerment of parents, students and teachers, not just in a symbolic sense, but having actual power to determine school budgets, hiring and firing, curriculum, disciplinary policy, and language equality. While CEJ has not yet achieved its goal, it has helped win some significant victories, none so important as beating back the effort to strip Crenshaw High of its accreditation. CEJ member and leader Alex Caputo-Pearl played a major role in that victory. He achieved that victory not because of his tactical brilliance, speaking ability, or notoriety, but because he demanded that the decisions about the future of Crenshaw High School be made by the mostly African American and Latino parents and students of the school. Alex provided invaluable support to the real leaders of the struggle to restore CHS' accreditation - the Crenshaw Cougar Coalition, an organization of hundreds of mostly African American parents who led an incredible campaign to save this historically African American institution. They not only succeeded in restoring the school's accreditation, but they forced LAUSD to provide millions of dollars in new resources for the school, to lower class size, and to increase the number of counselors at the school. Oh yeah, and they succeeded in booting out the incompetent principal who had cost the school its accreditation. Well, now the empire has struck back. Superintendent Roy Romer, the bureaucrat ultimately responsible for the near-disaster at Crenshaw High has decided to transfer Alex Caputo-Pearl to a school in Westwood - that is, a school as far from the African American and Latino community as you can get without being in Idaho. This punitive transfer is the district's effort to silence activist teachers, ESPECIALLY THOSE THAT SUPPORT THE LEADERSHIP AND EMPOWERMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND LATINOS! I am asking you to help us stop this gross injustice. We are going to the School Board to demand Alex's reinstatement to Crenshaw, where he was not only a committed activist, but an outstanding educator who gives a deep damn about his students. Please join members of CEJ, The Crenshaw Cougar Coalition, Progressive Educators in Action, and United Teachers of Los Angeles, and many other educational justice and community-based organizations next Tuesday, September 12th at 4pm at 333 So Beaudry in downtown Los Angeles. By joining us on September 12th, you will be helping to build a movement to EXPAND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE IN LAUSD. What happened to Alex is just another example of the kind of boneheaded decisions that can be made by a bureaucracy vested with too much power and when parents, students, and teachers have too little. Please call me if you have any questions. Bill Gallegos 323/660-5119 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Digest: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to:
[LAAMN] URGENT, BAN ON KILLING MARINE MAMMALS GLOBALLY.
URGENT, BAN ON KILLING MARINE MAMMALS GLOBALLY. (Disclaimer: You have received this email is because we joined the same egroup. If you do not want to see our mail in your inbox, you may go to yahoo egroups you joined to choose the Option which will not forward egroup's message to your inbox. Thanks ) Dear Caring friend, This campaign letter is so URGENT and so IMPORTNAT . Enclosed an important Sample letter and contacts. Please write your letters NOW. In order to access our campaign letter today, please IMMIDIATELY COPY our entire letter and all Contact information from our email account from the draft folder and then paste into your own email account. (NOTE: Due to some people with ILL intention, we urge you to copy our campaign letter immidiately into your own email account NOW before they erase it.) Here are the STEPS to retrive our campaign letter : 1: Go to : http://www.yahoo.com 2: Then click MAIL. (if you already signed in with other ID, then please sign out first and then sign in with the following new ID.) 3: Then enter a new ID : USER ID : wpeace_51405 Password: wp51405 4: Then click DRAFT under folder to COPY our entire campaign letter and PASTE into your own Email Account. (*** Because the letter has to be sent from your own Email Address.) Note: please select any subject line as you wish. As they are all the same contents. Please hold down your left button on your mouse and then drag and highlight the entire message. Then release the left botton. Then press your right button on your mouse and then click COPY. 5: Then go to your own Email Account and then click COMPOSE and then press the right button of your mouse and then click on PASTE. Now, you will see our campaign letter again appear in your own email account. Then click SAVE as a DRAFT on the top bar . Now, you have a copy of our campaign letter in your own Email Account to work with. Or you may simply SAVE our letter in any of your own word processing file. Now, you can start to work on this very important and urgent campaign letter Now. Thanks so much for your time and efforts for the World's Peace and Justice. HUMANITY __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Digest: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] The Northeast Democrat -- September 2006 issue
The Northeast Democrat Newsletter of the Northeast Democratic Club September 2006 + In Support Local Business, Bill Rumble explores a loophole in the safe drinking water proposition that fosters bogus lawsuits against legitimate neighborhood businesses. See http://www.northeastdemocrats.org/news.php?extend.68 Healing the Black-Brown Divide tells of an ongoing effort to bring law enforcement agencies, the religious community, and politicians together to solve the racial divide that has Los Angeles streets running with blood. See http://www.northeastdemocrats.org/news.php?extend.67 Campaign Corner debuts a column by campaign manager Matt Rodriguez on how campaigns work from the inside out. See http://www.northeastdemocrats.org/news.php?extend.66 The Cost of War details how America might have better spent its treasure on social uplift had it not pursued the reckless and wrong-headed occupation of Iraq. See http://www.northeastdemocrats.org/news.php?extend.70 Click the Downloads button on the top banner to get the PDF file for this month's newsletter, at http://www.northeastdemocrats.org/download.php?list.4 --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Digest: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[LAAMN] Fwd: ZAPA-CALIFA: Fwd: [globalaction] Rebellion in Oaxaca and Mexico!
Mario Galvan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:43:53 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Mario Galvan [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ZAPA-CALIFA: Fwd: [globalaction] Rebellion in Oaxaca and Mexico! Hi everyone, I'm forwarding a an article on the situation in Mexico, which is edging toward the precipice... of what, remains to be seen, but the pressure is building. I was in Mexico City for a couple of weeks in August, and experienced the amazing energy involved in the huge sit-in going on in the heart of the city in opposition to the electoral fraud being perpetrated there. I have to add that this feeling of outrage over the fraud is not limited to Mexico City. Just yesterday I read a e-mail about how Calderon, the supposed President-Elect, was driven off the stage at a speaking event in Morelia, Michoacan by a hail of eggs and tomatoes! The situation in Oaxaca is even more intense, yet as in the case of Chiapas, home of the Zapatista uprising, the Mexican government keeps saying Nothing is going on. My own impression is that the ruling class is just trying to ride out the storm, and keep their hold on power and privilege. They assume, no doubt, that as long as they have the support of the U.S. government, they don't need the support of their own citizens. It must be an adaptation the political system here in the U.S., where as long as politicians have the support of big money, they don't need the support of the people. This message is from the People's Global Action list serve, and has a few grammatical errors, but considering that it was written by a German, I'd say it was pretty darn good! (Thanks, Momo!) Mario Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 From: Momo [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [globalaction] Rebellion in Oaxaca and Mexico! Hi all, Olivier mentioned the case of Mexico and Oaxaca and the situation here. I told him i am right here in Oaxaca and he asked me to write something about it. waht is happening here is realling amazing. I was about to fly back to Europe yesterday, but i changed my flight since i just cannot leave in this situation. Anyway, this is a summary of wha is happening here, how the movement evolved and where it might go... saludos, Momo I´m now since three weeks in Oaxaca, the beautiful capital of the state Oaxaca in the south of Mexico, which is in these days full of the sounds and smells of rebellion. What began as a strike of teachers that were struggling for better the payments and improvements for the kids like school breakfast, turned into a popular rebellion after the government tried to evict a Planton (a camp of the teachers on the Zocalo, the central place of the city) violently on the 14th of June. Although for us who survived Genova it might seem not even that hard, but for the people, who had already suffered a lot under the governor Ulises Ruiz in the almost two years since his election (which many suspect was by fraud), that was simply too much, the point that made them say Ya basta!. Instead of killing the movement by repression, as intended by Ulises, he reached a huge wave of solidarity of all parts of society, from indigenous communities to parts of the church, and a united call for his destitution. In this process the APO, or today APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca) was born, which is an organization, a movement and an assembly at the same time, that unites now more than 300 organizations and local assemblies of villages and quarters. There the delegates of the member organizations meet several times a week to discuss from practical problems to actions and strategies to the future of the city and the movement. Their first aim is the destitution of Ulises, but most people know that the problems are far beyond Ulises and that profound changes are needed. And that process is already on the way: There are discussions going on about a new constitutional process and a new for of government. People and sectors of society that never had to do with each other are meeting to discuss in the assembly or in one of the many Plantones that are all over the city, or at night on the barricades (there are 1500 of them in the city of Oaxaca!!!). At night you see housewives and old men and women standing on the burning barricades with a stick in their hand, ready to defend themselves and the movement. And that is very necessary: just in the last weeks two people got shot down and died, on in a march and one on a barricade, when the police tried to evict a radio station occupied by the movement. But normally there is no police at all on the streets, since one part of them is anyway on the side of the movement and the other part is simply afraid because of the strength of the movement. And they are strong: On the marches of the APPO up to 800.000 people joined, which is almost one forth of the population of the whole state of Oaxaca, (and 140% of the number of
[LAAMN] President Bush's Reality, The America of 9/12
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/12/opinion/12tue1.html?_r=1themc=thoref=slogin President Bush's Reality NY Times Lead Editorial: September 12, 2006 Last night, President Bush once again urged Americans to take terrorism seriously - a warning that hardly seems necessary. One aspect of that terrible day five years ago that seems immune to politicization or trivialization is the dread of another attack. When Mr. Bush warns that Al Qaeda means what it says, that there are Islamist fanatics around the world who wish us harm and that the next assault could be even worse than the last, he does not need to press the argument. After that, paths diverge. Mr. Bush has been marking the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 with a series of speeches about terrorism that culminated with his televised address last night. He has described a world where Iraq is a young but hopeful democracy with a unity government that represents its diverse population. Al Qaeda-trained terrorists who are terrified by the sight of an old man pulling the election lever are trying to stop the march of progress. The United States and its friends are holding firm in a battle that will decide whether freedom or terror will rule the 21st century. If that were actual reality, the president's call to put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us would be inspiring, instead of frustrating and depressing. Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terror until the Bush administration decided to invade it. The president now admits that Saddam Hussein was not responsible for 9/11 (although he claimed last night that the invasion was necessary because Iraq posed a risk). But he has failed to offer the country a new, realistic reason for being there. Establishing democracy at the heart of the Middle East no longer qualifies, desirable as that would be. Where Mr. Bush sees an infant secular Iraqi government, most of the world sees a collection of ethnic and religious factional leaders, armed with private militias, presiding over growing strife between Shiites and Sunnis. Warning that American withdrawal would embolden the enemy is far from an argument as long as there is constant evidence that American presence is creating a fearful backlash throughout the Muslim world that empowers the fanatics far more than it frightens them. Fending off the chaos that would almost certainly come with civil war would be a reason to stay the course, although it does not inspire the full-throated rhetoric about freedom that Mr. Bush offered last night. But the nation needs to hear a workable plan to stabilize a fractured, disintegrating country and end the violence. If such a strategy exists, it seems unlikely that Mr. Bush could see it through the filter of his fantasies. It's hard to figure out how to build consensus when the men in charge embrace a series of myths. Vice President Dick Cheney suggested last weekend that the White House is even more delusional than Mr. Bush's rhetoric suggests. The vice president volunteered to NBC's Tim Russert that not only was the Iraq invasion the right thing to do, if we had it to do over again, we'd do exactly the same thing. It is a breathtaking thought. If we could return to Sept. 12, 2001, knowing all we have seen since, Mr. Cheney and the president would march right out and do exactly the same thing all over again. It will be hard to hear the phrase lessons of Sept. 11 again without contemplating that statement. *** http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/opinion/10rich.html?pagewanted=2themc=th Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12? By FRANK RICH NY Times Op-Ed: September 10, 2006 THE most famous picture nobody's ever seen is how the Associated Press photographer Richard Drew has referred to his photo of an unidentified World Trade Center victim hurtling to his death on 9/11. It appeared in some newspapers, including this one, on 9/12 but was soon shelved. In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world, Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo. Five years later, Mr. Drew's falling man remains a horrific artifact of the day that was supposed to change everything and did not. But there's another taboo 9/11 photo, about life rather than death, that is equally shocking in its way, so much so that Thomas Hoepker of Magnum Photos kept it under wraps for four years. Mr. Hoepker's picture can now be found in David Friend's compelling new 9/11 book, Watching the World Change, or on the book's Web site, www.watchingtheworldchange.com. It shows five young friends on the waterfront in Brooklyn, taking what seems to be a lunch or bike-riding break, enjoying the radiant late-summer sun and chatting away as cascades of smoke engulf Lower Manhattan in the background. Mr. Hoepker found his subjects troubling. They were totally relaxed like any normal afternoon, he told Mr. Friend. It's possible they
