Los Angeles peace organizing

Upcoming major events

Peace Vigil, Sat Dec 14th
7-9 PM, Hollywood & Highland. The four major coalitions have signed on to this so it could easily draw a few thousand people.

Mass Rally, Sat Jan 11
Probably 11 AM, assemble downtown. Specific details still being worked out. This could get tens of thousands and is being organized in conjunction with the expected to be huge DC & SF rallies the following weekend.

Coalitions
These coalitions, while they may have different constituencies and viewpoints, are all working with each other. 

Coalition for World Peace
Has considerable Westside and entertainment biz support. 

International Answer LA
More militant than the others. Favors a Palestinian homeland, and sees this issue as related to an Iraq War and American imperialism. Also the best organized, as they’ve had an office here three years, the others were formed post 9/11. 

Interfaith Communities United for Justice & Peace.
Los Angeles coalition of 80+ faith-based groups, including the five major religions. Becoming a model for other groups across the country.

Not in Our Name LA
Doing considerable organizing in high schools, colleges, as well as with a multitude of ethnic groups.

Ongoing
Peace vigils
There are at least fifteen weekly peace vigils now in LA, usually on Friday nights between 5-7 PM at busy intersection.

Coffehouse teach-ins
Popular and informative - standing room only with people outside on the street looking in.

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Another Stop the Department of Homeland Security action

This one is from … The John Birch Society!

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Let’s photograph the surveillance cameras!

Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto associate professor of political science, wants people to grab their cameras and hit the shopping malls Dec. 24 and participate in World Sousveillance Day.

Surveillance means “to view from above.” Sousveillance means “to view from below.”

On the day before Christmas, at noon, local time, all over the world, Deibert wants citizens to “shoot back” at surveillance cameras — not with guns, but with cameras of their own. Participants are to head out, in disguise, to their favorite malls and public spaces, and photograph all the security cameras they find.

Deibert warns that photographing security cameras will quickly cause large men wearing navy blue blazers and two-way radios to place their hands over your camera lens. Photographers may even be escorted off the premises.

Which is exactly the point. Deibert hopes World Sousveillance Day will “raise awareness about the increasing pervasiveness of all forms of surveillance in today’s hypermedia society.”

“A lot of people probably aren’t aware of the extent to which they’re being monitored,” he said.

Indeed, modern video surveillance systems are omnipresent, and sophisticated. They are web-enabled, so one can view them via the Net. They have motion detection, two way audio, and record to disk in encrypted form. These cameras ARE everywhere, no joke. They are billed as “management tools”, allowing employers to view what employees are doing, as well as watching parking lots, hallways, etc. Some Vegas casinos have thousands of video cameras.

And in a similar vein, with our snoopy government, your Google searches are not private.

Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly - Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.

So, does Google ever get subpoenas for its information?

“Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google”.

Anonymizer is a useful tool here, making your IP address unknown to search engines and web sites, plus allowing anonymous email, and lots more.

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Mozilla 1.2 has shipped

Mozilla is a fast, smart open source browser that - added feature - has no huge security holes. What are you waiting for! Get it!

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A XMAS CAROL

On the twelfth day of fascism
John Ashcroft gave to me
Twelve digital implants
Eleven years protesting
Ten less amendments
Nine internment camps
Eight surveillance cameras
Seven TIPsters tipping
Six snoops a-sniffing
Five Carnivores
Four airport friskings
Three wiretappings
Two detained Muslims
And a Department of Homeland Security

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America’s imperial slide toward war.

So, with little effort to justify his actions, an imperial president moves the most powerful nation on Earth toward the latest deadly conflict. Sitting on the sidelines, too many lawmakers seem content to let their constitutional authority be the first casualty of war. [Latino Vote News]

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True Roots of Terrorism Against the West.

Patrick Seale dismisses the arguments raised by the media as reasons for the examples of world terrorism, but primarily focused in nations where Muslim populations are in the majority.

If all this, as the US would have us believe, is the work of a single shadowy terrorist network, with tentacles stretching across the world, then the way to defeat it is to cut off its head and then destroy its offshoots one by one. This is what America and its allies are trying to do. But what if the West is grappling with an altogether different phenomenon? What if the war on terror being waged is fundamentally wrong-headed? [Instead, Seale argues, a more logical] possibility is that the “enemy” is not just a terrorist network but a broad, militant, grassroots rebellion against American military and political interventions in the Arab and Muslim world, against Western arrogance, racism and bullying. [Via Blog Left]

As pointed out here before, as detailed in the seminal book Networks and Netwars, networked organizations don’t have heads that can be cut off. That is one of their strengths, -  something hierarchical organizations have major difficulty understanding. These is no one person in charge. There may not be anyone in charge.

Al Quaeda has variously been described as a university and a funding source. They train and finance, Students graduate and form their own groups which may be in loose contact with the others.

The primary point here though is that these groups may be the radical fringe of a general “grassroots rebellion” against - hey let’s call it what it is - American imperialism.  If so, they will have hidden and tacit support everywhere and be that much harder for outsiders to find.

It’s clear that at least some major part of the Saudi monarchy supports them, certainly the highly competent Pakistan Secret Police does, and, obviously suicide bombers do. For a suicide bomber to be that willing to die, pehaps we should be asking WHY they are so motivated, because yes, this does seem like a grassroots rebellion…

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Turkey terror ad from PETA

The new television campaign, scheduled to run through the holiday season, depicts a terrorist takeover of a supermarket. The store manager is shown bound and gagged, with shoppers cowering, as an unseen hostage taker warns that “innocent creatures” will be beaten, scalded and dismembered if anyone resists.

The commercial eventually reveals the “terrorist” to be a turkey puppet with a demand that people stop eating meat.

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Big Brother, Pt. 1

Mass. Gov. wants Bush administration to handle security at 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston.

Big Brother, Pt. 2

From Molly Ivins. The great writer on the subject of totalitarianism was George  Orwell, and “1984″ is always worth rereading. Damned if GeeDubya Bush didn’t pop up the other day to announce that we must fight a war “for the sake of peace.” That’s not vaguely Orwellian, it’s a direct steal.

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You just can’t make this stuff up, folks!

Henry Kissinger will head “independent” 9/11 investigation.

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Gore Takes On Fox News, Right Wing Media.

In an interview with the New York Observer, Al Gore claimed there is a “systematically orchestrated bias” in the media: “Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh — there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks — that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.”   [Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire]

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Britain has TOO MUCH wind energy

Britain’s push to to build new wind farms could exacerbate current problems of overcapacity in the electricity industry, energy regulator Callum McCarthy said.
 
The crisis in the sector, triggered by low power prices, sent TXU Europe - once one of the UK’s main electricity suppliers - into administration on Tuesday and has left nuclear generator British Energy on the verge of bankruptcy.

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Guess what this is, go ahead and try….

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THE LIST

Via ProRev

Countries whose male visitors to the U.S. must be fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated under oath by January 10.

Afghanistan
Algeria
Bahrain
Eritrea
Lebanon
Morocco
North Korea
Oman
Qatar
Somalia
Tunisia
United Arab Emirates
Yemen

NOTICE
The following, Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, is no longer operative

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

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Ron Kovic

I heard Ron Kovic of “Born on the 4th of July” fame speak last night. Kovic, who lost use of his legs in combat in Vietnam, helped found Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), and has been an peace activist ever since. VVAW was a hugely important group. As Hunter Thompson once pointed out, while cops may have enjoyed cracking hippie skulls at demonstrations, they had no stomach at all for attacking Viet Vets in wheelchairs.

He spoke to about thirty of us at an Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP) organizing meeting. ICUJP is a Los Angeles coalition of about 80 mostly faith-based organizations doing serious peace organizing. There were Quakers, several ministers, a rabbi, and two nuns present, as well as people like me, from secular groups. One retired minister (whose name escapes me) has been organizing for peace since 1949 and did federal time for refusal to go to Korea. In other words, these are serious long-time activists. 

Kovic talked about his fury and hatred while lying in the hospital realizing he would never walk again. He regretted some of his early activist statements, when he attacked people and didn’t care if he hurt them - because, he said, he’d been so badly hurt himself. Then he had An Experience, and came to understand that nonviolence is the only way, and the best way.

The core of his speech is as follows. War solves nothing. We as a country already have far too many mangled, disabled, homeless Viet and Gulf war vets, yet now our leaders wish to have another lunatic war? If we wish to stop this war, we must do it on our own. Our elected representatives will be of little help. They are part of the problem.

We are living in dangerous times, among the most dangerous ever in this country. However, with danger comes opportunity. It’s time to speak out, to organize against insane wars with the simultaneous ongoing erosion of basic civil rights. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to take action and make a difference. What happens in the coming months and years will be talked about for decades to come. This moment in history is why we are here.  A rebirth is coming to the US, and we who choose to can help make it happen.

Visionary? Yes! Hopeful? Absolutely! He is a genuine man of peace.

PS Anyone in LA interested in peace organizing should link up with ICUJP. They welcome all.

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The Evangelical Environmental Network has launched this campaign to encourage to drive cars that are respectful of the environment.

From their website, “Have you seen the Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation? The declaration is a carefully considered statement on the biblical call to reduce pollution and environmental degradation and the harm they cause to people and the rest of creation. Since the day we released it, hundreds of evangelical leaders in North America have expressed their agreement with the principles of the declaration by signing on.”

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Further proof the Stones are getting clueless

Bill Wyman vs Bill Wyman.

Bill Wyman, an editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, must stop using his name, says Bill Wyman, formerly a musician for a British rock band called the Rolling Stones. The bassist’s lawyers sent editor Wyman a cease-and-desist letter, stating that if the editor could prove his legal name was Bill Wyman, he would be allowed to use it in his articles only if he included a “prominent disclaimer.” The best part is that Bill Wyman, editor, was born with his name 41 years ago, while Bill Wyman, bassist, changed his name from William George Perks 39 years ago. [Boing Boing Blog]

Just before their current tour, Keith Richard nearly refusing to join because Mick Jagger had been knighted and thus had sold out. Had the tour not been sponsored by eTrade, this might be credible…

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Music file swapping can’t be stopped

Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work. So says a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for software giant Microsoft.

The four researchers believe that the steady spread of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down.

They also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy.  [Scripting News]

The best thing record companies could do to increase sales is to drop prices. That, and joining the file swapping world instead of continual attempts to stop the inevitable.

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Sung to the tune: “If You’re Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands”

If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets hurt your Mama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi
And the bank takes back your Audi
And the TV shows are bawdy,
Bomb Iraq.

If the corporate scandals growin’, bomb Iraq.
And your ties to them are showin’, bomb Iraq.
If the smoking gun ain’t smokin’
We don’t care, and we’re not jokin’.
That Saddam will soon be croakin’,
Bomb Iraq.

Even if we have no allies, bomb Iraq.
From the sand dunes to the valleys, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections;
Let’s look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

While the globe is slowly warming, bomb Iraq.
Yay! the clouds of war are storming, bomb Iraq.
If the ozone hole is growing,
Some things we prefer not knowing.
(Though our ignorance is showing),
Bomb Iraq.

So here’s one for dear old daddy, bomb Iraq,
From his favorite little laddy, bomb Iraq.
Saying no would look like treason.
It’s the Hussein hunting season.
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.

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Five percent of national electorate gay

Self-identified gay and lesbian voters comprise 5 percent of the electorate, according to a poll released today by the Human Rights Campaign and Zogby International.
 
“These numbers clearly demonstrate the importance of the gay community in major elections. In the current political climate, 5 percent of the vote is often the entire margin of victory,” said the HRC’s David Smith

“It’s also important to remember that many gay and lesbian voters are reluctant to come forward and be counted out of fear of discrimination — so these numbers are probably low.”

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Finances of U.S. States Called Worst Since World War II

Plunging tax collections and soaring medical costs have created the worst fiscal problems for states since World War II, the National Governors Association said today.

Governors and state budget officers said the fiscal condition of the states was more dire than the condition of the national economy.

“Nearly every state is in fiscal crisis,” the governors said in a new survey of the states.

With many states already halfway through fiscal 2003, about 23 plan to cut enacted budgets by a collective $8.3 billion. That figure did not include California, where Gov. Gray Davis plans to present a plan early next month to cover a $21 billion shortfall.

Actually, the 21 billion dollar deficit for California is now considered to be way too low.

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Thank you!

Political Site of the Day has named us their site of the day!

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Why the California voting system is broken

From the always perceptive George Skelton in the LA Times.

The problem: “Closed” primaries combined with districts drawn for party protection. Together, they’re adding up to legislative extremism. Toss in term limits and it’s a formula for producing ambitious amateurs who are radical or reactionary.

Closed primaries are unhealthy for both the legislative and executive branches, he says, because they force “Republicans to race far off to the right and Democrats far off to the left. Neither is helpful to the political system.”

The same process happens also because of the recent redistricting that made every legislative seat completely safe for either the Democrat or the Republican. Thus, the race is won in the primary (and so much for Democracy or letting voters have any say, eh?).

Voters love term limits, but these limits are ludicrous: Three two-year terms in the Assembly, two four-year stints in the Senate.

About the time legislators get the hang of legislating and government — like, where to find real waste — they’re sent packing.

Limits should be extended to 12 years in each house.

“It’s amateur hour in Sacramento,” South says. “That’s not what you want in a state this big….

Closed primaries and restrictive districting virtually guarantee the two big parties will run candidates that appeal to the flanks of their party, not the middle. Extreme term limits means experience legislators become a thing of the past.

Some solutions; open primaries with the top two regardless of party running in the general,  redistricting being done by an independent committee, and twelve year term limits.

Another idea. Instant Runoff Voting, see our article for more info.

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