Possible rally site? Maybe

CNN is saying there will be a rally after the march at Union Square, which is north of the East Village, and far from Central Park.

However, Newsday is reporting there is no rally

<UPJ> said the gathering at Union Square would also not be a rally, and that police had agreed not to keep the protesters there in a pen.

Also, the UJP listserv a few hours ago did mentioned the march would end in Union Square, but said nothing about a rally.

If the rally actually is happening, then UPJ has 48 hours to organize stages, sound, and logistics for an expected 250,000 people. As one who has helped organize rallies that drew upwards of 80,000 and took weeks to plan, this is a near-impossible task - as well as being a sneaky ploy by police to move people away from Central Park to what will almost certainly be chaos at Union Square.

ANSWER is circulating flyers urging people to go Central Park.

The flier issued by the ANSWER coalition outlines city regulations, which the group says allow protesters to bring political signs to the park as long as they are no larger than 2 by 3 feet.

“The fact is that people are coming to Central Park,” said Brian Becker, national coordinator for the group. “It is their constitutional right to do so.”

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RNC protests. Do the Republicans want chaos in the streets?

From Danny Schecter’s Media Channel listserv and blog

In Britain and around the world this is front page news-a peace rally banned in New York. The BBC reported it that way: “Organizers say the ban is a violation of their constitutional rights of assembly and free speech. A judge at New York’s state Supreme Court has ruled that the rally, which was expected to attract a quarter of a million demonstrators, cannot be held in Central Park because of the damage which may be caused to the grass.”

Save the grass and kill the constitution seems to be the order of the day. What is one likely result: “.organizers have warned that in the absence of a place to gather legally, demonstrators may move on Central Park afterwards and that could bring the possibility of provoking clashes with the police.”

A PROVOCATION?

Increasingly this seems to be a planned provocation. The GOP knows how hostile this city is to them, how furious and enraged. They know how easy it is to get the kids fighting the cops — and voila we have a modern day Reichstag fire without the fire, a scene of just the kind of chaos that can be twisted and used to win support for strengthening the Patriot Act and keeping the gang in power in power.

Bush is planning to Nixon on this — to demagogue about the need for order and a strong America. If there is violence, as is probable given the hard-headed attitude of the city, the consequences are unpredictable. It is all escalating with few calm heads to cool things down. Another Vietnam parallel is threatening in the streets.

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LA Sound Posse

LA Sound Posse has recorded leftie speeches and events in the LA area, and now has hundreds of audio tapes available for free, legal download on Radio4All.

We encourage you to download these talks and share them widely. They’re anti-copyrighted (except for several as noted), so you can burn copies and even sell them if you’d like. Our talks include the following speakers:

Vandana Shiva
Howard Zinn
Elaine Brown
Maxine Hong Kingston
Walden Bello
Stan Goff
Randall Robinson
(among dozens more)

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US general concedes abuse was torture

Three army generals have found that 35 military intelligence soldiers and civilian contractors were partially to blame for an array of sometimes shocking detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. One general conceded that some of the acts qualified as torture

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Those fiendish lefties

Via Greg Palast. The official Republican website (click “protesters supporting Kerry”) is all a-twitter with the hideous plans those fiendish lefties are hatching. Prostitutes with AIDS! Mice on the convention floor!! Oh the horror!!!

Next week, people who hate Republicans plan to release swarms of mice in New York City to terrorize delegates to the National Republican Convention.

Republican-haters plan on dressing up as RNC volunteers, and giving false directions to little blue hair ladies from Kansas, sending them into the sectors of New York City that are unfit for human habitation.

They plan on throwing pies and Lord knows what else at Republican visitors to the city. Prostitutes with AIDS plan to seduce Republican visitors, and discourage the use of condoms, according to liberal journalist Ted Rall.

Um, Ted Rall is also a humorist, Apparently Republicans are too dim-witted to realize he tweaked their nose. And, oh yes, the Republican website links to the above article, which is from the Manchester NH Union leader, quite possibly the most reactionary, hate-filled newspaper in the country. It’s been that way for decades too. In the late 60’s they were angry at Kissinger for something and ran a banner headline titled “Kissinger the Kike”, yes they did.

The Republicans apparently have no knowledge of the other Fiendish Plots, like anarchists setting off firecrackers to confuse bomb sniffing dogs, John Perry Barlow’s plan to have hordes of people dancing in the streets, and much more - which I am not at liberty to divulge. Bwa ha ha.

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US military intelligence personnel, contractors involved in Iraqi prisoner abuse

A U.S. Army investigation has found that 27 members of a U.S. military intelligence unit at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were directly involved in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

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