Our podcast of Richard Becker speaking about the crisis in Palestine on July 7 accidentally had the wrong url for the podcast.
Here’s the corrected url.

mp3 (48:30 min, 15.5 mb)

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LAPD clubs peaceful immigrant rights protestors in Hollywood
Plus: call for video, photos & witnesses

This Tuesday, July 11, 10 am
National Lawyers Guild Office at the Peace Center
8124 W Third St, Los Angeles (Corner of Crescent Heights and Third)

ANSWER LA and the National Lawyers Guild are planning to file a lawsuit against LAPD for their despicable actions, beating passers-by, continuing to club people who were lying on the sidewalk (after being beaten for no reason.) I’ve watched multiple videos of what happened. This was unprovoked brutality from the thugs of LAPD. But then, this is the same violent police force that beat Rodney King.

From the ANSWER LA homepage

Shocking video footage will also be shown of anti-Minutemen protestors being brutally beaten by LAPD officers without provocation. The video shows a deliberate, violent attack on peaceful protestors exercising their First Amendment rights. Please come to the press conference to show solidarity with the immigrant rights movement and people who were brutalized by the police attack. Take a stand for civil rights and free speech.

ANSWER is also putting out a call to all progressive people who attended Saturday’s anti-Minutemen protest for video footage, photos and eyewitness reports of police brutality.

From the ANSWER LA eyewitness account

After nearly two hours of peaceful protest, dozens of LAPD police in full riot gear instigated a wave of unprovoked violence on the progressive crowd. They pushed protestors, jabbed them with batons and wrestled several people to the ground while beating them brutally without any cause or concern. Several ANSWER activists were brutalized and one was arrested because his friend was attempting to take photographs of riot police slamming a bystander against the back of a truck and hitting him with a baton. Top police brass later tried to justify their violence by saying protestors provoked the beatings by “crossing police lines” - an outright lie.

A Spanish-language media reporter from KPFK radio was shoved to the pavement, smacked hard and arrested for attempting to document the repression. The cops were attacking so wildly that even an elderly woman getting of a Metro bus was clubbed for being too close to the protest.

As I mentioned yesterday, LAPD does nothing to stop counter-protestors from entering ANSWER LA anti-war marches, and LAPD sure lets them walk on the sidewalks and follow the march. Yet they blocked the sidewalks so we couldn’t follow the Minutemen march. (We went down another street instead!) Clearly, LAPD has a double set of standards. But then they’re notorious for being ultra-right wing, racist, and violent.

The police arrested around six people without cause while the fascist Minutemen chanted “L-A-P-D,” cheering them on. It was a naked display of police and fascist collaboration. The outraged anti-immigrant crowd stood their ground and defended their demonstration while chanting “Cops and the Klan go hand in hand!”

The National Lawyers Guild has successfully sued LAPD a number of times. This time will be no different.

[tags]police brutality, LAPD, Minutemen[/tags]

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Four US soldiers were charged yesterday with the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman, then killing her parents and five-year-old sister to eliminate witnesses.

So, they raped her while her parents were forced to watch? Wow, it takes a mighty big man to shot a five-year old after raping her fourteen-year old sister at gunpoint.

Iraq, under the onerous rules of the occupation, is not allowed to prosecute such crimes - or any crime, for that matter - committed by a member of the US military (and also contractors, I believe.) That’s right, they are specifically exempt from being prosecuted for *anything* by the Iraq government, including rape and murder, a sickening piece of colonialist nastiness.

Police abuses in Iraq detailed. Didn’t US military say they were training Iraqi police? Ah, what’s that you say? Yes, they did train them, and in their likeness too…

[tags]Steven Green, Abeer Qassim Hamza, Iraq rape[/tags]

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LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, no Republican, wonders why a fund-raiser letter from Ted Kennedy is so devoid of actual ideas and has no coherent platform.

Democrats’ fundraising letter is bankrupt on ideas

As a matter of fact, I do share Kennedy’s concern about the Bush administration, and so I was eager to read the four-page letter and other enclosed materials to find out more about the alternative vision being offered up by the Democratic Party.

Page 1, however, contained no such clues.
Page 2 was nothing but groveling for money for contested races.
Page 3 suggested the Republicans will burn in hell for sins against humanity (”They’ve poisoned our air and water”), and Page 4 warned, “They’ll never stop unless we stop them. They’re shameless!”

That’s quite a cavalry call, but it seems to me the Democrats are once again rushing to the front lines with empty muskets.

Craig Smith, a former speechwriter for Gerald Ford and the first President Bush, said the Kennedy letter is a direct response to polls that show declining support for the war in Iraq and for the president.

But he finds it astounding that the Democratic Party still can’t move beyond its attack strategy and figure out how to define and sell itself with a specific, alternative agenda.

It’s because they don’t have one.

Smith, who teaches campaign persuasion at Cal State Long Beach, has a simple piece of advice for his political rivals:

Go back to your roots.

“They have not been the loyal opposition,” said Smith, who believes Democrats sold their souls under the influence of the Democratic Leadership Council, which pushed the party toward the center after Walter Mondale was blown out by Ronald Reagan.

Oh dear no, shrieks the DLC (and netroots), we can’t do that, support those tacky unions, the poor and disenfranchised, minorities, and health care reform. How icky. Instead they want to ‘tack to the center’ in the delusion this will get them votes. And in this, netroots is no different from the DLC. Both ignore the roots of the Democratic Party.

It’s a sad day in America when a Republican can deliver a more coherent agenda in a single paragraph than Ted Kennedy can in a four-page screed.

Indeed.

[tags]Democratic Party[/tags]

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(This is oldish, I’ve been meaning to blog it for a while now)

First Lt. Ehren Watada [is] the first commissioned U.S. officer to publicly refuse to serve in Iraq

After weighing the evidence, he came to the conclusion that he could no longer be silent while atrocities were committed in the name of democracy. He could no longer be a tool of an administration that used deception and lies to make the case for pre-emptive war.

My son no longer stands at the crossroads. He has chosen “the road less traveled.” Come what may, he is committed to staying the course.

Spread the meme. May more officers following what he’s doing.

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