From the ANSWER listserv

Bush has again defied the will of the people and announced a war without end. His proposed “withdrawal” of troops is actually nothing of the sort. The 30,000 troops that Bush plans to remove by summer 2008 — nine months from now — would only lower the troop level to its pre-”surge” figure.

What Bush really intends is to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for years and years to come. He plans to continue spending hundreds of millions of tax-payers dollars every day. He plans to move forward with a policy that will continue to kill thousands of U.S. service members, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

There will be a Die-In after the march, simultaneously with the main rally. Several thousand will commit civil disobedience in protest of the war. The march itself will be led by Iraq war veterans.

I’ll be there doing video and photography, and will have lots to post on Sunday.

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Just when you thought it was over and another zillion pricey condos would be built on precious wetlands in Los Angeles - the California Court of Appeals ruled the project’s environmental impact report was flawed and ordered an immediate halt to construction.

“This is a huge victory that Playa Vista is going to have an enormous problem trying to get around,” said Rex Frankel, president of the Ballona Ecosystem Education Project, one of the groups involved in the lawsuit. “To rework an EIR with major problems like this is going to take awhile.”

The Playa Vista Wetlands are about the only remaining wetlands in L.A., and the battle to save it has been going on for at least, no joke, twenty five years. Many condos have already been built there, but part of that agreement was the most precious parts of the wetlands would be restored, and they were.

But developers wanted to build thousands more homes in an already highly congested area, and now their plans have been stopped cold. Back in the early 90’s, in a different lifetime, I was president of the nearby Marina Mar Vista Venice Democratic Club, and this was a hugely contentious and visible battle back then. And had already been going on for at least a decade.

I know for a fact that environmentalist friends in L.A. were dancing on the ceilings after hearing of the decision. From a popular listserv there -

“oh my GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD WHOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO
YAHOOOOOOO!!!! Ballona Wetlands Victory Extraordinaire!!!!!!!!!! ”

And it is.

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