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Editorial: Gavin Newsom, lawbreaker

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Gavin Newsom, candidate for governor of California, doesn’t want to seem soft on crime, so Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is siding with the federal authorities on deporting immigrant youth

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom has set off something of a crisis in San Francisco government by insisting that he will defy the city law that seeks to protect immigrant youth from deportation. While Newsom claims that the sanctuary policy approved 8-2 by the supervisors last week violates federal law (something the same-sex marriage advocate hasn’t worried so much about in the past), this is really a matter of politics. Newsom, candidate for governor of California, doesn’t want to seem soft on crime — so Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is siding with the federal immigration authorities.

He’s also putting out a misleading message about the law.

Center for American Progress

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Center for American Progress

Statement on Obama’s Upcoming Decision on Afghanistan and Press Call Advisory

CAP Experts Brian Katulis, Lawrence Korb, and Caroline Wadhams are available for comment on this statement over the weekend, and will be hosting a press conference call on Monday, November 30th, at 12:30 p.m. More information on the call below.

The Obama administration will soon release its much anticipated strategy on Afghanistan. Congress must subject this plan to comprehensive oversight and scrutiny in order to ensure the United States has a clear and comprehensive plan for advancing stability in Afghanistan and the broader region. Before it approves any additional funding for the war, Congress should require the Obama administration to outline a clear set of objectives with accompanying metrics and an implementation strategy that does the following:

* Establishes a flexible timeframe for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
* Ensures that the mission is shared with our international allies.
* Presses Pakistan to battle extremists within its borders.
* Requires good governance and internal reforms in Afghanistan.
* Plans for how the war will be funded.

West Fest: Mel Belli’s friends gather again

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Well, promoter Boots Houston put out an email summarizing his West Fest event:

“West Fest, Woodstock 40th Anniversary this Sunday October 25th, 72 acts, 4 stages, 26 poster artists- FREE-9 a.m. to 6 p.m.Golden Gate Park. Let the magic begin.”

But I like to think of the event as full of Mel Belli’s friends and coming in a direct line from the famous Human Be-In of l967 and the Summer 0f Love and the Summer of Love anniversaries and other such events in Golden Gate Park.

Let me explain the story as told to me by the late Michael Bowen, a promoter with Allen Cohen of the Be-In. Bowen called me from Sweden, where he was living, on the eve of the 40th Summer of Love event in 2007. He said the story, a closeted San Francisco classic, had never before been told and he wanted it out. Mel Belli was the famous San Francisco attorney and King of Torts, as he liked to call himself. He’s been dead for many years, but to me his spirit will live on in Sunday’s Woodstock event.
Bowen said he and Cohen were in desperate need of a permit for their event because, as hippie activists, they were persona non grata at City Hall. So Bowen went to the downtown office of his friend Mel Belli and asked for help.

Belli sent his secretary down to City Hall and she returned later that afternoon with a permit.

It read, “A permit for Mel Belli and his friends.” And so Mel Belii and his friends showed up by the tens of thousands and turned the Human Be-In into a world famous cultural event and the precursor to the Summer of Love and anti-war events that followed. The event drove the tac squad crazy and police and City Hall officials scurried about trying to find out how this huge event blossomed almost over night. Bowen loved retelling the story and swore up and down to me that it was true. I believed him.

There will once again be tens of thousands at the Woodstock event. And they will all be in an Oraclean sense Mel Belli’s friends. Mel would like that. B3

#9_carolyn_ferris.jpg
Poster by Carolyn Ferris

#14_mike_dolgushkin.jpg
Poster by Mike Dolgushkin

To view more West Fest posters click here, here, and here.

Click here to read Johnny Ray Huston’s preview of West Fest, Park life — and 3,000 guitars.

Calvin Trillin: 3 explanations for Nobel prize

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THREE POSSIBLE

EXPLANATIONS FROM

THE NOBEL COMMITTEE

Don’t be surprised. Don’t gasp. Don’t faint.

We’ve simply said, “George Bush he ain’t.”

The prize diplomacy can reap’ll

Prevent this guy from bombing people.

Since Henry Kissinger has won,

You know that this is all in fun.

Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet, The Nation, Nov. 2, 2009

U.S. in Afghanistan: Good help is hard to find

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Now the Obama administration and congressional leaders — with Sen. John Kerry playing a starring role in recent days — are making a determined effort to legitimize the Afghan government as a prelude to further U.S. escalation of the war.

By Norman Solomon

(Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”)

Almost eight years after choosing Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan government, Uncle Sam would like to give him a pink slip. But it’s not easy. And the grim fiasco of Afghanistan’s last election is shadowing the next.

Another display of electioneering and voting has been ordered up from Washington. But after a chemical mix has blown a hole through the roof — with all the elements for massive fraud still in place — what’s the point of throwing together the same ingredients?

This time, the spinners in Washington hope to be better prepared.

Brownell: Stress in Congress over the color blue

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What happens when members of Congress get post traumatic stress syndrome and see blue, blue, blue

By Jess Brownell

(Jess Brownell is our Voice of the Heartland, a freelance writer who lives in Milwaukee.)

I know this was a while ago now in Andy Warhol Time, but good old Joe Wilson keeps popping into my mind. For me, the most interesting aspect of his “You lie” shout during the Obama speech to congress was its timing. To be fair, there are moments in any presidential speech when a shout of “You exaggerate,” or “You embellish,” or maybe even “You prevaricate” would be understandable, if out of order. But in this instance, Rep. Wilson chose a moment when the President was obviously telling the truth. Obama has advocated no health plan that would cover illegal immigrants, and the legislator from South Carolina must have known that.

Fair: Limbaugh’s long record of racist remarks

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fair.gif

Limbaugh defenders ignore his record of racist and race-bating remarks over a long period of time
10/16/09

In the wake of Rush Limbaugh being booted from a group of investors bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams football team, a minor media tempest has been stirred by conservative commentators who charge that Limbaugh has been falsely accused of making racist remarks.

Central to their charge are two quotes allegedly made by Limbaugh–in which the radio host supposedly praised slavery and Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray–that cannot be documented and may be bogus. Many of the commentators claim that the case against Limbaugh is based on little more than the two dubious quotes.

Meister: Shake now, buy later

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By Dick Meister

Attention fans of free enterprise: After the earthquake on Oct. l7, 1989, almost everyone with something to sell quickly began peddling earthquake specials

(Dick Meister is a longtime San Francisco journalist.)

Fans of free enterprise undoubtedly were pleased that the earthquake which caused such great damage in the Bay Area on Oct. 17, 1989, didn’t so much as dent the spirit of local entrepreneurs. They lost none of their eagerness to exploit any and all situations to their advantage – natural disasters unquestionably included.

Bankers and lawyers and utility companies, insurers, furniture and appliance stores, contractors and condo salesmen, jewelers and art dealers, office supply firms, clothiers, supermarkets, fast food outlets, hotels and restaurants, T-shirt vendors …

Meister: Radio noise that mattered post-quake

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After the earthquake of Oct. l7, 1989, commercial radio stations performed an invaluable public service and justified, if only briefly, the bright hopes when radio broadcasting was introduced 75 years ago

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister is a longtime San Francisco journalist)

To me, and doubtless to many others, commercial radio is nothing more than highly unwelcome noise. Turn the dial, and what do you usually get? Advertising. Lots and lots of advertising. Inane music and talk shows. News headlines conveyed with great speed and false excitement in hopes you will stay alert for yet another commercial.

It is radio designed primarily to deliver listeners to advertisers. But it can serve nobler ends. I know, as do millions of others in Northern California. We found out within minutes after the earth began the 15 seconds of terrible shaking that brought such great devastation to the region on Oct. 17, 1989.

Potrero Hill comes alive

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Potrero HIll is the gem of San Francisco neighborhoods, either cut or uncut depending on your point of view.
Here is the proof: a nifty jazz breakfast at the Potrero Hill neighborhood house (Saturday morning, Oct. 17) followed by the Potrero Neighborhood Street Fair on 20th between Missouri and Wisconsin sts.

PotreroHillFestival.jpg

Why do they hate America and love Brazil?

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What we have here with Rush Limbaugh and staffers at the Weekly Standard is a coup de foudre, a thunderbolt of love that strikes without warning and cannot be denied.

By Jess Brownell

(Jess Brownell is our Voice of the Heartland, observing the political scene as a freelance writer from Milwaukee.)

According to news reports, staffers at the conservative Weekly Standard cheered when they learned that Rio de Janeiro rather than Chicago had been selected to host the 2016 Olympics. Rush Limbaugh pronounced himself “gleeful,” I’m told. Others in that camp were equally pleased at the result.

Why do these people hate America?

Understand that I ask the question in a plaintive tone. In the past they were the people who could always be depended upon to love America unconditionally, without reservations, with all their hearts and souls, forever and ever, amen. When others ventured to criticize some little American venture – Viet Nam, Iraq – they were the ones who told us to love our country or leave it. They carried around flags to wrap themselves in whenever they thought the occasion called for it and a camera was in the vicinity. They admired the men and women of our armed forces so much they might almost have become one of them had they not heard a higher call to punditry. Now, without warning, they have transferred their undying affection to Brazil. How could this happen?

Jon Stewart: CNN leaves it there

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B3: Jon Stewart says, “CNN: Nobody leaves more things there.” In a short segment on his Daily show (l0/12/09),
Stewart gives one of the most incisive commentaries I’ve seen on the problem with television news. He nails,
among other things, the interviewing bloviator who allows the lies to go unchallenged, doesn’t ask the obvious followup questions, or do the research to get at the truth. How can CNN keep “leaving it there” (the lie), he asks, when it has a huge backup staff and a 24-hour news cycle?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Free concert: 40th Anniversary of Woodstock

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West1.jpg

From the producers of the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock:
Free Concert Golden Gate Park
Sunday, October 25, 2009

Event: “West Fest” Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock.
Attraction: 42 bands, 3 stages and 26 poster artists. Solar domes, Alternative vehicles, Electric bikes, Native American Tipi Village, Sustainable Living Road Show, Conscious Art Gallery, Light Temple, Holistic Healing Section, Hooper Heaven, Rock’n Green Kids Zone and Eco Village vendors. Narada Michael Walden featuring Vernon e Black leading 3,000 guitar players and closing the show with the Hendrix Experience reenactment and Superstar Jam
Admission: FREE
When: October 25, 2009, 9am to 6pm
Where: Speedway Meadows, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA USA
Producer: 2b1 Multimedia Inc. and the Council of Light in association with Artie Kornfeld, the original producer of “Woodstock 1969”
Contact: Boots Hughston, 415-861-1520 www.2b1records.com/woodstock40sf or woodstock40sf@yahoo.com

Solomon: The War Stampede

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The War Stampede

By Norman Solomon

Disputes are raging within the Obama administration over how to continue the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. A new leak tells us that Washington’s ambassador in Kabul, former four-star general Karl Eikenberry, has cautioned against adding more troops while President Hamid Karzai keeps disappointing American policymakers. This is the extent of the current debate within the warfare state.

During a top-level meeting November 11 in the White House, the Washington Post reports, President Obama “was given a series of options laid out by military planners with differing numbers of new U.S. deployments, ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 troops. None of the scenarios calls for scaling back the U.S. presence in Afghanistan or delaying the dispatch of additional troops.”

Dick Meister: Young workers and our future

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One of every five U.S. workers aged 18 to 25 live below the official poverty line. More than one third of U.S. workers under 35 are living with their parents because they can’t afford to live on their own.There are solutions.

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV’s Newsroom, has covered labor, politics, and other matters for a half-century.)

These are exceptionally painful economic times for the young Americans who will shape our future.

Editorial: PG&E’s biggest power grab ever

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Wake up, City Hall — and get moving on community choice aggregation power

(B3 note: I made a mistake in this story. See the correction below.)

EDITORIAL San Francisco’s chance to create a semblance of public power, through community choice aggregation, faces a devastating threat from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. — and the city needs to move with a sense of real urgency to get this program off the ground.

CCA would allow San Francisco to buy electric power in bulk and sell it to customers at a reduced cost. It wouldn’t create a true public-power system — PG&E would still own the transmission facilities. And while customers would see price breaks, the city wouldn’t make much money off the deal. But it would be a major step toward breaking PG&E’s illegal monopoly.

Joseph Stiglitz: Borlaug and the Bankers

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If neoclassical economic theory were correct, Norman Borlaug would have been among the wealthiest men in the world, while our bankers would have been lining up at soup kitchens.

Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

NEW YORK – The recent death of Norman Borlaug provides an opportune moment to reflect on basic values and on our economic system. Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in bringing about the “green revolution,” which saved hundreds of millions from hunger and changed the global economic landscape.

Before Borlaug, the world faced the threat of a Malthusian nightmare: growing populations in the developing world and insufficient food supplies. Consider the trauma a country like India might have suffered if its population of a half-billion had remained barely fed as it doubled. Before the green revolution, Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal predicted a bleak future for an Asia mired in poverty. Instead, Asia has become an economic powerhouse.

Scheer: AG Brown’s spokesman didn’t break the law

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In taping a reporter, AG Brown’s spokesman showed bad judgment, but didn’t break the law

By Peter Scheer

Attorney General Jerry Brown’s spokesman Scott Gerber was unceremoniously “disappeared” from Brown’s incipient gubernatorial campaign this week because of a lapse in judgment that, quite frankly, has been grossly overblown. Gerber’s mistake: to surreptitiously record a phone conversation with a reporter, which was later discovered because Gerber, in a plea for changes to the story, presented an editor with verbatim quotes too extensive and accurate to be the result of efficient note-taking alone.

Meister: The endless censoring of labor

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Dick Meister runs down some important labor stories that the mainstream press has ignored and in effect censored

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)

Did you know about the Bush administration’s rotten treatment of the air traffic controllers whose work is essential to air safety? That controllers were forced to work long, fatiguing shifts with little time to rest? That many quit because of that? Were you aware of the great potential for serious accidents that posed?

Did you know that President Obama’s appointees to the Federal Aviation Agency stepped in to rescind the onerous conditions imposed by Bush’s FAA appointees and end the controllers’ long struggle for decent treatment?

Well, you wouldn’t know about those vital developments if you relied solely on mainstream media. The Bay Guardian ran my column on the subject, but to most mainstream outlets, certainly including all Bay Area outlets, it was just another labor story to be ignored another labor story to be in effect censored.

New York Times: Censoring Project Censored

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“After 34 years, will the New York Times cover the Project Censored annual release?”

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Peter Phillips, the director of Project Censored at Sonoma State University, sent me this key question with his annual Censored package:

“After 34 years, will the New York Times cover the Project Censored annual release?”

Phillips was referring to the fact that the Times has never written a word about the project, even though it is now a widely respected package, is carried by the Guardian and many alternative papers, and produces a book of censored stories each year.

Moreover, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, which is owned by the Times, didn’t run a story this year even though the project and Sonoma State are in the PD’s circulation area. When the PD did run a story in previous years, it was a nasty whack job.

The “censoring” of Project Censored by the Times, which declares itself the world’s best newspaper, has always fascinated me. And so I set out two years ago to see if I could get an explanation from the Times and its sister paper. I asked Carl Jensen, the founder of the project, and Phillips if they had ever gotten an explanation from the Times why why the paper “censored” Project Censored. They said they never got an explanation.
So I went to work on my own and emailed the package several times to the editors at the Times and the PD.
No reply from either the Times of the PD. Nothing. They were even “censoring” the messenger who was asking the questions.

I noted in Sunday’s New York Times (10/4/09) that the new public editor, Clark Hoyt, was dealing with a tricky subject for the Times, namely that it was missing some juicy stories. Hoyt mentioned the Acorn story
and said that “the story caught fire on Fox News from conservative blogs, but the Times was slow to respond.”
He wrote that Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, and Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news,
said they would assign an editor (B3: unnamed, alas) to “monitor opinion media from now on and to briefs them frequently.”

Clark added that “it seems self-evident to me that the Times needs to be aware of the buzz out there–whether it’s about politics and public policy or fashion. The hard part is is deciding what merits coverage. When the Times misses or is slow on a story that is boiling elsewhere…it lets it’s readers down.”

Well, Project Censored each year for 34 years has produced a list of major stories that the Times and the mainstream media have missed or under-reported. Why doesn’t that merit coverage? Why can’t the Times explain why it “censored” the censored story? To me, the fact that the Times won’t run the story or explain why dramatizes the point of the project in 96 point Tempo Bold.

In any event, I’m going to email the story to the Times and its sister paper near Sonoma State and see if I can get an explanation this time around. I’ll keep you posted. Stay alert. B3

Click here to read Guardian reporter Rebecca Bowe’s story, Project Censored: The top 10 stories not brought to you by mainstream news media in 2008 and 2009.

Click here to learn more about Project Censored.

Click here to read the 2007 blog, Censoring the Censored Project: Will the NY Times, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and the mainstream media censor this year’s Project Censored story?

Meister: Justice at last for air traffic controllers

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Obama’s FAA rescinded the onerous and dangerous work rules imposed by Reagan and Bush appointees and signed a new agreement that went into effect Oct. l.

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV’s Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century)

The long struggle of the nation¹s air traffic controllers for decent treatment appears to be finally over ­­ the struggle that began in 1981, when President Reagan fired 11,000 controllers for striking and which resumed full force during George Bush¹s presidency.

The controllers aren¹t the only ones involved. Millions of airline passengers and employees and many fliers who pilot their own aircraft have faced serious threats to their safety because of what was done by the Bush
appointees who ran the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Calvin Trillin: What the Gekkos know

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A YEAR LATER, LITTLE
CHANGE ON WALL STREET

–Headline in the New York Times

Derivatives are with us still,

Unregulated. All concede

That Congress doesn’t have the will

To curb a system based on greed.

So once again, the debt will grow,

Inflated salaries will soar.

Collapse? So what? The Gekkos know

We’d simply bail them out once more.

Editorial: How an SF online newspaper can succeed

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No number of part-time bloggers and citizen journalists will ever be able to perform the watchdog role of a fully-staffed newspaper.But the new web-based publication “can’t just be about getting the old band together for another tour.”

EDITORIAL Dave Iverson, host of KQED’s Friday Forum show, introduced the Sept. 25 program with a pretty obvious comment: "Conversations about the future of journalism, and newspapers in particular, are rarely optimistic affairs." He went on to describe the new effort by Warren Hellman, KQED, and the UC Berkeley journalism school to create a new media outlet in San Francisco (a story that broke first in the Guardian‘s politics blog).

The guests, including Neil Henry, dean of the j-school; Carl Hall, the former San Francisco Chronicle reporter; and Jeff Clarke, president of KQED; talked in vague platitudes about the big new plans — and then spent much of the time defending and lauding the Chronicle, which one guest called "a great paper."

ACLU: Will the House protect your privacy?

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We’ve got another big chance to end Patriot Act abuses–but we have to act fast.

The Senate Judiciary Committee had the opportunity to pass legislation to rein in a bill that has become a symbol of out-of-control government invasions of your privacy. They failed–approving a bill that does little to curtail the sweeping powers embedded in the Patriot Act.

That’s why we must do everything we can to ensure that the House of Representatives passes a stronger bill–one that can lead to genuine reform of the deeply-flawed Patriot Act.

Act right now. Ask your representative to co-sponsor the USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009.

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