Journalism

Only in LA: On one side of Pico Blvd., the Rancho Park golf course, with joggers, dog walkers and of course, golfers; on the other, a hundred “Occupy Fox News” demonstrators outside Fox Studios, chanting “We – are – the 99 per cent!”; in between, a hundred LA cops, many with riot gear at the ready, and an entire city block of TV news trucks, bristling with giant satellite dishes, power cables up and down the street, and news reporters under lights talking earnestly into the cameras. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

After decades in which “hard hats” were described as enemies of the left, and four decades after construction workers in lower Manhattan attacked anti-war demonstrators on Wall Street, the AFL-CIO on Thursday called on its members to defend Occupy Wall Street from the NYPD as the city moved to arrest and evict protestors in Zuccotti Park.  Hard hats and hippies, together at last!….
. . . . Continued at TheNation.com HERE

When Sarah Palin announced last week that she was not running for president, many wondered, what had she been trying to do during the last three years, when she seemed to be almost a candidate?  Now we know: she was trying to make money.
. . .  continued at TheNation.com HERE

From High Noon to The Ten Commandments, from low-budget horror films like Them! to noir melodramas like Panic in the Streets, Hollywood was a key arena for the giant U-turn in American politics that took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  (Review of  An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War by J. Hoberman; Dissent, Fall 2011) . . . . continued HERE.

In a move that dramatizes the political differences between Los Angeles and New York, several members of the LA City Council today declared their support for Occupy LA and introduced a resolution that will put the city officially on record as endorsing the demonstrators camped at City Hall. City Council president Eric Garcetti, who is running for mayor, visited the encampment yesterday and said, “Stay as long as you need, we’re here to support you.” . . .
Continued at TheNation.com HERE

They called it “rebuilding Iraq,” and Peter van Buren knows a lot about what went wrong — he’s a career State Department foreign service officer who spent a year there on a Provincial Reconstruction Team. I spoke with him recently on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles.

It says here you speak Japanese, Mandarin, and some Korean – why did the State Department send you to Iraq?

Along with the WMD’s, there was another misunderstanding . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

In a trial that never should have taken place, ten Muslim students at UC Irvine were convicted Friday of disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador on campus last spring.. . . .
. . . . Continued at TheNation.com HERE

Cops lie. Under oath, on the witness stand. “I saw him reach for a gun.” “I found the drugs in his pocket.” But what happens when juries refuse to believe their testimony? Do cops ever get in trouble for fabricating evidence or lying under oath? Do they ever get charged with perjury?
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE

First came the news that advisers to Israel’s foreign minister had recommended that Israel provide arms for the Kurdish terrorist group PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party which has been fighting an armed struggle against Turkey for an autonomous Kurdistan. The idea was for Israel to punish Turkey for expelling the Israeli ambassador, after Israel refused to apologize for its raid on the Gaza flotilla, in which nine Turkish citizens were killed. . . .
. . . continued at TheNation.com HERE.

If you Google “Pearl Harbor and 9/11,” you get more than 4 million hits. In George W. Bush‘s 9/11 interview on the National Geographic Channel last week, he said Sept. 11, 2001, eventually will be marked on calendars like Pearl Harbor Day: a day never to be forgotten by the people who lived through it. But on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s instructive to consider the way Pearl Harbor Day was remembered on its 10th anniversary.
In fact, on Dec. 7, 1951, Pearl Harbor wasn’t remembered.
continued at the L.A. Times HERE