International notes
Israel/Palestine: Israeli CP presses political solution / Greenland: Inuits demand their land back / Haiti: Flood takes huge toll / West Africa: U.S. carrier strike group to visit region / China: Economy keeps growing
Thousands at D.C. meeting say: Take back America
WASHINGTON – Over 2,000 participants in a “Take Back America” conference here June 2-4 cheered speakers who urged a bolder, pro-peace, pro-worker, pro-equality program to rally voters against George W. Bush and the Republican right in November. click here for Spanish text
Howard B. Silverberg: Fighter for peace and equality
BALTIMORE, Md. – Howard B. Silverberg was remembered at a memorial here June 1 as a giant of a man with big hands and big feet. But his niece, Ruth Caley, told the crowd, that “biggest of all was his heart,” never so true as when he was standing up for working people, the poor and the oppressed.
Making a movie against all odds
Review The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in Cold War America, by James L. Lorence, University of New Mexico Press, 256 pp, $21.95 To many older progressives, activists, union organizers, socialists and communists, the story of how the movie Salt of the Earth came to be, its production and blacklisting, is a cherished something to be told and re-told.
The floating zoo
Review Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Harvest Books, 336 pp., $14 Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a sensational tale of a boy, his religious beliefs and his zoo animals in a lifeboat. It is where Dr. Doolittle meets The Old Man and the Sea.
What the U.S got away with
Review An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, by William F. Pepper, Verso, 320 pp., $25 William Pepper’s book An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King makes us realize that extra-judicial executions such as those carried out by the Colombian military and their proxies, the paramilitaries, are not exclusive to South America.
'Eyewitness to Occupation' events
“This is just what we need to be doing,” was the reaction of many of the participants in two Connecticut “Eyewitness to Occupation” events featuring remarks by Judith Le Blanc following her two-week fact-finding tour as part of a delegation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Manhattan public access TV elects new chairman of board
NEW YORK – The Board of Directors of Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), the recently expanded public access cable television network, has elected one of New York City’s most active advocate journalists, Donald Suggs, as its new chair. A former senior editor at The Village Voice and a long-time freelance reporter published in The New York Times, Suggs replaces Larian Angelo, budget director for the New York City Council, who stepped down this month.
Jacobs Ladder a timely film
Jacob’s Ladder is an anti-war film released in 1990, a month before the start of the Gulf War. It’s about life and death, love and humanity, but the studio promoted it as a horror movie. It came and went in an instant but many consider it among cinema’s most memorable films.
Lawyer challenges detention
Attorney Donna R. Newman announced June 11 that she will challenge the detention of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who is being held by the Justice Department without criminal charges as a suspect in a “bomb plot.”
