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Announcing 40 Scholarships in Authentic Journalism in Mexico, May 2011

category international | arts and media | other press author Wednesday December 29, 2010 19:10author by Jane Ruby Report this post to the editors

Ten Days of Intensive Training in Central Mexico: Video Production, Investigative & Online Reporting, and Movement Strategies for Journalists

By Al Giordano

We’re on a roll, kind readers. Narco News’ School of Authentic Journalism is coming back, again. The next session will be held May 11 to 21, 2011, in Mexico City and surrounding mountains.

This will be the largest School of Authentic Journalism to date, with 40 students learning from 36 (or more) professors (many of whom are themselves graduates of the school since 2003, and all of whom consider ourselves permanent students, too). This session will build upon the February 2010 school’s work with intensive training in production of viral video, investigative and online reporting as well as deepening our understanding, as journalists and communicators, of the strategic dynamics of the social movements and civil resistances that we report.

The theme of the 2011 school is “Movement Strategies for Journalists.” Let me introduce you to some of our confirmed professors for this session. First, I’ll mention those with extensive experience organizing their own communities and nations and winning political and social battles against powerful interests.

We’re especially thrilled that Oscar Olivera of Bolivia – who due to sudden developments in his own country could not attend last February’s session – has reported to us “I will definitely be with you in 2011, that’s a promise.” Oscar is known far and wide as a key organizer of the city of Cochabamba’s successful 2001 struggle to expel Bechtel Corporation from control of its public water supply, a watershed moment for all struggles on earth against mighty economic interests. A longtime union leader and social fighter, Oscar will bring his years of experience as a strategist and organizer to the school to help us all become better reporters on social movements.

Janet Cherry helped end apartheid in her land of South Africa, organizing with union and student movements and the African National Congress. A prominent young political prisoner of that movement during the 1980s, now a lecturer at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, will share the story she lived when an armed underground resistance, the African National Congress, of which she was a member, converted itself into a national project of community organizing and nonviolent civil resistance and evolved to win one of the epic political struggles of the last century.

Renny Cushing, of Seabrook, New Hampshire, co-founder of the Clamshell Alliance which in the 1970s gave birth to an international movement against nuclear power, trained and inspired me as a community organizer when your correspondent was a teenager. He has also served multiple terms as a state legislator and currently directs Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, a national anti-death penalty movement. Renny has an organizing style reminiscent of The Preacher in John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath. You might say he was Preacher to my inner Tom Joad. I know he can teach, too, having learned so much from him.

Anne-Marie Codur, native of France, has worked for years in defense of Palestinian rights, with the Israeli peace movement, and with women’s movements in many lands. A former (and future) opera singer with a doctorate in economics, she recently wrote:

“My work with civic organizations involved in peace building between Israelis and Arabs, and between Jews, Christians and Muslims, has taught me that the problems don’t stem from the individual level. Conflicts result not from ‘existential’ hatred supposedly fuelled by incompatible values causing ‘clashes of civilizations,’ but from the dispossession of the ones by the others – dispossession of key resources whose control is determinant in the shaping and strengthening of structures of power.”
These are the kinds of social dynamics that we who want to be good reporters on social movements and struggles must better understand to be able to do our work with competence and excellence.

Stephen Zunes, professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco is a chronicler and scholar of nonviolent anti-imperialist struggles, a topic of a plenary session he’ll lead when he returns to the j-school next year.

Other outstanding teachers from the 2010 school will also be joining us again:

The Rev. Jim Lawson, who Martin Luther King Jr. called the most important strategist and theorist of nonviolent struggle in the world, delivered the keynote speech at the School in Mérida, Yucatán last February, and also made himself available for a plenary interview by two of our students. Jim reports that he’ll be at the 2011 j-school from its first day and will stay twice as long as the three days he was able to attend the last one.

Mercedes Osuna, human rights defender and organizer from Chiapas, Mexico returns, too, to teach safety for journalists in conflict zones among so many other lessons.

And, as is already tradition in this school, we’re very proud to premier some of our 2010 graduates as a professors in 2011…

Egyptian blogger-against-torture Noha Atef not only returns as a professor, but also as co-chair of the Internet Journalism work group at the School of Authentic Journalism, a job she will share with 2010 professor Richard Bell, another veteran of the anti-nuclear movements and the Internet pioneer who, in the 1990s, established the first website of a major political party in the US (democrats.org). Returning professor Erin Rosa (also staff reporter for Narco News) will teach in the Internet workgroup, too, along with 2010 student promoted to professor Kara Newhouse, who spent much of this year reporting from Palestine, and a new talent in our ranks, the Mexican graphic designer par excellence Paola Galletta. I’ll be lending a hand in that workgroup, too.

Another 2010 graduate among those returning as professors, Chilean native Milena Velis of the Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia, will be also be a department head at the 2011 School: She’ll co-chair the Viral Video Workgroup with documentary filmmaker Gregory Berger, a New York native that has worked twelve years alongside social and indigenous movements in Mexico. Other professors in the video workgroup include returning professors, among them; cinematographer Joshua Bregman, audio wizard Andrew Stelzer, photographer Noah Friedman-Rudovsky and Mexican television news producer Quetzal Belmont. Their team will be strengthened by 2010 students now promoted as professors in the video group: Ter Garcia of Spain, Karina González of Mexico, Katie Halper of New York, Sebastian Kolendo of Wisconsin, Franco-New Yorker Marine Lormant, 2004 graduate Sarahy Flores of Mexico, and some new talents, too, in Daryn Cambridge of the US and Marco Campillo of Mexico. Students in this workgroup will learn by doing while they videotape, audiotape, mix and produce online videos sharing the curriculum of the School with a global public, including with you, kind reader.

Rounding out the School’s three workgroups, at the helm of our Investigative Reporting department, we welcome back Natalia Viana from Sao Paulo, Brazil and Bill Conroy of San Antonio, Texas. They’ll be joined by returning professor the Englishman Roddy Brett coming from Bogotá, Colombia, and by 2010 graduates Fernando Leon (also a Narco News staff reporter in Mexico) and Mariana Simoes, of Brazil, now promoted to professors. By the way, did you notice? This has been an historic month for Natalia’s journalism, with her publication of the only interview with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange on the eve of his arrest in London. Natalia graduated from the School of Authentic Journalism in 2004 and her extensive body of work serves as a shining example of what we hope our students will go out and do with the skills they learn here.

Everyone’s favorite fantastic fun support staff will be returning too: School of Authentic Journalism social directors Maia Facen and Tiberio Tinarelli (mixers of the best mojito in all the Americas), jack-of-all-trades Victor Amezcua, Johanna Lawrenson (who with her late husband, the American dissident Abbie Hoffman, were the first to take me to Latin America as a young community organizer), and Laura Tilsley Garcia of The Fund for Authentic Journalism.

As in 2010, the 2011 School of Authentic Journalism is only made possible thanks to the support of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which again offers $20,000 in matching support if you, our readers and supporters, donate that amount in smaller donations to The Fund for Authentic Journalism. We’re especially appreciative of its director, Jack DuVall, himself an award winning television producer, who believes in the importance of organizing a new generation of authentic journalists to report accurately on the strategies and tactics of movements that the Center teaches. We hope he’ll be able to join us, too, in Mexico.

The Fund is a 501c3 organization registered in the United States, which means that your contributions to it are tax-deductible. In other words, every cent you donate in 2010 can be deducted from your 2010 taxes, and the same goes for anything you will contribute in 2011 for that year. With the end of the year coming up in two weeks, if you’re studying where your contributions will have the most impact, please consider that the work of Narco News and the School of Authentic Journalism keeps coming back year after year, as our graduates continue to report to you the stories you wouldn’t hear about if we weren’t reporting them. Your gift is literally a gift that keeps on giving.

Please help us sponsor the 40 scholarship recipients of the next generation of the School of Authentic Journalism – and gain $20,000 in matching support – by making a contribution today.

You can make it online, right now, via this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or you can make a check out to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 1446
Easthampton, MA 01027 USA

Everybody complains about the media, but we know of no other program like ours, that actually does something about it by replacing its ranks with better, faster, more coherent and more honest journalists: authentic journalists! We’re very proud, for example, that last week when British police were on his trail, the WikiLeaks founder chose one of our graduates to grant his exclusive interview, knowing that she would report it accurately, competently, honestly and at the high quality that would make sure his exact words were heard around the world in multiple languages.

Finally, this part of this announcement is directed at our next generation of students.

You’ve read about our all-star team of professors and you may even know about their work already. You can also see how so many who have attended the School in the past have continued working together, supporting each other, and investing in each other long after they “graduate” from the School. You’ve seen how we promote the work of our graduates and promote many, in future years, to teach what they have learned both at the school and in their journalism work outside of it. To have the chance to make the best of an experience like that which the School of Authentic Journalism offers is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We’re looking to give scholarships to the 40 people – from any part of the world, of any age or experience level – who we think will continue to do this work, and to pass its skills and knowledge on to new generations.

The School of Authentic Journalism charges no tuition. Unlike other schools, we’re not looking for people who can afford to pay us. This isn’t a business. For those students who can’t otherwise afford to attend, we subsidize your air travel, food and lodging. Many students have returned home from the School with cameras, computers and other equipment donated by our readers, too.

Many of the sessions from the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism are made available via online video at Narco News TV. We urge you to watch them if you’re interested in attending the School, to get an idea of what you, too, might become part of should you apply and be invited. And today we unveil the latest in that series of videos from the 2010 school: Organizing the Journalists.

In it, you can see that we’re not your typical academic institution (I never graduated from any college or university, much less an official journalism school, and I believe it gave me a head start and an edge up on most journalists who did.) This school doesn’t grade you, judge you, pass or fail you. We have learned that a horizontal learning process works better than all the pompous nonsense that passes for higher education these days. By horizontal we mean that the “professors” learn from the “students,” too, and many students end up leading plenary sessions and other classes when they have skills and experiences to share, too. In fact, did you know that the professors aren’t paid? We do this because we love it. The School gives us the chance to give something back, and to assure that our craft – which before the School of Authentic Journalism held its first session in 2003, was a dying one, but now thrives anew – continues on long after we’re not around to do it ourselves anymore.

That’s what I learned as a youngster, from more experienced maestros like Abbie and Johanna, like Renny and Richard, and others who took time (and probably required some patience) to show me the ropes of so many things years ago, especially how to understand the strategic dynamics of people’s struggles. It’s that knowledge and experience – at least as much, maybe more, than the technical skills of journalism we also teach – that has allowed Narco News to become what it is globally recognized today as being: Your most honest, feisty, creative and aggressive source of international news in this hemisphere. And we intend to keep growing, hopefully with you at our sides, too.

In this video, of February’s inaugural session, our two youngest students, Geovani Montalvo, then 18, of El Salvador, and Mariana Simoes, then 20, of Brazil, prepared interview questions to ask their School president. And that’s how the 2010 School began, not by giving a sermon or a speech, but by answering questions. Check it out, and decide if you want to be part of something like it.

And if you do want to be part of it, don’t tell yourself that you’re not good enough, not experienced enough, not privileged enough, not lucky enough or not anything enough to win this scholarship. Email us for an application form, fill it out, and email it to us by 11:59 p.m. (Pacific Time) on Sunday, January 23. And within two weeks from then, forty of you will be receiving calls inviting you to attend.

It’s not an easy application. It’s long and it has an essay requirement. It also has some unorthodox questions, some of which we’ve used since 2002, others which we’ve developed over time. It is designed to weed out the lazy or those who want something for nothing without also giving their all. It’s an application that seeks out people who can work well on a team. If you know how to work hard – and aren’t opposed to having fun while doing it – and you want to change or defend your community, your nation or our world by practicing authentic journalism, this application is for you.

For an English language application email app11@narconews.com and for a Spanish language application email sol11@narconews.com. We’ll send it to you immediately and hope to hear back from you by January 23.

Likewise, if the School isn’t for you, but you know of a person of talent, conscience and passion who you think should attend, encourage him and her to apply. You, too, kind reader, are part of our intercontinental scouting staff!

We’re so thrilled to be able to do this again. This will be only the fourth time in eight years we’ve been able to do it. And we still need your help – with your donation to The Fund for Authentic Journalism – to meet our $20,000 goal and receive the matching support from our friends at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, without whose support, the 2011 School wouldn’t be possible.

It’s a wonderful thing, this School. And that comes from a guy who always hated school, who concluded that it was interfering with his education, and went, instead, to the streets and back roads, where everyday people who organize and struggle to win were the faculty. Maybe you feel the same way. That would be another hint that the School of Authentic Journalism might well be the place for you, too.

Related Link: http://narconews.com/Issue67/article4278.html
author by V for vendettapublication date Thu Dec 30, 2010 09:27author address author phone Report this post to the editors

get 40 potential radical journalists to meet up with radical journalists from all around the world to teach them and do it in MEXICO. ????
FFS what are you all thinking??

It would be so easy to stage a nice neat massacre and cheaply rid the elites of many potential future irritants in one foul swoop and blame it on "drug cartels". Nice.

Let me guess, the money came from an "anonymous" donation.? cheap at the price!!

whats wrong with journalists meeting somewhere else other than the only place in the world worse for journalisat fatalities than Iraq?? It's not as if good radical journalists are all that common these days.!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/nov/19/...exico

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/03/15/20100....html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/reporters-uncensored/mexi....html

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Thu Dec 30, 2010 13:07author address author phone Report this post to the editors

sounds a bit like one of those ubiquitous 'exciting' offers Madison Ave is pushing.
The style is more reminiscent of a college fresher's enthusiasm than any journalist I'd be inclined to give credence. Might it be a recruiting trawl(corporate boards have valued the 'radical activist' and his harnessable talents for a while now), or am I being too cynical?

Hunter Thompson or Ambrose Bierce would be expelled I'd say.

author by nmn - newsmediapublication date Thu Dec 30, 2010 19:10author address author phone Report this post to the editors

"Everybody complains about the media, but we know of no other program like ours, that actually does something about it by replacing its ranks with better, faster, more coherent and more honest journalists: authentic journalists!"

As a former chief reporter with thousands of published articles, this statement above alone throws intense doubt on the veracity of your so called 'program'.

Journalism is not cliqueism and that is what you appear to be promoting here.

Sorry to be blunt.

author by V for vendettapublication date Sat Jan 01, 2011 10:33author address author phone Report this post to the editors

"I would have thought that some of the critics might learn a few things from the course like not stereotyping countries"

I was not stereotyping anybody. Just stating facts. According to the Guardian link I provided if you cared to read it:
QUOTE:
"In the last five years, 66 journalists have been killed and 12 journalists have disappeared in Mexico, according to a report by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).There has been a conviction in only 10% of the cases,"

Seems like the last place on earth I would hold a journalists conference! Not exactly a safe haven for journalists!!

So, are you actually saying that it's as safe a place as any other European city to get a whole bunch of radical journalists together for a course?? I mean why take ANY unnecessary risk? its just a course.

author by tom bolla in camoflaugepublication date Sat Jan 01, 2011 15:19author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I can remember a time when journalists had to have a bit of guts unless they were only going to be reporting on the latest summer garden fetes at church of ireland vicarages . Mind you even they could get a bit hairy too at times. at the tombolla stall; Accusations of too much spin and all that.
It depends where you go in mexico v4v. But even if the course was being held in the Jaurez region wouldnt a journalist course held there offer some solidarity?

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Sat Jan 01, 2011 16:55author address author phone Report this post to the editors

and if you wasted your money on todays New Year IT it would appear nothing is happening on earth. Modom must be flying gerryRyanair.

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Sat Jan 01, 2011 17:04author address author phone Report this post to the editors

..it seems Liquileaks from burst pipes is more newsworthy than wiki. Ear to ear Goebbeldigook missiles. No wonder they turn to sport for respite care. If religion is the opium, sport and gambling are the coke and speed. Psyops trinity of stupifactionalism.

author by Marc Springpublication date Sat Jan 01, 2011 18:44author address author phone Report this post to the editors

People, people...

What a miserable bunch of negative comments! :-\ Having said that I share some disquiet about how this advert is written, but can we try to lift the tone a little? This is one of the things that gives indymedia and the left in general a bad name.

I know nothing about this course but give them a break. Even if the writing seems foolishly enthusiastic, they are doing something. That line up would be worth interacting with. Narco News has done a bloody good job for years.

V, your comments remind me of North American friends in the 1980's saying, you're from Ireland, wow, that must be really dangerous with the war and all, which would be disappointing coming from you (I normally am a big fan of your comments), but hopefully you're being tongue in cheek. No doubt you know that situations like Mexico's and Colombia's have given rise to some of the most fearless activist/journalists in history. And journalists there are not stupid in the way they organise their conferences.

Opus, you are losing the run of your exuberant verbosity, but as ever it's fun to read. But, people, stop fucking complaining and use your undoubted talents to do something equally useful in your own context.

Tom, are you saying that the absence of any posts on Indymedia on St Stephen's Day means that it has been taken over by a self serving conservative clique? If so, well, did you post anything yourself on that day?

nmn, you've a point in your objection, but if this particular brand of cliquism exposes potential journalists to truly radical ideas, then hell it beats the horrible cliquism of the Irish mainstream media.

Obviously the writer has some money behind him. And he is clearly coming from a North American cultural context. And maybe is a bit of an egotist. But that doesn't mean in+of itself that he's a front for some horrible corporate trap for the unwary student journo.

OK I'm off to take some of my own advice. Giving-out session over. And Happy New Year!

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Sat Jan 01, 2011 19:40author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Sorry bout that. But behind the new year pyrobatics I'm not trying to amuse.
THIS is MY school of journalism(the word comes from the Latin for 'day', as in journal, or daily record of events).I'm the stoodint.

You can teach literacy. Integrity we have to develope as individuals for ourselves. Healthy journalism grows from that balanced confluence.

Come back and dismantle my points and I'll respond. I believe in the perrenial and proverbial grain of salt. Credulity builds bullshit.
Fair enough?

author by Marc Springpublication date Sun Jan 02, 2011 02:10author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I don;t want to dismantle your points cos I actually like them and also the panache with which they are made! It was more the tone of all the comments combined that impressed me as lacking a certain graciousness, it looked like a slightly sour chorus of boos for someone's significant effort, and I have always liked what I saw of Narco News. Oscar olivera's an impressive guy too. Sometimes things can look worse out of context particularly when they cross the Atlantic. I agree we should look gift horses in the mouth and take 'fabulous offers' with a large grain of salt. And there is an authoritarian feel to the missive, particularly when he is talking about not taking lazy people in as the lucky scholarship students. But as well as suspending our credulity until we verify bona fides,maybe there's a time for suspending the public criticism until we feel sure something's dodgy. So, no problem witht he points you made Opus, it was just the tone of everyone's comments when read consecutively.

Yeah, I have been wondering lately what journalism will look like in 2020, 2030 etc. I assume an ever more conservative mainstream press for an ever shrinking core of true believers in the system, with a tiny cadre of paid journalists working for think tanks like the late lamented Centre for Public Investigation (and probably many private organisations across the political spectrum)with a whole host of citizen journalists in the middle. So, I am happy to be a student here too!

author by V for vendettapublication date Sun Jan 02, 2011 09:38author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I've no problems with a school for radical journalists
great idea.

Just the venue sucks, thats all. Right now Mexico violence is not comparable to NI violence. It's much worse. And Journalists are actually targets.

Surely it's time enough to give 'em diarrohea and get 'em killed AFTER they are trained!

Even the military don't do basic training in the trenches.

yeah, kinda tongue in cheek but there is a point here too! :-)

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Sun Jan 02, 2011 15:08author address author phone Report this post to the editors

So if the poster is serious about authentic journalism she should be well pleased with the critical feedback. It should steepen her learning curve.

P'raps she'll even get back to us with a response and further elaboration. And hopefully she'll correct our sloppy homewrok.

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Mon Jan 03, 2011 15:47author address author phone Report this post to the editors

If you haven't come across them already try Nick Davies's 'Flat Earth News' and also 'Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy' edited by William Dinan and David Miller, from Vintage and Pluto respectively. Bit of background on the behind the scenes corporate PR manipulation and erosion of traditional press watchdog values and homogenisation of content into PAP-a la razzi. Just so we know here that nascent democracy got buried and by whom.

'...what journalism will look like in 2020, 2030 etc...'.

If the Pentagonal plan unrolls to plan(and its looking increasingly likely) it will resemble 1938 Deutchland. I did not coin Goebbeldigook in a fit of facetiousness.

Either that or some smarter simian somewhere in deepest Papua will be experimenting with a charred stick on the back of a banana leaf.

It was Einstein who said the fourth world war would be fought with sticks and stones. They gotta burn up all that hardware to justify the manufacture of the next generation of product.
The awkward fact that their program might eliminate all future generations is increasingly suppressed.
The hubristic presumption is that homo sapiens sapiens does what it says on his rose-tinted self-definition.

author by seedotpublication date Mon Jan 03, 2011 21:28author address author phone Report this post to the editors

On 11th April 2002 channel 4 news gave a report which was a basic rehash of a US press statement hailing the coup taking place in Venezuela as 'a victory for democracy'. On the recommendation of a friend I opened the NarcoNews website and over the next 3 days got the inside story in a way that our 24 hour satellite and twitter enabled broadcast media just don't do anymore.

Narconews brings journalists to where the news happens and works with them to investigate stories - that old fashioned stuff that nobody has a budget for any more. Everybody else, including outlets you would think better of, seem to be happy regurgitating PR shite. And guess what - if you know what you are doing most countries are manageable (including Mexico).

Related Link: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/1939
author by Marc Springpublication date Wed Jan 05, 2011 00:09author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Hey thanks - I got 'Flat Earth News' for christmas pressie last year - I thought it was a good book and would say it's directly relevant to the above issues.

I would suggest, however, that it's somewhat overpessimistic, even panicky, in its prognosis - perhaps because it was written by a mianstream media insider who seems to equate the end of a decent mainstream media with the end of critical thought in society at large.

I'd like to be at that forum in Mexico but instead will keep an eye out for 'Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy'. :-)

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Wed Jan 05, 2011 15:28author address author phone Report this post to the editors

If you dont have it already Global Research just delivered an update on Venezuela at

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22602

Marc, Charlie Byrne's in Galway is where I picked up 'Thinker....'.
Overpessimistic?Surely better than the prevalent rose-tinted 'soft-landing' wishful thinking rerun?

As a former fisherman I tend to think its best to presume there are rocks just below the hull if you are in 'uncharted waters'.

author by Peadarr.publication date Fri Jan 07, 2011 19:24author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Driving across the border from the USA to Mexico is a culture shock.
From stinking rich to stinking poverty.

Authentic journalists will report to us on why the USA is so stinking rich and why Mexico is so dirt poor.
Of course they will !!!!

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Sat Jan 08, 2011 13:22author address author phone Report this post to the editors

But then moving from one neighbourhood to another in any big city will reveal the same contrast.

The US has the biggest gap internally between wealth and poverty of any developed nation. Part of our problem is we have been gullible enough to allow ourselves be sold the same pig in a Madison Avenue tiger-stripe pimped poke. We swallowed the Dallas definitions of smart from Charlie's silver spoon, before allowing the PDs finish us off with the same laissez faire elixir that brought us centuries of famine and squalor.

Why else did the Galway races have record takings last year even as our bought and sold media lamented our 'common' indigence?

author by p for pussycatpublication date Sat Jan 08, 2011 22:56author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Gabrielle Giffords a Democratic Party congresswoman is in an intensive care unit following surgery for a gunshot wound in the head at close range. According to Fox News , at least 19 people were shot at Giffords' "Congress on Your Corner" event, including three of the congresswoman's staff in Arizona. Five have died, including one of Giffords' aides, and nine are in critical condition at the University of Arizona Medical Center.

V for vendetta's talks about massacres in Mexico !

Last year Sara Palin named Giffords as one of 20 Democrats in her "target practice" crosshairs. GIffords' local office has been subject to repeated violence over the last two years . Right wing web sites like this one http://yfrog.com/h5p7wp have targetted the Congresswoman for over 5 years.

author by p for pussycatpublication date Sat Jan 08, 2011 23:26author address author phone Report this post to the editors


Gliffords bucked the national trend regaining her Arizona seat in last years election after she adaptied right wing anti-immigrant positions saying that Mexican border security should be of of primary consideration
In August 2010, she praised the arrival of National Guard troops on the Mexican border saying , "Arizonans have waited a long time for the deployment of the National Guard in our state. Their arrival represents a renewed national commitment to protecting our border communities from drug cartels and smugglers

author by p for ppublication date Sat Jan 08, 2011 23:39author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Gliffords was instrumental in securing a bill through congress last year that provided $600 million to fund enhanced Mexican border security . She said after the bill was passed , "This funding signals a stronger federal commitment to protect those Americans who live and work near the border."

author by pat cpublication date Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:34author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Gabrielle Giffords was wrong to back reactionary immigration legislation. But if she was shot for a political reason then it was because she was Pro-Choice and she supported Obamas Health Care legislation.

author by V for vendettapublication date Tue Jan 11, 2011 14:05author address author phone Report this post to the editors

if you are interested in the Giffords shooting then read the counterpunch article.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01102011.html

its nothing much to do with immigration as you seem to imply pussycat.(or is it tomeile?)

it is more about right wing propaganda and it's effects on the mentally unstabel gun toting us public.

The republican right and teaparty are spinning this like crazy and deleting pictures from websites to hide their attempts to incite violence in impressionable people with mental conditions and who are carrying guns

author by p for pussycatpublication date Tue Jan 11, 2011 15:41author address author phone Report this post to the editors

V for Vendetta posted about the choice of Mexico as a venue - the whole of Mexico without distinction- arguing that MEXICO in capital letters would not be a safe venue for aspiring left-wing journalists . My point was that the shootings last Saturday demonstrated that even a right-wing democrat who was prepared to use racist anti-Mexican rhetoric to keep her seat in Congress last year is not safe in certain parts of the USA. .

Had the organisers of this event suggested holding it in the USA , I doubt if V for vendetta would have raised the same objections ,which strike me as cowardly to say the least.

author by V for vendettapublication date Tue Jan 11, 2011 19:01author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I was thinking more of somewhere like london or paris. cheap flights are available.
who wants to go to the US or mexico! I agree US is definitely a basket case country as well
Tucson is a real gun totin' nutjob shithole by the sounds of things
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01102011.html

definitely wouldn't send them there either!!
In fact the reason why mexico IS a basket case is BECAUSE of the US

What is the great virtue of journalists risking their lives at all if it isn't necessary.Time enough for that when they are engaging in actual work

Should they go into the most dangerous place there is on the planet for journalsts Just because some sock pussycat on the internet thinks so? well you are free to go and live in mexico yourself if you think it's such a virtue to do so and show us all how brave you are tomeile/pussycat. Lead by example.

author by p for pussycatpublication date Tue Jan 11, 2011 22:05author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Dalkey would be just as safe I would have thought .It also has the advantage of being serviced by the DART line. The organizers did well to call this a school for authentic journalists.

author by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite partypublication date Wed Jan 12, 2011 15:28author address author phone Report this post to the editors

So the taxdodgers on the hill got the taxpayers waitin for a bus to build them a state -of -the-art public transport system in case their mercs n beemers might catch a chill sitting in the gridlock.

That was kind of us.

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