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Don't know how long these will be up, but here's two hours of Joe Frank's surreal, dark, humorous and absurd tales from the urban jungle:
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douglain points us to this Noam Chomsky interview (MP3) and as a bonus he interprets the talk in images.
CODEPINK brought a delegation of Iraqi women to the U.S. for March 8, International Women’s Day, as part of the Women Say No to War campaign.
David Gross of The Picket Line (who used to be employed by the samedefense contractor software company with whom I used to be employed) was written up in SFWEEKLY's feature on tax resistance:
I'm The Decider (Turn it up)
The Dictator(Third part of The Dictator to be aired on KPFA, this sunday 9PM PST.)
douglain points us to this Noam Chomsky interview (MP3) and as a bonus he interprets the talk in images.CODEPINK brought a delegation of Iraqi women to the U.S. for March 8, International Women’s Day, as part of the Women Say No to War campaign.
The report shows that from 1958 to the 1990s, Iraq provided more rights and freedoms for women and girls than most of its neighbors. Though Saddam Hussein's dictatorial government and 12 years of severe sanctions reduced these opportunities, Iraqi women were active in all aspects of their society. After the occupation, with the exception of women in Iraqi Kurdistan, women's daily lives have been reduced to a mere struggle for survival.
- Women walking on the streets face random violence, assault, kidnapping or death at the hands of suicide bombers, occupying forces, Iraqi police, radical religious groups, and local thugs.
- Women trying to raise families in the midst of this chaos find themselves beset by a lack of electricity and clean water, and a dearth of social services like decent schools and health care.
- Unemployment among women has skyrocketed. Of the 260,000 reconstruction contracts in Iraq, less than 1,000 have gone to female contractors. Before the occupation 70% of the public workforce, by far the largest employer in Iraq, were women.
- The constant violence has trapped women and their children -- particularly their daughters -- inside the homes. Fewer girls go to school and illiteracy among girls is on the rise.
- Though 25% of the seats in the National Assembly are reserved for women, the real power in Iraq is increasingly in the hands of Islamists determined to move Iraq from a secular society towards a theocracy. They are forcing women to wear veils and are trying to curtail women's rights in areas such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
David Gross of The Picket Line (who used to be employed by the same
I won't pay, and you can't make me. For David Gross, 2003 wasthe year outrage turned into action — which in his case meant fillingout a lot of forms. Gross quit his job to reduce his income, put hismoney into things like tuition and retirement savings, and filled outreams of paperwork for the associated tax credits. All this keeps hisadjusted income below the taxable level. "Before I started I was makinga pretty good amount of money at a software company over in the EastBay, living pretty fat, and enjoying all that San Francisco has tooffer," he says. Now, he does just enough contract work to fulfill hisneeds, and home-brews his beer. But it's worth it, he says, for thesatisfaction of not owing the feds a single red cent.David's been documenting his tax resistance for a few years now.Upside: Totally legal. "They could audit me and look at all my paperwork, and I'd come out smelling like a rose," says Gross.
Downside: Besides the paperwork, no more Anchor Steam on tap.
I'm The Decider (Turn it up)
