CHRIS ACOSTA WRITES:

I was in the Washington Monument and had a clear view of the size of the crowd. Sorry to disappoint you but it didn’t even look like 50,00 from my vantage point. I had a 450mm lens and could zoom right on the stage area from there. The crowd was very thick up to about half way to the first speaker down field from the stage but thinned very quickly to the second one. There were people walking towards the stage but it was hardly 500,000. It was a very disappointing day for me crowd wise but very successful from a media event point of view.

HAL SYNDER WRITES:

I’m sending this by way of follow-up to your Jan 28 posting, “The Anti War March Meets The Media”. I noticed the cut Saturday afternoon when a friend mailed the AP piece.

Let me know when we’re marching on the media.

David Rovics writes:

For people attending or reading about this weekend’s anti-war protest, there are certain assumptions that could be made, that the media also seems to be confirming: It may or may not make much difference, since democracy is mostly about voting, but we have a First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. When there’s a really big national protest like this, you
will hear about it in the mass media.

Reading the corporate media over the years and listening to the government spokespeople as well, certain other assumptions are clearly to be understood: If it wasn’t reported, it must not have been very big or significant. If there is any violence at a protest, it was probably started by protesters.

Protests are dangerous places with lots of angry people at them who generally don’t really understand what they’re angry about. For some reason because of the “war on terror,” we have to have more police security at protests since 9/11, since terrorists might target or take advantage of otherwise non-terroristic protests. There is some kind of relationship between protest and terror. As we know from our history books, since the Civil Rights movement the authorities have learned from their violent excesses in the past, and now when civilians commit acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, they are gingerly carried off by the police. Police do not attack nonviolent protesters without provocation.

Of course, all of these assumptions are false.

J HELMAN WRITES ABOUT MARCH ING ON THE MEDIA

i am 81 years old dannie and if you have a march –count me in –i’ll bring my walker–even if i have to fly to d.c.—-everyone i talk to appears frightened to express an opinion —is that what this country is coming to?—another mccarthy era?— it seems everyone is just too comfortable— and when i talk about the war they look at me amusedly tsk! tsk! just an old granny!

Janet Lawson writes:

Danny, I saw it live on CSPAN - heard all the speakers - saw the crowd build. It was covered until they began marching. I was sick, too, so I couldn’t be there. It’s disgusting that nobody validated this voice. What’s it going to take?

Glad you’re out there!

JUDY GUMBO ON THE YIPPIES

Danny: great to hear from you & thank you for running a piece of this on your blog. No - you are not chicken feed — or if you are then Stew and I are gefilte fish. Who’s a Yippie founder is something like “who’s on first?” In an original draft I e-mailed to a few folks, Roz Payne got unhappy because I had left out Paul Krassner. So I put his name in. I guess for me founders are dead folks, (which of course Paul isn’t) and that comes from my ooking every day at the iconoic picture of Stew, Jerry & Abbie that Anita took.

And Let’s not forget poet Ed Sanders of the Fugs.

PAUL KRASSNER ON THE FILM CHICAGO 10

I hadn’t seen any of the rough cuts and didn’t know what to expect at the festival screening. Well, I loved, loved, loved it. Brett -the Director -got a standing ovation. Although he was born two months after the protests in Chicago, he has managed–with the determination of a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, aided by 180 hours of film, 50 hours of video, 500 hours of audio and 23,000 pages of trial transcripts–to reveal in this unique neo-doc, the horror and the humor, the rhetoric and the reality, of those events and their aftermath, in a style and rhythm calculated to resonate with–and inspire–contemporary youth. . .

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-yippies28jan28,1,2060567.story

From Bradley Laing:

But, as Somerby pointed out on Wednesday, there are hopeful signs:

But in one major way, things are much better. Already, bogus claims about Democratic candidates have been debunked — in the mainstream press! Congratulations to the Washington Post and CNN for going after the gong-show claim that Barack Obama attended a madrassa, for example. Meanwhile, turmoil is spreading about John Solomon’s puzzling report in the Washington Post concerning the sale of John Edwards’ home. Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has already challenged the story on her web site. Apparently, she will address the issue in this Sunday’s column.

In each case, a bogus or shaky claim has been quickly debunked or challenged. Simply put, this never happened in the astonishing two-year war the press corps waged against Candidate Gore — the war which sent George Bush to the White House. We’re looking at a massive change in the way our politics works….

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IN MEMORIUM

Via Sarah Meyer

Writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski died last week aged 74. Here we extract one of his last pieces to be translated into English, in which he reflects on his childhood memories of 1945.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1999383,00.html

A GREAT READ, BEAUTIFULLY PRESENTED PLUS A FREE BOOK
http://www.coldtype.net/

FREE DOG IN NYC

Tsidii writes:

”I need a favor!!

My neighbor has a puppy he’s giving away (FREE!). It’s a Dachshund, it’s house broken, and it’s great with kids.

He’s giving it away because his wife says the dog ’stares’ at her when she is undressing, putting on make up, etc,

And that gives her the ‘Heebie Jeebies’. I think she is just weird !

If you’re interested, or know someone who is, let me know.

The Dissector Dog service will intervene. If you live in NYC, contact me.

Thanks to all who write. Please follow Rory O’Connor’s great play by play of the Liddy trial here on Mediachannel.org.

Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org