Iraq War

artist, designer and fabricator in the district to draw from. And the talent pool is deep. It seems we’re on the all too typical road to nowhere.

Ron Linden San Pedro

Digital Signage

Regarding the “proposed,” SAN PEDRO SIGN, here we go again, with another San Pedro “misguided” project! It’s like throwing money away. Why not think out of the box?

For over 20 years, as residents and commercial property owners, we’ve been advocates for Digital Signs at the end of the Harbor Freeway at Gaffey, and at the end of the freeway off-ramp at Harbor Boulevard. It would demonstrate our community is forward thinking!

Digital signs are bright enough to capture the audience’s attention, while stopped at the traffic light. These signs can also be synchronized, so they are not a distraction while traffic is moving. When traffic is moving, the signs cable networks. MSNBC and CNN, feeling the heat of what industry insiders were calling “the Fox effect,” were desperately trying to outflank their right-wing rival — and one another — by actively eliminating critical voices and seeing who could bang the war drums loudest.

At MSNBC, as the Iraq invasion approached in early 2003, network executives decided to fire Phil Donahue even though his show had the highest ratings on the channel. A leaked internal memo explained that top management saw Donahue as “a tired, left-wing liberal” who would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Noting that Donahue “seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives,” the memo warned ominously that his show could end up being “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Not to be outdone, CNN news chief Eason Jordan would boast on air that he had met with Pentagon officials during the run-up to the invasion to get their approval for the on-camera war “experts” the network would rely on. “I think it’s important to have experts explain the war and to describe the military hardware, describe the tactics, talk about the strategy behind the conflict,” Jordan explained. “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said . . . here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war, and we got a big thumbs up on all of them. That was important.”

As Norman Solomon observes in Media Education Foundation’s film War Made Easy, which was based on his book of the same name, the bedrock democratic principle of an independent, adversarial press was simply tossed out the window. “Often journalists blame the government for the failure of the journalists themselves to do independent reporting,” Solomon says. “But nobody forced the major networks like CNN to do so much commentary from retired generals and admirals and all the rest of it . . . It wasn’t even might say WELCOME TO SAN PEDRO!

These signs can promote upcoming events and attractions. It’s always surprising to us, that a great number of San Pedro residents, and/or, visitors passing through, don’t have a clue about what’s going on in town, or future happenings. The vinyl signs hanging on the fence along Harbor Boulevard, are ineffective, and there’s nothing promoting activity in town, on Gaffey.

We also find that many events are not well attended, because the word does not get out, and a lot of us become aware after the event was over.

Digital signs can also be money makers, benefitting community projects, the arts, music, etc., by advertising local events, and/or businesses.

We urge you to take another look at this digital sign possibility.

George Woytovich and Patti Kraakevik San Pedro

In Response to “Cultural erasure of Oz

I have to admit that I’m a bit something to hide, ultimately. It was something to say to the American people, ‘See, we’re team players. We may be the news media, but we’re on the same side and the same page as the Pentagon.’ . . . And that really runs directly counter to the idea of an independent press.”

The result was a barely debated, deceit-driven, headlong rush into a war of choice that would go on to destabilize the region, accelerate global terrorism, bleed trillions of dollars from the U.S. treasury, and kill thousands of U.S. servicemembers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians. Yet two decades later, as we hurtle ever closer to potentially catastrophic new wars, there’s been virtually no accountability or sustained reporting in mainstream news media to remind us of their own decisive role in selling the Iraq war.

It’s an act of forgetting we can ill afford, especially as many of the same media patterns from 20 years ago now repeat themselves on overdrive — from the full-scale reboot and rehabilitation of leading Iraq war architects and cheerleaders to the news media’s continuing over-reliance on “experts” drawn from the revolving-door world of the Pentagon and the arms industry (often without disclosure).

“Memory is a strategic resource in any country, especially the memory of wars,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen has written. “By controlling the narrative of the wars we fought, we justify the wars we are going to fight in the present.”

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the murderous U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s imperative to reclaim the memory of this war not only from the Bush administration officials who waged it, but also from the corporate media system that helped sell it and has tried to control the narrative ever since.

Jeremy Earp is the production director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF) and the co-director, with Loretta Alper, of the MEF documentary War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, featuring author Norman Solomon. Stream War Made Easy here: https://tinyurl.com/ WarMadeEasyVimeo excited about the harbor being renovated into a place that we can once again frequent and stroll and create new memories in. There are three factors, however, that I’m not too thrilled about. These are: the lack of blueprints for how they plan to handle traffic, where many visitors will find parking, and the name of the project.

The day Channel Street Skatepark had its grand opening, Gaffey Street was a mess. I drove in bumper to bumper traffic just to get home. I can’t imagine how busy this street and Harbor Boulevard will be when the proposed amphitheater hosts 6,000 plus guests. I’d like to see reports for better planning of new traffic lanes and additional parking spaces. Perhaps a ferry taxi from one side of the wharf to the other. Our quiet town is soon going to turn into a busy, no parking, crowded city. As you mentioned, many tourists “may walk away mistaking this place for Redondo Beach.” I’ll take it a step further and add Manhattan Beach and Santa Monica, as well.

Thank you for saying that

West Harbor will always be Ports O’ Call. My maternal grandfather, uncles and father all worked at Ports O’ Call Restaurant for many years when they made San Pedro their home after coming here from Mexico. I walked its cobblestone streets as a kid with my parents and cousins. When I was a senior at San Pedro High School, we also hosted several events there. These are fond and always present memories. I think that many residents will continue to call this space Ports O’ Call even after its renovation. This leads me to my next point.

Even though I’m enthusiastic about the new plans for this space, I’m still not convinced about the name that’s been chosen for it. Why is it called West Harbor, and who decided this name for it anyway? Is there a way to protest this as a community? Can we gather signatures to ask for a name change? Why not call it San Pedro Harbor? I’ll even settle for Los Angeles Harbor. The developers are completely disregarding the ground’s history, its peoples and culture. Let’s not forget about the local businesses, which we don’t see on the roster of proposed shops for the project. It’s disrespectful and barbaric. It’s very reminiscent of settlers in the past. Yes, that’s what these developers are, modern day conquistadores. They come with financial power thinking that they can rename a spot because they “found” it. In this case, they purchased it.

But, isn’t this what has always happened? Should we expect anything different today? History repeats itself, right? I’d like to think that we have evolved as a species… that we have learned from previous mistakes… that we can and must do better. Yes, life is a cycle, but we don’t have to stay on the karma wheel going around and around like a hamster because we refuse to learn from our negative experiences. We must stop, get off and take new roads toward improvements. That is, steps that lead to soul searching, community unity and emotional intelligence. Who’s with me?