Pictures from Friday Night's KQED Protest

This was the KQED protest, rally, and bake sale put on by Network Against Disinformation. The last event I did with them was a protest at the Chronicle last year, which was pretty funny because Debbie Moore and several others were naked and the Chron person was quite annoyed by it, not to mention the cops who couldn't arrest her.

Anyway, this was mostly the usuals there, but some who I'd never seen, and a few curious KQED'ers who came out and paused to have a look at the film. The crowd grew as it got darker, but it was nice to have it the size it was, and to watch the film in that way. I'm hoping we can do this sort of thing more often.

Luckily it wasn't windy at all, and so it was relatively comfortable to sit and watch. I was surprised that the film (John Pilger's 'Palestine is Still the Issue,' included a long distance shot of some IDF using rocks to break the bones of their Palestinian prisoners. It was really disturbing to see, and because the rest of the film is like a PBS documentary, you don't really expect it. I suppose KQED would have to edit out that reality, if they could ever show such a film. And it was an amazing film, in a lot of ways.

Barbara Lubin had good things to say about ANSWER, among other illunimating points, and Henry Norr told the full account of his column on - I believe it was - an IBM building that had been built on land which was legally not Israeli land to be selling or leasing. He said that a fire alarm had gone off at the Culinary Academy demo for him earlier in the day, where Phil Bronstein was talking.

And there was a skit to illustrate how KQED works with which films they'll show. They take money from Lockheed, but the average viewer has no idea. Marc also discussed the results of Retro Poll. People answer that they support the Patriot Act for security, but then when questioned on whether they think the gov't should have the right to do the actual things that are in the act, they freak out, can't believe it's true. But's it's good work because it is a legitimate poll and is as close as you can get to actual research being done - by an independent non-profit - in the area of knowledge of the masses of current issues. Although Marc pointed out, 70% of Americans won't answer a poll over the phone anymore - the trust in the media is virtually completely lost - so by it's own nature, any poll in the US is biased.