A conversation with Al Giordano
On the eve of his return to New York City to answer a libel suit brought by Banamex executive Roberto Hernández, Narco News Bulletin publisher/editor/correspondent Al Giordano took part in an e-mail exchange with the Phoenix’s Dan Kennedy. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
DAN KENNEDY: Why the Narco News Bulletin? You’ve done good work writing for the Phoenix and the Valley Advocate, and hosting a talk-radio show in Western Mass. Why did you want to go off completely on your own, and why did you want a cover a topic — the war on drugs in Latin America — that everyone knows is important but that few people really care about?
AL GIORDANO: Dan, first let me say that it is a pleasure to be interviewed by you again. The last time you interviewed me, in 1993, you were the news editor at the Phoenix, looking to hire a new political reporter. I hope this interview goes at least as well.
I’ll answer your lead question with what the lawyers call a leading question: if “few people really care about” how the US government is waging the war on drugs in Latin America, then why is Narco News getting an average of 20,000 to 25,000 hits per day after just one year of publication?
http://bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/dont_quote_me/documents/01285285.htmAbbie's Road
By Al Giordano
originally published on April 24, 1989
His road began in Worcester, the Massachusetts city of seven hills and no thrills, on November 30, 1936, at 4:30 p.m., double-trouble in a triple-decker house. The end of the road came on April 12, 1989, when Abbie Hoffman was found lying peacefully in his bed outside of New Hope, Pennsylvania, with a stomach full of barbiturates and a legacy that will be felt for as long as the rest of the human race survives. The fact that the coroner said he committed suicide does not for one moment erase all the good he did while serving his life-sentence on planet earth. Abbie was captain of his own ship. He did everything on his own terms, including die.
He was a friend of mine. But his loss will leave a gaping black hole for many who mourn his passage, including millions around the world who never met him, except when he entered their living rooms through the television set, pioneering a new method of guerrilla warfare on the electronic battlefield of the mass media.
Editor's Note: Advocate staff writer Al Giordano and Abbie Hoffman were close friends and co-conspirators for eight years. Since Hoffman's death on Wednesday, April 12, Giordano has been in Pennsylvania, New York and Worcester with the Hoffman family and friends.
In 1987 Hoffman wrote about Giordano as "the best under-thirty community organizer in America." Last summer, Hoffman asked him to write his authorized biography.
"Al taught me the strategy of 'capture the flag,' " Hoffman wrote of Giordano in Steal This Urine Test. "I took Al's lesson with me to the University of Massachusetts on November 24, 1986, when I spoke at a rally against CIA recruiting on campus."
"Capturing the Flag," wrote Hoffman, "implies you are as good an American or better than the Enforcers. It is a strategy essential to winning in the eighties."
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:SSl0SYtM-g8J:old.valleyadvocate.com/25th/archives/abbies_road.html+al+giordano,+biography&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=20&gl=us"Why the Lawsuit?
To Silence Him"
A Message From Gary Webb
"Make no mistake. This court fight isn't about any particular story NarcoNews has done. It's about ALL of them, and all of the ones yet to come. And it's a battle over the continued independence of Internet journalism as well. The silencing of Al Giordano and NarcoNews isn't a theoretical possibility that might happen a couple years from now. It's already happening. Al and his volunteer lawyers are hip-deep in it right now. And they need our help."
- Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Gary Webb
March 16, 2001
March 16, 2001
http://narconews.com/webbletter.htmlCourage in Colrain
The IRS plans to auction off the house of local war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner on July 19. But Kehler and Corner have no plans to leave their family nest of ten years
By Al Giordano
originally published on July 10, 1989
In China last year, according to published reports, 3,000 tax collectors were beaten or killed while on the job. During the American revolution, some tax collectors were tarred and feathered. It's hard enough to pay taxes, even when you benefit from the school, fire or police services they provide. How frustrating, then, for so many Americans forced to pay federal taxes for a nuclear war that they morally oppose, and pray will never happen.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service plans to auction off the Colrain home of Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner on July 19. They say that the couple owes them $27,000 in back taxes. But local IRS agents need not worry about suffering the fate of their Chinese counterparts. Kehler and Corner are peaceful folk. In fact, that's the point. Kehler and Corner say they can't, in good conscience, give their hard-earned money away for killing.
Kehler and Corner give the amount they would pay in federal taxes to local groups instead: the Veterans Outreach Center, NELCWIT, the Greenfield Survival Center and the Traprock Peace Center. They do pay their state and local taxes. They even file a record of their earnings with the IRS each year, calculating how much they would be required to pay, and informing the federal tax agency that they've given the amount to these other groups, because they don't want their money spent on war.
snip:
"I had a draft card. Turned it in back in '67. I did 22 months in federal prison." Before he went to jail, at age 26, Kehler gave a speech in Pennsylvania explaining why he, a graduate of Exeter Academy and Harvard, chose to go to jail instead of to Vietnam.
In the audience that night was a Pentagon consultant named Daniel Ellsberg. "Here was this person," recalls Ellsberg, "that I thought was such an attractive American. I really had patriotic feelings when I heard him speak. Then he announced that he was on his way to prison and it hit me."
Ellsberg vaulted into national prominence when he leaked the Pentagon Papers -- the secret history of the Vietnam War -- to the U.S. Senate and the newspapers. "I wouldn't have thought of copying those papers," says Ellsberg, "without the direct example of Randy, and without having met him."
snip to end:
"I have no doubt," says Ellsberg, "that Randy and Betsy' s example will influence the lives of other people. It may only be individuals, but you can never tell whether that individual will have a greater effect. I'm glad this attention is focused on Randy and Betsy. People can't do better but meet them, and hear what they are saying. It can only improve people's lives."
Daniel Ellsberg beams when he speaks of the young man who inspired him, 20 years ago, to make his own historic stand. "It takes courage," says Ellsberg of Kehler and Corner's protest. "We won't get out of this hole without courage. It's really passed on from person to person."
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:DUELeAkta-0J:old.valleyadvocate.com/25th/archives/colrain_courage.html+al+giordano,+traprock+peace+center&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=usI read somewhere that Al started with Traprock Peace Center, a couple of years ago he returned there for a summer seminar.
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