[narconews] Narco News Reloaded: Help Dan Feder Lead Our News Team for the Coming Months
 
Resent-Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 09:54:27 -0500 (CDT)

September 11, 2007 Please Distribute Widely

Dear Colleagues,

As we have every September for the past seven years, Narco News
will expand its coverage of the stories from Latin America that
other media dont report. In this upcoming season youll see greater
emphasis on stories from South America and in particular the continued
US-funded military intervention known as Plan Colombia.

To lead this coverage, Dan Feder  our webmaster and managing editor
from 2002 to 2006  is coming back to the newsroom, with the continued
labor of Webmaster Dave Briones, Newsroom Coordinator Chris Fee and
coordinating the network of reporters and co-publishers across the
hemisphere. Laura del Castillo will also return to the team, now
as managing editor and reporter. With Chris and Dave captaining the
tech support, Dan will be able to do more reporting than ever,
including an upcoming series of reports from Colombias terrible
civil war.

The consequences of the multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia adventure
begun by the Clinton Administration in 2000 and continued throughout
the Bush presidency  must be put back on the front burner in the
country that funds it: the United States. We have the plan in place
to do that but, as you know, were up against billions of dollars:
much of which goes to bolster official propaganda that this aid
goes to fight a war on drugs, but which has the effect of widespread
environmental destruction (through aerial herbicide spraying), the
emboldening of paramilitary death squads, the assassination of labor
organizers and other social leaders, the corruption of Colombian
and US law enforcers in Colombia, and the deterioration of human
rights.

With the 2008 presidential and congressional elections upcoming in
the United States, now is the time to alert the people there and
throughout the world the true facts of that failed and harmful plan:
so that the next US administration finally puts a stop to it.

Thats going to take some resources, and so I appeal to you to pitch
in, both with your labor as co-publishers and writers, and with
your generous donation today to The Fund for Authentic Journalism.

Please make a contribution online at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org/

Or send your contribution today to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism P.O. Box 241 Natick, MA 01760

Narco News will continue reporting from Mexico, bottom to top: from
Oaxaca and Chiapas to the US border, and we plan to cover the
upcoming international indigenous gathering with the Zapatista Other
Campaign in the northern state of Sonora in October, as well as
regional meetings leading up to it. But we feel that it is urgent
to put more sunlight back upon the news from South America as well,
from where Feder and del Castillo will be working.

While I will be around to advise and assist Dan and the rest of the
team (and will be devoting a good part of the coming months to
hunting down the resources to reboot the Narco News School of
Authentic Journalism), Ill also be reporting for some other
publications about an important story outside of Narco News beat:
The US presidential election campaign (which will obviously determine
much about what can and will occur in Latin America after the exit
of George W. Bush), and, specifically, the primaries beginning next
January that will determine the nominees. Via Narco News and the
Narcosphere, youll be kept informed on where to read my own upcoming
reports on that story. But it remains absolutely vital that during
these months Narco News continues setting the context of news from
Latin America with adherence to the true facts and countering the
official spin.

Dan Feder and Laura del Castillo are the right journalists at the
right hour to reload Narco News coverage, and are coming in with
many new ideas and lots of enthusiasm. Dan would love to hear from
you directly with your counsel and, of course, your participation
in the project. You can reach him at dan@narconews.com.

Ill still be available to each of you at narconews@gmail.com but
it will be Dan captaining the ship day to day. Please give him all
your support.

In addition to the reentry of Dan and Laura to the news team, we
would like very much to bring one or two other journalists on board,
but that will be dependent on your response to this appeal. Please
do whatever you can to give Dan and the rest of the team the best
possible start. If you do, I know well all be impressed and pleased
with the work theyll be able to do (and Ill be much like many of
you; dependent on them to know what is really happening throughout
the hemisphere!)

Again, you can make your donation online, right now, at:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org/

Or via snail mail to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism P.O. Box 241 Natick, MA 01760

Thank you, again, for your past support and please, now that the
fall is upon us, do give the revamped Narco News team the resources
to keep us (you and me both) informed.

From somewhere in a country called Amirica,

Al Giordano Publisher, Narco News