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<div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 18px; ">Notification from Elected Pacifica Board Member Akio Tanaka:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 18px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"> FLASHPOINTS TEETERING ON THE BRINK: A PLEA FOR COMMUNITY SUPPORT</font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"> </font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">KPFA management is hell-bent on destroying Flashpoints. They terminated the Knight report, cut Nora's hours in half, and wiped out our tech director position all together, in less than week. (Flashpoints has lost 50% of its budget under current management. Please! compare this to the Morning show and the KPFA news!! under the same management.) Meanwhile, the expanded budgets of the Morning show and the KPFA news, remain largely in tact, and management has created a new show, Letters to Washington, that features one of their strongest supporters, Mitch Jesserich. Jesserich, along with several other pro-management members of the KPFA's ruling cabal, verbally attacked Nora at a recent union meeting to tell her that Flashpoints is the most unpopular show in drive time. MJ’s kind words came right after the Flashpoints teams were given <b>Lifetime Achievement Awards</b> by Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation, and right before Nora, and I, and Flashpoints, were chosen by Pulse Media’s to be honored and listed among the </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="6" color="#222222" style="font: 27.0px Lucida Grande; color: #222222"><b>20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009:</b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="6" color="#222222" style="font: 27.0px Lucida Grande; color: #222222"><b><a href="http://pulsemedia.org/2009/12/31/pulse-20-top-global-media-figures-of-2009">http://pulsemedia.org/2009/12/31/pulse-20-top-global-media-figures-of-2009</a></b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="6" color="#222222" style="font: 27.0px Lucida Grande; color: #222222"><b> </b></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">One of the verbal attackers, Sasha Lilley had just moved back into the union, after three years of working hand and hand with the current GM, censoring, preempting and disrupting Flashpoints, as Interim Program Director. She was the KPFA/CWA shop steward, before she took the IPD position, and now she's happily back in the union, verbally attacking Nora with her union cap back in place. Lilley attempted to give Nora a tongue-lashing because Nora enlisted the support of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Chris Hedges and many others, who have now singed onto a petition to not allow KPFA to use their voice or their great works to raise money until the program is restored to some semblance of working order. The third tongue-lasher, who went after Nora, was Aileen Alfindary, co-director of the greatly expanded KPFA evening news. According to a copy of the official 2005/2006 budget, In the first year under current manager, Lemlem Rijio(<a href="mailto:gm@kpfa.org">gm@kpfa.org</a>) the News budget received a $51,000 increase, while Flashpoints took ten thousand dollars in cuts. KPFA news now has 220 staff hours on the books, compared to Flashpoints 80 staff hours. The KPFA news has not been cut. Fast forward to last night, when management failed to even supply a Board-Operator for a complicated drive time show the show like Flashpoints. So Nora, who came to work sick, because Flashpoints, unlike the KPFA news, does not have sick-day fill-in, was expected to run the board and make all the calls, plus cover Palestine. Guess what? Palestine was neglected last night!!</font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"> </font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"> </font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333">Due to severe and greatly disproportionate cutbacks, Flashpoints is teetering on the brink. What happens next month when Nora(with a nine year old child) plans to put her life on the line again to report from Palestine. ( I assure you Nora's trip will not be funded by management, the way it RECENTLY Funded(even as Nora was being cut in two, the FP tec position wiped out, and Robert Knight Terminated)its strongest supporter in the news department, Brian Edward Tierket's trip to the Global Climate summit. BET once referred to us as "enemies" who need to be made to pay for our politics, in a now infamous letter sent to Lemlem Rijio, Sasha Lilley, and others.) No, as usual, Nora will be forced to take a vacation in order to go and report on one of the most dangerous and important stories of our time, the lynch-pin for peace in the world. This time, however, based on the severe cutbacks, when Nora leaves for Palestine, the program will not be able to continue. So either she gives up the story or we give up the show: Not a pretty picture!! Management knows this, and is hovering to put the final screws to Flashpoints.</font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"> </font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"> It has been made abundantly clear to the Flashpoints team, through word and deed, that we are not welcome at KPFA under current management, and they want to get rid of us. They despise our politics and our bold radical message. Please, do not stand idly by and let them finish the job. Stand up for Flashpoints Now. If you have technical skills, as in editing on sound forge, or can think of any other way to support us in our battle to restore Flashpoints and keep the show going, please e-mail me at <a href="mailto:dbernstein@igc.org">dbernstein@igc.org</a></font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="5" color="#333333" style="font: 17.0px Lucida Grande; color: #333333"> </font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="5" style="font: 17.0px Arial"> Dennis Bernstein, Executive Producer, Flashpoints</font></div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Arial" size="5" style="font: 17.0px Arial"> </font></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Arial" size="5" style="font: 17.0px Arial"> </font></p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="5" style="font: 17.0px Arial">On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 4:45 PM, <<a href="mailto:dbernstein@igc.org"><font color="#0024dd" style="color: #0024dd">dbernstein@igc.org</font></a>> wrote: KPFA IAGM Amelia Gonzales(<a href="mailto:iagm@kpfa.org">iagm@kpfa.org</a>), former CWA shop steward, now interim assistant manager of KPFA</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 18px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Arial" size="5" style="font: 17.0px Arial">.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 18px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Geneva" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Geneva">On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 4:45 PM, <<a href="mailto:dbernstein@igc.org"><font color="#0010fe" style="color: #0010fe"><u>dbernstein@igc.org</u></font></a>> wrote:</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Geneva" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Geneva">Hi Amelia, We have just spoken. Nora confirmed with me that you told her there is no board op scheduled for 5:00 today. I appreciate your last minute offer to board-op, but we can't work catch as catch can with a complicated live show, with as many as 12 add fifteen guest some time. At the very least we need a tec producer to be with us three hours a day from three to six. I am now informing you, and GM Lemlem Rijio, that the deep and disproportionate cuts current management has made to the Flashpoints show, along with a general refusal to even supply the show with a part time tech producer/board op, have effectively crippled it: To be clear, Management's cutting of three postions in a single week from the show, just before christmas, has made it impossible to do the work necessary. It is very clear, that the Flashpoints show is unwelcome at KPFA by the current management. And after sveral overt acts of censorship, and five years of intimidation and other hurtful tactics to hobble the show, management is using the budget it busted as an excuse to cripple the Flashpoints show. Consider this an open letter to the concerned Pacifica Community from around the world that deeply cares what happens to this show. I hope management will immediately consider at least amending its cuts to help us fufill the bare mimium need of the Flashpoints show. Dennis Bernstein</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Geneva" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Geneva">::::</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Geneva" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Geneva">P U L S E "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." PULSE: 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009 with 5 comments After we published our list of 20 Top Global Thinkers, we thought we would be remiss if we did not also honor those media figures and institutions who bring these voices to us in the first place. With the goal of recognizing those individuals and institutions responsible for exemplary reportage and awareness-raising in 2009, we asked our editors and writers to name their choices for the top 20 media figures, be they journalists, publications or publishers. We aggregated these nominations into the following list. Like our 20 Top Global Thinkers, our criteria for choosing media figures included people/publications/publishers who have shown a commitment to challenging power, holding it accountable, highlighting issues pertaining to peace and social justice and producing output that encourages critical thinking and questions conventional wisdom.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Geneva; min-height: 16px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Courier New" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Courier New">Nora</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Courier New" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Courier New"> Barrows-Friedman / Dennis Bernstein (Flashpoints)</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Courier New'; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Courier New" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Courier New">Run by executive producer Dennis Bernstein and senior producer Nora Barrows-Friedman, the award-winning Flashpoints radio is an indispensable daily source for hard-hitting and incisive investigative and public affairs commentary. Bernstein and Barrows-Friedman (a recent recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Media Freedom Award from Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored) continue to tackle those issues which even some progressive media outlets shy away from, with a particular emphasis on Israel/Palestine, and on-location reporting from various international hotspots. Their uncensored and independent reportage provides a needed counter to the biased and corporate-influenced productions of mainstream journalism.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Courier New'" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br></span></font></div></div></body></html>