Determine a budget and confirm venues: These go hand in hand and will affect the way the entire fest is organized.  First you must confirm your total rental costs for venues, including security if mandated by the venue.  Make sure you have all expenses worked out with the venues before you establish ticket costs.  After venue expenses, all remaining money should be allocated to the bands.  The budget needs to accommodate gas money for all the traveling bands.  Bands traveling a long distance just to play one show usually need the most money, and touring bands will also need a comfortable amount of money to safely drive to the next city. Make sure you ask local bands how much they want, usually they don't ask for much more than gas money.  Your fest may not sell out, so make sure your ticket prices are set so that you can still cover expenses in case of a poor turn out.  Having a couple of benefit shows for a “rainy day fund” is always a good idea.  Most importantly, keep a paper trail. 

Confirm bands early: Make sure you confirm the bands early, and stay on  top of calling them regularly to keep them confirmed.  Sometimes a band member accidentally forgets he/she had other plans on the same day.  If you keep in touch with them on a regular basis, then they'll usually clear unforeseen setbacks early enough to avoid any problems.  Once you have the bands and venues confirmed, you can start promoting the show.  Make a batch of flyers to get the word out early.  Mail them out all over the region to places where punks hang out.  YOU DO NOT NEED MYSPACE.  Keep  a log of what bands are playing which days, as it will fluctuate as the fest draws nearer.

Work out logistics: Once you have all the bands confirmed, you can start working out the details regarding set times, gear, food, and places for bands to sleep.  Always arrange a place for bands to sleep, just make sure it is an appropriate house to suit the bands' needs.  Some bands want to party while others just want to crash someplace quiet.  Most likely, bands will all go out and party wherever the after-parties are and may not even make it back to wherever they're crashing at.  Still, they need a place to anchor their vans down and call headquarters.  Always cook for the bands and bring the food to the venues early enough to clean up before doors open.  Make sure you've arranged what times you want the bands to arrive at the venues, and that you've settled any gear issues.  Work closely with the staff of the venues to organize load-in and load-out for band equipment. 

Promote, promote, promote: Make wave after wave of handbills and posters.  Saturate the local scene and mail them around the region/country as well as to the touring bands.  Give plenty of flyers to local bands as well.  Consider buying an ad in a punk magazine.  YOU DO NOT NEED MYSPACE! Besides, making a flyer is usually the most fun and exciting part of booking any punk show.   

Keep a to-do list: I cannot stress this enough.  Everyday there will be tons of shit to do and you must get it done on time, especially as the fest draws closer.  If you do not keep a list, I guarantee you'll forget some things and regret it like hell later. 

What you'll need: Your own vehicle.  Don't even try to book a fest without your own vehicle to run errands.  Otherwise you'll just end up nagging your friends all the time every day.  Trash bags, drum carpets, a P.A. complete with speakers, microphones and microphone stands, and back-up plans in case the shit hits the fan.

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News From Palestine

By Jonathan Cook

From just outside Jerusalem's Old City walls, the simple stone and cinder-block homes of Silwan cascade southwards into a valley known as the Holy Basin. 
 
The Palestinian residents are used to living in the shadow of history and religion, given dramatic physical form as the great silver dome of the al-Aqsa mosque and the looming presence of the Mount of Olives. But of late, history has become a curse for most of Silwan's residents. 
 
"We have cameras everywhere watching us night and day," said Jawad Siyam, 39. "Armed Israeli guards wander through our alleys. Our open areas, the places where I played as a child, have become no-go zones." 
 
The reason is the growing number of settlers who have moved into Silwan since the early 1990s claiming a biblical right to the land. At least 50 Jewish families, comprising 250 people, have taken over Palestinian homes dotted across Silwan and turned them into secure compounds over which Israeli flags flutter. 
 
Similar takeovers are occurring out of sight in other Palestinian areas of occupied East Jerusalem. The settler organizations, backed by private donors from abroad, hope to make a peace agreement impossible and so ensure East Jerusalem never becomes the capital of a Palestinian state. 
 
But only in Silwan have the settlers defied the law so publicly, openly recruiting an array of official Israeli bodies, from the Antiquities Authority to the Jerusalem municipality. 
 
Silwan's takeover is being masterminded by a shadowy organization known as Elad, which unusually has been preferred over the Nature and Parks Authority to run an important archaeological site in the village center. 
 
With funding provided by secretive backers in Russia and the United States, Elad has transformed Silwan into the "City of David." Even the signposts in the area are oblivious to the existence of the Palestinian village and its tens of thousands of residents. 
 
The heart of the City of David is an archaeological park that is being relentlessly extended into ever more corners of Silwan. 
 
"The settlers began by taking over homes around the site," said Siyam, whose grandmother's home was one of the first to be seized in 1994 after her death. "Then they were given the main excavation site, and built new homes in the park. And now they are finding new sites, fencing off more land and digging under our houses." 
 
Many homes in Siyam's neighborhood have developed cracks in the walls, he said, after excavations began last year to unearth a drainage channel believed to be from the period of King Herod. Residents fear their foundations have been damaged. 
 
The dig was intended to run 600 meters underground to the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, but was halted by the courts in February after it emerged that the archaeologists were digging without licenses. Nonetheless, Elad has recently begun work on other tunnels. 
 
The organization's main focus is the City of David site itself, over which it was given control in 1998 in a dubious deal with the Parks Authority and Jerusalem municipality. 
 
Elad has poured money into excavating the area and subcontracted Israel's main archaeological body, the Antiquities Authority, to oversee the uncovering of what appears to be the original location of Jerusalem. 

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Oaxaca News

Thursday, September 25  
 
Justice for our sister Marcella Sali Grace!  
 
Brother and sisters,  
 
Our hearts are full of sadness and rage because our sister Sali was brutally raped and murdered 20 minutes from San Jose del Pacifico and up to this moment the Oaxacan Attorney General's Office, as is its custom, is not doing anything regarding the fact that there exist witnesses who have information to identify those responsible.  
 
Marcella Sali Grace was born in the United States, with a big heart in solidarity with just causes. She had many friend because she was always inclined to help, using her artistic talents to paint a banner or a wall or dancing Arabic dance to raise funds for the struggle, or putting on punk shows, or giving self-defense courses to the women because she knew very well how the men accosted them. This was one of her struggles, that women were free and respected. Sali was so involved in the struggle that she was an international accompanier of brothers and sisters who felt harassed by the bad government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.  
 
Unfortunately, on September 24, a woman's body was found with the physical characteristics of Sali, in a deserted cabin twenty minutes from the village of San Jose del Pacifico and at the moment when a village member went to feed some dogs around that area, he was struck by a fetid odor coming from this cabin and notified the municipal authorities of the village, who proceeded to removed the body that was found which was already in a state of decay, and after these events, they did not give any more information to the people in the village.  
 
Yesterday, companera Julieta Cruz (who knew Sali was headed for San Jose del Pacifico) was informed that a young, foreign woman was found in the Miahuatlan amphitheatre, where she went, and where she recognized the body of Sali because of the tattoos she had, as her face was unrecognizable. Julieta thinks it is because of burns, but it doesn't explain why the rest of her body has less visible damage. When we asked for the case number we were denied as well from seeing the results of the autopsy, as they argued with us that because we weren't relatives they couldn't give us any information.  
 
Due to her solidarity work with the popular struggle of the people of Oaxaca, in other struggles in the world and against the racism on Mexico's border with the U.S., on different occasions and to different people, Sali mentioned that recently in Oaxaca she had suffered political persecution and surveillance. This makes us think that her cowardly murderer is related to the widespread repression against the social movement and directed particularly at international observers. Because of this, we don't dismiss that the intellectual authors are the same who ordered the repression against the people of Oaxaca in their struggle for justice and freedom.  
 
In the face of these bloody events, and for the brutal cruelty used against companera Sali, we don't disregard that this could be a clear message directed at all the people of Oaxaca, as well as the companeros in solidarity from different parts of the world; we say this based on the recent national and international news which says that "APPO members were the ones who killed U.S. journalist Bradley Roland Will" and as there is no justice in Oaxaca, we worry that the distortion of information could interfere in procuring true justice for our companera and the clear bureaucratic slowness with which the involved authorities are already treating this investigation.  
 
In the face of these lamentable events, WE DEMAND:  
 
The immediate speeding up of the investigations.  

The immediate clarification of the facts.  
 
Punishment for the intellectual and material murderers.  
 
Justice for our sister Marcella Sali Grace!  
 
Enough is enough with of the murders, violence and hate against women who fight for justice!  
 
We ask you to sign on (at the email indicated) to this demand for justice and to become a part of the urgent 

rebeldiasentrelazadas@yahoo.com  

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Dispatches from Iraq

BOOKS-IRAQ: "We Blew Her to Pieces" Inter Press Service  
By Dahr Jamail 
 
MARFA, Texas, Sep 16 (IPS) - Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers' own words. 
 
"Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupation," published by Haymarket Books Tuesday, is a gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers. 
 
Authored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and journalist Aaron Glantz, the book is a reader for hearings that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland between Mar. 13-16, 2008 at the National Labour College. 
 
"I remember one woman walking by," said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. "She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realised that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces." 
 
Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement in Iraq, and how lax they were, even to the point of being virtually non-existent. 
 
"During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot," Washburn's testimony continues. "The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond." 
 
His emotionally charged testimony, like all of those in the book that covered panels addressing dehumanisation, civilian testimony, sexism in the military, veterans' health care, and the breakdown of the military, raised issues that were repeated again and again by other veterans. 
 
"Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry 'drop weapons', or by my third tour, 'drop shovels'. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent," Washburn said. 
 
Four days of searing testimony, witnessed by this writer, is consolidated into the book, which makes for a difficult read. One page after another is filled with devastating stories from the soldiers about what is being done in Iraq. 
 
Everything from the taking of "trophy" photos of the dead, to torture and slaughtering of civilians is included. 
 
"We're trying to build a historical record of what continues to happen in this war and what the war is really about," Glantz told IPS. 
 
Hart Viges, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army who served one year in Iraq, tells of taking orders over the radio. 
 
"One time they said to fire on all taxicabs because the enemy was using them for transportation...One of the snipers replied back, 'Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Fire on all taxicabs?' The lieutenant colonel responded, 'You heard me, trooper, fire on all taxicabs.' After that, the town lit up, with all the units firing on cars. This was my first experience with war, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the deployment." 
 
Vincent Emanuele, a Marine rifleman who spent a year in the al-Qaim area of Iraq near the Syrian border, told of emptying magazines of bullets into the city without identifying targets, running over corpses with Humvees and stopping to take "trophy" photos of bodies. "An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pot shots at cars that drove by," he said. "This was not an isolated incident, and it took place for most of our eight-month deployment." 

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