DENVER, COLO.- I might be sensationalizing a technicality, but in effect it’s what happened: the remembering of Ludlow has been commandeered by the class who perpetrated it. The preliminary series of events commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre (April 20, 1914) concluded tonight at Denver’s History Colorado Museum with a panel discussion featuring only establishment voices. “Is Ludlow relevant?” was the question posed to five participants among them three professors, a soldier, and a union rep. That’s like asking “is global warming real?” The question is loaded with the suggestion that the opposite is equally plausible. I would have preferred to hear HOW is Ludlow relevant. Though the union rep skillfully skirted the issue, no one pushed back at another flawed presumption, that the coal strike was an armed conflict. Yes the massacre provoked the ten day “Coal Field War” during which striking miners retaliated against the mine company employees, but the death toll was still but a fraction of the number of miners killed in the mine accidents which precipitated the Ludlow strike. It took an audience member to address that omission. Alas nobody mentioned the aftermath that found many miners under arrest, others scattered, and no mine owner, operator, guard, strikebreaker, Baldwin-Felts thug, or National Guard save one, was punished for the atrocity. Yes many immigrant miners were veterans of Bulkan wars, but some Colorado soldiers were veterans of the US campaign in the Philippines, where villages were dispatched with flame and machinegun fire. Not mentioned. Instead a Colorado National Guard representative was let to say that burning the tents at Ludlow was not a tactical error -and since the “non-combatant” deaths were unintended, Ludlow was not technically a massacre.

Yes the crime was horific, highschoolers being stabbed from behind, their assailant without character enough to face his random victims, without motive, armed with such a weapon as any amateur can pick up in their parent’s kitchen. Though signs migh point to medication or mental illness, the troubled 16-year-old is being charged as an adult, because schools have been failing Americans for generations before Alex Hribal.

DENVER, COLO.- Saturday’s “Every 5th” Anonymous march didn’t get two blocks along the 16th Street Mall before Denver police officers advanced into the compact procession to extract what looked to be targeted activists. Said one Anon: “One minute we were chanting ‘FUCK THE POLICE’ and the next they were fucking themselves! Our demonstration AGAINST police brutality was in solidarity with the New Mexico action #OpAlbuquerque, but became a demonstration OF police brutality. Thank you DPD!” Hundreds of downtown shoppers were drawn to the shit show, to see four dozen masked protesters menaced by a paramilitary force three times the size, ostensibly for jaywalking.

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OCCUPY DENVER recidivist Caryn Sodaro was given 90 days this week for violating the terms of her probation, an earlier plea deal which relinquished first amendment rights in exchange for what turned out to be temporary freedom.

SO, Westboro Baptist weirdo patriarch Fred Phelps died this week, before he could finger who it was bankrolling his unpopular church outings to far-flung, media-covered, sensitivity-defying graveside demonstrations orchestrated to make protest look bad and prompt public support for preemptive limits on free speech.

I’ll believe corporations are people when one is declined the chance to pay a fine instead of face criminal penalties. Imagine OJ Inc or Pistorius Inc or Bernie Madoff being able to pay off US marshalls instead of going to jail. Next question, who is the beneficiary Toyota’s $1.2 Billion payoff?

Yes, yes there are grey areas. Black and white is for the printed page. But publishing is a great example of the decisive expression of intention, whether to write it down or not. So too, taking action requires commitment to a direction. I fail to see how “taking the middle road” serves anyone but those trying to forstall your getting beyond the status quo. My objection to middle roads is that they lead you nowhere. They’re basically medians.

DELIVERY CONFIRMATION for drones! You can get it for free with the Metadata iPhone app. The following notice arrived this morning, March 3, postmarked Yemen: “Jaber was sleeping near his car when the missile arrived. 3 people killed.” The blurb is as much as the USG knows, based on preliminary reports from the ground, and highlights what little they know of their intended victim. It’s also based on the POV of the targeting pilot whose job it is to study the slow-mo video of the warhead’s GoPro camera. Extreme Extrajudicial Assassination –Radically illegal too!
 
UPDATE: Mar 3, Yemen
“The second drone strike of the day killed 1 person in Abyan.”

PUEBLO, COLORADO- 2014 marks one hundred years since the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. A variety of commemorations are planned before the formal anniversary on April 20. I attended one such event on Wednesday, a lecture by a CSU professor to footnote the “Children of Ludlow” exhibit at El Pueblo History Museum. I’m always excitied when attention is paid to Ludlow, a subject regularly left out of American schoolbooks, but I was disappointed to find key elements of labor history excised from the museum’s narrative. Literally. The United Mine Workers of America, the organization central to the strike, which supplied the tent city, and which even today maintains the memorial site, was mentioned only once, IN FINE PRINT! The Ludlow miners voted to strike because the mining companies refused to recognize the UMWA. Unmentioned. The horrors of the atrocity were not tempered, in their explicitness perhaps we think them enough, but there was also the apologist suggestion that some culpability belonged to the miners. I questioned one curator who admitted they were at pains to keep the story “balanced” and that the squeakiest wheel thus far has been the National Guard. Apparently the Guard is offended that its role will be misconstrued. What balance do they want, I wondered. Had they lost children in the “battlezone” too?

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COLORADO SPRINGS residents are left to wonder what kind of leverage the public utilities CEO holds over his board of directors. City Council wants to raise Jerry Forte’s salary to half a million in spite of the coal-black hole in which he put the city’s energy portfolio. They won’t consider investing in renewables lest it bump utility rates by 1%, put they will raise the rates by 3% to resolve a payables problem, austensibly, (They want to act quick while higher winter usage means the rate hike will yield more) and I guess for the CEO’s raise.

We can keep arguing about who the Ukrainian opposition/protesters were, but the aftermath of the celebrated uprising has wrought this: the new leadership is being courted by the EU and the IMF so long as they agree to club requirements. Make austerity reforms, aka the privatization of public assets, and saddle their economy with debt to the World Bank. Meanwhile Russia is being warned to keep its military out. That should confirm who won in Ukraine.

DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy activists were making their usual cacophony on Friday night when Denver police cruisers began converging into a familiar disproportionate show of force. Experienced skirmishers though Occupiers are, we couldn’t help whispering to each other as we watched more DPD officers accumulate on foot from vehicles yet unseen. The unintended effect of course was that our chanting diminished as the tension rose and Denver onlookers were treated to a literal illustration of the chilling effect of police intimidation. To make matters more embarassing, Occupy was shouting that we would not be silenced! By the time police were trooping upon us there was no sound but DPD boot steps and our “cameras on, everybody, cameras on.”

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What a sad, embarrasing scene. What ungrateful guests Americans appear. Russia throws a magnificent party in Sochi, the penultimate of accasions almost still outside the bounds of what the international corporate media can control, and western journalists do everything they can to poop the party. Is Sochi really only Putin’s ego trip? Do you think the Russian people haven’t invested a lot of pride in these Olympics?

Protesters are being killed in Kiev, and revolutionaries enthusiasts are buying into the Western Media narrative. Even Democracy Now is parroting the theme, describing the demonstrations as opposing their government’s rejecting closer ties to the European Union. “Closer ties?” Ukraine was rejecting growing indebtedness to EU banks, favoring a bailout from Putin instead. Let’s remember that Senator John McCain jetted to Kiev to rally the uprising, seeing it as part of the rolling “freedom movement” not coincidentally encircling Russia, the former Soviets now no longer foe to Capitalism but rival. Unfortunate developments have led to government snipers firing at the “rebels” many of whom are dupes but many too are supremacist fascists not particularly misguided about US-EU hegemony. Perhaps we can find consolation in the hope that Ukrainian snipers were able to hit the OTPOR and CIA provocateurs coordinating the urban warriors.
 
I support all popular uprisings, but unfortunately US covert ops have picked up on our game. The only way to insulate rebellions against Western provocateurs is to build movements around political ideology they will not embrace. For the onlooker, ideology is also the means to discern destabilitation projects parading as protest. If the offending government is anti-Western-Capitalism, our counterinsurgency ops are there. Of course Socialist, Islamic, or non-World Bank client regimes are not imune to being authoritarian, but hardly more so than the Capitalist empire. Often US adversaries are forced to authoritarian measures by US covert ops working to destabilize them.

To “open the ball” is a dance expression the US cavalry borrowed to describe the initiation of a military engagement. Against Native American prey this usually meant to wake the village by firing into the teepees. The US has long been covertly trying to destabilize Venezuela, but recent developments indicate they’re escalating “opposition protests” to Syrian proportions. Tunisia and Egypt may have been more spontaneous than the US-coordinated “Color Revolutions” along the former Soviet Bloc and in Iran, but the rollout of Arab Spring into Libya and Syra was entirely US-EU covert ops. With renewed “populist” uprisings cementing the encirclement of Russia, the US has detonated unrest in South America, determined to push the Venezuelan government to extremes. Next the UN will decide someone has exceded the bounds of human rights violations, ignoring of course the real Goliaths of that game.

Olympic commentators are fawning over the winter sports dynasties, some of them actual petty-royal lineages, from European feifdoms and colonial sultanships, family trees full of resort-dwelling ski bums, literally, jetsetters. Agree the commentators: “It’s in the genes!”

A young doctor I once met travelling in Thailand told me that a heroin addiction would be his ideal state, provided his supply remained stable. A person could function, maintain a job even, regularly dosed with heroin. Unlimited financial means wasn’t required, just a regular, regulated source. That detectives found a full pantry of heroin in the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s home indicates someone in his household was nursing his habit. Given the actor’s prolific and excellent work, it’s hard to consider Hoffman a victim of addiction. Hoffman didn’t die from an overdose, he died from a toxic batch, a result of drug production and distribution being illegal. The War on Drugs killed Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was rich enough to support a drug habbit, but not inhumanely so to afford a royal poison taster.

Amanda Knox is disappointed with the Italian judicial system. In America of course, if you can pin the crime on a black guy, white perpetrators go free. For the 2007 murder of Meredith Kerchner, African male Rudy Guede is serving 16 years, but Italian judges are convinced he was an accessory. And remember, first Knox tried to give them ANOTHER. Knox is appealing her slander conviction for falsely naming Patrick Lumumba, and now, instead of speaking appreciatively of her two year respite from prison after political pressure muddled an appeals court reversal, Knox says she “expected more”. Not just that, she reminds us “this isn’t going to bring Meredith Kercher back.”

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The year 2014 will mark the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, on November 29, two days after Thanksgiving. But on this day, January 29 of the year before, a Shoshone village suffered an identical fate. The Bear Creek Massacre was also once called the Battle of Bear Creek, but the only grounds which western military history buffs have to argue that such engagements were “battles” not massacres, is that was how the US cavalry waged its fights against the hostiles, its only victories were raids upon unsuspecting villages.

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Wherever did NY congressman Michael Grimm learn such language? I’m guessing the FBI edition of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, Grimm being former FBI. If ex-officer Grimm isn’t prosecuted for MENACING, threatening to throw a DC news reporter off a balcony, it would seem only fair that the representative’s constituents be free to tease him with the same bullying words, and who knows, even mean them. I doubt Grimm himself is “man enough” to weather bluster coming his way, especially if spoken with intent. “HEY CONGRESSMAN! LET ME BE CLEAR TO YOU! If you disrespect us again, we’re going to throw you off this fucking platform! We’re going to break you in half, boy!” That heckle should be perfunctory at every next Grimm public appearance. Would it be illegal? It is. As it should be, in particular from the mouth of an offensive politician who appears to act with impunity. For example, I not only believe Grimm, I believe he’d get away with it. Does Grimm have to throw journalists from balconies before he is arrested? Would he be more than upbraided even then? It shouldn’t be up to reporter Michael Scotto to decline to press charges, the real victims are everyone who’ve now witnessed and felt this threat. And let’s press the FBI to apologize for their former agent, and promise to wipe “throw you from a fucking balcony” from their interrogation script.

Media propagandists can’t conceal the state of the union address for what it was, a pageant of creeps, a pandering freakshow, and a flaunting of the celebration that the American constituancy is peopled by idiots on both sides of the aisle.

Colorado Springs is not home to an Olympic Training Center because of our competitive nature, proclivity for classic games, nor certainly athletic bloodlines — it’s our high altitude that draws athletes in training so they’ll hit the games with a competitive advantage against the majority of teams stuck at sea level. Boosters who look to promote the city’s Olympic identity ought maybe admit its true character before taking for granted that people want to celebrate it.

So it turns out the “Syrian Peace Talks” were of the Mideast Peace variety: terminal consessions to an aggressor’s demands, as per usual Zionist. The US has successfully pressured the UN to rescind the invitation for Iran to join the Syrian peace conference, apparently because Iran doesn’t agree that a peaceful outcome must include President Assad’s abdication. Does regime change sound like a fair and impartial solution for Syria, or does it resemble the goal of the Western nations who continue to back the instability? As usual, instead of pursuing peace, the US is talking extortion.
 
NOW THIS: US expresses horror [that someone is vying to beat US record] of torture and execution –is what the headline should read. Can the US “express horror” at torture and execution, alleged no less?!

Yes, fat joke. Bellies don’t fill themselves

Commenting on televised politics is as meaningless as speculating about developments on reality TV. Since the Christie bridge debacle purports to effect which presidential candidate gets voted off the island, it might be worth at least delving where the talking heads are not. Of course Chris Christie’s office engineered plausible deniability for their boss with the bridge blocking scheme, but Christie would certainly know WHY pressure was being brought to bear on Fort Lee. Christie’s lack of curiosity on the matter betrays an untruth. If his mea-non-culpa had digressed to speculate about a motive, he would have exposed himself to being caught lying.
 
Was the Washington Bridge closure in retribution for the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, not giving his endorsement? Was it retribution for a Democratic senator obstructing the state legislature? Retribution does seem petty. I think there’s a stronger likelihood this was not retribution, but extortion, about a yet unmentioned political goal. Especially as Sokolich professes not to know why the governor’s office acted why it did. What would be the point of retaliating if your mark didn’t know why? A second clue is that now the mayor has accepted governor Christie’s apology, still without asking why. When Christie’s chief of staff emailed “It’s time” to disrupt the traffic in Fort Lee, it’s unlikely any of the players were in the dark about what that time was.