Our colleague Lotus has initiated some fruitful correspondence on the subject of the still-impending fracking of the Pikes Peak region. In light of the City’s abrupt cancellation of the May 17 public hearing, we’ll present excerpts of his emails and telephone notes here.

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For Mother’s Day I was wondering about… MOMS FOR MARIJUANA. Are you kidding me?! Could cannabis users choosing motherdom as commonality for a niche advocacy group be any more half-baked? Motherhood is more than a special interest, demographic or hobby; it bears maternal responsibility. Women For Marijuana for example, doesn’t imply there are children around. One infers from Moms For Pot that there’s a role for drugs in the mothering process, a Just-Say-Yes policy in store for her children, if even there’s an age of consent.

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DENVER- Isn’t there something distasteful about a gathering of Obama supporters who want to rail against “The War On Women” and permit no mention of his non metaphorical deadly engagements? Organizers complained bitterly about activist Rita Ague’s successful subversion of their Democratic Party-only event messaging, while pretending the Pro-Obama theme was spontaneous and not partisan astroturf. While attendees carried all sorts of reproductive rights slogans, the only signage hung on the amphitheater was for Dem candidates. We had anticipated as much from early participants instructed not to worry about signs, they’d be provided. Indeed they were: “Women for Obama”, “Latinas for Obama” and anti Right-wingnut signs. Another clue came from Denver colleagues who surprised us with the news that a significant turnout was not expected because the Denver community was not responding. This was strictly a country mouse affair.

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Oh for God’s Sake. Is there no end to Colorado Springs’ dumbshittedness? The Colorado supreme court rules against the constitutionality of a national Day of Prayer, to the objection of, the National Day of Prayer Task Force, whose headquarters are HERE in Colorado Springs! Of course the annual proclamation is a violation of the separation of church and state, and the NDPTF doesn’t plan to appeal the decision, but they’ve put out the call for you to appeal it, and they want Governor Hickenlooper to defy the court. Who are these litigious theocratic fascists? Oddly the Gazette article paraphrased the group’s press release without attributing its statements to any spokesperson, perhaps the Gazette is embarrassed for them, you’d like to think. I shall not be surprised if next I learn that Colorado Springs submits an application everyday for its anti-intellectual prowess to be recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Denver activist Chad Duffy and the ultimate protester’s protest sign.

Was it Utah Philips or Michael Parenti who said it, “the only thing the rich have ever wanted was EVERYTHING”?
Do you wonder why Occupy’s demands have to be specific? To my mind, Occupy has a mandate that’s equally self-evident: EVERYTHING BACK.

OCCUPIED DENVER– If Denver Occupiers accomplished one thing this May Day, in solidarity with global calls for a general strike, and in sync with more aggressive protests in Oakland and elsewhere, Occupy Denver had a great time. THAT WAS ALL IT HAD TO BE. The crowd was largely young, with the energy, idealism and ideology reminiscent of the early days last fall. OCCUPEZ LES BONS TEMPS ROULER!

The downtown First Prez congregation voted 95% to leave its too gay-accepting mother church and launch their own cult of bigotry and warmongering.

Famed environmentalist Denis Hayes spoke at Colorado College last week, and it was very tempting to ask the creator of EARTH DAY what he thought about speaking to an audience which had eliminated theirs. Oh, we have Earth Month, and CC has Earth Week, to make room ostensibly for the growing plethora of environmentalist activities, to a thinning crowd unfortunately. Shrinking the party is a curious strategy, don’t you think? Obviously the Earth deserves more than a day’s commemoration, but the point of an Earth Day, is to concentrate popular attention toward building global community. Perhaps the new “Earth Hour” attempts to recapture that focus, you’d think there might be a happy medium, such as… Earth Day?! We’re content with holidays of a day duration. America’s uber-patriots would have expanded the 4th of July to Independence Month, if such a thing was really meant to be effective. We do not have Memorial Month, or Veteran’s Month, or Christmas or Easter Months either. Oddly, Pikes Peak environmentalists chose to expand their drinking hours to last a month, encompassing more eco-themed happy hours to please their members-only. Local common folks looking beyond the usual corporate media antagonist apathy on subjects environmental, find themselves on April 22 with no Earth Day.

At a San Diego-Tijuana border crossing, ‘Ice’ handcuffed and killed a man using tasers to torture him to death, then the US government covered it all up. Why are so many of our cops and soldiers seemingly cold blooded sociopathic killers? Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas Death: Border Patrol Tasing Incident Complicated By New Footage

I know that we should all be e’er so respectful of ‘our’ uniformed soldiers, but then again after the third vandalism LAST NIGHT of my property and/ or Eric’s by these dishonest and insincere, soldier loving Right Winger former members of Colorado Springs Occupy, I’m not feeling too charitable to the many low lives that inhabit Fort Carson right this minute. And here’s a local news item we have all been following with interest, Fort Carson based Soldier #2 and Soldier #3 were arrested for the murder of another man. See Second Ft. Carson Soldier Arrested In Deadly Shooting Man Shot After Leaving Sin City Disciple Motorcycle Club and 3rd Fort Carson Soldier Arrested In Shooting.

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I’m going to think that the more mobilization of the 99% the better, no matter if it’s, ding-dong MoveOn Calling. The vast 99 are wise to the corporations and the corporate media, I think they’ll recognize when corporate organizers try to co-opt their protest. It might be bad enough that MoveOn’s nationwide “Nonviolence Teach-in” wants to defang the popular uprising, they probably imagine the public’s anger can be refocused on the usual Republican bogeymen. What’s so nefarious about MoveOn? It backs President Obama. That means even though MoveOn wants to play megaphone for the 99% and its demands, it’s actually against all of them. MoveOn Obama is against Wall Street reform, against universal healthcare, against action on climate change, against fill-in-the-blank if the people are for it! MoveOn’s centralized DC HQ, effective but decidedly not-grassy, will probably be its undoing.

No surprise, it’s Mars.

The following letter appeared today online in what is really most often the daily Colorado Springs local military propaganda sheet called The Gazette. We reprint it here because it underlines the rather common type of thugs that the Pentagon has stationed in our city out at Fort Carson, and quite often turned into major league thugs as they were used by the Pentagon to occuppy foreign countries with. SORRY, but we cannot attribute their behaviors as merely being due to PTSD, which many of them try to hide their personal AND GROUP misbehaviors behind. Here following is the letter from former Gazette reporter, David Philipps… Read more »

The Colorado Springs municipal government has now decided to gamble city tax funds into the National Security State by spending tens upon thousands of dollars in surveillance cameras. However, who will want to go into an already sterile downtown environment into the Downtown Surveillance State future? My guess is that it will be less than we have going downtown now. Who wants to be watched all the time IN PUBLIC as if they were automatically suspected of being potential criminals? Nobody. People will instead go into public spaces elsewhere and will give downtown businesses a pass.

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Turns out that the Occupy Movement is not so dead after all, it’s just that the corporate media wants you to think that it is. ‘Occupy Montreal’ is not exactly organized in the way that Occupy Wall Street has done up to now, but it was way more successful last week when massive anti-government demonstrations took place there in Quebec and the majority of the demonstrators were young people! What if this youth protest begins to spread once again into the USA? See Students stage monster march in Montreal to protest against tuition-fee hikes- Read it on Global News …If it does, that will shake the entire world up! Youtube has an excellent video of this march and protest… Montreal Student Protest – March 22, 2012 – Manifestation Étudiante Montréal.

OCCUPIED DENVER- March 24.

‘If you believe that what Wall Street does is Evil, then Obama’s service to Wall Street is Evil, and there is nothing lesser about it’ …says Glen Ford, and he’s absolutely right about that. Read his entire commentary about the Obama presidency @ Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil- Glen Ford at the Left Forum

‘Overseas in Iraq for several months, these (Lethal Warrior’ unit) soldiers were exposed to the same dangerous scenarios on a regular basis. So much, Philipps said, that the soldiers never knew who the enemy was and would shoot random citizens and place guns on them to legitimize their kills.’ …Author: Combat follows soldiers home describes ‘Lethal Warriors’ tale.

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Nobody likes to draw the short straw, but isn’t that already our lot living in Colorado Springs? Yeah, it’s easy to protest Wall Street from the safety of a provincial backwater, our city even backed us with a permit, but is that really grabbing the imperial bull by the horns? The Occupy Movement has spotlighted how the world’s 99% are oppressed by the ruling elite. It made more clear how true democracy is undermined by their military-industrial-corporate-banking complex. Now, doesn’t a major chunk of that alliance operate right where we live? Think. It ain’t banking or industry, and the corporations here orbit around the headliner of that lineup, the military, our city’s dominant export. Yes, criticizing the military in a military town is not popular. Do you think the Wall Street protesters were a welcome sight to Manhattan’s bankers? You can call to “End the Fed” online, or protest anything in the world from a digital soapbox, but a public demonstration is limited to what’s in your local vicinity, especially if you mean to OCCUPY IT. Look on this as a curse or a blessing: The Zuccotti Park activists get to target sharkskin-suited traders, we’re up against men with guns. But what are you going to do, cheerlead the OWS front in NY, or hold up your end of the fight?

Racist Florida cops refuse to arrest Black teenager’s gun loving killer even when they have witnesses that say he was murdered in cold blood. See Witness Speaks Out In Trayvon Martin Case … We in the general public need to stop these soldiers, cops, and Right Wing gun toting thugs from receiving total impunity when they commit their crimes.

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Not all vets are pro 1%er war like the thug force unit, the so-called ‘Lethal Warrior’ soldiers at Fort Carson, now mobilized against Occupy Colorado Springs’ antiwar voices. Kevin Baker, Iraqi war vet, calls for immediate withdrawal and compensation to the Afghan people for the destruction done to their country. He also speaks out against the dehumanization of Afghans, and against the US military murders of the many Afghan children continually being done there by US troops. See the youtube video- US troops to be targeted after Afghan massacre?

As the local Colorado Springs Occupy has to contend with Right Wing soldiers from Fort Carson trying to shut our Movement down and shut us antiwar activists up, another local Fort Carson soldier made the news today. See The Gazette story Soldier sentenced to 90 days for fracturing 8-month-old son's skull

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MoveOn wants to mobilize the world’s largest nonviolence movement, calling on the 99% to teach-in itself in time for their American Spring. That’s certain to sound more palatable to America’s unbaptized middle-roaders, than the invitation above, invoking the reception likely awaiting protesters who plan to converge on Chicago in May. The G8 has been relocated to Camp David, but the larger NATO summit is still scheduled to warrant a two mile wide security perimeter around downtown Chicago. What does this poster communicate to you? I’m guessing the menacing image wasn’t chosen at random, it says to me the unadventurous need not apply.

OccupyAfghanistan vets Jeremy and Brittany Westmoreland attracted Patriot Shop teabag Jim Kross to their vow to destroy our local occupy. I’d like to say as little as possible about this lamentable development, except to document today’s escalation.

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