I’ve always been irked by the Starbucks invented term “Barista.” It’s the equivalent of Walmart calling their workers “associates.” It means nothing except to delude the workers that they are something more than slave-wage, unskilled workers.

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The peace sign is the footprint of the American chicken? Haha. What is it you think we are chicken of?
 
Are we afraid to square off with armed authoritarian ugliness? Are we afraid to speak our mind in the face of untroubled, couch-potato-patriot freaks like you?
 
I don’t think so.

The WAR ON expression has come to mean what any more? War On Drugs. What did that mean? Trying to address the drug addiction problem, obviously. Wouldn’t it have been better to call it: “addressing the drug addiction problem?” Declaring a war on the noun drugs has meant thousands incarcerated for being victims.

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I visited the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo yesterday. They have a newborn baby gorilla who is needing special attention because he has been abandoned by his mother.
 
Except for having arms which can reach well over his head, there is little to distinguish him from you or me don’t you think?

Time for some spring cleaning at Camp Casey, an opportunity to hang out some fresh laundry. We’ve sewn new colorful sheets and here are prospective banner slogans:

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Reprise: Junior Samples, Grandpa Jones, Buck Owens and Roy Clark.
 
No I’m messing with you. This is the cast of Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again or something like that. Three funny guys who make an enormous living by speaking for the common man, plus the Cable Guy, their greek chorus, in this case impersonating the common lower common man. Really, when Larry The Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy and Ron White appear in promotional pictures, CD covers or movie posters, they are never shown in any other order than where their fans have seen them sit on their Comedy Central special. What an interesting opinion of the intellectual incapacity of your target audience.

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Kelly, Pallas and Cindy.
 
Camp Casey Colorado Springs own Pallas Stanford and IVAW co-founder Kelly Dougherty marched with Cindy Sheehan from Mobile to New Orleans. Also marching from Colorado Springs were veterans Joe Hatcher, Jeff Peskoff, Ethan Crowell, Alan Skinner, and Vietnam Veterans Against the War co-founder Terry Leichner.

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President thinks he has glommed unto an Iraq War success story, the American suppression of Tal Afar. Americans had hardly heard the name Tal Afar before Bush mentioned it in his recent address. Ergo must be a quiet town, at peace. Think so?
 
Tal Afar has been off the radar because there are no unembedded journalists there. There has been no one to report back about the usual American practices against the Iraqi population, no one but the usual military liasons. Now 60 Minutes is adding their voice to Bush’s refrain.
 
Well Tal Afar is in our neck of the woods actually. The last of Colorado Springs’ own Third Armored Cavalry has returned from duty at Tal Afar, and the stories circulating already will make your hair stand on end. Over the next weeks, I’ll document a number of 3rd AC eyewitness reports.

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The three remaining CPT captives, held hostage since Novemember 27 have been freed.
 
On DAY 119 of their captivity, on DAY 106 or so of the vigil which we’ve kept every day at noon, the BBC has just reported that the three CPT hostages, English Norman Kember and Canadians Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, have been freed.

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The Bookman would like to announce, on the eve of its 15th Anniversary, a long overdue, grand attention-getting idea: A GET WITH THE PROGRAM- BOOK BURNING!
 
Let’s draw national attention and put Colorado Springs on the map for what it is: the Mecca of modern American fundamentalism. You hear it from world citizens more and more, they’re less worried by Islamic Fundamentalists than they are by American Fundamentalists!

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Where are the Democrats on Anti-War? Why are they not standing at the forefront of this issue? The PPJPC held a well-attended Iraq War Year III rally in the park downtown and we saw not one politician in attendance.

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We are watching a prizefight. Bush is swaggering and staggering around with his arms in the air having declared himself winner before the bell has rung, as he’s done through every round. This time he’s looking deliriously vulnerable. He’s got the typical bad guy aura of a smug WWWF villain. He could be in a wheelchair and the crowd would cheer to see him clobbered.

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The media are showing themselves for the shills that they are. The story would seem to be President Bush’s ever lower approval ratings. Yet the media are working overtime to quote bush left and right. As if to prove the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
 
Why we looking to Bush for any answers at all? Greenland is melting yet Bush denies global warming. Iraq is disintegrating into fearsome indescriminate violence yet Bush calls it victory.
 
Bush sets up a straw man argument by saying he can understand why Americans are disheartened. Try disgusted. Explain that.

You can get a calculator for 99 cents. Glossing over for a moment the issue of the third world child/slave/prison exploitation that goes into these cheap products, consider that we can manufacture incredibly complex and intricate gizmos for pennies.
 
Why then do razorblades based on a patented design cost nearly two dollars a pop? They’re also made in China for pennies. Why do blades for electric razors cost six dollars? Why do brushes for electric toothbrushes cost four dollars? If the design of those products were in the public domain, their consumer price could be in the pennies.
 
That’s the cost to you in the bathroom of intellectual property rights.

Nevermind that this operation appears to have been a diversion.
 
This is a picture of U.S. locusts launching the largest airborn assault on Iraq since the U.S. invasion. The attack upon a suspected resistance stronghold north of Samarra was called OPERATION SWARMER.

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Of course Michael Jackson is closing Neverland, his kid-themed estate in Southern California, he doesn’t need it, he’s gone to Disneyland!
 
(Caution: this article may get a little gross.)
 
The California Disneyland where children run around unattended? The Florida Disney world
with its similar kid-sized attractions? No, it’s just an expression. Jocko’s gone to the proverbial ne-plus-ultra destination for those who’ve hit the jackpot. Well you be the judge.

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Seventy riders joined the monthly CRITICAL MASS ride through downtown on Friday, St Patrick’s Day, seen by hundreds of revelers and commuters. Our special IWY3 gathering rode down Tejon, crossing on Bijou, Kiowa, Boulder, St Vrain, Pikes Peak and Colorado Ave, doubling back on Cascade, Nevada and Weber St.
 
Peter put together a fantastic hybred for me just in time for the occasion. Chants of WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS were mixed with BIKES NOT BOMBS and SUPPORT THE TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME which became SUPPORT THE TROOPS, RIDE A BIKE!

I have the opportunity to attend the $75 per head Democratic Party fundraiser at the Patty Jewett Country Club this Friday. Max Cleland will be the featured guest. It sounds like an interesting affair, well-to-do Democrats might make for interesting folk. The trouble is, the featured benefactor of the fundraiser is the Democratic candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, a certain Jay Fawcett. So I’m not going.

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What’s the point to the U.S. camouflage scheme on armored vehicles in Iraq? If opposing forces do not have an air force, nor any mechanized cavalry, nor any artillery, nor any optical sighting devices to speak of, what exactly is the benefit of military camouflage?
 
No really, how does camouflage conceal you from IEDs or suicide bombers? And in an urban, peopled environment, against what backdrop can you even hope to blend in? Truth in advertizing might suggest that a best camo scheme should reflect the real battlefield, filled with the real casualties.

Are we really contemplating hanging Zacarias Moussaoui for plotting to participate in 9/11? Even though he didn’t do it, nor was he even thwarted for trying, but simply for talking about it and expressing his enthusiasm? He’s not even guilty of conspiracy because he didn’t even contribute to the 9/11 effort.
 
Usually the small time hood who decides not to get up in the morning and go rob a bank, is not regarded as a bank robber. You can’t plead guilty to wanting to commit a crime because that is not a crime. Moussaoui’s behavior should land him into the care of psychiatrists certainly, but no more.
 
But such is the blood lust of the U.S. government that even though Moussaoui already faces life in prison, lawyers are making every effort, including tampering with the witnesses, to see Moussaoui hanged.

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A third U.S. cow has now been found to have Mad Cow Disease. The refrain remains the same. Have no fear, no part of this infected cow ever found its way into the food supply.
 
Great. But where did that cow come from? Specifically, where did that cow get its BSE? Does it grow on trees? Does it generate itself spontaneously?

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The local NBC affiliate 5/30 did an excellent story involving Camp Casey. See the video clip here.
 
They covered our Sunday morning send-off of IVAW members who were leaving to join the March 14 peace march along the Gulf Coast. And they also gave our banners some visibility.

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(Sarah, Mimi, Amy, Evie, Lara, Ryan, Devon, Marie, David, Peter, Diann, Amber)
 
Our peaceful infiltration of the Old Colorado City St. Patricks Day Parade was great fun. We had to scale back our original plans for using the Peace Snake and the Blue Lady in favor of giving more visibility to our green peace t-shirts. Turnout for our peace contingent was affected by the cold and more specifically by a flu going around which hampered a number of families.

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As a professional soldier I cannot escape my share of the collective guilt; but as a human being I feel none.
I hope that nowhere in the world will young people ever again allow themselves to be so misused.
 
Hans von Luck, Panzer Commander