Monthly Archives: November 2007

Torturing the universities, future feminine possibilities for Colorado College

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Pity the universities these days. They have become wildlife havens for America’s torturers. Southern Methodist University in Dallas is to house the papers of the head torturer advocate of them all, George W. Bush, in his ‘presidential library’. Stanford gets Donald Rumsfield. And now the University of Florida took it upon itself to take up the media rehabilitation program of Alberto Gonzalez. Whoopee, Students!

Here at home the local rag, The Gazette, today continued in its campaign to pretend that Global Warming is nothing to be concerned about, health care for all is too expensive to be implemented in the US, and YES, that water boarding is ‘uncomfortable, not torture’. So what, since at least local students have the ‘liberal’ Colorado College to find refuge in, right?

No, this local institution has graduated Dick Cheney’s wife and both his daughters, too (Lynn, Elizabeth, and Mary). And the college’s board of directors has Suzanne Woolsey , wife of super neo con advocate of fighting a continual, decades long ‘world war’ against the Muslim World, exCIA Head James Woolsey, sitting in as Vice Chair of the Colorado College Board of Trustees, emphasis on VICE.

These women folk ‘belonging to’ such noted torturers and torture advocates, Dick Cheney and James Woolsey, make it just right, that Colorado College and its Department of Political Science should house a proposed ‘Library of Women That Love Torturers’. There, we could see the love letters between these prominent ladies and their torturer husbands, dads, and lovers!

It would be a credit for the local military community’s institutions, too! Visit the Air Force Academy, then step over to Colorado College to see the more feminine side of US militarism, and women who love the torturers behind it. Other cities have their water parks, but Colorado Springs could have their waterboarding park!

Maybe our mayor, Lionel Rivera, and the entire city council will get behind this idea? We can only propose… but Colorado College should not let itself fall behind in the academic love affair with noted American torturers! Now can it? Maybe it could open up by next Halloween?

Nike tags more advertizing surface

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Viking uniform a maze of swooshesOh my goodness look at the Swooshes TM! Nike strikes again with its branding of the Minnesota Vikings. How many not so subliminal Nike trademarks do you see in this picture? The Viking uniforms sport the same torso swoosh as the Broncos but there’s more! Above the shoulders, behind the arms, and the refashioned horns.

Original Viking helmetIf the NFL is more restrictive than the NCAA about displaying manufacturers logos on uniforms, that’s not keeping Nike from tagging the athletes like so much graffiti.

On the old helmet, the ring around the horn was a semi circle, not a lateral crescent.

Disasters in Mexico

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Mexico was hit by the worst natural disaster in its history this last Halloween when rains flooded 80% of Tabasco state. Villahermosa, the second most populous Mexican city after Merida in Southern Mexico went under water, when its poorly maintained levee system failed much like what happened in New Orleans. See video of aftermath, and video of flooded Villahermosa from air.

A few dollars ‘saved’, and billions lost, all through government corruption. But there is another disaster due to hit Mexico soon, and it is called ‘Plan Merida’. This is a deal negotiated in secret between the US controlled Mexican puppet government of Felipe Calderon, and the Bush White House. Their plan is to further militarize Mexican society in copy cat form with what is occurring in the US.

The further militarization of Mexico is to be done under the guise of fighting drugs and drug cartels. What we can expect in the years ahead, is a Mexico with more Swat Teams, more army control over civilian society, more crime and danger to the average Mexican citizen, more drug traffic, and less rights for all. This is a mirror of what the US public can expect under ‘Homeland Security’.

Mexicans and Anglos have a common struggle together. It is a struggle against an encroaching police state of international dimension. It may well be that the ongoing militarization of Mexico by the US, may dwarf any natural disasters such as occured with the flooding of Tabasco.

Neo-liberal regime in France hits hard road block

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France doesn’t want the neo-liberal program that its government is trying to shove down its throat. Nicolas Sarkozy was elected in May as France’s president, and it is clear that he was the French corporate candidate of choice. France gripped by massive strike

Those corporations want him to destroy the social benefits that the French currently receive and to break all opposition to corporate control over everything in French society.

The French Labor Movement is battling back, and unlike the British and American Labor Movement, the French working class still has some punch left in it. The Battle For France involves more than just the French though. Neo-liberal needs to be delivered a death blow, and the French workers just like the Iraqi population as a whole, are doing their very best to fight back. We wish both the best in their struggles against the common evil we all should be struggling against. That common evil is corporate control over all society against the will of those underneath corporate yoke.

Comfort food for the sugar-fat addict

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Comfort food truth in labelingComfort food is what? The food addict’s fix? The salve of eating disorders that is also the poison? Is McDonalds concerned that out of sight in the bag, a fat-eater might forget what designs he had on his impulse/compulsive purchase?
 
McDonalds would seem to have quite a grasp of its customers. McFatties may have heard about “comfort food” but may not remember whether it denoted something bad or good. The McDonalds marketing department is employing a linguistic maneuver: own up to the accusation, then pervert what it means.
 
This bag promotes McDonalds’ World Children’s Day, urging us to give comfort. A search of their linked website about helping children yields not a single mention of “comfort.”

When Microsoft was confronted with Java, the Sun Microsystems product that offered to reduce our dependence on client-side software, what did Microsoft do? They jumped on the Java bandwagon, used their dominant market position to spread their own version of Java, but injected some broken code. Thus for the majority of users, Java was a disappointment. And Microsoft and Sun Microsystems settled out of court.

Why?

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Black Americans are getting sick and fed up with the entire racist criminal injustice system of the US. Still fresh in memory is the picture of White cops with guns turning back Blacks trying to cross the Mississippi Bridge to get out of New Orleans. In mind, too, is the new blatantly open use of torture not only of American military held POWs, but also of Black common folk held in US prisons around the country.

Thousands marched against racial profiling this week In D.C., their protest fed by the movement to defend the Jena Six. Why?

Why? is the question that was asked in Miami this week, too, and got a young man shot down by the police there. Why? too another taser death, not just in Canada, but in Miami that same week, this time of a Black man? Why? Black Agenda Report reports these stories of the Miami events. Executed ‘Walking While Black’ in Miami

Why? The answer is simple. We live in a world ruled by corporations run by Whites of privilege. They control and run a police and judicial system run and controlled by Whites of privilege, too. We live in a US privleged White world where a White privileged and dominated system arrests and tortures prisoners of color without any sense of the human indecency of their actions, fed by an even larger White community that cheers this on. We live in a racist US society.

Nothing that much has changed from the past. MLK’s ‘dream’ is still a dream and not any reality. That is the answer to Why?

For Black Americans especially there is no national security under the so-called national security state. Instead, it is a state of criminal injustice Blacks live under and promises of change for the better cannot be fed when all the recent changes have been for the worse. Racial injustice cannot be disappeared, when class injustice is the norm.

How best to stage manage Pakistan’s regime change?

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Oh what a dilemma! How will the US, champion of world democracy, stage manage regime change for the world’s most populous Muslim country?

It seems that Busharraf is as spent out as the American dollar itself. But Benahir Bushutto is not the military man behind the curtain that the US has to turn to. That general is Leavenworth, Kansas trained, General Ashfaq Kiyani.

Bhutto is the ‘pretty face’ for the American public of American-made Pakistan regime change. In Pakistan itself, she will fail to impress.

I can already imagine the jokes that have to be arising amongst the English speaking intellectual set of Pakistan that will play on this general’s name, Ashfaq. Truth can be stranger than fiction, and it seems that God truly is Great! Ashfaq to power!

And at home in the US, the ambulance chasers are storming the Supreme Court building on behalf of Pakistani regime change! I think these US lawyers don’t quite get it that they should be demanding regime change at home instead of so far, very far away.

Acacia Park IVAW sentry-duty-a-thon

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On Friday November 16 until Sunday November 18, the Colorado Springs chapter of IRAQ VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR will be manning a “Tower Guard” in Acacia Park downtown. This will be a 12-hour a day vigil atop a scaffolding guard post, a motif pioneered earlier this year in DC by veteran Evan Knappenberger, minus assault rifle, minus orders to shoot anything that moved. This weekend local IVAW soldiers will stand atop their own guard tower and all are invited to visit and show their support. It’s a brave thing for these ex-soldiers to come out against the war in [Ft]Carson Springs. Let’s encourage them!
Evan Knappenberger keeping a 7-day Tower Guard vigil in Washington DC September 2007

Police taser kills another mentally ill person

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Pity those that are mentally ill, for they must fear for their lives from those supposedly sworn to protect them. The current police weapon of choice, or course, is now the taser.

The police continue to pretend that the taser is a non-lethal weapon just as the government continues to pretend that it doesn’t brutally torture prisoners. And most all of us pretend that we live in a society ruled by the goodness of Law and Justice. Video of police killing another mentally ill person.

When will we be able to get this nasty weapon away from the police? This weapon allows the police to get lazy, as seen on the film of this murder, and lazy police kill people without any consequence to them at all.

The police have always gotten away with murder, but at least police murder was once considered illegal. Police murder with tasers is now not illegal and is a way to force people into a Russian Roulette game played with their lives, while being totally in the hands of an uncaring police force.

Meltdown times

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We are living in the time of a universal meltdown unlike any ever experienced by any human society ever before. We have military meltdown, economic meltdown, energy supply meltdown, climate meltdown, intellectual meltdown, moral meltdown, the meltdown of our world oceans, forests, farmland, and natural areas, and it is all melting down together and at one and the same time.

Our fanatical, US Right Wing Christian neighbors will find that their ‘rapture’ about all this meltdown will fall quite short of their nonsensical expectations. We can count on their inaction and outright resistance with dealing realistically with any problems at all.

It is as if we were caught in a burning fire, and these Christian nuts are trying to push us all back inside the building instead of trying to get even themselves outside safe from the flames. They are telling us to close the doors and not to go outside since we might catch a Cold!

What is most apparent, is that all of the traditional leaders, religious, economic, and political, are totally incapable of providing any real leadership to help deal with our current realities, and not just the fanatical Right Wing Christian nutters. It is as if everybody is incapable of any thought outside of their own little ‘boxes’.

We have a tsunami headed our way, and our leaders are still playing on the beach in vacation from reality. The meltdown will come ashore to a Land of Denial… a Land of Total Denial.

YES, I feel like the proverbial bearded and robed guy holding high the sign that says,

[[[[ The End is Near ]]]]

…but it really is this time. The future is defintely grim.

There must be some new med for this depression? But then again, maybe not? What does NMT’s sane mass following think? Is there any hope at all for the world still? Is there hope for the mentally ill?

Is there hope still for dealing with this insanity without being sucked into total despair? It is the waiting that is actually the hardest. And will anybody ever wake up from this nasty nightmare and do something sane?

And perhaps worse yet, what will happen when all wake up at the same time? What will that be like? I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see it.

The King of Spain is a royal asshole

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The international press has been reporting for everybody the spectacle of the King of Spain putting down Hugo Chavez with his comment ‘Why don’t you shut up, Little Boy?’ Why the King of Spain should be attending a summit meeting in Santiago, Chile is never questioned at all though?

Actually, the royal family of Spain is a royal group of royal assholes just like it is with the royal family of England. Can’t somebody chop off their heads please, since this is the 21st century, is it not? There is no need to have kings and queens around any more, not even for ceremonial purposes let alone having them attend summit meetings between countries while opening their big, royally stupid mouths.

It is also interesting to know that it is even against the law in Spain, a supposed democratic country of Europe, to insult the royal family. That being said, the King of Spain is a total asshole for sure. ( I hope they don’t try to put me in prison for 2 years for saying this. There would go my Spanish vacation!)

And they make fun of the laws of Thailand protecting their royal king asshole from cartoons, etc.? The Europeans need to clean up their own royal assholes first, it appears.

The War must go on, Dissident Bugs

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Police think of dissenters as bugs that must be sprayed on behalf of the moneymakers. That’s what can be seen in Olympia, Washington.

You are a bug if you try to stop the war, even if you are a veteran, too, one might add. Gone are the days when veterans thought that they might be loved unconditionally by The Establishment.

Denver Veterans let their antiwar message be known

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Veterans for Peace march in Denver Veterans Day ParadeThe antiwar Denver veterans did march in this years Veterans Day Parade in that city, and it was the right thing to do. Instead of just ceding the event to the government and their jingoist lackey supporters, these veterans took the lead in the Antiwar Movement and showed the whole world that not all vets are militaristic flag waving nitwits, like so many connected to the military industrial complex are. Thank you, Denver antiwar vets! You inspire us.

Setting an example of anti-Semitism

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Adopt an Israeli orphan girl.I ran across this plea for Americans to support orphan girls in Israel. Not adopt, but sponsor. Not orphans, but orphaned GIRLS. I Googled in vain for an orphanage concerned about Israeli orphaned boys. What’s the story?

All societies have orphans, by accident, abuse or neglect. Israel of course will not just infer, but admonish us of their continuing plight, “despicable terrorism.” How many Israeli children are orphaned compared to children in Palestine, Lebanon or other countries with which Zionists are feuding?

I also searched for any orphanages focused solely on their religion’s children, seeking outside funding. How can Jews practice this racism while so quick to accuse others of anti-semitism? Plenty of religions have words to describe their non-believers, but who else insists that outsiders adopt laws which forbid criticism of Jews? What audacity, to expect less fortunate Goyim, the unchosen, to show deference.

The Jewish Religion being matrilineal, its adherents number according to the offspring of its mothers. A Jewish man cannot begat Jewish children. A Jewish wife on the other hand will always propagate the bloodline. Small wonder Israeli soldiers are cast to the wind after their compulsory military service. Like the Mormons, the Jewish religion is only concerned for their spiritual alpha leaders and their girls.

Would this explain this ad’s solitary focus on orphaned Israeli girls? The girl in the picture is blond and blue-eyed, you might think that LEVLALEV is concerned for the Palestinian or Christian orphans of Israel. Nonsense. Remember too, they don’t want you to adopt these girls, but leave the caretaking in Jewish hands. Here’s how their plea concludes:

Over the forty years of its existence, the Kiryat Sanz Children’s Home – now the Rubin-Zeffren Children’s Home – has married off many of its students, who have set up beautiful Jewish households.

The face of legally blind patriotism

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Prosthetic eye with Marines emblemGunnery Sergeant Nick Popaditch lost his eye in the assault on Fallujah. His new glass prosthetic features a holographic emblem of the US Marine Corps.
 
This Veterans Day, Sergeant Popaditch was awarded a medal for pioneering an innovative combat technique. Presuming an ambush, Popaditch called in an airstrike, then drove his tank forward under cover of the C-130 gunship before its firestorm had subsided. As a result Popaditch was injured, but in his words: “(We were) just inflicting a devastating number of casualties on the enemy, and we did it in a way that no one had ever done before.”

This is the same tank commander immortalized on magazine covers in 2003 smoking his cigar as he assisted in toppling Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square. Articles told later of Popaditch’s tank named “Carnivore” storming Fallujah in retaliation for the contractors killed by jubilant Iraqis. Now he’s grabbing attention with his Few-The-Proud cornea. When we recoil at WWII accounts of the Death’s Head Regiment and other unthinkably morose nomenclature and regalia of the enthusiastic Nazis, can we fathom the imaginative horrors of our own X-Box-born killers?

Popaditch acted courageously by venturing into an ordnance maelstrom to certain injury. But whose kind of hero?

Commerce takes Visa or anti-Visa

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Life takes Visa not cashI love this commercial. Life Takes Visa. Life –or here its commerce equivalent– is a well choreographed bakery, a happy flow of patrons interrupted only by a hapless customer who bottlenecks the process by presuming to pay with cash. The scenario presages acceptance of the viewer/consumer’s role as willing cog, but it offers an important economics truism to those who would aspire to monkey-wrench such a dehumanized construct. What does it take to disrupt a well oiled machine? A trifle.

Ever wonder what would happen if a store’s customers all decided to shop the same day? We see it the day after Thanksgiving, but otherwise most of us distribute ourselves evenly across the calendar. It’s the market’s invisible hand and retail business models are fashioned accordingly. What happens when someone organizes a boycott, or otherwise interferes with the statistical flow? We can see it in this ad: Chaos and collapse. A boycott doesn’t have to convince a majority of consumers to curb their spending, it need only reach a number critical to upset the applecart. As management practices streamline labor efficiencies, even a small interruption in demand can wreak a disproportion of havoc.

It will not be for lack of a credit card (though certainly for lack of consumer credit!), but fliers or a picket line, can effect the balance sheet, most of all because the potential liabilities they pose cannot be predicted, and margins of profit cannot then be insured. The demise of your worst nightmare of a blood-sucking capitalist is but a garlic-breath away. You may be kept to feel by the corporate media that you are powerless to contravene, but here’s an ad they are too cynical to have censored. YOU can bring their machinations to a cathartic stop.

Veterans and Peace

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Tomorrow is the annual Veterans Day Parade here in Colorado Springs and the local peace group, Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, has decided to hide in the shadows rather than attend this event with a message for PEACE. In taking this cowardly stance, they are betraying those veterans that oppose the war that is turning US soldiers and Iraqis alike into cannon fodder so that the US military-industrial complex can continue to grow and profit.

Also, this parade is heavily subsidized by our tax monies. The pretense that it is a private event is patently false, since many military units often attend these events all around the country. In short, we pay money to the government that maintains the military, and the government then parades the military through the streets demanding that both the government and its military be backed up in support for its invasions, occupations, and destruction of foreign countries.

The Justice and Peace Commission not only is failing to show support for veterans by not taking a pro-PEACE message to this parade, but is also failing to support the right of ALL citizens to speak freely in this city with out being clobbered by the police when the message is Against War, and not for it. This group just does not have its act together at this time, which is a crying shame.

Fools of Fred

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Let’s face it, ‘Rudy’ and ‘Hillary’ are not that popular. ‘Rudy’ is too New York, too much a moral slacker, and too much a buffoon for many Republicans. That’s where Fools of Fred come in. He exudes deep, dumb America of the Dixie past, or Reagan to Dubya to neo-Reagan once again.

We might get the Fools of Fred running the Empire soon? A Rifleman rerun of sorts… The System says if enuf of yuh can’t stomach Hillary and Rudy, then we will give you country ‘Fred’. And they call that democracy.

Are you a fool of Fred? Or will you become an Anybody But Fred type? The rest of the world will be laughing between their tears. This is the America that wants to lead the world, and a sad sight it is.

US sadism

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Forcing witches to confess
‘This doesn’t really hurt, now, does it?’, Donald says with a gleam in his eye. Albert responds, ‘No, I think he actually likes it.’ Michael sez, ‘Oh yes, let the judge decide! Have another drink of water now…’ The Clown repeats, ‘America does not torture you. America does not use torture. This is not torture.’ And Dick, who is getting older, snores.

Venezuelan top general throws in lot with US

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Venezuelan defectorA key figure in the Venezuelan military, Gen. Raul Isaias Baduel, has decided to jump ship and cast his lot with the US. He has become highly uncomfortable, as Chavez has been busy dismantling the entrenched power foundations of the Venezuelan elites, and implementing new institutions that would better help defend Venezuela from US plans to overturn social reform there.

The rallying cry to move the Venezuelan Revolution forward has become Chavez’s call to reform the constitution. The Church, the military elite, and the top business elite oppose this, and continue to convince many in the Venezuelan middle class that it is better to allow the US to manage national affairs rather than allow the lower classes an opportunity to a better society for all.

By jumping ship, General Baduel is calling for rebellion inside the ranks of the Venezuelan military and asking that elements there support another US coup attempt on the Chavez led government. There are increased signs that the US government will take soon time away from their affairs of screwing over the Middle East and Africa, and advance toward committing new military aggressions against Latin America, against Cuba and Venezuela. In this, both the Democrats and Republicans are united.

Democrats can expunge the good apples

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Stephen Colbert takes on Betsy RossComedic point man Stephen Colbert has been deprived of his chance to run for office in the state of North Carolina. Both parties voted to keep him off the ballot. The move disheartened a lot of fans but surprised no one. That the Democrats did it is going to surprise my friend George.

A friend of mine is an organizer for the Democratic Party. For years I’ve asked him why the Dems can’t excommunicate Lieberman and other Democrat Benedict Arnolds. Apparently the Democratic open arms policy doesn’t work that way. Anyone can be a Democrat, all are welcome. It’s a critical difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Apparently not. They’re both only interested in rotten apples.

Shit

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What to do with the world’s shit? That question remains the world’s biggest health question.

With all the money being wasted it is incredible that world capitalism still has almost half the world’s population having to shit on themselves almost literally. Kind of kills the claims about capitalism being all that efficient an economic system, does it not? World Toilet Summit: Sanitation Beyond Septic Tanks and Sewers