Civilians everywhere receive special care

From the AP comes news of nearly 6,500 civilians killed in ______: “Foreign Secretary [X] said the government took special care to avoid civilian casualties, and that many of those killed were combatants dressed in civilian clothing.”

“At least 6,432 civilians have been killed in the intense fighting over the past three months and 13,946 wounded, according to a private U.N. document circulated among diplomatic missions in ________ in recent days. A foreign diplomat gave a copy to The Associated Press on Friday.

“The U.N. has declined to publicly release its casualty figures and had no immediate comment on the document.

“Civilian deaths have increased dramatically, according to the U.N. An average of 33 civilians were killed each day at the end of January, and that jumped to 116 by April, the document said. More than 5,500 of those killed were inside a government-declared “no-fire” zone.

US Army blankets are generic today

US Army blanketWhen I was assembling my dorm room kit for college, I wanted an army blanket as a bed cover. For reasons I must have understood better then, the heavy duty olive drab wool, emblazoned with a U.S. monogram, was inarguably cool. Its generic quality was iconic, thus it had a caché more authentic than a stack of Izods. I considered my Army blanket to be the No. 2 Pencil of bed linens.

I forgot about that blanket until the Ward Churchill trial in Denver, when the contention arose whether the US army spread small pox to North Dakota Indians by means of infected blankets. Native American oral tradition has been retelling this tale, but the White Man’s narrative is pushing back.

The ignoble suggestion remains a penciled notation in American History texts, except by scholars such as Churchill, because anti-revisionists want to see more proof. Deniers seem to willfully overlook that perpetrators might have cloaked their trail, sooner than document their scurrilous coup. Where are the blankets, or invoices for the blankets? With only songs about the blankets, how is anyone to confirm their provenance? It’s hearsay, the defenders say, bitter, vindictive slander to implicate the US Army for the 1837 small pox epidemic, just because the Red Man’s comprehension could not attribute another cause.

Although the Indian accounts aren’t so pointed. They tell of an Indian chief who stole the blankets from the white soldiers, unwittingly bringing the outbreak back to his camp.

Now I’ll not assert that US Army blankets have always had a “U.S.” stenciled on them, nor even that they were army-colored, as khaki wasn’t on the uniform palette until the turn of the century. But governments have always needed to distinguish government property, to discourage their agents from divesting of their standard issue for personal gain.

I will contend that it is only from the perspective of our contemporary culture of abundance, that we presume a blanket is nondescript without a trademark. In our overloaded consumer economy, it is not unreasonable to believe that an item without its receipt cannot be assumed to have come from a particular store. Indeed we need designer logos to differentiate products when we cannot assess the quality for ourselves. Today, even thread-counters are at pains to tell an Eddie Bauer from a CJ Crew by touch. But not so in the Wild West. The carpet-bagger mercantile purveyors of the West may have ushered in mass-produced dry goods, but I hardly think varieties were indistinguishable. Wanna bet there was quite a difference between blankets woven by Indians, blankets bartered from trading posts, and standard army issue?

Republican-Democrat? It’s a Christian thing.

I have to delineate this in three different perspectives, that of Christians who don’t preach that God tells us to kill people, people who say they’re Christians and that God DOES say to kill and torture people, and people who don’t claim the name of Christ and say that God doesn’t tell us to kill and torture people.

Since the issue was raised, why Republican makes such a huge difference:

They not only are making Torture and Killing the major part of their platform for the mid-term elections but for the 2012.

I brought up Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal because they’re both being considered as candidates

They also, like the entire leadership of their party and the only vocal members of their party, who are fortunately very loud in their screams for the blood of everybody who Is Not Them….

…claim to be the representatives of God on earth.

Literally.

I don’t listen to KVOR by choice, but the idiots who do like to play it REAL damn loud because that’s the only way they can convince anybody to listen to it.

and a loving God in His infinite mercy and wisdom failed to provide me with ear-lids.

Sarah Palin, for instance, is a lay-minister in the Assembly of God church.

Somehow the AOG has slipped a little in the past 40 years because they used to not allow their women to wear slacks… far less dressing like a crack whore.

Bobby Jindal, Gingrich, Vitter, the list goes on, Huckabee and Romney… aside from all of them being Chickenshit ChickenHawks who are all for killing people just as long as they don’t have to put themselves at risk to do it…

Claim to be Christians. So do the loudmouth rednecks on KVOR. Huckabee is a preacher. Romney took draft deferments because he was doing his Mormon missionary service. Gingrich converted to Catholicism so he could get an annulment from wife #2, thus wife #3 wouldn’t be judged as a whore. Kind of like Henry the Eighth.

He’s also considering a run for President in 2012.

All this in the name of God.

If the R’s hadn’t made these things their entire platform I would be entirely wrong to criticize them (almost) exclusively.

The Democratic Party doesn’t claim an exclusive right to speak for Christians…

Now, see, I AM a Christian, remember? It’s where I get the Brother part of my name.

That means I do have a horse in this race.

If I allowed the Christian version of the Taliban speak unchallenged on this or any other issue I would be betraying God.

And, like the boy scout oath, My Country as well.

A lot of Christians have about zero tolerance for outsiders telling them what’s wrong with with their version of what Christ said and did.

Let’s make that fair, eh? Those readers who are pagans, Buddhists, Jews, Muslim, Atheist, do YOU ever take it kindly when people tell you, speaking from THEIR faith, or the dogma thereof, what YOU as a pagan or Buddhist or Jew or Muslim or Atheist has to believe or how you’re supposed to act as representatives of your faith or lack thereof?

I didn’t think so.

Since I AM a Christian and not ashamed of Christ (although some of my fellow Christians make me queasy and uneasy) I am obliged to point these things out, not just “preaching to the choir” of people who agree with me but ESPECIALLY to Christians who don’t. I took His name, I have to stand against the Murderous blasphemy and to do it in His name.

Or be a collaborator and accomplice to their crimes, the ones they justify with their blasphemous use of God’s name.

The Republican Party are with a united voice claiming that any criticism of their policies is an attack against America and an attack against God.

I say that it is instead an affirmation in my faith and my patriotism to oppose placing my nation squarely in the wrong, and to oppose doing it in the Name of God.

That counts for the first perspective. Mine. And shared by millions upon millions of other American Christians who opposed the Republican agenda precisely on that ground.

The Republicans have a huge amount of available air time and their tame corporate press to spout their bullshit and they do it regularly.

That’s the second perspective and they express it … a LOT and very loudly. For them to deny it would be pointless and laughable.

The third is from non-Christians who have pointed out that God didn’t tell us to kill each other.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road (I’ve got a million unused cliches to tap into)

There’s a Fourth Perspective.

Just like a lot of Christians, and a lot of Atheists, and a lot of Other non-Muslims will say that Islam is a religion of purest hatred, and cite passages in the Koran which are based on very similar passages in the law of Moses…

A lot of non-Christians will say that God did teach murder and torture and other perversions.

And they’ll cite the same scriptures the Hate Freaks like Palin and Gingrich and Bush cited, and they’ll cite every “christian” who is Stupid Enough to follow them.

Follow them explicitly by tossing up the stiff-arm Salute and echoing their bullshit, or follow them implicitly by not opposing their murderous ways.

White Flight from football to assault rifle

Lacrosse baggataway warriorRyan dons the rest of his gear in the car. Pads, armor, helmet, even mouth guard. I adjust the rearview mirror downward until I see his small frame in the backseat. We’re only halfway to practice and he’s already biting down, breathing through his nose, focused straight ahead. It’s the same routine for football, except today he’s got a lacrosse stick across his knees. In his grip, I should say. When we pull the car to the edge of the parking lot, he jumps and literally hits the ground running. From my height he gives me the sense I’m a helicopter pilot who’s dropped soldier reinforcements to join the team on the pitch. There’s a steep hillock between Ryan and the field, but his charge never slows, he ascends like a Cavalry of One, his stick brandished like an assault rifle.

Would an M16 be held any different? The difference between football and lacrosse is that your little assault squad is armed.

In 1763 a band of Chippewa Indians seized Fort Michilimackinac by feigning a game of baggataway, the Native American origin of lacrosse. The Indians pretended that an over-spirited drive led players over the fortifications and within minutes they’d stormed the ramparts.

In a spirit of honoring American Indian tradition, like the harvest celebration of Thanksgiving, American dads are pushing a new sport unto the youth athletic season. Because the first early adopters where also the first white men to hit the New World, the sport now has a Mayflower WASP identity too.

Lacrosse has an exotic appeal in spite of its New England tradition. It’s sort of field hockey gone aerial, full court jai alai with armor, East Coast blue blood rooted with the authentic red bloods, the original old money land owners.

Is that what’s behind the lacrosse resurgence? As Ryan’s team wrapped up the other day, they passed baseball diamonds and could not hold back from chanting “lacrosse, lacrosse” toward the children playing baseball, as if to instigate a cross-sport rivalry. Lacrosse teams are still relatively scarce. On weekends they have to cross neighboring metropolitan regions to play each other.

How many sports programs do you need to round out your kids? Boys have baseball, football and basketball, among the big team sports. Neither of which are the biggest sports internationally. Soccer and handball. Curiously both those require little equipment. They are perfect for the Third World, but imperfect for consumer cultures which have wheels of commerce to drive, especially in recreational pursuits.

Which could explain why Lacrosse teams have to traverse great distances to encounter adversaries. The usual cross town rivals can’t pony up the money for this game.

Lacrosse is White Flight from football. Most schools have barely enough money to keep their athletes in football gear, let alone a completely redundant lacrosse kit. And so the only kids playing lacrosse are from families who can afford the hundreds extra for the specialized equipment. Added bonus, there are no players bringing a black athletic advantage to the game. Like the other equipment intensive sports of the northern climes, lacrosse is a venue where white boys can dominate, and give their accustomed advantage some elbow room.

I remember a fencing instructor encouraging prospective young pupils at a toney gym, about a peripheral advantage to the sport. Ivy League schools offered fencing scholarships, and prospects outside the usual New England states would be at an advantage for consideration. It was the first glimpse I had of counter-insurgency strategies in America’s race war.

Lacrosse may be the arena where prosperous families can let their white boys roughhouse with supremacy, but the joke’s definitely on them. It’s a sport for social climbers, and this ladder is definitely pointed elsewhere. Is your Playstation 3 teaching options trading or first person combat? Lacrosse is real world preschool basic training.

What does lacrosse impart that Football doesn’t? The teamwork is the same, the size differentials are still key. In both games there is only one ball, but in lacrosse, regardless who has the ball, everyone has a stick. If ever there was a sport which prepared athlete soldiers, lacrosse is it.

The sport of real blue bloods was always Rugby. In England, where commoners play rugby, you can always tell the rugby veterans by their broken noses and missing teeth. In America it’s the preference of the prep schools and private colleges, where offspring of the affluent can acquire scars without fear that it will hinder their job prospects because their futures are secure.

America’s white settlers weren’t blue bloods, they were the ground troops dispatched to seize the continent. It looks to me, the same American Dreamers are being tweaked again into service of the empire. The poor bigoted middle class is turning their boys out for real war.

UN Security Council and US government rubber stamp Sinhalese slaughter of Tamils in Sri Lanka

Like how the UN Security Council and the US government ONCE hid in the shadows egging on Saddam Hussein-led Iraq and its assault on Iran in previous times, today it is doing the same with the Sri Lanka Civil War. But Saddam Hussein couldn’t get in the death blow against Iran that the Security Council lusted for on behalf of the US in the ’80s. Sinhalese Sri Lanka is though against its Tamil opposition, and now the Security Council has come out of the shadows and is egging the final kill on. See Tamil Tigers urged to surrender (by UN Security Council)

Geopolitical reasons always dictate who the world corporate press declares as being righteous and who is denounces as being villainous in these conflicts. The US and its European allies have definitely tilted towards using India as regional ally against China and Russia, and India wants the end of Tamil rebellion, both inside India itself, and also inside Sri Lanka. That’s enough to spin the conflict as it is being done. While the ‘Security Council’ with the name of the United Nations attached to itself is calling for the Tamil insurrection to lay down its arms, we sincerely doubt that it will ever do anything to protect the Tamil population from slaughter at the hands of Sri Lanka’s government. It certainly hasn’t in the past.

“That Small Nations Might Be Free”…

Which was a propaganda line the British, French and Belgian Empires used to justify sending millions of “their” subjects to die in the trenches of World War One… same standard is now being used for Space Technology.

Sure, any nation can participate in the technology… as long as they do it by the Rules Set Forth…

By the Empire…

Much like Irish and Scots and other Subjects of the King were conscripted into the British Army… to fight for the noble cause that even the smallest nation had the same National Rights as the Great Powers.

By a truly equitable application of the standards used by American and British and Israeli “Nationalists”, North Korea or Iran could invade America, kill any who resist, imprison anybody they wished as “Unlawful Combatants”.

But, Ah! (you say) Iran and North Korea don’t have the technology or the Raw Power to do that, and of course, Might Makes Right…

And if they look like they might acquire such powers we should invade them and force them to their knees and force them to beg “our” God-damn forgiveness for thinking themselves our Equals.

Back to the British Standard in WW1, the IRA could have conscripted Englishmen to fight against England.

Or, as the song continues, die “at Subla sud-Al Bar”

To secure more Resources and land and subjects for the Emperor.

Cheney and other Perverted Torture Freak Scum…

There’s a standard, a psychological finding used to determine
when somebody is a serial killer, and determine whether he is
worthy of the death penalty.
The prosecution doesn’t actually NEED it in many cases, but they
always do the testing and make the determination.

It’s a level of sociopathy wherein one has a fetish for causing
pain, or even death, and becomes sexually aroused by it.

The same standard can be applied to torturers.

Those who do the “dirty work” themselves, and those who direct
their actions, such as George Bush and Richard Cheney.

Their clones John and Sarah as well, and those who, knowing the
bastards were engaged in these unholy perversions, supported them
anyway.

There’s another Legal standard, “accomplice before and/or after the fact”.

This has also been often used in Death Penalty cases, sometimes the
“first to squeal, gets the deal” will be the one who actually
pulled the trigger.

And get a life sentence while his partners in crime get the needle,
or the gas in California or the bullet in Utah.

The standards for determining “torture” and “war crimes” used to
convict the Nazis, and lately Saddam Hussein and many of his
friends and family, also convicts Richard Cheney and his
meat-puppet George Bush.

…and the people who support them.

People like Bobby Jindal and Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, the people
who VOTED for them.

I’m often told that this is overly harsh, people say stupid crap
like the Torturers keep us safe.

But the only way a Torturer can accomplish his job is if he or she enjoys it.

On an extremely basic sexual level.

Torture, like serial murder, is a vicious form of rape.

People tell me “How dare you say that! My son, daughter, husband,
father—whoever— works at Abu Ghraib or Khandahar or Guantanamo”

Hey, the fact that the Perverts are related to the whiners who say
that doesn’t make the Perverts any less guilty.

Your son or daughter works at one of the Torture Centers, your son
or daughter is a Rapist. It is EXACTLY that simple.

The Torturers keep us safe? Are you sure?

Do you REALLY want to trust the future governance of our nation to
Perverts who get their rocks off to killing or hurting people?

They’re “only doing their jobs”? They’re not forced to take the
job. They seek out the job because it gives them an opportunity to
exercise Ultimate Control over another human being, and, because
they, like Bush and Cheney and Jindal and Gingrich, are physical
cowards… they have to have helpless victims.

They have to have their Gang back them up on everything.

They took the job not out of Patriotism or a sense of Duty, nothing
nearly that noble. They took the job because they enjoy doing it,
and some Dumbass Dubya appointee hired them to do it and gave them
immunity.

The only substantial difference between them and the dude strapped
to a table with a needle in his arm, THEY have the support of “our”
Government.

And enough people who are Stupid enough to support them unconditionally.

One other thing,..

A determination of somebody being a habitual killer is strengthened
if the person attributes his actions to God.

Like George and Sarah do…

And their good friend Erik Prince, the Murderer in Chief of the
Blackwater mercenaries does…

For those of you who do support those types of action, there’s an
excellent description from Professor Churchill:

Little Eichmanns.

Just following orders, right(wing)?

UN, US, and EU all split on how best to continue to plague Somalia?

pirate obamaUN head against new Somalia force ‘In December, Mr Ban had said few countries were willing to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia, as there was no peace to keep.’ That would be the United States’ fault since they tore the country apart along with the help of Ethiopia’s dictator.

Again ‘the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, warned against sending a UN peacekeeping force to Somalia.’ He was opposing a push by the US controlled ‘UN’ Security Council to gather yet more mercenary troops to occupy Somalia with, now that the Ethiopians have long gone arunning from the havoc they caused while serving George W. Bush.

Why is Barack Obama so eager to continue doing the same wrecking job? Are there now too many underage ‘pirates’ pestering the Buccaneer Emperor for him to pullout from screwing Somalia?

For more coverage, see the BBC’s report… On Board a White Pirate Vessel

One man’s Guerrier, another’s Terroriste

WELL LOOKY WHAT I FOUND! Published in France just after the war, this book is about “LES TERRORISTES.” Can you tell by the cover art, who play the title role?
Souvenais-vous, les Terroristes

USA POST-2001: America designates its war zone detainees as EPWs, or “Enemy Prisoners of War,” because to call them POWs would confuse public sympathies. To the average American, “P.O.W.” commemorates the GI captivity experience in Vietnam or Korea. When a soldier of ours is caught, that’s a POW. To grant both sides equal status would be to humanize our enemy. Of course, POW used to mean all “Prisoners Of War,” ours and theirs, in WWII days, before, and as mentioned in all international conventions.

We label the people of Iraq or Afghanistan who resist our occupation, as insurgents. Be they Bathists or Taliban, we call their cause an insurgency, not a resistance, because that would confuse American public affection for the French Resistance: La Resistance! Every nation in Occupied Europe had a resistance movement, and the WWII archetypes are still fresh. Occupiers equal Germans. Collaborators equal cowards, traitors, Qwislings, Vichy. Resistance fighters equal the heroes.

Since then, American occupations, of postwar France for example, have avoided mention of their assigned task. In Germany and Japan, US soldiers are merely “stationed” there. In countries which we’ve invaded, like Vietnam, Americans denied being the despised occupiers, we were advisors, protectors, etc. And the populations who opposed our military administration were insurgents, and if they attacked us by unconventional means, they were terrorists!

In Iraq as well as Afghanistan, the American spectator can discern that al-Qaeda has been the only named terrorist organization, yet Sunni, Shiite, and Taliban fighters are all called terrorists. Militant Islam is considered terrorist, Hezbollah and Hamas liberation movements are called terrorist, even the Somali pirate brigands are being condemned as terrorists.

So who were “Les Terroristes” of Occupied France? The book cover heeds us to “Souvenais-vous!” Never forget them. The book is full of their pictures and accounts of their brave deeds. Most of them fell to the Nazis, to firing squads and Gestapo tortures. The brave Terroristes were the scourge of the German Occupation, rooted out and almost eradicated before the last year of the war. The Nazis called them “terrorists,” they were LA RESISTANCE!

Operation Lead Ass Cast

israeli military court
‘The Israel Defense Forces announced on Wednesday that an internal investigation has determined that no civilians were purposefully harmed by IDF troops during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. The inquiries were performed by five IDF colonels who were not involved in the fighting in Cast Lead’, but are now dug deep in the trenches of Operation Lead Ass Cast.

Obama hugs Dick Cheney and says torture works!

Obama doesn’t want to prosecute criminal torturers and rallies CIA dogs at rally! Obama says torture works and says Banned Techniques Yielded ‘High Value Information’ Barack Obama hugs Dick Cheney, and says, ‘You did well! We just need to step back some for a while and change (HINT, HINT… code word for do nothing). You understand, don’t you?’

Thanks liberals! You really solved the problem with your votes. Good work. No need to do anything else. Problem solved.

No seriously? Isn’t Barack Obama enough to turn your stomach? Black Man talk with forked tongue. White Man in Black Face talk with forked tongue.

Boy is this a sick country! We’re going nowhere but fast! With liberals like these, who needs Dick Cheney?

How long can the US and Mexico militarily occupy Ciudad Juarez?

Felipe CalderonCiudad Juarez is a city of 1,500,000 plus people directly opposite El Paso, Texas, and Presidente Fecal Calderon and his Gringo manager, US President Barack Obama, have occupied the city with 10,000 Mexican troops. In short, this is where and what the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ has ‘retreated’ to.

Sure military pacification works short term but not long term, as the examples of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Gaza so poignantly illustrate. So what happens when the troops are withdrawn, and they eventually must be? What happens then? See An Army Takeover Quells Violence in Mexico/ Drug Killings in Juarez Plummet, but Rights Complaints Surge

My guess is that they move on and occupy with troops yet other major cities in the years ahead. And eventually… voila! we have a situation much like that of Colombia. In other words, ‘the solution’ becomes the bigger problem.

Saipan abuses impervious to outrage?

A 2006 article in MS Magazine exposed labor abuse in the US territories of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Have conditions changed since protectors Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff were dislodged? Consider that US Senator Daniel Kahikina delivered this condemnation of human exploitation in the Saipan in 1998.

The Commonwealth shares our American flag, but it does not share the American system of immigration.

There is something fundamentally wrong with a CNMI immigration system that issues permits to recruiters, who in turn promise well-paying American jobs to foreigners in exchange for a $6,000 recruitment fee. When the workers arrive in Saipan, they find their recruiter has vanished and there are no jobs in sight. Hundreds of these destitute workers roam the streets of Saipan with little or no chance of employment and no hope of returning to their homeland.

The State Department has confirmed that the government of China is an active participant in the CNMI immigration system. There is something fundamentally wrong with an immigration system that allows the government of China to prohibit Chinese workers from exercising political or religious freedom while employed in United States.

Something is fundamentally wrong with a CNMI immigration system that issues entry permits for 12- and 13-year-old girls from the Philippines and other Asian nations, and allows their employers to use them for live sex shows and prostitution.

Finally, something is fundamentally wrong when a Chinese construction worker asks if he can sell one of his kidneys for enough money to return to China and escape the deplorable working conditions in the Commonwealth and the immigration system that brought him there.

There are voices in the CNMI telling us that the cases of worker abuse we keep hearing about are isolated examples, that the system is improving, and that worker abuse is a thing of the past. These are the same voices that reap the economic benefits of a system of indentured labor that enslaves thousands of foreign workers — a system described in a bi-partisan study as “an unsustainable economic, social and political system that is antithetical to most American values.”

There is overwhelming evidence that abuse in the CNMI occurs on a grand scale and the problems are far from isolated.

The Full Text of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s speech

AhmadinejadAt last we have a copy of the full text of the Iranian President’s speech at the Durban Review Conference on racism and now we can examine just how it has been misrepresented as vile, ugly, and racist by vile ugly racists. The fact is that the main point of the speech actually has next to nothing to do directly with Israel or Jewish people at all, but rather is an attack on the war-like and imperialist United Nation Security Council and the undemocratic nature of this US controlled organization.

He essentially calls for its abolishment in the summary of his remarks and it is this Call that actually is the cause of the Made-In-US boycott and subsequent walkout from the anti-racism conference, and not anything else Ahmadinejad said.

President Ahmadinejad….

‘Secondly, mindful of the inefficiency of the current international political, economic and security systems, it is necessary to focus on divine and humanitarian values by referring to the true definition of human beings based upon justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the world and by acknowledging the past wrong doings in the past dominant management of the world, and to undertake collective measures to reform the existing structures.

In this respect, it is crucially important to rapidly reform the structure of the Security Council, including the elimination of the discriminatory veto right and to change the current world financial and monetary systems.

It is evident that lack of understanding of the urgency for change is equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay.’

There is absolutely nothing anti-Jewish in any of his remarks, and the world has had enough of the United Nation Security Council and its constant war making. Many will also champion Ahmadinejad’s call for its abolishment.

FULL TEXT:

(Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the Durban Review Conference on racism in Geneva on April 20, 2009.)

Mr. Chairman, honorable secretary general of the United Nations, honorable United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Ladies and gentleman:

We have gathered in the follow-up to the Durban conference against racism and racial discrimination to work out practical mechanisms for our holy and humanitarian campaigns.

Over the last centuries, humanity has gone through great sufferings and pains. In the Medieval Ages, thinkers and scientists were sentenced to death. It was then followed by a period of slavery and slave trade. Innocent people were taken captive in their millions and separated from their families and loved ones to be taken to Europe and America under the worst conditions. A dark period that also experienced occupation, lootings and massacres of innocent people.

Many years passed by before nations rose up and fought for their liberty and freedom and they paid a high price for it. They lost millions of lives to expel the occupiers and establish independent and national governments. However, it did not take long before power grabbers imposed two wars in Europe which also plagued a part of Asia and Africa. Those horrific wars claimed about a hundred million lives and left behind massive devastation. Had lessons been learnt from the occupations, horrors and crimes of those wars, there would have been a ray of hope for the future.

The victorious powers called themselves the conquerors of the world while ignoring or down treading upon rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us take a look at the UN Security Council which is one of the legacies of World War I and World War II. What was the logic behind their granting themselves the veto right? How can such logic comply with humanitarian or spiritual values? Would it not be inconformity with the recognized principles of justice, equality before the law, love and human dignity? Would it not be discrimination, injustice, violations of human rights or humiliation of the majority of nations and countries?

The council is the highest decision-making world body for safeguarding international peace and security. How can we expect the realization of justice and peace when discrimination is legalized and the origin of the law is dominated by coercion and force rather than by justice and the rights?

Coercion and arrogance is the origin of oppression and wars. Although today many proponents of racism condemn racial discrimination in their words and their slogans, a number of powerful countries have been authorized to decide for other nations based on their own interests and at their own discretion and they can easily violate all laws and humanitarian values as they have done so.

Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine. And, in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.

The Security Council helped stabilize the occupying regime and supported it in the past 60 years giving them a free hand to commit all sorts of atrocities. It is all the more regrettable that a number of Western governments and the United States have committed themselves to defending those racist perpetrators of genocide while the awakened-conscience and free-minded people of the world condemn aggression, brutalities and the bombardment of civilians in Gaza. The supporters of Israel have always been either supportive or silent against the crimes.

Dear friends, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. What are the root causes of the US attacks against Iraq or the invasion of Afghanistan?

Was the motive behind the invasion of Iraq anything other than the arrogance of the then US administration and the mounting pressures on the part of the possessors of wealth and power to expand their sphere of influence seeking the interests of giant arms manufacturing companies affecting a noble culture with thousands of years of historical background, eliminating the potential and practical threats of Muslim countries against the Zionist regime or to control and plunder the energy resources of the Iraqi people?

Why, indeed, almost a million people were killed and injured and a few more millions were displaced? Why, indeed, the Iraqi people have suffered enormous losses amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars? And why was billions of dollars imposed on the American people as the result of these military actions? Was not the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then US administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing countries and the possessors of wealth? Did the invasion of Afghanistan restore peace, security and economic wellbeing in the country?

The United States and its allies not only have failed to contain the production of drugs in Afghanistan, but the cultivation of narcotics has multiplied in the course of their presence. The basic question is that what was the responsibility and the job of the then US administration and its allies?

Did they represent the countries of the world? Have they been mandated by them? Have they been authorized by the people of the world to interfere in all parts of the globe, of course mostly in our region? Are not these measures a clear example of egocentrism, racism, discrimination or infringement upon the dignity and independence of nations?

Ladies and gentlemen, who is responsible for the current global economic crisis? Where did the crisis start from? From Africa, Asia or from the United States in the first place then spreading across Europe and their allies?

For a long time, they imposed inequitable economic regulations by their political power on the international economy. They imposed a financial and monetary system without a proper international oversight mechanism on nations and governments that played no role in repressive trends or policies. They have not even allowed their people to oversea or monitor their financial policies. They introduced all laws and regulations in defiance of all moral values only to protect the interests of the possessors of wealth and power.

They further presented a definition for market economy and competition that denied many of the economic opportunities that could be available to other countries of the world. They even transferred their problems to others while the waves of crisis lashed back plaguing their economies with thousands of billions of dollars in budget deficit. And today, they are injecting hundreds of billions of dollars of cash from the pockets of their own people and other nations into the failing banks, companies and financial institutions making the situation more and more complicated for their economy and their people. They are simply thinking about maintaining power and wealth. They could not care any less about the people of the world and even their own people.

Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen, Racism is rooted in the lack of knowledge concerning the root of human existence as the selected creature of God. It is also the product of his deviation from the true path of human life and the obligations of mankind in the world of creation, failing to consciously worship God, not being able to think about the philosophy of life or the path to perfection that are the main ingredients of divine and humanitarian values which have restricted the horizon of human outlook making transient and limited interests, the yardstick for his action. That is why evil’s power took shape and expanded its realm of power while depriving others from enjoying equitable and just opportunities of development.

The result has been the making of an unbridled racism that is posing the most serious threats against international peace and has hindered the way for building peaceful coexistence in the entire world. Undoubtedly, racism is the symbol of ignorance which has deep roots in history and it is, indeed, the sign of frustration in the development of human society.

It is, therefore, crucially important to trace the manifestations of racism in situations or in societies where ignorance or lack of knowledge prevails. This increasing general awareness and understanding towards the philosophy of human existence is the principle struggle against such manifestations, and reveals the truth that human kind centers on the creation of the universe and the key to solving the problem of racism is a return to spiritual and moral values and finally the inclination to worship God Almighty.

The international community must initiate collective moves to raise awareness in afflicted societies where ignorance of racism still prevails so as to bring to a halt the spread of these malicious manifestations.

Dear Friends, today, the human community is facing a kind of racism which has tarnished the image of humanity in the beginning of the third millennium.

World Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religions and abuses religious sentiments to hide its hatred and ugly face. However, it is of great importance to bring into focus the political goals of some of the world powers and those who control huge economic resources and interests in the world. They mobilize all the resources including their economic and political influence and world media to render support in vain to the Zionist regime and to maliciously diminish the indignity and disgrace of this regime.

This is not simply a question of ignorance and one cannot conclude these ugly phenomena through consular campaigns. Efforts must be made to put an end to the abuse by Zionists and their political and international supporters and in respect with the will and aspirations of nations. Governments must be encouraged and supported in their fights aimed at eradicating this barbaric racism and to move towards reform in current international mechanisms.

There is no doubt that you are all aware of the conspiracies of some powers and Zionist circles against the goals and objectives of this conference. Unfortunately, there have been literatures and statements in support of Zionists and their crimes. And it is the responsibility of honorable representatives of nations to disclose these campaigns which run counter to humanitarian values and principles.

It should be recognized that boycotting such a session as an outstanding international capacity is a true indication of supporting the blatant example of racism. In defending human rights, it is primarily important to defend the rights of all nations to participate equally in all important international decision making processes without the influence of certain world powers.

And secondly, it is necessary to restructure the existing international organizations and their respective arrangements. Therefore this conference is a testing ground and the world public opinion today and tomorrow will judge our decisions and our actions.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, the world is going through rapid fundamental changes. Power relations have become weak and fragile. The sound of cracks in the pillars of world systems can now be heard. Major political and economic structures are on the brink of collapse. Political and security crises are on the rise. The worsening crisis in the world economy for which there can be seen no bright prospect, demonstrates the rising tide of far-reaching global changes. I have repeatedly emphasized the need to change the wrong direction through which the world is being managed today and I have also warned of the dire consequences of any delay in this crucial responsibility.

Now in this valuable event, I would like to announce to all leaders, thinkers and to all nations of the world present in this meeting and those who have a hunger for peace and economic well-being that the unjust economic management of the world is now at the end of the road. This deadlock was inevitable since the logic of this imposed management was oppressive.

The logic of collective management of world affairs is based on noble aspirations which centers on human beings and the supremacy of the almighty God. Therefore it defies any policy or plan which goes against the influence of nations. The victory of right over wrong and the establishment of a just world system has been promised by the Almighty God and his messengers and it has been a shared goal of all human beings from different societies and generations in the course of history. Realization of such a future depends on the knowledge of creation and the belief of the faithful.

The making of a global society is in fact the accomplishment of a noble goal held in the establishment of a common global system that will be run with the participation of all nations of the world in all major decision making processes and the definite root to this sublime goal.

Scientific and technical capacities as well as communication technology have created a common and widespread understanding of the world society and has provided the necessary ground for a common system. Now it is upon all intellectuals, thinkers and policy makers in the world to carry out their historical responsibility with a firm belief in this definite root.

I also want to lay emphasis on the fact that Western liberalism and capitalism has reached its end since it has failed to perceive the truth of the world and humans as they are.

It has imposed its own goals and directions on human beings. There is no regard for human and divine values, justice, freedom, love and brotherhood and it has based living on intense competition, securing individual and cooperative material interest.

Now we must learn from the past by initiating collective efforts in dealing with present challenges and in this connection, and as a closing remark, I wish to draw your kind attention to two important issues:

Firstly, it is absolutely possible to improve the existing situation in the world. However it must be noted that this could be only achieved through the cooperation of all countries in order to get the best out of the existing capacities and resources in the world. My participation in this conference is because of my conviction to these important issues as well as to our common responsibility of defending the rights of nations vis-à-vis the sinister phenomena of racism and being with you, the thinkers of the world.

Secondly, mindful of the inefficiency of the current international political, economic and security systems, it is necessary to focus on divine and humanitarian values by referring to the true definition of human beings based upon justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the world and by acknowledging the past wrong doings in the past dominant management of the world, and to undertake collective measures to reform the existing structures.

In this respect, it is crucially important to rapidly reform the structure of the Security Council, including the elimination of the discriminatory veto right and to change the current world financial and monetary systems.

It is evident that lack of understanding of the urgency for change is equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay.

Dear Friends, beware that to move in the direction of justice and human dignity is like a rapid flow in the current of a river. Let us not forget the essence of love and affection. The promised future of human beings is a great asset that may serve our purposes in keeping together to build a new world.

In order to make the world a better place full of love and blessings, a world devoid of poverty and hatred, merging the increasing blessings of God Almighty and the righteous managing of the perfect human being, let us all join hands in friendship in the fulfillment of such a new world.

I thank you Mr. President, Secretary General and all distinguished participants for having the patience to listen to me. Thank you very much.

Singing a song of angry men

Citizens of France rise against the will of the absolute monarchDo you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums,
There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes.

If you search online for Les Miserables lyrics, strangely you find only the first stanza of DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING, repeated three times. The other refrains are in the Finale. Have a read.

Have Gandhi or Mandela or MLK or His Holiness the Dalai Lama, delivered anyone yet from impoverished misery, persecution, or captive servitude to the idle rich? When you want to put your fate into your own hands, maybe it’s going to take guts.

Do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums,
There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance?
Some will fall and some will live, will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing, lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light.
Oer the wretched of the Earth there is a flame than never dies.
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the plowshare, they will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward.

Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing? Say do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes.

Gore says 2009 is Turning Point in Environment Battle- Isn’t that a bunch of complete nonsense?

al gore aglowThe DP liberals over at the Common Dreams website are out there pushing Al Gore dope off on us once again.

To the liberal ‘Peace’crat voter, somehow they have remade in their own minds Al Gore out to be the MAX ‘Green’, who is then made to stand alongside that MAX ‘Peacenic’, Jimmy ‘Peanut Butter’ Carter, always the two out under the spotlight as neo Democratic Party Saints!

Here it is then… Gore: 2009 Turning Point in Environment Battle …WTF? Not hardly, Al. Not even by a long shot! What a dope! And what a Democratic Party hack!

If you’re not on CD’s no fly shun list feel free to write them about pee GREEN Al. I did, and my comment is listed at #5 on the list of comments. I wonder if it will be removed? (I’m hoping that CD has gotten away from that sort of thing though???)

Just in case, here below are my remarks about Al Gore there.
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Gore, wasn’t he the ‘environmentalist’ who administered 8 years of economic war against the children of Iraq? YES! Now I remember him! He also began the fencing off and militarization of The Border between the US and Mexico, too. He is some sort of Green for sure! He and his Administration friends, Silvestre Reyes and Madelyn Albright.

Wait, something about oil in Colombia, too? And here’s Al in March this year…

‘I’m not a reflexive opponent of nuclear. I used to be enthusiastic about it, but I’m now sceptical about it.’

Well, YES, Al! My you’ve changed! Or have you really?

‘Yes, there is [more appetite for nuclear power now]. And because of the carbon crisis there will be more nuclear plants built and some of those being retired will be replaced by others. I think it will play a somewhat larger role, but it will not be the main option chosen.’

YES, such scepticism!

‘. People have said for years that there are now completely different [nuclear] technologies. OK, but if you have a team of scientists that can build a reactor, and you’re a dictator, you can make them work at night to build a nuclear weapon. That’s what’s happened in North Korea and Iran. And in Libya before they gave it up. So the idea of, say, Chad, Burma, and Sudan having lots of nuclear reactors is insane and it’s not going to happen.’

Let’s go to war, Gore! It’s the ‘green’ thing to do and now I see what a great environmentalist you are! You’re against nuclear power in Iran and Chad and Burma! Of course, but here it will be an option, but just maybe not ‘the major option’?

(Remarks taken from a Leo Hickman interview with Gore for the UK Guardian)
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And a final comment about Al Gore not put on CD just yet from The Tennessee Center for policy Research a comment titled

Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”
Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average

He says he’s fixed all that up though, using his own company, Generation Investment Management. He hopes to turn a nice profit in the eco- Business World while saving the planet for the Democratic Party!

Suddenly colored television

Today Show-network now African AmericanImmediately after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the term “Nine Eleven” was already tripping off the tongues of TV talking heads as if it was more natural than saying “last Monday,” or “last week Monday,” before even we knew the attack was not going to last several days. The day after the election of Barack Obama, a suddenly large proportion of the TV talking heads were black, overnight, like it had become some sort of costume party theme.

Television has become colorized, and much more vigorously than Ted Turner might have ever intended.

Have you noticed? On post-Bush television, Black is the new focus of equal-time. When pundits are summoned, now there’s a black person among them. Nothing wrong with this development. Whatever years of seasoning these new African-American faces may lack, they make up for by being visibly brighter than the vacuous white-breads they replaced. There must be an entire class of Anglo-Saxon communication majors who are lamenting the great lost entitlement of 2009.

It’s a fine development, though certainly limited in its generosity. The proportion of African Americans to the total population, is vastly smaller than the new TV ratio. Conversely, over half the US public is progressive. But still almost zero percent of the corporate media personalities reflect that.

Where did all these colored faces come from? Had they been training in the wings, for just this contingency? It’s a wise move on the part of the networks. President Obama and his family would be looking pretty dark against the sea of white Washington DC. Someone could confuse him for security or kitchen staff, but for the media framing of black commentators to remind White America that there is no cause to panic, the new American lens is colorblind.

It should be, but is it? White man still looks upon dark-skinned people as requiring domination. American urban blacks are to incarcerate, African blacks are to rescue, and insurgent/Muslim/pirate blacks are to lynch. I’m not sure we don’t really long to lynch the bunch of them, if AIDS isn’t thinning their number fast enough for our taste.

Hitch your horse to this manservantObama meanwhile is the black man we invite to dinner. And these colored teevee folk too. They’re not poor blacks after all. They’re the Thomas Sowells, Uncle Toms, educated reformed black people. Rich black people are the new lawn jockeys.

Okay, so the corporate media wants to project an urbane sophistication about integrating racial harmony into its facade. We hope, I suppose, that by portraying it so, they can make it so. I think we have to wonder if that’s the real manipulation.

The day after September 11, the term “Nine Eleven” was coined before most of us knew what even happened. Flights were grounded anticipating more attacks. How curious that the experts were calling it “9/11” when it might still have turned out to be 9/11 – 17 or other. They’d gotten the memo about how to frame the “world-changing” development, complete with its catchy catchphrase.

Obama is just such another media campaign, to assuage the darker-skinned world that the Great White West comes in peace, see look, we love our Darkies. We respect them, we ask their advice, we put them up in the White House.

This year’s Clio Award, the advertising world’s Oscar, for best campaign, went to Barack Obama. What does that tell you about the collective effort involved, and the focused objective of the marketing?

Clansmen hold a rally in Washington DC

Zionist Right Wing launches new effort to fire another Left university professor

William RobinsonUniversity of California- Santa Barbara Sociology and Global Studies Professor, William Robinson, is under attack from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for having spoken out against Israeli military atrocities in Gaza. Their position is quite simple and is that he should either shut up or be fired. See The Robinson Case

A quick view of his defense site shows that this professor and his supporters are quite aware of the nature of this enemy of free speech they are up against. See Academic Freedom in the News The Anti-Defamation League perversely spends much of its time trying to shut people up and defame them, so to speak. As another example of how this works, see the recent Right Wing attacks against President Obama himself for having shook hands with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Below is a passage of a news report about Obama and Hugo Chavez’s meeting last week.

‘Obama returned to Washington early Sunday evening. But even before he got back, Obama was facing condemnation from some Republicans about how he dealt with Chavez. “I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez,” said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.’

While the Anti-Defamation League itself is not trying directly to remove Obama from office (they love Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff way too much!), they do have a campaign going full steam to falsely label Hugo Chavez as being antisemitic. See ADL’s report below…

“What is troubling about Venezuela is that anti-Semitism is being used as a political tool,” Mr. Foxman said. “Anti-Semitism is fostered by those at the highest levels of government, trickled down the government apparatus and left unchallenged by officials in the Chavez regime, the government-controlled media, and civic and religious leaders who support the regime in Venezuela.

“We are encouraged by the many expressions of support for the Venezuelan Jewish community coming from opposition politicians and independent media outlets, who we believe more accurately reflect the views and feelings of the vast majority of the Venezuelan people.”

That is an excerpt from their website’s ADL Report: Venezuelan Jewish Community Under Threat

Coming after the US coup attempt and kidnapping of Hugo Chavez, one rather imagines that the ADL has the whole situation backwards. It is not the Chavez government that is anti-Semitic at all, but rather that it is the Right Wing Zionist Movement that is anti-Chavez. They want him removed just like they want all radical Left antiwar professors removed from their academic posts inside the US. And the ADL campaign against Venezuela’s current government moves hand in hand with the Republican campaign against Obama for shaking hands and laughing alongside Hugo Chavez. Both the Republican Right and the ADL simply want to stifle all views critical of US foreign policy and Israeli government policy.

This Israeli-made campaign to silence and trash all critics of the Jewish State hegemony in the Middle East promoted in US foreign policy even has been seen down to the level of covert attacks on American blogs like this one. That is why we now express our own solidarity with UCSB professor William Robinson. We will not, and should not, let them silence us all. They have many tools of intimidation and censorship and we need to bring to the light of day all of them.

Yes, they may succeed at silencing an individual critic of Israel here and there but our Movement to expose the reactionary nature of US foreign policy use of Israeli Zionist Jewish State propaganda grows stronger over time. People around the globe are simply getting fed up with the racism and imperialism that are political cornerstones of the Israeli and US governments. The truth will continue to rise up through the blankets of neo-con and Zionist propaganda for having yet more of their bloodshed and pillage.

Visit Professor Robinson’s website

US directed walkout of conference threatens Iran with extension of regional US planned war

The truth hurts and the US and its allies don’t like it when it is spoken. Because of that reality, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had his honest speech at the UN anti-racism conference being held in Switzerland interrupted by a hateful US government whose main message is more war soon against even more of the uppity Middle East ‘darkies’. Racism talks expose deep divisions

The justification for the walkout led by the US government was supposedly that the speech by Ahmadinejad was intolerable and racist itself. Almost all those who walked out though, were White Europeans and White English speaking government neo-colonialist representatives from around the globe! Poor Whitey! How they struggle against racism in the world today. NOT, and never did either.

Since the speech was the supposed cause of their supposed indignation, I looked across the web to find a full English language transcript of it published, with the certain knowledge that if it truly was offensive, that both Israel and the US would have rushed out this transcript with great haste? But I couldn’t find one! Go figure then? Why not?

At this time, one must simply wait until more of the truth trickles out for us that await it, as this full transcript will eventually be released in English. What is for sure until then, is that the simple fact of this US led boycott and walkout of this UN anti-racist conference signaled to the entire world, that the US government with its new warmonger CIC Barack Obama at the helm, is jumping for an opportunity to committing yet more bloodshed against others and yet more war against the ‘darkies’ out there. And all to supposedly keep safe and protect White America and its honorary mainly European friends, those that provide the background for supporting White America’s running of the planet these days!

See CNN video of walkout

Boy in the Striped Propaganda-jamas

Dachau suicideWhat’s wrong with imagining that a German youngster could traverse a maximum security perimeter to charm readers with his innocent observations, for example, mistaking dirty excrement- encrusted forced-laborer uniforms for striped pajamas? And more, sneak under the wire, to suffer and thereby confirm, the inmates’ inhuman fate?

This year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 20, arrived with a new tale to beguile the kiddies: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

The photograph above depicts a concentration camp inmate killed between rows of barbed wire. At the Dachau Memorial its caption pronounces: “Suicide,” conjecturing that this inmate chose to rush the fence and be shot by guards sooner than endure any further brutalities. While the scene amplifies the savagery of the camps, it also puts to the lie the poetic liberties which imagine that camp inmates could linger in the no-man’s land between fences, or that likewise nearby locals could approach to within even hailing distance of the prisoners.

Angel at the Fence, Herman Rosenblat’s purported camp memoir, was debunked because the author asserted that he met his wife during the war, across the fence of a concentration camp, and that she saved his life pre-maritally, by throwing pieces of bread to him. Oprah called it the single greatest love story ever, but under scrutiny Rosenblat confessed his fabrication. Now he’s determined it should be redistributed as fiction, because it’s a magical tale that people still want to hear.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John BoyneStriped author John Boyne paints a similar scenario for younger readers, where two pre-adolescent boys meet on opposite sides of the fence of no less than Auschwitz. The German boy is fascinated by the other’s pajamas. Cute? Like a boy in another hemisphere being intrigued at a slave laborer’s dark black tan, or dirt under his fingernails? Eventually Boyne’s young protagonist crawls under the wire to join his new Jewish friend, and they die together in the darkness of a gas chamber.

Will this prove to be the ultimate aim of Holocaust Rememberers? To drag us all across an impassible divide, over a bridge that stretches credulity, by means of so false a memory that we suffer the Holocaust ourselves through a regression therapy assault on our psyche?

Mother Jones and the children of Ludlow

Mary Harris Jones and the children of miners 1914
APRIL 20 MARKS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LUDLOW MASSACRE.
From her 1925 autobiography, Mother Jones wrote about the UMWA strike in Ludlow Colorado, over the harsh winter of 1914.

From Chapter 21:

No one listened. No one cared. The tickers in the offices of 26 Broadway sounded louder than the sobs of women and children. Men in the steam heated luxury of Broadway offices could not feel the stinging cold of Colorado hill-sides where families lived in tents.

Then came Ludlow and the nation heard. Little children roasted alive make a front page story. Dying by inches of starvation and exposure does not.

On the 19th of April, 1914, machine guns, used on the strikers in the Paint Creek strike, were placed in position above the tent colony of Ludlow. Major Pat Hamrock and Lieutenant K. E. Linderfelt were in charge of the militia, the majority of whom were, company gun-men sworn in as soldiers.

Early in the morning soldiers approached the colony with a demand from headquarters that Louis Tikas, leader of the Greeks, surrender two Italians. Tikas demanded a warrant for their arrest. They had none. Tikas refused to surrender them. The soldiers returned to quarters. A signal bomb was fired. Then another. Immediately the machine guns began spraying the flimsy tent colony, the only home the wretched families of the miners had, riddling it with bullets. Like iron rain, bullets’ upon men, women and children.

The women and children fled to the hills. Others tarried. The men defended their home with their guns. All day long the firing continued. Men fell dead, their faces to the ground. Women dropped. The little Snyder boy was shot through the head, trying to save his kitten. A child carrying water to his dying mother was killed.

By five o’clock in the afternoon, the miners had no more food, nor water, nor ammunition. They had to retreat with their wives and little ones into the hills. Louis Tikas was riddled with shots while he tried to lead women and children to safety. They perished with him.

Night came. A raw wind blew down the canyons where men, women and children shivered and wept. Then a blaze lighted the sky. The soldiers, drunk with blood and with the liquor they had looted from the saloon, set fire to the tents of Ludlow with oil-soaked torches. The tents, all the poor furnishings, the clothes and bedding of the miners’ families burned. Coils of barbed wire were stuffed into the well, the miners’ only water supply.

After it was over, the wretched people crept back to bury their dead. In a dugout under a burned tent, the charred bodies of eleven little children and two women were found-unrecognizable. Everything lay in ruins. The wires of bed springs writhed on the ground as if they, too, had tried to flee the horror. Oil and fire and guns had robbed men and women and children of their homes and slaughtered tiny babies and defenseless women. Done by order of Lieutenant Linderfelt, a savage, brutal executor of the will of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The strikers issued a general call to arms: Every able bodied man must shoulder a gun to protect himself and his family from assassins, from arson and plunder. From jungle days to our own so-named civilization, this is a man’s inherent right. To a man they armed, through-out the whole strike district. Ludlow went on burning in their hearts.

Everybody got busy. A delegation from Ludlow went to see President Wilson. Among them was Mrs. Petrucci whose three tiny babies were crisped to death in the black hole of Ludlow. She had something to say to her President.

Immediately he sent the United States cavalry to quell the gunmen. He studied the situation, and drew up proposals for a three-year truce, binding miner and operator. The operators scornfully refused.

A mass meeting was called in Denver. Lindsay spoke. He demanded that the operators be made to respect the laws of Colorado. That something be done immediately. The Denver Real Estate Exchange appointed a committee to spit on Judge Lindsey for his espousal of the cause of the miners.

Rockefeller got busy. Writers were hired to write pamphlets which were sent broadcast to every editor in the country, bulletins. In these leaflets, it was shown how perfectly happy was the life of the miner until the agitators came; how joyous he was with the company’s saloon,. the company’s pigstys for homes, the cornpany’s teachers and preachers and coroners. How the miners hated the state law of an eight-hour working day, begging to be allowed to work ten, twelve. How they hated the state law that they should have their own check weigh-man to see that they were not cheated at the tipple.

And all the while the mothers of the children who died in Ludlow were mourning their dead.

A Colorado coal mining family

The truth comes out about how actually the US government tortured its POWs

Sept. 11 planner waterboarded 183 times: report, but this is a little bit different than the US government officials’ lies about how they used torture on Pentagon held POWs, is it not?

We ask, because the apologists for US government torture use have always tried to paint a picture of themselves using only supposedly limited and necessary tortures, needed and used only to protect the larger US common society from baddies. In such, they have mimicked the Israeli government’s murderous actions against Palestinians, too, where all the Israeli government abuse is qualified as being merely a restrained and rational program of protection for endangered Jewish people. But the truth actually in both cases is that both the Israeli and US governments are engaging in their own form of terrorism against people they have tried to deligitimize as supposedly not being subject to international laws of humanity and human decency.