Monthly Archives: January 2007

Rand McNally’s mapped stupidities

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I have one of those big map atlases that Rand McNally puts out each year, and have begun to use it some to home school my kid in geography. Since the District 11 school she attends is so busy constantly testing kids about the 3 Rs, they don’t seem to have time to teach geography, history, science, nor much really about anything. As it is, if I don’t teach her where Kansas is, she’ll probably be graduating down the road, with the herd of American kids that will be unable to locate their asses from a hole in the ground.

What gets me about Rand McNally is the, shall we say, subtle racism they practice. Where the fuck is Mexico, you idiots? It’s not like Mexicans and Americans don’t drive in each other’s countries. So what happened here? Let’s see? there are detailed maps of Canada’s provinces on 12 pages, plus semi-detailed maps of most of the big cities of that country. But Tijuana? Where is it? Where are the major Mexican cities, the Mexican states? Why might they not be shown? Instead, there is one page with a poorly detailed map of the country of Mexico as a whole. The idea here is a racist one. It is that Mexico is unimportant, and just does not rate being mapped by such a prestigious outfit as Rand McNally. Oh brother. And what idiots!

I wouldn’t mention this map thing, except that it seems so prototypical of the American racist mindset of the world. Dear Mr. McNally Inc., how many Mexicans do you think are in the US as compared to Canadians? When they drive back and forth from the US to Mexico, and Mexico to the US, don’t you think it would be nice of your ‘service’ to provide folks with directions? After all, that is the service your business supposedly is engaged in. Canada gets mapped, so why not Mexico?

Why not provide Texans, for example, with detailed maps of the North of Mexico? It would be nice to have city maps of Monterrey/ Saltillo, Guadalajara, and the DF. And certainly if Newfoundland can get its own detailed provincial mapping, then why not Nuevo Leon, Baja California, Chihuahua, etc.? And why not, other than the racism involved?

This is not just an unthought about error neither. The passage between Tijuana and San Diego is perhaps the busiest international crossing in the world. So why leave a blank space on that map for where Tijuana should be? Duh… Rand McNally is clearly a business that is ready to shoot itself in the foot by totally ignoring Hispanic buyers of their product. Racism seems to be more important to keep intact, than sales of their product or integrity of the service they provide. There are far more people traveling between Mexico and The US, than between the US and Canada, yet Canada gets mapped in detail, while Mexico gets only the barest of outlines of a national map.

The lesson here for my kid, is that neither her Colorado public school nor our big American Rand Mcnally book of maps will educate her well about geography, nor about other cultures. That, she will have to pick up on her own with my help, or she won’t learn much about these things at all. Why? It is simply that we live in a culture that prizes ignorance and stupidity much more than education. America the Free has become America We don’t know Our Asses from a Hole in the Ground. Keep fighting the rot. That’s all we can do.

Democracy Now on KRCC

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Mini fliers to urge KRCC listeners to actionThis week the Pacifica news program Democracy Now was added to the KRCC lineup on weekdays at 7pm. After listening this week when I could, I came away thinking: for the Colorado Springs community, the sudden juxtaposition of Democracy Now to the regular NPR and BBC-lite news programming has got to be turning some heads. Local critics had anticipated that Democracy Now would perseverate on only the bad and the ugly, but this inaugural week proved very much the opposite.

What happened this week? The Democrats ran roughshod over Congress. They introduced some key legislation ahead of their 100 hour pledge, leaving time even for a non-binding resolution on Iraq. In brief, they behaved quite the opposite of how the mainstream media would like to portray Democrats. On NPR, just as on the networks, we were given only brief summaries of what the Dems did. The little interest the reporters paid to the stories played into the inferrence that accomplishments in Congress this week were of little consequence. And the Senate’s non-binding resolution damns itself with its ineffectual appellation, if that’s all you say about it.

Contrast that with Democracy Now’s coverage. DN aired Representative Lynn Woolsey’s full address on behalf the corresponding bill in the House, the Bring Our Troops Home and Sovereignty of Iraq Restoration Act. To hear her rational and sober words left you wondering how anyone could still think otherwise about what to do in Iraq. American listeners are not accustomed to hearing politicians unspun. These days when a speech such as Rep. Woolsey’s reaches the public unfiltered, we think that person should run for president. The media doesn’t want to empower politicians like Woolsey if they can help it. Better for Americans to be impressed with TV celebrities than real public servants.

And so Democracy Now’s reports this week were affirming. They offered the ray of hope that the new House and Senate will move forward in spite of whether the mainstram media, including NPR, make light of their work.

The liberal media unmaskedI saw NPR’s Political Correspondent Mara Liasson speak at Colorado College back in 2004. She spoke about the likely contenders for the Democratic nomination. Asked afterwards why, incredibly, she never once mentioned Dennis Kucinich, she told us it was because she assumed we were interested in the candidates of consequence.

Now in Colorado Springs, like over 500 other communities in America in which Democracy Now is airing side by side with NPR, reporters like Mara Liasson are going to know they can’t play gatekeeper with the news. Although Fox and the MSM will be there to corroborate the mainstream NPR line, public radio listeners will be hearing other voices, such as Amy Goodman’s, pulling the cat from the bag. Increasingly, Mara and company will no longer get to decide for their listeners what persons or which issues are of consequence.

Colorado Springs’ first week of Democracy Now began with a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The DN special was broadcast live from the media conference in Memphis and The Indy’s publisher John Weiss was there. Amy Goodman congratulated him on DN’s having broken into the Colorado Springs market. It was news to John, but it’s true he played a key role. At the end of the day though the credit goes to KRCC’s new station manager Delaney Utterback for all the right reasons.

Super bowl Janet Jackson and Republican morality.

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This is something I published a couple of years ago. Every bit as relevant as today. And every bit today as then, some things are timeless.
This one contains a “dirty” word, so you might go ahead and set your browser Content Filter to profanity blocking. Better to censor yourself than try to censor me.

But now, once again, we are going to have the hyperbole and rampant commercialism pushed onto our senses, over and over and over and endlessly and I bet you thought I was going to say over again and again and again and repeatedly.

I don’t know the exact date of the Super Bowl. Just that it’s about a couple of weeks. I know the Chicago Bears are going to be one team, because of the hype I got as soon as I opened one of my email servers.

I am sure everybody is going to get lots and lots of Emails saying Bears or ? you choose… or New Poll: Who will it be Bears or ?

There will be jockeying to find out what the commercials are going to be for the half-time show, there will be much breathless wide-eyed awe and stories about what the commercials and so much (ok, I lied, there are more than one “dirty” word in this) all kinds of who-seriously-gives-a-fat-rat’s-ass-about-it bullshit, to lead us up to the Big Game.

A lot of the commercials are going to be for beer. And other drugs, especially alcoholic drugs.

You know the ones, they say at the end of it “(name of brewer/distiller) urges you to DRINK (notice they put this word last) responsibly”.

It is dope dealing at its finest. The crack house and the opium den and the weed corner are blown away (sick dope reference) by this magnum opus of Purveyance of Demon Rum.

And it is on a Sunday, a Pagan holy day, co-opted by Christianity, for worship of our respective God or gods. Pastors in Churches across the land are going to schedule their services, especially the evening services, around this latter-day Circus Maximus. And their morning services too, because the worshipers are going to have to rush to the store after services so they can score their dope and munchies for the BIGGGGG DEALLLLL…….

So I got the Super Bowl part embedded in our consciousness, right?

Now to the Republican Morality part, for a quick tease, then to Janet Jackson and the Infamous Titty Incident, then back to a slightly longer rant on Republican “Morality”.

The owners of the NFL teams, virtually all of them, are supporters of the Republican party. And the R’s pay it back in spades by supporting legislation that makes the PUBLIC TREASURY pay for the stadia, (yes, I spelled that last word right, I’m practicing my Latin, are you?) the security, the traffic control, and in-stadium dope I mean Beer Sales. That last because some stadia, like the ill-fated Cotton Bowl in Dallas, are in dry precincts. Which is the real reason the Cowboys don’t play in Dallas, for decades it has been in Irving, and next year it won’t be in Dallas County even.

The cities have to pay for the construction of the stadia out of bond money, and they are always told that it will boost the local economy.

Also here in Colorado, there was a guy running for Senator, you might recognize the name Pete COORS. And yes, he is heir to the beer fortune.

On to The Titty Incident.

Janet Jackson, during the half-time 3 years ago or was it 4, I lose count of things like football. Got her costume deliberately torn at the end of a song and exposed part of her (gasp! the HORROR!!) breast. Now, I didn’t get to see this. I don’t watch football. The homo-eroticism of 22 very large gentlemen throwing their bodies at each other doesn’t do it for me.

There was much scandal. Much public outcry. Much Breast Beating in the halls of Congress, (yeah, I know, that last joke was horrible but I had to get it off my chest) even the Commander in Chimp of the United States saying that he hadn’t watched the incident, but it was a lovely breast.

Ok so I might have taken a little liberty with that last statement, but I don’t keep abreast of the off the wall statements of Mr Bush, every time I try to watch one of his speeches my brain tries to escape by crawling out my left ear.

The Moral Outrage sweeping the country was amazing, especially in the R party.

Like Mr Coors.

 During the 04 super bowl, and I know I know, the Super Bowl calendar starts from S.B. I and S.B.II and so forth, with the not-very-subtle Roman numerals numbering system. Instead of A.D. or C.E., measured from the birth of Christ or the birth of Christianity, depending on your faith viewpoint. But I don’t worship the oblong ball. So it matters naught to me how the Hell many S.B. there were.

Mr Coors was OUTRAGED about this public impropriety. How dare they interrupt his half time show where he had a commercial or two over the years, with scantily clad women whose costumes showed a substantially higher percentage of overall Breast Acreage than Ms Jackson did, telling the poor saps watching that somehow they would have a shot at touching these breasts if they only buy his brand of Dope. For people who keep up with such things, these are the modern version of the Vestal Virgins performing their religious duty at the modern Circus Maximus, the Cheerleaders, who get paid a paltry amount for their Services on the field, but get much more opportunity working in commercials. Like for Mr Coors.

Since this was an Election Year, when all the Noble Laws about the Half Time show being lagged 4 seconds or so just to protect America from such an awful sight ever again….

And the Republican NFL team owners who pimp out these Vestal Virgins as part of their Circus, were also outraged, that Ms Jackson would Dare To Expose America to a sight of substantially less breast-age than their own cheerleaders and even most of the Female fans and even some of the (ewwweewwww) male fans show during every game. I mean, one team has its fans wear cheese on their heads, and paint their naked upper torsi green and yellow, and show over and over again one in particular a set of udders that would make a topless dancer envious (or nauseous) and who happens to be a guy (I think)

So this year we will be (or you will be, I plan to be out riding my bicycle, while the streets are practically deserted for four or five hours) watching a heavily subsidized, heavily censored, erotic commercial enterprise, knowing that the GOP Big Brother apparatus will be protecting us from such unseemly behaviour ever again occurring.

Where to host the war crimes trials

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War Crimes Trial in privateNotMyTribe is soliciting proposals for where to hold the impending War Crimes Trial. Brent Green replies:
 
In my van downtown.

This is kind of how I see it going: I’ll drive my van downtown- there’s a huge parking lot right on the bank of the river behind the UPS packing center. It’s unmarked, which I see as my biggest asset here, the secrecy of an unmarked van will keep these officials on familiar ground. I’ll hold out my dictionary (the only title the used bookstore wouldn’t purchase from me) and say “Place your right hand on this Science Bible, and promise that you’ll try hard not to fuck up.” W says “I swear.” I don’t believe him, he seems insincere, but I didn’t really give myself a backup option, so we move on.

I guess Bush will take the stand- a comfortable cloth spinning captain’s chair (one of Bush’s demands I’ll have to meet in order for him to submit to trial). I’ll grill him mercilessly.

“True or False: you are _______.” The correct answer is that tricky T/F hybrid that everyone mastered in elementary school quizzes, but that’s a very hard letter to say, so he’ll probably get this one wrong.

Whereupon I’ll make a powerful and moving objection “HEADS WILL ROLL!!!” I’ll shout, the wind shaking my ride.

We’ll turn on the radio for intermission. Some Mexican college rock station. Yo la tengo espanol.

And if you want experience and variety, this is your location. It’s seen it all. I got it from my Uncle Oscar who met Jack Kerouac once (not in the van)- it’s seen all there is: Illinois, DUI, DOA, FBI, Florida and a charging wild elk. Before Oscar raced dogs he used the van as an ambulance.

I pretended I was a lawyer once, to get my girlfriend a paycheck her boss was trying to keep for hisself.

Back when Great Uncle Oscar had the van it was always kept in tip-top shape. Uncle Oscar was rich. He was always saying “Get in the fucking van!!”

Uncle Oscar got more money than the government racing dogs between the cars on Wall Street.

Uncle Oscar lost his mind when his mistress died, and grew a cancerous hole the size some governments between his throat and his lungs. Wheezing like an elephant chasing dogs no one else could see up and down the cellar stairs. (Later, up, down and back up the street.)

Uncle Oscar’s legs went numb on Christmas Eve, a cart pulled by his dogs brought him to our front door (he was sitting on the hood, hollering whiskey fumes above the engine’s roar). With two strong hands and a trunk full of stuff he invited us “Come on In!” tramping snow through shoveled flowerbeds. He wasn’t yet, but he already looked dead.

After a long hard chase, Oscar liked to climb in his van and “help people.” He’d go ambulancing with a stethoscope and pliers and a bottle of Mescal. Mescal is terrible. Just everyone thinks so. Hitler didn’t like it ’cause it made him mean. But apparently it cures everything. Even road rash. Just say you’re halfway between the cab and the sidewalk and an ambulance turns you into a chalkline- Oscar’s there before you wake up. He cleans the blood off the hood with your shirt and puts you in the back. He opens the bottle, wraps your lips around the funnel, and moves the muscles in thee jaw (with his right hand- the left tipping back the bottle) ’till your teeth and your tongue eat the worm. Ambulancing was fun- even though I guess it directly led to my disbarrement (it was the only cause). I always told him it wasn’t his fault- but it was. Entirely.

Anyway, I guess Oscar should be the judge. He’s the oldest person I know, and he always says he’s done his share of courting.

Old Uncle Oscar, all hopped up on Viagara, screaming at Conde Rice “I hear my zipper shaking!”

I need these war crimes trials.

Keith Ellison, DP Muslim Congressman for Zionism

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Keith Ellison, newly elected Congressman from Minnesota and the first Muslim ever elected to House or Senate, at first seems to be the ideal liberal politician to support.

On abortion rights, social security, reform of the medical system, immigration, support for public education, and even calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, he seems to be quite supportive of a progressive agenda. Plus, it is impressive that liberal Jewish groups were there backing him, a Muslim candidate for Congress. All seems to look quite good.

Unfortunately, the devil can sometimes be found in the details. At his ‘On the ISSUES’ page, intermeshed in with all the nice liberal rhetoric one finds out that Ellison is ‘a strong supporter of law enforcement’, and for reinstatement of Clinton’s COPS program. In other words, he is for maintaining a police state environment, where police and prisons are grossly and constantly overfunded. He actually seems to hint that Bush and the Republicans are underfunding policing, whereas he would change that! His concern is the ‘middle class’ and not the working poor that have to live in so many inner cities where police rampage throughout their communities like an occupation army.

And look in at his ‘Israel and the Middle East’ page. This is truly telling for we see not a word about Abu Ghraib, US support for ‘renditions’ and torture, condemnation of the US/ Israeli invasion of Lebanon, etc. Instead, we learn from this Muslim for Zionism, that supposedly Iran is a nuclear terror threat, that the Palestinian Authority has not dismantled a terrorist superstructure in the Occupied Territories, that Hamas supposedly represents the greatest obstacle to peace, etc. In short, we see the full agenda of Zionism represented as progressive agenda, by a Muslim! Israel comes in for ZERO condemnation!

I would say, the Keith Ellison is about as representative of the majority of the American Muslim community, as Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice are of the Black community in our country. Not very. In short, the American media are guilty of a big con, as they spread news of Ellison’s victory at the polls as being a historic victory for the Muslim community. It is not. Electing a Zionist Muslim into office is about par for what liberal Democratic electoral politics brings, but that is nothing really to boast of.

How sad to see all the liberal community behind such a man, whose web page clearly paints Iran as being a nuclear danger to Western Civilization, and not Israel. Is this not liberalism backhandedly pushing another Bush Administration assault on yet another country? It is reminiscent of when liberals rallied around Clinton’s illegal war on Yugoslavia. That’s right, it is illegal in international law to invade and bomb another country, yet liberal Democrats supported that. And liberal Democrat, the Zionist Muslim Ellison, seem to be very eager to push the buttons to get a new conflict goin with Iran and its multiple supporters in the ME. Straight zio-con agenda.

Who is the big supporter of Keith Ellison that he list on his website? He lists him as this… ‘Vice President Walter Mondale’! (And I mistakenly thought it was Dick Cheney that held that post! Stupid me.) Lest we forget, Walter Mondale WAS VP under Jimmy the peanut farmer Carter, and WAS a longtime supporter of the Vietnam War with his cohort, Hubert Humphrey. He only seemed mildly to turn against the war then, when it was Richard Nixon that came to head up the presidency and US government’s efforts to terrorize SE Asia. In other words, Keith Ellison’s big behind the scenes supporter, is the grand guru of the constantly pro-war Northern liberal wing of the Democratic Party, Mondale. Mondale, Zionist backer all the way.

With Keith Ellison, we see what a ‘good Muslim’ is like, to the constantly pro war, pro imperialist US ruling class. Keith Ellison, not so liberal after all. Another carnivore hiding in a sheep’s wool that the Establishment would like to pull over our eyes.

Give Founding Mothers a chance

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Aunt Sally wants you to think about peaceIt’s about time we integrate some “Founding Mothers” into our political process! Let’s make it a requirement that henceforth any official gathering whose purpose it is to pass judgment, make laws, determine patriotism, set political agendas or put into effect national security measures, should have to include at least three mothers. Better yet, three of the gathered officials’ own mothers.

These mothers would be required to be part of the review board, or sit in key positions in the assembly, in such a manner that their opinions and positions would be factored into the process.

Imagine that! Mothers, guardians of life, standing side by side with our elected representatives deciding legal limits on pesticides, cutting funding for education, re-appropriating money for defense spending, or voting on whether to go to war.

These mothers would, by their mere presence, alter the dynamic of any male dominated, testosterone driven group. These mothers couldn’t help but change the course of history. True to their very nature, these mothers would stop the next war now!

The other George

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After going over all the official Democratic Party web sites what comes to mind, is how much America needs the other George. I’m talking about the George of RESPECT, not the George of MURDER INC. on this side of the Atlantic. Contrast the best known member of RESPECT, George Galloway, with all the US politicians of the party I will call LACK OF RESPECT though they are better known as the Democratic Party.

If George Galloway’s site above is down, then see Galloway’s Israel’s Lebanon invasion interview at youtube, where he gives the Murdoch media a whipping.

About the only DP presidential contender site I could even begin to stomach, was that of Dennis Kucinich, though what’s he doing in the DP instead of bolting it, anyway? And you certainly won’t hear a peep out of him on his website about the need to get out of Afghanistan or Colombia, say. Still, he’s a saint compared to Hillary, Obama, or Edwards.

If you are sick of all the mealy mouthed, slimy rhetoric from all the officially announced DP presidential candidates, then check out the video section of George Galloway’s web site! You certainly won’t see the likes of Dennis Kucinich denouncing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, like George does in the lead video there on his site. Or could one imagine Kucinich, or any of the Democrat Party politician slimeballs, standing up like George Galloway did to the US Senate, when a Senate Committee tried to make him out as tied to Saddam Hussein’s regime? This appearance before the Senate can be seen in 5 parts on the website.

Why was Galloway testifying there? Simply because he had opposed the Clinton sanctions against Iraq, that through 8 years murdered about a million Iraqis, mainly children. I am talking about the Democratic Party sponsored sanctions that paved the way to Bush’s invasion, and continued occupation of that country. He had been the most vocal critic for years of Blair and Bush in both the US and Britain, and has always been an outstanding opponent of Israeli Apartheid where all others had feared to speak out. For this, they were trying to besmirch him and his reputation for integrity.

Democrats, you vote for the PARTY OF DISRESPECT, disrespect for you, the liberal. We need an organization like RESPECT here in the US, and if George Galloway ever tries to set up an American branch of the Respect Unity Coalition, then I’d be the first to join. The other George…. We could use some of that spunk here in the US.

Watch parts 2-5 here.

Lies and the lying Dumfox that tell them

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This is a link to a transcript (an Official Court Document) (unlike what Fox might put out on their shows, we would have to take their fair and balanced word on it.) of a hearing over the alleged “trademark infringement” of DumFox news and Bill O’Really, (see, I parodied their names so they can’t sue ME for libel, like the whiney little tittie babies they actually are)

In the accusations of Mr Al Franken putting on his book cover the images of GW, his Vice-chimp and everybody’s favorite dick, Bill O’Really and Ann “the pie in the face was a terrorist act, really!” Coulter, alongside Al Franken, and using an interview on DumFox news as a backdrop.

And made the almost believable claim that listeners and regular viewers of “The Oh, Really? Fiction ”
would be easily confused enough to buy the book thinking it was somehow sanctioned by DumFox News.

The attorney for Fox Networks mentioned first the idea that Fox had 80 million subscribers. On a network where nobody needs to subscribe to begin with, and the judge questioned the assertion, by asking if since his Basic cable package includes DumFox (my word not his) News channel, as do ALL basic Cable packages, would that mean that he himself was a “subscriber”?

The attorney backed off the 80 million claim very quickly, and said that well, the cable companies have a way of counting how many viewers tune in the show more than 1 minute per week, which lets out channel surfing, and said the number of viewers who watched that regularly (!) (!!!!!) was 19.5 million.

Now watching 1 minute per week wouldn’t make me a regular subscriber of anything, or so I would think.
And those like Al Franken or our friends at Media Matters or just any independent thinker who would actually take the time to see what other people are saying before putting them down, would actually be included in DumFox’s bizzare accounting scheme.

Then she (the lawyer was a lady, or at least female, but I am a nice guy and would call just about any woman on the earth a lady…) comes up with this amazing piece of twisted accounting that
“as many as 8% of the regular audience might be deceived” (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Ummm… eight percent of the people who watch DumFox news are so confused that they would think a book by AL FRANKEN was actually supported by either Mr Oh,Really? or DumFox in general…..

gee, that must mean that all the times they put down Mr Franken BY NAME and with his picture prominently displayed, are wasted on 8% of their regular viewers..

8 percent out of nineteen and a half MILLION people are supposed to be that stupid. That would be more than a million and a half people are so STUPID they can’t be trusted to not buy a book, without being assisted by the Legal Team of DumFox News and the enforcement of the courts.

and these are the ones DumFox proudly trumpets are its hard core audience.

Let me tell you, that means that Fox Networks not only believes that ALL of Americans are too STUPID to be trusted to make their decisions without the leadership of themselves, but the CORE of their audience are too stupid to be trusted even WITH their guidance.

Maybe they themselves are not the great leaders they trumpet themselves to be?

Castro passes the baton

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ChavezFor even the hopeful, Fidel Castro’s imminent mortality has for decades presaged the end of a dream. But Castro lived to see a successor. Not brother Raul, indeed neither an island-bound disciple nor a private-school Marxist, nor (but for this photo) a khaki’d comrade, but a veritable everyman Simon Bolivar to deliver the indigenous Americas to autonomy.

Though Fidel and Che could not bring the revolution out of the jungle, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is poised to overrun Latin America, sitting on a mountain of oil wealth, telling Uncle Sam’s banker goons where they can stick it. It’s Capitalism’s domino theory come home to roost.

Oaxaca begins to rebound

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The people of Oaxaca have begun to rebound from the wave of repression that Vicente Fox unleashed on them in his final days of office. Many were rounded up and sent off to far away prisons in other Mexican states to be tortured, beaten, and sexually assaulted, and the population as a whole cowered in fear of the same being dished out to them.

Meanwhile, Felipe Calderon began a media campaign to improve his already horrible presidential image. He mobilized the military to scurry around and pretend that it was waging in a gigantic campaign against Narco-lawlessness. Few have been impressed, though. He announced that he was beginning a jobs program. Few have been impressed though. He announced that he would try to stop the rise in price of Mexico’s staple, the corn tortilla. Few have been impressed though.

Meanwhile, the family of Brad Will have begun a campaign against Mexican government impunity and demanded that justice be done for Brad Will, who was the Indymedia American reporter shot down in cold blood during a protest in Oaxaca late last October. Justice for Brad Will!

Meanwhile, the family of the political prisoners held and abused by the Mexican police and army, began to protest on behalf of their family members. This was being met by repression itself, outside the jails.

Finally, after the weeks of repression, last weekend the people of Oaxaca once again demonstrated their opposition to the political repression that the government of Fecal (Felipe Calderon) was directing against their state. Ten thousand fearful marchers turned out into the streets once again. The crowd was overwhelming from the poorer strata of society, and one cannot see even a single kid in the crowd. It would have been too risky to bring them to the protest, with such a high level of repression coming from state authorities. .

Check out the film of this march. To finally win a struggle, one must not give up, and must protest, protest, protest. Certainly a lesson that we in the United States need to learn well. Victory never comes easily. Here is the Oaxaca march on video.

Cuba lives on as Fidel lies dying

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Fidel Castro has been dying for half a year now, and yet Cuba continues to stand strong resisting US imperialist power. Almost 1/2 a century of US imposed war on the island, and it will be Castro’s digestive tract that will finally bring Cuba’s great leader down, and not some CIA exploding cigar, poison placed in his food, or some other terrorist plot launched by the gusanos of Miami and their US government handlers.

The corporate media at home made most of us think that Castro was merely some sort of island Ceausescu. They had us believing that it was only Fidel and his mad charisma that made Cuba a non-capitalist country, all against the desires of its people. But surprise, there is no movement to restore capitalism there, no celebration at the nearing death of Castro. Instead, there has been a strengthening of Fidel Castro’s example, as more and more people in more and more Latin American countries, have fought to move themselves into the anti-capitalist camp headed by Fidel.

Centuries of ‘free enterprise’ have brought lives of poverty and disease to most throughout Latin America. Beat down with truncheons of the police, military, and death squads, now the people have begun to find the beginnings of an opening to rebel once again, and seek another road. The Left throughout South America has begun to rise, and as they have, they have gravitated toward the example that Fidel Castro and Cuba have shown them.

At the beginning, Fidel Castro was a doctor who actually cared about the health of the people he was trained to treat. Throughout, his political guidance has strongly tried to incorporate medicine and medical care for people in the policies he fought for. He was a doctor who cared for his patients, and not for his stock portfolio.

He is a great man, and once again we find ourselves with a leader whose life example was built on armed struggle, and not just pacifist liberal mouthings by some guru or another. He has more in common with George Washington, than with Martin Luther King. He is more John Brown, than Gandhi. He led, but his message was that one must physically resist oppression, and not just turn the other cheek.

So what happens after Fidel Castro dies? Check out this yahoo article to find out how the situation is actually currently unfolding.

Conspicuous accountancy

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The General Accounting Office says they don’t have enough manpower to audit the Iraq reconstruction contracts. So much money has been spent, and so much of it has vaporized, that there isn’t staff enough to follow it.
 
I ask you, imagine the white-collar power to abscond with that loot!

Granted it takes less effort to bury a needle in a haystack than it takes to find it, but we are not talking about needles. If so much money missing, let’s look for contractors with accountancy muscle enough to have hauled it off. Like a polar bear gone missing at the zoo, at first it’s inexplicable, but we know it would take a pretty conspicuous baby stroller.

If you don’t have the accountants to trace billions of diverted funds, hire them from the contractors who have them. Lots of accountants were needed to devise, execute and cover-up the heist. Where are they?

When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear, with mirrors it’s said, he didn’t do it alone. You and I could say we didn’t have the staff to go out there in the grass and find his un-magical cohorts. But Mr. Copperfield has the staff. Their resumes probably laud their skills for mirror holding.

Desert Rock protests

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Navajo protestI might have missed something in ‘The Gazette’, but I sincerely doubt it. The assholes that run that paper are keeping Colorado Springs uninformed of an environmental struggle going on right down the road from us. I am referring to the mainly Navajo protest against the construction of a new power plant in the Four Corners area. See these photos of the Desert Rock Vigil now taking place.

The Navaho don’t want mercury and other contaminants from coal burning to further environmentally degrade their people’s traditional lands. It has become a constant battle to keep the environment of this ancient Native American tribe from being totally destroyed by mining, forestry, and energy production companies.

The White ranchers who struggle to stop the expansion of Fort Carson into Pinon Canyon and the Navaho of Desert Rock, both need to get together and unite their now separate causes. Without unity in the fight to save the environment , Colorado and the Mountain West as a whole are going to become toxic zones in a generation or two. We need energy production, but we need a clean environment, too. Wouldn’t it be great if the many varied groups of citizens out here, would work together better to save these lands?
Navajo protest site

Intel Corporation

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If we were ever to see PEACE, most of America would be in the unemployment line. The whole US economy would crash and unemployment would shoot up to 50-60-70-80% of us.

That’s how grounded in war we have become. Just this week this was driven home in Colorado Springs, as the local media announced that the local Intel Corporation plant here might well close down, and 1,000 would lose their employment soon afterward. Actually, another 4,500 jobs would fall alongside the loss of those Intel positions, too. Total hit on the local economy? Over 5,000 jobs!

What does Intel corporation produce? It is the world’s largest superconductor producer. What does the Pentagon use a lot of? Superconductors. Imagine if the Pentagon-White House-Halliburden maniacs weren’t spending a trillion or two on the ridiculously named, ‘War on Terrorism’? Most of America’s economy is actually spent on producing terrorism, and without that, we’d most all be out of work. Isn’t capitalism fabulous?! Big bang for the buck!

Ney gets 30

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Representative Bob Ney gets 30 months? What in the name of sleezy Ohio politics is that for justice?! I’m sorry to sound so punitive, but where can a corrupt bureaucrat get a fitting reprimand? Abramoff payeeIn developing nations, government officials who profit illegally from their station are executed in public. This is meant as a lesson to others who may be tempted to take advantage of the public trust. It’s a trust the public has no recourse but to offer. That’s why punishment must be severe.

What of the misrepresentation for which Ney was convicted? How many people were hurt by Ney not representing them? What public-good legislation was prevented from passing because of Ney and the corporations he was protecting? What detrimental laws were passed for their benefit? Going further, who did Ney help get elected, and what wave of murderous manslaughter did Bob Ney and his fellow cronies help unleash? Should those consequences not have weighed into his sentencing?

Compounding Bob Ney’s crime of misrepresentation is that the results persist. The laws he was influenced to pass still stand. It’s as if a bankrobber, caught, is let to keep the money. Bob Ney was fined $6,000. Is that restitution?!

There is no restitution for the victims, the American people, who suffer from corrupt laws and elected administrators. And fellow cronies continue to represent their malevolent corporate interests against the voters who thought their candidates represented them.

You may say even thirty days in jail is a sufficient deterrent. I say we should demand the heads and bank accounts of all a crony’s progeny. And business partners. Everyone who benefited from the crime of corruption. I’ll be satisfied to meet in the middle, a pound of flesh.

Over the Hubbert Peak into war

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Most Colorado citizens probably think that Hubbert Peak might be a fourteener somewhere, and not the reason our country is at war. Fact is, the US led the rush to overmine the world’s most precious resource which is petroleum, so there actually is an oil shortage now. And certainly both Oily Dick and Dubya the Dummy are well aware of that, even if most liberals seem often not to be.
Mount Hubbert

And this shortage is not a temporary one but is becoming most permanent. A shortage that can only worsen, so off to war they took us, all to grab that precious and declining resource. What does the Hubbert Peak mean? It means for one thing, that the Iraqi War is not Vietnam all over again. Vietnam had no important resources, but was a war for political influence and control of a region. It also means that occupying Iraq is not just a ‘clash of civilizations’.

What it does mean, is that those who have taken America into this war feel that they are fighting for their very lives. Yes, Dick and Dubya are fighting for the continuation of profit-making as they know it, and that is their life. With declining world stocks of oil, that means declining possiblities of keeping oil cheap, and declining standards of life for both them, and for us, because of that. That’s why the Republicans, and most of their Democratic Party friends and enablers, are so very hesitant and reluctant to back up and get out of Iraq. If corporations cannot deliver the goods, even the dumbest of ‘We, the People’ will begin to grow dissatisfied with them our supposed leaders. Osama is not the real terrorist for us, it is the lack of oil that is.

Why do the liberal religious peacenics fetish solely focus on American troops dead? That’s not the main point to the Oilies running the show. Cheap oil is. Heck, just having some oil around is most important to them, and really to us too, even if the oil becomes not so cheap. Dick and Dubya think it can only be gotten continually by war, for conservation is off the books for them. That’s an effort they don’t want to make even though it is completely necessary to do so. No Blood for War, should have an additional line to it. Conservation, not Devastation! It is about much more than just the direct killing, as awful as that might be. This war is to maintain our oily way of life.

Exxon-Mobil might pretend that there is no such thing as Global Warming and a Hubbert’s Peak, but that’s all it is really. Pretense. They are not as stupid as they pretend, and are way ahead of most of American society in thinking about the consequences of running short with their precious resource. They are in serious trouble, and so are we, as supplies have begun to dwindle.

If you are reading this commentary and haven’t figured out yet just what I am talking about, then Google ‘Peak Oil’ or ‘Hubbert’s Peak’ on over at Wikipedia, and do yourself a favor and read about it some. Good luck, and try not to get too depressed. Our lives are going to change, and it won’t be much fun at all.

Your deadly news

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Polls show that more and more world citizens are relying on their computers to stay informed. If one watches TV, Murdoch and Turner have got your brain in their hands. And just imagine trying to stay informed through our local ‘Gazette’? It’s less informative than a roll of toilet paper. So we become forced into this option of relying on our computers to be in anyway informed.

People are turning to the computer and the semiconductor industry to stay on top of things. We’re forced to do so just as most of us are forced equally to have a car, telephone, refrigerators, and washing machines to stay alive these days. But each new technological gadget we have to have to manage modern life, just keeps getting more and more toxic. Bad as the car is to the environment, the computer is even worse.

All sorts of deadly compounds go into making the computer, and the computer is certainly dangerous to our health even when running. But as a discard? Well that’s just much worse. Some states have bottle laws to help preserve the environment, and that’s way too little and too late, but it’s just a glass bottle after all. But think about this. The government and the corporations running it, don’t give a damn enough about your health or the environment’s to put a functioning recycling program into place regarding computers!

Go and educate yourself and see what sorts of metals are in your computer. And then think about breathing this stuff? Think about it in your bloodstream? And then ponder the fact that in 5 years alone, 250,000,000 computers in the US alone are discarded, with next to no supervision or recycling at all!

Personal computers are just one element of semiconductor use, too. They are used in other forms of communication systems as well as in pcs. For example, they are the glue that holds most modern weaponry systems together. Semiconductors are now all over the place. Lead, cadmium, mercury, and much more, with none of it good for your life or that of other species as well.

When a computer is produced, is that a production of value or a destruction of life on this planet? How sad that the most common of items these days, is actually leading to Earth becoming a planet that will be fit only for the cockroach in a few years. All because the capitalist drive for constant increase in their profits, mandates this sort of increasingly toxic production of increasingly toxic products.

Computers and the military? In fact, the military’s drive for more destructive weaponry is what developed the computer in the first place, just as their need to increase speed of travel with their weapons is what had them pushing for the car, and the development of the interstate freeway system back in the late ’40s and through the ’50s. Military and capitalist enterprise, together in a mad rush to destroy life on the planet. The computer is their latest mechanical advance to their creating a toxic earth, all in the name of ‘defense’ and ‘freedom’!

To paraphrase the famous line by Calvin Coolidge, ‘The business of America is business’…. and YES, the business of America’s business is making war against Mother Earth. The computer is now our favorite toy behind the car and telephone, tv and our groins (sex and porn). Out of all of those though, it may well be the computer that ecologically sinks the planet for good. Man, done in by ‘artificial intelligence’….done in by one of man’s own machines.

Capitalists demand that we try to turn our lives into being their little machines, but as flesh and blood we can never fit their deadly ideal for us. The machine world is just too toxic for us. That’s the deadly news your computer will let you in on.

Iran

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Since our government is planning to bomb Iran in a short time, it is imperative that our people be educated regarding how backward these people are.

Just a short time ago, Libertarian and Zionist lawyer poster, Michael, was keeping us informed (and with a slight assist from Glenn Beck, too) about how Nazi-like the Iranian Muslims truly are. However, it now appears that he has had to flee our site in fear of his life. But I have discovered, from iranian.com, further evidence of these Shiite Muslims’ backward ideas regarding Jews, Americans, and women. Here are 4 videos posted on that site, that are sure to alarm all civilized people.

Thanks for the memories
Boob Tussels
French Muslims adjust hejab
George and Condi

Bush ‘renders’ US citizen to Israel

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Israel extradites a dissidentFawaz Damra, a US citizen was stripped of his citizenship, held in jail for months for no crime what-so-ever, and finally ‘rendered’ to Israel 2 weeks ago, possibly to be tortured?. His crime? He was born a Palestinian.

He was deported to Israeli military forces without being allowed contact with either his family or his lawyer beforehand. He has 3 teenage daughters and a wife, all who are also US citizens. I bet they are really glad to enjoy the benefits of American citizenship? What a grand civics lesson they are receiving.

It is apparent to more and more American Muslims now, that it is barely legal to be a Muslim here. Muslims do not now have to wear a Crescent like the Star of David that Jews once had to wear for Germans, but that’s more due to advances in surveillance technology. But you really are taking your life in your hands as an American Muslim, to enter your place of worship or to make a charitable donation to a church cause. I bet the family of Damra are really impressed by what religious freedom us Americans have? How protected they must feel in being citizens, too.

Fawaz, upon immigrating to the US, became a moderate imam and headed up the Cleveland mosque. Just the type of person that the US people as a whole need most amongst us, to counter the threats of future terrorism. I’m sure that stripping this man of his citizenship and then deporting him into the custody of Israeli military torturers, is certainly going to do wonders for our National Security, the Bush neo-con Klan are so fond of barfing on about so continuously! They are brilliant strategists for sure!

It shouldn’t surprise us at all, I guess? The US was very good under the Democrats of FDR at turning back Jews trying to escape from the Nazis. But the Zionist Jews of Israel are now our Aryan Empires allies, and so things are the same as back then, yet so very topsy turvy. It is now the Jews that run the show and Arabs that are in ghettos. Looking over all this, of course, is the great Christian Church of imperialism.

Let me mention here, that my last name is really Arabic, though I am really totally Aryan. I wonder how I fit into the computers of our new national security state observation deck? But just for the record let me state, that I am still for jailing the terrorists that run our country. Oh how anti-US I must be with my Arab last name! How suspect my politics.

And to you fascistic dittohead thugs out there? Well, I am ashamed of the US. If you weren’t such ignorant backward bastards, so would you be, too. I wonder just how far out nutty this government terrorism against us will go? Let’s just say, I don’t think I can just go down to the airport and hop on a plane nowadays. But why should I leave? This is my country, and the Right Wingers should get out of it and Go to Hell, not me. They are nothing but traitors to everything decent, they are, and are not the real patriots out there, not in the least. All their good Americanism is a big fat sham, same as the good Germans back 90 years ago were with their ‘patriotism’..

To follow more the history of this case somewhat, go to the Cleveland newspaper’s coverage page on Fawaz Damra

Obama outta my face

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Barack Obobblehead
Democrats are storming Congress, threatening the Neocon oligarchy, and the MSM directs its spotlights to a sideshow: Obama! Do you worry about who’s running for president in 2008? There’s supposed to be plenty change afoot right now in the center ring.
 
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

And please do not choose the 2008 straw men for us. Do not tell voters that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the Democrats’ best offerings. Obama is an impressive individual, certainly a non-commital politician, so let’s give him a few years to prove his effectiveness. He only became a senator in 2004. As yet we only know he’s qualified for the Tony Robbins circuit. Let’s let Obama look us up in 2016. Until then we’ve got to pick someone electible, not someone the GOP/media wants to sell us as our Last White Hope.

George Bush’s latest sales pitch to the American public highlighted for me the extreme entrenchment of corporate media. They ran nothing but interference for Bush, prepping their audiences to receive Dubya’s message well lubed. It didn’t work, and I hope the networks’ glad-handling showed.

The will of the people is overtaking congress and the land, and the media are going to proclaim otherwise until we pry the microphones from their cold dead buttholes.

Lampwick and the original Lost Boys

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Trouble my friends right here in River CityWas Lampwick the archetypical dilettante? You know, dapper, cultured, erudite, jaded, amusing, but nihilist? The boys in Pinocchio who cut school to smoke, drink and play pool were turned into donkeys in the Land of Boobies. Sound like a fitting analogy for an effete lounge-oisie? Internet blogs can amuse us with cynical antics, they often feel to me like small plexiglass window-seats looking on protracted personal train wrecks in upholstered stalls.
 
I got quite preachy a day ago in a local salon maudit, a favorite site I should also say. I’ll reprint my lecture here because the question I asked in earnest, albeit tucked inside some name-calling, remains unanswered.

This discussion has illuminated for me the challenge of how to activate the hands in pockets crowd. You make light of self-righteous do-gooders who take themselves too seriously. I do wish my indignation was less serious. It’s not that left-leaners have arbitrary spiritual beliefs which are being offended, it’s that our common sense of humanity is being trivialized. Bankrupted farmers, child slaves, indentured laborers, you tire of hearing about such horrors, but still you drink your Starbucks, buy your chocolate, and plug into your iPods with a yawn. What tone do you expect from activists beside scolding?

I ask that question seriously. What tone would cause you to say to Coca Cola: we’re not going to tolerate you killing Columbian union leaders or stealing India’s water? If consumers don’t withhold their consent, they are as guilty as Coke. I’m sorry fun-lovers but life comes with responsibility. Your pursuit of happiness may have to wait a bit, the rest of mankind begs your assistance.

The social justice movement isn’t about enlivening your water-cooler conversation, it’s about prompting change. We’re trying to organize a bucket brigade to help our neighbors stuck in a fire. And we have to stop those among us who are starting those fires. If you are standing idle, making light of the message we are trying to spread as quickly as possible, in chorus with the establishment voices already demeaning us, I’d just as soon walk over you.

Quite seriously, what would light a fire under your gay asses?

Started my own web page finally

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brotherjonah.biz

Don’t let the .biz part scare you, I ain’t gone over to Capitalism. The .biz just happened to be the cheapest of the available domains. Now I got to put a whole mess of content on it. Got a link to here, tested it out by popping up my page and hitting all the links I already put up. Now I got to collect my blogs from all over the net, get my downloadable stuff to be, well, downloadable. And do my daily research on the folly and sadness of the world outside. Sometimes it just makes me shake my head in disgust.

Still got to get some idea of something to do about Der Sheisse-Fuhrer giving us all the bird.

I still say Civil Commitment, and that would give us enough breathing room to start pulling the soldiers home. Once they get a whiff of not having to be in Hell for as long as the Chimp demands, he won’t have a single hope of making them stay there. He orders them back I bet a donut there will be a mutiny. But if he beats the Civil Commitment there is still Court Martial. for HIM at least. He does have military rank, of a sort, he loves being called Commander in Thief. Rank has its privileges but rank also has its duties. His duty as commander was to avoid killing off his countrymen, and his country. He has done both.

Commitment is about the only thing that can be done quickly enough so he doesn’t have a bunch of guys over there, with no supplies. Which is what cutting off the funding for it would do. His adult handlers played the timing just right, verdad? 8 damn weeks for his stupid ass to be pretending to find a New Way Backward. One news report was that on that particularly day, the day he had Cindy arrested in fact, he had worked a full 3 1/2 hours on the problem before giving up for the day, chopping some wood and riding his horsie.

Maybe if they do commit him and Cheney they will be in the same ward as John W Hinkley. the rich kid who shot Reagan 25 years ago. On the aggravated assault charge he would already have been off parole and everything, but no he had to play crazy. OK so maybe he was crazy, but the fact of it is, without the set sentence to serve only that and nothing more, quoth the raving nevermore, he would be out, stalking Jody Foster and trying to get somebody crazy enough to sell him another gun. But imagine if the Chimp and his pet Dick were in the same room with a man they had helped the other Reaganites keep locked up for 25 years…. And Hinkley knows it too, he ain’t THAT crazy. I bet they would have some interesting conversations.

Ugly Betty’s ugly Golden Globe

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The actress who plays Ugly Betty said she thought it was awesome that America has embraced a completely new face.

Ugly face of American comedyNew face, her ass! Ugly Betty is a new face like Urkel was not Webster, Gary Coleman, Fat Albert, and Kid Dynamite. Like Alf was not Ronald Reagan.

The best thing I can say about Ugly Betty –I learned tonight from the acceptance speech– the show is about hispanic American immigrants, a faction of our population sorely lacking in heroic protagonists on Anglo TV. Too bad the creators consider Hispanic ugly.

Ugly
What does Ugly Betty say about how Americans see themselves on TV when to see ugly, we have to fit an actress with prosthetics, bad hair, braces, and a fat suit. And of course, eyeglasses. Ugly is artificial. We seem also to want to say that ugly is genetic and it’s for keeps.

Although the dental braces indicate Betty is consiously on track for self-improvement and TV normalcy, her transistional ugliness is also a movie insider’s ugly. It’s the stereotypical Hollywood beginner’s ugly where female Horatio Algers start out as caterpillars but everyone is already assured a happy ending because from the begining they could recognize under the familiar cliched trappings the butterfly that is going to emerge, usually a recognizable beautiful actress. The actress who accepted the Golden Globe award was of course very pretty.

Except where most story lines dealing with appearances are guided by the idea that beauty is only skin deep etc, Ugly Betty is self-consciously inferior. struggling as she is every episode to prove and improve herself.

Though not enough to dress better. A superficiality that strikes me with Ugly Betty is the insistence on ugly clothes and support shoes. How many ugly people do you know address corporate boards in their grandmother’s worst frock? One of the glaring aspects about unattractiveness in the real world is the insistence of some homely people to dress like they are not.

World Cinema, like typical domestic independent film, is distinguished by actors who look like authentic people. The faces are real, the complexions imperfect, the looks asymmetric, the hair whatever it is. Their stories are thus easier to communicate and identify with. In Hollywood, plastic is real, and the audiences who watch the blockbusters don’t get anything from the experience but adrenaline.

Why did I not see the Hispanic component in Ugly Betty before -except for the dad who doesn’t speak English and who gets a visit from the INS? Because Ugly Betty’s caricature masks every nuance of reality. Her artificial face shows cultural, social or racial feature. She is a potato head with four or five “ugly” accessories, one of them being race.