Monthly Archives: November 2009

Sarah Palin dons lipstick for Dog Dinner

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Sarah Palin with lipstick
She’s got a book tour, so what? But Oprah is willing to suffer her for two couch sessions, now Hillary Clinton wants to grant her a beer summit. Foreign leaders can’t get an audience without preconditions. Why is Sarah Palin accorded such stature?

David Letterman protested his contractual obligation to feature reality TV “Survivor” contestants on Late Night. He made them stand at the edge of the stage, at audience level, instead of joining him on the furniture reserved for celebrities and real people lifted from the news. But Letterman’s rejection of the contrived importance of the Survivor casts worked against him. The television audience grown fond of the individual contestants tuned in to see their moment in the spotlight with the king of late night, and felt intimately slighted themselves by Letterman’s haughtiness.

Maybe it’s a lesson the Dem powerbrokers don’t want to relive with John McCain’s last mate from tribe GOP. With the media able to make it all Sarah, all the time, who is the Obama administration to pretend Sarah Palin is just a hockey mom in lipstick –or was it a dog– I’m surprised to have forgotten the distinction.

Actually the distinction is the difference between Sarah Palin being champion idiot at a Dinner Game, or the winner’s date at a Dog Dinner.

I know what they’re doing, and it’s every bit as gruesome as parading the circus freaks. And worse. Those Palin supporters who are also railing at the loss of whatever it was the Constitution meant to them, are going to be proved right.

Of course it depends whether you think Sarah Palin ever had a chance in 2008, or whether she has any viability in 2012. I’m inclined to think not. And I’m pretty sure that’s the consensus of those eagerly pandering to Palin’s political aspirations.

Palin makes an ideal straw candidate. She is who the people want, by “the people” I mean of course, the sans culottes. What’s the new equivalent — the American ill-dressed? Palin appeals to all variety of voters who think politics need a shot of authenticity, whatever. And she hasn’t got a chance, she couldn’t even squeeze a middle school education between now and the start of a 2012 campaign. For the coup de grace, Palin’s character assassins could parade freak two, Levi Johnston, to drop a second shoe.

There’s everything to gain by floating Palin’s balloon, because you prevent opponents from materializing a real one. By all means, inflate Palin’s ego, and let her people’s hopes take flight. Blow, blow, the sky’s the limit.

This is the American two party system at its most efficient. It’s Billie Jean Kings versus Bobby Riggs, all show. Unlike King who only reluctantly agreed to the Battle of the Sexes with the aging baffoon, the Democrats are courting their challenger. The closer she can bring her big mug into camera frame, the bigger the money the Dems can draw from those staking odds.

It’s good for Las Vegas, it’s good for the Dems, it’s good for those who think the Democrats are better then the Repugs, but it’s curtains for democracy.

Palestinians don’t have “right to exist?”

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The Palestinian Authority has declared the people of Palestine want statehood on what’s left of their land. Mahmoud Abbas plans to seek the support of the UN. Why is the media calling this decision unilateral? I need a bath –the media needn’t report if the verdict was or wasn’t unilateral.

Of course the accusation of Palestine acting “unilaterally” is coming from Israel, a unilateral categorization in itself. Israel is waving its arms that the Palestinians have acted without consulting their occupiers, in the manner King George of England might have when confronted with the American states’ Declaration of Independence. How could they? Without asking! Now just like George, the Israelis are threatening to lay claim to the “disputed” territories.

The Middle East “Peace Process” has been alleged to be the solitary means by which the original population of Palestine was supposed to achieve self-determination. Where has it got them? It does seem a dubious prospect, jumping through hoops for your occupier, while he confiscates what remains of the reservation land which you’d negotiated in your retreat.

Israel is most agitated that Abbas intends to enlist the UN members to vote for Palestinian independence, because the international climate is heavy with sympathy for Palestine. The UN General Assembly just might do it. That’s why Israel has preemptively announced that its American partner in the Security Council will veto any such unilateral move. It threatens the peace negotiations, it will erode Israel’s goodwill toward the Palestinians. Hmm.

Israel was created by a vote of the United Nations. Now the UN can’t do it for Palestine? And this time it doesn’t even mean carving up somebody else’s property to do it.

Israel responds to those who question the legitimacy of a For-Jews-only state, that its people a “right to exist.” Palestinians who reject the taking of their homeland, are accused of refusing “Israel’s right to exist.” It’s a major sticking point, even while by international law, an occupied people cannot be compelled to legitimize their invader’s act.

Israel BDS - Boycott Divestiture SanctionsAmerican audiences who’ve been attending Israel’s recent panicked Hasbara blitz have heard the speakers deny there is any such thing as a Palestinian people. Which explains why a reciprocated “right to exist” is not even on the table.

Where then were the Israelis really leading the poor Palestinians with their “peace talks?”

Now I say it is time for my bath, and I am unanimous in that.

Footnotes: Arthur, Are You Being Served?

Buy Nothing Day 2009 now Wildcat Strike

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Adbusters Buy Nothing DayDo you recognize the cat at right? It might be a child’s zoo animal rubber stamp if it didn’t look so angry. This is a stencil that dates to the Wobblies, when working men were angry. When labor organizers had to fend off union busters and Pinkerton goons, actions had to be called in defiance of the bad contracts and entrenched company-union bosses. Something for UFCW Local 7 to think about. The hasty stencils painted on factory walls announced: Wildcat Strike!

Adbusters resurrects the wild cat for the 2009 Buy Nothing Day, whose impact might be better felt as a GENERAL STRIKE. Buy nothing, drive nowhere, turn out the lights, turn of the electronics, go for a walk, and do not go to work. For one day. The day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving by the way goes off the calendar too. Find something else for which to be thankful besides feasting at the expense of the Native Americans, themselves starved, infected, and driven from their land.
Adbusters Buy Nothing Day
Someone someday will be able to mobilize a real general strike. Until then, what can we lose by trying? Do it. This is the splash page which Adbusters recommends for websites planning to blackout.

Who is making a list, checking it twice

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Sony PS3 Playstation network TV spotI know, right? Why won’t her boyfriend take his new Playstation online, where obviously all the fun is? “What’s wrong with him?!” The Sony PS3 spokesman commiserates, but he’s an interested party. So what’s up? Well, we have a clue this week with the Xbox.

By the way, I find Sony’s choice of spokesperson discordantly subversive. I’m guessing marketers of the PS3 have found their target audience watches the Mac vs. PC commercials and identifies with PC.

In a sudden move that has exasperated Xbox users, Microsoft decided that all its game consoles which have been modified to play software obtained through alternative delivery systems (piracy) will now automatically be blocked from their online system.

It make sense, but is it appropriate? If you’ve modded your car, for example to run on another fuel in addition to gasoline, would gas stations have the grounds to shut you out? And it’s not like you put a sticker on it advertising the modification. How would they know?

I think Microsoft’s violation lies more in a Terms of Use contract which permits them to query your machine for your personalizations. What right have they to tell you what you can or cannot do with your equipment, regardless whether you bought it from them? You didn’t rent it. Next are they going to dictate with which peripherals you are allowed to connect it, or atop which pedestal you must behold it?

You may not feel the video gamer’s pain, but look who’s doing the smack-down. What would happen if Microsoft decided to apply the same policy to copies of its operating systems, or office software?

Could it be coming? Google is criticized for knowing too much about internet users as they search the web. The companies who make browsers, including Microsoft, of course know where you go online. Imagine what Microsoft knows about what you do offline. And they are now asserting jurisdiction over your hardware. What if you wanted to turn off your computer, instead of putting it to sleep where it might still be answering queries about you? Maybe Microsoft will decide its Terms of Use won’t let you.

Microsoft hasn’t been above integrating spyware into its applications, creating stealth logs whose existence its programmers deny, even as users wonder why the files regenerate themselves after they’re deleted. Microsoft Windows’ unceasing security vulnerabilities are due entirely to the software exploits it leaves so that its programs are inter-compatible.

If that’s not enough, Microsoft counterinsurgent teams load malware into community open source projects, to give Windows company looking crummy.

Apple too is guilty of overreaching its intellectual rights authority. It recently stopped Psystar from adapting the OS X to work on PCs. And it disabled an element of its Snow Leopard 10.6 release to thwart a Hackintosh adaptation of Mac’s OS for netbook users.

DEC 28 mile long march for Gaza

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gaza mile long march 2010 break siegeBill and Genie Durland, Colorado Springs’ most vocal champions for Palestine, will be among a tidal wave of peace activists converging on Palestine on the first anniversary of Israel’s unrestrained attack of Gaza. With a Mile Long March to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, the UN Goldstone Report pushing Israeli IDF commanders inexorably to The Hague, the snowballing Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions campaign supported by Israel’s own peace activists, and Israeli professor Shlomo Sand unmasking the Zionist’s defrauding of Judaism, the self-righteous death grip on Palestinians will lose its cheerleaders.

Technology, is it science or alchemy?

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Symbols for X and YWoman and man? The X and Y for creating life? Actually, symbols for copper and iron, designated by the alchemists; curiously, X/Y to the Bronze Age overtaken by Iron, the supremacy of technology.

Our sixth-graders are learning that alchemy was a science that is no longer practiced. I must be oversimplifying the lesson, because it occurs to me that modern science, on the contrary, has become exclusively alchemist.

Not in its eastern spiritual form seeking enlightenment, nor the pre-Chemistry Islamic alchemy of Geber, but its indecorous European operation in pursuit of wealth-conjuring.

We call it applied science, it’s the academic denomination which gets the funding, whose patrons justify their investment in exchange for technological leaps, intent to deliver mankind from the laws of nature, by spinning straw into gold.

It feels no less heretical to say it. Because we know something of alchemy’s prospects.

As distinguished from the spiritual seekers, the European alchemists were charged by their monarchs to make gold. They had very little to go on, except that lead was a substance closely resembling gold, it had the heft and malleability, it needed only luster. Those kings inclined to invest in laboratories jumped into the technology race. The more their scientists came to understand the material properties, the closer it seemed they got. Eventually of course we can all see on the Periodic Table that the alchemists had only to nudge Pb just a couple of frames over. But now we understand elements are as intractable as prime numbers.

In their early grasping at straws, the alchemists figured the seven heavenly bodies which moved across the stars, might have an influence over the metals they hoped to manipulate. Maybe not so strangely, they were never closer to the truth.

No, and not even.

A Wiki-tangent: the seven celestial objects visible to the ancients already held influence over the days of the week. They were, in order of proximity to the Earth from farthest to nearest: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon. The Romans believed that these beings kept watch over the Earth in hourly turns, repeating in cycles of seven. Thus the English days of the week are named for which god/planet took the first hour that day, starting with Saturn’s day, Sunday, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus (we substituted their Norse god counterparts: Tiw, Wodan, Thor and Frigg).

Alchemy symbols for the metal

The celestial bodies were associated by many cultures with the classic elements, earth, fire, water, air. When the alchemists correlated the planets to the known metallic elements, the sun became gold; the moon, silver; Mercury, itself; Venus, copper; Mars, iron; Jupiter, tin; and Saturn, lead. Interesting alignment isn’t it? Lead and tin seemed the choicest starting blocks from which to morph a precious metal, but astronomically, they were the furthest away.

The answer was literally in the stars, and could have saved a lot of trouble.

Eventually man learned that he couldn’t change the elements. Since then, the gold-from-lead alchemist has gone the way of the druid. But what of today’s wealth-from-ether scientists? How is man’s presumption to master Gaia any less foolish than the gibberish of the alchemists?

I wonder where modern man should be looking for his best clues to scientific advances. For all we enhance our measure of the known world, progress seems to lead us further from a holistic understanding. Mankind’s earliest wisdom might lack for technological remedies, but may already have the answers to what will be sustainable.

Public art to make you feel Lilliputian

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Industrial sized public sculptureCOLORADO SPRINGS- I confess to being reminded regularly of a clip from Michael Moore’s movie Capitalism a Love Story. It’s the mock tourism video ad selling Cleveland: We’re not Detroit. The punch line accompanying this shot is “we think this is art.” Of course I’m reminded because our city too has a collection of these big little things dropped on lawns where you might expect a sculpture. Giant paperclips, marble engagement rings, are feats of logistic craftsmanship certainly, but where in the Parks & Rec shopping catalogs do they warrant a listing in the index under art?

I’m thinking these objects keep us company as we navigate between buildings and structures which dwarf human beings. Maybe they calm our sense of foreboding, or give us the false sense that the city’s oppressive scale is every bit as whimsical as everyday items removed of their functional context, rendered inanimate by being made giant.

But imagine the money to cast that much bronze, to lift that much steel, cement and resin, if it were spent on real works of creative impulse. We wouldn’t do it. For one, it would underwriting artists, not engineers, and two, uplift the spirits of people commuting to work and they’ll all go off truant.

Senators Cornyn, Smith, Lieberman, Webb, McCain, not common criminals

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They want war crimes trials, then book ’em. Senators John Cornyn, Lamar Smith, Joe Lieberman, Jim Webb and John McCain have mouthed off against bringing accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial in US civilian courts. They want Mohammed and his fellow detainees tried by military tribunals, which have already been condemned as violations of international law. So has voting to support the attack on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, secret prisons, etc.

Forget the presumption of innocence. Said Cornyn:

“These terrorists planned and executed the mass murder of thousands of innocent Americans. Treating them like common criminals is unconscionable.”

Added Lieberman, they–

“are war criminals, not common criminals … not American citizens entitled to all the constitutional rights American citizens have in our federal courts.”

Nope, sorry it doesn’t work that way. Our constitution protects the rights of everyone under US jurisdiction. Not to mention the detainees are “alleged” criminals as well.

The senators are perhaps influenced by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s media monicker: the self proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. That’s a rather inflated attribution based on a confession extracted after an apparently record setting series of water boarding torture sessions.

Unless Attorney General Eric Holder plans to conduct the 9/11 trials under wraps, with the sound off like the kangaroo court lynching of Saddam Hussein, this news could be the most significant development the 9/11 Truth Movement will ever get.

Next step, join the ACLU in urging Holder to try all War on Terror detainees in US civilian courts. This isn’t about keeping American citizens safe. As the Senators rightly miserly point out, this is about according the detainees sufficient rights that they might win an inconveniently fair trial.

HR-3962 a travesty of mockery of sham

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new medicare logoWhile a number of Democrats implicated themselves by joining all but one Republican to vote against the Affordable Health Care for America Act, let’s make a distinction for Representative Dennis Kucinich who had reasons the other congressmen are not prepared to articulate. For example, Colorado District 4 house rep Betsy Markey rejected HR-3962 for the usual GOP tea party bugaboos, asserting it would hurt the deficit and didn’t include tort reform. Below is the statement Kucinich released Nov 7. Chew on this, as Dems pat themselves on the back.

Why I Voted NO

We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care.  We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are.  But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit.  That is our system.

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution.  They are driving up the cost of health care.  Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills.  The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%.  It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care.  Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care.  In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers.  This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies — a bailout under a blue cross.

By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal.  The Center for American Progress’ blog, Think Progress, states “since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.”  Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that “money will start flowing in again” to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation.  Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.

During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back.  The “robust public option” which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million.  An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration.  Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy.  The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks’ hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy — in which most Americans live — the recession is not over.  Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America’s manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care.   America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system.  As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.

Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America’s businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.

This Israel public relations jig is up

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Colorado College lecture in Gaylord HallCOLORADO COLLEGE- The news from the ISRAEL TODAY lecture is all good. If you’d been there, you might wonder how my takeaway from such a bilious gathering could be upbeat. I’ll tell you. The Palestinian voice was well represented, Israel’s presentation was Old Testament, and the writing on the wall grows ever more clear. And I got a few nice pics.

The Audience
To begin, I would certainly have preferred everyone had acted with more decorum. That is, if there had been impressionable attendees there. As it was, the seats were only half occupied. Except for the young men with “JEW CREW” on their backs, or girls with Hebrew script across their pullovers, there were almost no CC students. The audience was one third voices for Palestine, and two thirds vitriolic Jew, amazingly indignant to disruption of their world view. No one was there to listen, except to cheer for what they already believed. But I’m certain it was an eye opener for all.

My friends and I were sure to supplement the speaker’s pauses with color to augment his heavily loaded statements. For example, when Gil Artzyeli described the objective and feat of Israel’s 2006 incursion into Lebanon “to silence them,” and did that not prove effective? Who could refrain from adding “you killed them.” The 2/3 supporters grew more and more angry. But the speaker had an inopportune manner of posing rhetorical questions, which we couldn’t resist answering.

It almost got us kicked out. I spent the duration with security guards poised right behind me, ready to escort me out of the room. I learned it would be more prudent to avoid the back row at opportunities like this, because you can be pulled out of your chair, or distracted into involuntary conversation with security personnel more readily than if you were well ensconced among the other attendees.

Those voicing support for Palestinians were made to wait until question and answer portion to voice their objections. Even then, the pro-Israel audience would cut them off. It became impossible to ask a complex question without interruptions of “What is your question? State your question!” They hounded everyone who wasn’t setting the speaker up for a softy. It was a ruthless crowd with the civility of Tea Partiers. When the pro-Israel attendees took their turn posing questions, no one interrupted. When it was a detractor, their time suddenly became too valuable to entrust to us. Even a CC student from Gaza, who hasn’t been permitted to visit his family in two years, was not given a hearing.

I’m positive that as these rude people think on how the event transpired, they will not be able to help feeling ashamed. Our interactions were spirited and engaging, addressed to a speaker with the hubris to take us on. We interrupted the speaker, but never tried to drown him out. Our adversaries on the other hand tried to flat out shut their fellow audience members up.

That crowd is immovable. I’ve no optimism for influencing their resolve. On the other hand, their rigidity was laughable. Their logic will not sway anyone new. They were positively shrill about their speaker being permitted to deliver his message as abridged. “Let him speak!” they shouted, as if their attention was rapt by information they’d never heard before, a preposterous notion. I’m neither Palestinian nor American Jew, but this was Israel Foundation Myth for Dummies. I can only think that this crowd sat tightly clenched, thrilled that the others among the audience were forced to listen to their dogma.

The Presentation
Old school. Palestinians offered their own statehood, but rejected it. Israel is pretext for Arab countries to oppress their peoples. No such thing as a Palestinian, Jewish presence in Judea has been continuous, Palestinians teach their children to hate, Israelis teach love, etc, etc. The old greenhouses of Gaza story was the example given to show that Palestinians don’t want to help themselves. Arab neighbor states are blamed for not resettling the Palestinians. Gaza is free, it is not occupied.

Would you believe Israel justifies the force it used in Lebanon and Gaza based on what NATO was permitted to do in Bosnia? Those were war crimes too! Israel accuses its critics of anti-Semitism because they don’t take other militaries to task for their crimes. But really Israel gives itself the latitude to commit crimes commensurate with the worst.

And here’s a wild gem! Israel owes its enormously successful economy (no mention of US foreign aid or direct sponsorship by Jewish American interests) to, among progressive business practices, the fact that all Israelis, both men and women, have to serve compulsory military service. It gives them the skills and discipline to excel in business and strengthen Israel. Mr. Artzyeli showed a video clip taken from CNBC, recommending that such a policy in American would certainly greatly improve its prospects for an economic recovery!

A word about the delivery of the presentation. Though impeccably dressed Gil Artzyeli affected the presence of someone wearing a Tony Soprano tracksuit. He sat back on his heels, his eyes directed to the ceiling as he dismissed his questioners. When a Palestinian girl raised a specific instance of an IDF strategy deployed in Lebanon, wondering how it was not a war crime. Artzyeli ignored it completely, making an aside to someone up front that the he wasn’t about to dignify that accusation with a response.

It’s kinda the problem Israel is having, isn’t it?

The Jig is Up
Over the last weeks I’ve had a chance to participate in three presentation by Israeli officials. The sum experience has fortified me with hope. With world opinion against them, and now the Goldstone Report, Israel is on the run.

The first lecture by Uzi Landau was on the offensive, directed toward Iran. It went over poorly. The Q&A revealed that Landau hadn’t connected the dots at all. The audience he had hoped to rally became only more concerned about Israeli nukes than Iran’s.

The second presentation delivered by Nir Barkat was an encouragement to the Denver Jewish community to support Jerusalem, with donations, travel, and by encouraging emigration. There the audience was equally smug and oblivious to the notion that increased settlements constituted violations of international law. But Israel’s continuous push for Jewish immigrants provides the clue to what Barkat inadvertently confirmed. Jews are leaving Jerusalem. The balance of the population is shifting toward the non-Jew.

This third event with the Deputy Consul General took the rhetoric down to basics, a demonstration of how far Israel is slipping. The dogma behind Zionism’s right to its own state, and their right to defend themselves, used to go without saying. Today Gil Artzyeli was forced to defend the most basic assumptions. The Jewish diaspora, their right to return, the expanding borders, the wall, the military retaliation. I was thrilled to see arguments slip back past the basics.

The Jewish American communities may still be a resolute, but their numbers are not large. It appears to me that the compatriots they’ve recruited, from the Christian right and the neoliberal conservatives are receding quickly.

The image of the much-oppressed Jew is becoming eclipsed by the militant arrogant Zionist, earning no one’s sympathy.

A few pictures from the event:
Deputy Consul General Gil Artzyeli lecture November 12, 2009
Castigated for raising his voice, Ed Nace insisted on standing for the duration of the lecture, to lend omniscience to his objection.

Deputy Consul General Gil Artzyeli lecture November 12, 2009
Colorado College Poli-Sci professor, and Middle East specialist Bob Lee rose several times to forbid the impromptu participation by the audience. Here he calls for security to remove Ed.

Deputy Consul General Gil Artzyeli lecture November 12, 2009
Security reconsidered asking Ed Nace to leave as he informed them in his booming voice that he was a Colorado College alum.

Deputy Consul General Gil Artzyeli lecture November 12, 2009
Would you believe Mr. Artzyeli trotted out the old Farfur the Mouse clip, depicting Muslim children being taught to admire suicide bombers. It’s a favorite example whose relevant context was long ago dismissed.

Footnote
One lamentable observation I had regarded a member of the chaplain’s office at CC, who is also a peace community activist. She was not at liberty to take sides on the Palestinian – Israel discussions for fear of alienating the Jewish students. I do not personally doubt her motives, nor her sympathies for the victims of injustice in Palestine.

However, when our 85 year-old Ed Nace raised his voice, or stood angrily, the chaplain’s assistant moved to calm him down. She may have thought he needed assistance, but in reality his stubborn act was working. His offense at the slanders against Palestinians, his incredulity that such a one-sided presentation was being allowed, and his indignation at the ferocity with which he was being silenced, expressed itself as a hard-of-hearing old man who was not about to be bullied. His performance, even inadvertent, worked to disrupt the lecture and temper the smug untruths being passed as academic fact. But Ed’s act was not made any easier by a colleague trying to calm him down. To his credit, Ed persevered and was able to put a human emotional context to Mr. Artzyeli’s slick propaganda.

The chaplain is no doubt schooled in nonviolent communication. She needs to bone up on effective nonviolent theater. Non-confrontational communication isn’t going to bring racist bullies like Artzyeli to heel. Zionist Apartheid is going to fall when it is condemned and pilloried.

DUI gone postal

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News 5 is trying metaphorically to crucify the Postal Service and especially the Postal Workers union because a mail-carrier wasn’t fired for being convicted of DUI. So I thought to myself (as I often do) “Self, I bet Freedom Communications has literally hundreds of people working for them who have DUI convictions”.

Their piss-and-moan about it is (allegedly) that the Postal Service is losing money. This from minions of a Corporation that’s in bankruptcy. And one of their subsidiaries, the Colorado Springs Gazette, has just laid off half their employees.

But whenever a person takes the stand in court, either as a witness or a defendant, he has to state where and for whom he works. So, fair being fair, posting a partial list of the employees of their Corporate Masters who have criminal convictions would perhaps be in order. I thought of doing it myself, look up the transcripts and report thereof…

Leaving out the names of those who work labor jobs for them, drivers, warehouse, the temps who stuff the circulars into the Sunday and Wednesday papers and assemble the mailings… cut those guys a lot of slack. They already are in wage bondage to a hostile employer anyway. Edit to add… they were the first to go in the layoffs.

On the other hand, there’s a TV reporter from Dallas and who I believe works for one of the Denver stations now, Leeza Gibbons., who was convicted of joyriding on I 30 from Grand Prairie to the west side of Ft Worth at 110 miles an hour and leading the po-pos from 8 different municipalities, 2 counties and the State Department of Public Safety on a high speed chase. And this kind of event isn’t really all that rare. That would be the type to publish. Also any who would fit into a suit and tie on a regular basis.

The ones who slither in and out of their corporate boardroom. The ones who are serving up the Union-bashing and the ones who ordered it done.

It’s also convenient that the Union Bashing is done at a time when two of their Loyal Corporate Partners are demanding that the Grocery Workers Union accept a really arrogant “Last and Best Offer” contract.

Ed Billings puts city council on Weebly

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Springs’ own Guy Fawkes, aka union activist Ed Billings, has a website finally, named not unpredictably, Colorado Springs Sucks. His first salvo is aimed at Mayor Rivera and our city’s cutback of transportation services. Excerpt:

Mayor Jackass …er… I mean Mayor Lionel Rivera … wants Colorado Springs to be the best city in America to live and work. Doesn’t he know how many people will lose their jobs after January 1, 2010 because he and his third reich have just taken away our extended bus service? … Our bus service will only run Monday through Friday from 6:00 am to 6:45 pm … Colorado Springs will have the highest unemployment in the United Stated thanks to Mayor Jackass and the third reich!

Israel sends deputy consul general to CC

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End the occupationThe Israel Today event changed the speakers on us, instead of the Israeli Consul General to Los Angeles, it’s the Deputy Consul Gil Artzyeli. But the act’s still on. Get to Gaylord hall sometime before noon, it’s the conference room at the Southeast corner of the Worner Center building. We’ll stand outside with our repudiation of Mr. Artzyeli’s message, then go inside to assure the discussion steers toward being honest. I found this quote by Artzyeli, addressing the Denver Jewish community earlier this year about the Gaza incursion:

“This is not a war for territory … The first war is to protect the citizens of Israel, the second war is against Iran and the third war is against lies and disinformation.”

Any takers? My first question, if I’m given the chance: Mr. Artzyeli, are you here only to speak, or will you listen?

Cyndy Kulp put together a handout for the occasion:

Human Rights Issues in “Israel Today”

Israel is a pariah nation condemned by the UN and much of the international community for its multiple violations of international human rights law, including:

• Continuing the occupation of the Palestinian people

• Building housing settlements on confiscated land

• Seizing additional land and property from Palestinians to build “The Wall”, highways for the exclusive use of Israelis, and military areas, etc.

• Using extremely disproportionate and indiscriminate force in the invasion of the Gaza Strip during “Operation Cast Lead” in Dec. 2008

• Inflicting heavy casualties on Palestinians, many civilians and children with no way to escape the bombing

• Refusing to compensate the 5.8 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were displaced from their homes and properties during 1948

Israeli Diplomats, like our speaker today, should not be given a public platform from which to promote their views as long as they refuse to recognize and cooperate with international laws.

HERE ARE FURTHER DETAILS:

? In June 1967, the Israeli military invaded the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. These areas of historic Palestine under military control are the “Occupied Territories,” comprising some 3.5 million Palestinians, and they are systematically being incorporated into the state of Israel in violation of international law.

? Life under occupation is very harsh. The Palestinians have virtually no human or civil rights. Unemployment is rampant. In order to go about their daily lives, the people in the Occupied Territories must line up and go through multiple checkpoints manned by the Israeli army. Proper paperwork, including Palestinian ID’s, and permits are required to pass through, and many people are denied entry, even into East Jerusalem which is Palestinian territory and home to many hospitals, schools, and employers.

? Israel has built 200+ settlements in the West Bank, and over 400,000 Israelis have moved onto Palestinian land. Many of the settlers are armed and aggressive extremists, and their actions are regularly protected by Israeli Defense Forces.

? Israel has seized a majority of the West Bank land as military bases, settlements, security areas, “land reserves,” by-pass roads linking settlements with Israel, and other areas forbidden to Palestinians. Palestinians are confined to small fragmented areas resembling Bantustans in an Israeli version of Apartheid.

?? Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem is questioned by the international community, and contrary to what the Israelis would like you to believe, Jerusalem does not belong to Israel. This is why other nations have their embassies in Tel Aviv instead.

? East Jerusalem was declared as an occupied territory in UN Security Council Resolution 242 which specifically emphasized the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Yet Israel continues to seize homes and land and allow Israeli settlers to move into East Jerusalem.

? Over 10,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed, leaving 30,000 people homeless. Housing demolitions and displacement are common for Palestinian families, and they are powerless to protect their properties or get legal permission to build homes.

? The Gaza strip remains under siege today. Despite the withdrawal of Israeli settlers in 2005, Israel still controls entry into Gaza. People cannot leave and cannot get the goods and services they need. They are literally locked into a ghetto.

? In Dec. 2008, Israel invaded the Gaza strip, causing massive destruction and Palestinian causalities. The vast majority of the Palestinians killed in Israel’s operation were innocent civilians rather than combatants, according to a new report by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Of the 1,387 deaths, 773 were non combatants. 320 of these were under the age of 18, and 109 were women.

? Nine Israelis were killed during the Gaza war — four by rocket fire on southern Israel, including three civilians and one soldier, while the other five were soldiers killed in combat, primarily from “friendly fire” incidents.

? The Goldstone Report which investigated the Gaza Invasion for the UN concluded that both Israel and the Palestinians had committed violations of International Law, but that Israel because of it’s huge army and sophisticated weaponry was more culpable and guilty of Crimes Against Humanity in it’s 2008/09 Gaza onslaught.

? U.S. aid has made Israel’s army one of the most powerful military forces in the world. Israel is using U.S. F-16 fighters and Apache helicopters in attacks against Palestinian civilians. This violates the U.S. Foreign Arms Export Act. Over $3 billion in US foreign aid is given to Israel, and most of it is used for military operations.

There Will Be No Security For ISRAEL Until There Is Justice For PALESTINE.

Resources For more information:
• Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
• B’tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
• Bethlehem University
• Mazin Qumsiyeh
• Machsom Watch
• Breaking the Silence
• Women in Black
• Sabeel

• Stop the Wall Campaign

• US Campaign to End the Occupation

–END THE OCCUPATION
–COMPLY WITH INTERNATIONAL LAWS
–FREEZE SETTLEMENTS
–NEGOTIATE AN EQUITABLE SOLUTION ON LAND AND WATER

The US claims to be an “honest broker” –fair to both sides– in the so-called peace process. At the same time, the U.S. proclaimed itself the unswerving ally of Israel. These roles are contradictory. Massive U.S. aid funds the occupation. Since 1949, the U.S. has given Israel well over $100 billion in grants, loans and other assistance. This amounts to over $15,000 per Israeli citizen. ?
A genuine peace with a minimum of justice requires an independent and viable Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem). Jerusalem should be shared as the capital of both Israel and Palestine. Palestine should be an equal neighbor alongside Israel with peace and security for both peoples. ?

Falcon Heene is going to be a star

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Colorado balloon boyThe Heene family takes the high road, pleading guilty to false reporting, to the surprise I’m sure of the poor-parazzi planting their tent stakes for a courtroom circus feeding frenzy. For his parents stepping up to tell the truth, Balloon Boy is going to emerge a hero, even at school. Who can fault the Heenes for taking the predatory media for a ride? They entertained, they became the butt of jokes, but they harmed no one and exposed the television media’s thinning credibility. The media is showing its vindictiveness, by explaining that the guilty plea was made to avoid Mrs. Heene’s deportation, but parents know this decision was about the kids, and I predict the Heene family’s star will rise. The media may never forgive them, but it’s too competitive to pass on this enterprising bunch.

How culpable was the media? There was not a single possibility that a child was being carried aloft by that mylar balloon. The media willfully played along and knew the story’s unraveling would make for even better ratings.

The prevailing opinion has it that the Heene parents committed an obvious error in judgment to plan this fraud and make the children their accomplices. I’d even agree. But in today’s scheme of things, isn’t seeking fortune and fame a matter of calculating what you have to compromise? It’s too early for mere television viewers to know if the Heenes actually miscalculated. Lots of ordinary people have launched themselves into the celebrity firmament on gambits which would embarrass the rest of us.

Was the Heene gambit much worse than taking your family to sail around the world, or any other foolhardy adventure? They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. In this godless age, that is no longer a warning. It’s become an adage to define the fast track for social climbers.

We can second guess to what risks parents should or shouldn’t expose their children, but I don’t know who can say that a grab at the brass ring is ultimately out of bounds.

The fraudulent child-abducted-by-balloon story could almost pass for tongue-in-cheek, really. Just how stupid are the reporters and law enforcement? If you called them to complain of an elephant stuck in your toilet, and they came, my first thought is not going to be to accuse you of fraud.

I don’t care how many search and rescue emergency vehicles were expended on the balloon chase. They’re salaried, and the fuel and equipment hours can be expensed as training exercise. Giving chase is what those personnel are for.

I’m much more concerned about the media teams, fully prepared to build media events from fabricated premises. But it’s what they do with the big stories, like war, and politics. Balloon Boy exposed it.

You have forgotten what to remember

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You are not forgottenCan someone please explain to me what it means to fly this flag? The POW-MIA flag is ubiquitous these days around veterans. Our town hall flies this black flag halfway below the Stars and Stripes. When the latter is at half mast, the former hangs indecorously low. Which reminds me of a pirate ship stalking a wavering Old Glory.

I understand POW and MIA, and “you are not forgotten.” But there is no flag for the veterans, the dead or wounded, to whom does this lone flag speak and why?

Since the Gulf War, the US military maintains that it loses track of none of its soldiers. We’ve had POWs but they’ve been returned, and we’ve had MIAs whose bodies have been found. One was recovered even recently, though it was the body of a pilot lost over Iraq, understood to have died. Casualties at sea are still sometimes unrecoverable, but at least something about American war-making proficiency now permits us to confirm deaths even sans corpus. Supposedly.

US military engagements between those wars, and later, have been kept outside public scrutiny, or not officially admitted. As a result, they’ve added no POWs or MIAs for the home front to worry over.

Which leaves Vietnam, from whose era comes the dark silhouette of a bent inmate in the shadow of a prison guard tower. According to the last report, there remain 1728 American soldiers missing in action in Indochina. They are unaccounted for — it might be more fair to say–not missing persons, expected to turn up.

During the Vietnam War, the MIA list gave hope that your soldier wasn’t among the fallen. It was a hope that loved ones could cling to for even years after the fall of Siagon. On the radio, a Dick Curless hit from 1965 continued to resonate even as the war receded from memory. “Six Times a Day” told of a bride in post-WWII Germany who met the trains every day, awaiting the return of her German soldier, held by the Soviets in war-reparation labor camps until the Russians considered them to have atoned. Was this what we expected Vietnam was doing?

Six times a day the trains came down from Frankfort
The night he came ten years were almost through
She held him close and said I knew you’d be here
He said I had no doubt you’d be here too

American wives were determined to wait even longer, except evidence of post-war prisoners never came. There was speculation of a cover-up, suspicions which politicians like John Kerry and John McCain do little to assuage. After the war, some believe that prisoner GIs were left behind, whom the North Vietnamese hoped to exchange for war reparations. Instead of paying, it’s conjectured that the US government chose to deny the existence of those men. No American diplomat has ever confirmed the scenario, and no surviving GI has ever surfaced.

The closest we’ve come to rescuing POWs was at the movies, when Rambo went back for a jailbreak and to do-over America’s lost war.

Even as the rumor persisted, the fate of the abandoned POWs is assumed to have been execution at the hands of their former foe, presumed so exasperated and bitter. The general consensus today, no matter the theory, is that no veteran is anticipated to step alive from the sad lists of the Vietnam MIA.

If they are presumed dead, then what separates an MIA from the dead, who we honor together with all veterans? The Vietnam MIA have been added to the Vietnam Memorial. How now is their memory any different?

Even recently I’ve seen relatives of those MIA conduct special ceremonies on Memorial Day, with the empty place setting, the chair, the vase and rose, etc. It looks to me as though the family members have even passed the ritual down to grandchildren who would not even have know the missing soldier. But this ceremony isn’t conducted for the regular dead, who are also missing from the family table, it’s reserved for the missing dead. And so I wonder at the distinction.

MIAs represent casualties who fell off the books. If a soldier’s capture is confirmed, his status changes to POW, otherwise soldiers come up missing through desertion, treason, malfeasance, or physical obliteration. Mother nature can dispose of bodies, but the most common cause of disappearance is owed to the inhuman scale of mechanized war. As weapons grew more powerful, physical bodies more frequently disintegrated. Missing bodies today, even looking back retrospectively, are the result of human beings eclipsed by machine violence. In the engagements America has chosen from Vietnam onward, usually the technology for the big violence is our side’s alone. Which is not to implicate friendly fire. Often USAF air strikes are called in over battlefields strewn already with GI fatalities.

At first the act of flying a POW flag was aimed at the Vietnamese, to remind all around us, with a sideways glance at our enemies, of our concern for our soldiers. Perhaps the MIA component was an urging to Vietnam as well, after the war, to put effort into recovering US soldier remains. Over the decades, I’m not sure that Vietnam could have shown itself more cooperative. If archeological digs are today able to unearth more evidence, it’s not because the Vietnamese weren’t trying.

Who today are we addressing with the POW-MIA flags? I see these flags usually paired with the Red, White and Blue. But those are directed at our foes.

If a soldier’s relation has question to suspect their soldier is an MIA, isn’t that a beef to take up with the US military? The POW-MIA flag seems to say, we don’t trust you, don’t lie to us about our boys in uniform. We don’t want you smashing their bodies to smithereens, or leaving them behind and not telling us. The POW-MIA flag is a renegade message which says: we support the troops, but not their mission. Give them back.

Flying the POW-MIA flag is so unpatriotic, it’s patriotic.

Marching orders from Vets For Peace

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Veterans For Peace are stepping forward to plan the unplannable: how to protest the regularly postponed announcement of an escalation in Afghanistan? I forgot how we picked March 19-21 to demonstrate against the attack on Iraq. Did we protest its beginning, or did it start afterward? Bush snuck the “surge” past public outcry, and that’s how Obama will surge Afghanistan. Vets for Peace suggest activists be ready this time with a “March of the Dead” immediately when Obama decides.
death masks

A MARCH OF THE DEAD requires dark cloths, preferably robes or hoods, and plain white masks with eyes and mouth backed with black gauze. Generic masks are available here, for example.

Already this year Obama has doubled US troops in Afghanistan without having to announce a decision.

As far as planning protests, it’s been easy to forecast the thousand-mark milestones of US soldier deaths, and the anniversaries of the wars. How are we to project when a decision is coming? The administration keeps setting back the date for Obama’s decision, owing to the complexity of the issues. Afghanistan may be so complicated, it will never be answered.

Participating in the Veterans For Peace call to action are: Military Families Speak Out, the A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition, National Assembly, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, United for Peace and Justice, and World Can’t Wait.

Let’s add Coloradans For Peace march for the dead.

Our mission, should we chose to accept it:

1) Within the next few days, ideally prior to any decision from President Obama, conduct any of a wide range of local activities — from calling Members of Congress to nonviolent civil resistance and everything in between — demonstrating our opposition to and disgust with any decision to widen the war in Aghanistan. To show unity of purpose, we suggest local “March of the Dead” to Federal Buildings, local Congressional offices and government buildings of any sort.

2) On the day immediately following an announcement to escalate the war in Afghanistan, respond again in a variety of ways. To show unity of purpose, we suggest:

a) making an appointment that day with at least one group that you’re not already a member of — a church, union, civic group, etc. — to go and speak with them about the war

b) return to the streets and again conduct any of a wide range of local activities — from calling Members of Congress to nonviolent civil resistance and everything in between — and be prepared to comment to the news media about the escalation of the war.

Veterans Day eleventh hour jeopardy

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Well here’s a clever twist of a knife into a phrase. Had you heard the “eleventh hour” emphasis on Veterans Day before? What used to be two minutes of silence to commemorate the signing of the Armistice at 11am on 11.11.1918, in Fox News’ hands leaves their viewers to infer it also means awaiting an “eleventh hour” last ditch rescue. Pared with pictures of active duty soldiers standing at attention, and Afghanistan on our minds, the message is unmistakable: send in the cavalry.

Even the eleventh hour last minute idiom has been transformed. To act in the eleventh hour used to mean too late, but to the incorrigible can-do spirit of American procrastinators, it’s when the cavalry rides to the rescue.

As if the propaganda gift of Muslim Major Nidal Malik Hasan weren’t enough, the media tasked with home front public relations is lined up to exploit Veterans Day too. Like Memorial Day, the holiday is meant to celebrate the peace achieved through the sacrifice of our soldiers. Both days commemorate veterans, not active duty soldiers.

It may feel uncharitable to begrudge future veterans the honor, but this where it gets us to hoist aloft present-day soldiers: you wind up celebrating and their mission.

Obama divides to conquer his indecision

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Not a campaign posterPresident Obama has reduced his Afghanistan options to four, but won’t say what they are, so that’s now four unknowns instead of one. A magician who tells you he’s narrowed your card down to four possibilities hasn’t conjured jack until he shows you which. Without detailing what the Afghanistan options are, the press is left to speculate, and their choices are: 10k more soldiers, 20k more, 30k and 40k. That’s just haggling. Obama’s real choices are 1) keep the generals at their calculators until it looks like the public will swallow a troop surge; 2) leave soon; 3) leave now; and I’m sorry but the best option 4) was forfeited on Barack’s first day in office.

The Obama administration is not only stalling, they’re having the media set up the punch by framing the perimeters of what Americans can expect from Obama’s decision. How will you like Obama’s choice, on a scale of 10 to 40? Zero increase in weapons spending and troop deployment is not a choice, according to the corporate war-making owned media.

DC Sniper John Allen Muhammad was early post-911 Muslim Avenger

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john allen muhammad beltway sniperWhat morbid fortuity that as President Obama heads to Fort Hood to commemorate the victims of renegade Nidal Malik Hasan, preparations are being made for the execution of another Islamic avenger, the Beltway sniper. As Americans satiate their blood lust against Muslims in the person of John Allen Muhammad who is scheduled to die tonight by lethal injection, perhaps comparisons to Major Hasan will draw attention to the ideological motives behind the 2002 shooting spree. We don’t have to like them, but it would obviously pay us to listen.

Not to excuse the Washington DC killings, nor suggest that the Gulf War veteran and convert to Islam is any less a cold-blooded murderer, but TV crime shows have painted he and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo as sadistic serial killers, completely burying the sociopolitical elements which tie the snipers to the Global War On Terror/Islam, the legacy of the African American struggle, and its extreme incarnation as the Black Liberation Army.

Muhammad maintains his innocence, primarily because the evidence implicating him remains circumstantial. He was convicted on the strength of partner Malvo’s testimony, and recently lost a Supreme Court appeal. In his testimony, Malvo described three phases to Muhammad’s murderous plans. First was to be the sniper killings, which the two calculated could claim six victims a day. Phase two involved plans to murder a policeman and set bombs at the site of his funeral, to claim an unprecedented toll of police casualties. With money extorted from the government in return for a cessation to the killings, Muhammad and Malvo planned to retreat to Canada, where they planned to build a Utopian community for other disenfranchised African American men, where they would be trained for bigger and more numerous missions against the US.

While I can understand US public figures having to distance themselves from Muhammad, I’m not sure why the organizations speaking out for US political prisoners weren’t showing their solidarity for his motives. Were Muhammad’s ambitions much different from the freedom fighters of the EZLN? Does the rejection of Muhammad reflect the post 9/11 pallor of insurrection in word only?

The case against Major Hasan proceeds apace with the usual unofficial press leaks. I heard reporters site sources who don’t want to be identified by name, in deference to the legal constraints of the ongoing investigation. The accusations they make against Hasan, however, for the benefit of the media outlets, reflects not a concern for Hasan’s due process, but rather their fear for getting themselves in trouble. But the media is eating it up.

Boycott Israeli propaganda lecture at CC

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Israel consul general Dayan JacobSince the damning UN Goldstone Report about Gaza, Israel has intensified its US PR speaking engagements, but social justice activists have risen to the challenge: in London, the Israeli Ambassador had to flee a citizens arrest, the ambassador to Turkey was pelted with eggs, while another minister met similar trouble at a university in Holland. No wonder last week’s appearances by Uzi Landau at CU-Denver and Nir Barkat at DU were conducted behind rows of policemen. This week Colorado Springs gets a chance to confront an Israeli lecture circuit propagandist. On Thursday November 12 at noon, Israel Consul General Jacob Dayan visits Colorado College Gaylord Hall, to speak on “Israel Today.”

I do not know enough about Jacob Dayan to accuse him of war crimes, although before his current appointment he served as Chief of Staff for Tzipi Livni, who does stand accused of crimes against humanity. By his own words, Dayan is a genocide denier and an advocate of illegal acts.

Being Consul General to Los Angeles is no small assignment; the city’s population represents the largest Jewish community outside of Tel Aviv. Jacob Dayan is responsible for shoring up vital US support for Israel’s unpopular actions. While the subject of Thursday’s presentation sounds bucolic –you might think CC schedules periodic “(Countryname) Today” updates for all its homesick students– a survey of Mr Dayan’s current campus addresses points to an agenda much less agreeable.

First of all, Jacob Dayan’s appearance is sponsored by the same organizations which hosted Landau and Barkat in Denver, both of whom are actively engaged in violations of international law. The underwriters are the Institute for the Study of Israel in the Middle East, the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, the University of Denver, and Hillel.

(Last week, DU’s Hillel members serenaded Pro-Palestinian demonstrators with an endless stream of songs in Hebrew, while holding signs which read REMEMBER 9/11 and AMERICANS AGAINST TERRORISM.)

According to Jacob Dayan’s bio, his main themes stress the significance of the Israel Christian friendship. He most recently collected American rabbis from all extremes of the Jewish community, to send them as a delegation to Israel, so

that they will stand in the front lines of their communities and will strongly tell the true story of the state of Israel and of a democracy that is defending itself … And by standing on the front lines in the fight against extremism, they are defending the entire enlightened world and showing what a strong ally the state of Israel has with the U.S.”

Dayan’s current talking points are more focused: Iran is greatest threat to Western Civilization, All terrorists believe in fundamentalist Islam, and, paraphrased at UCLA:

The recent conflict in Gaza wasn’t a war between Israelis and Palestinians, nor between Israelis and Arabs, but a clash of civilizations pitting Israel against Iran and extremist groups supported by the Islamic state.

COME THURSDAY, AT NOON OR BEFORE, to give this Jacob Dayan a war propagandist reception. Colorado Springs needn’t always be counted on for stupidly following the call for war. We’re jingoists, most of us, and Christian Zionists many, but that shouldn’t translate to occupier oppressor. We’re American racists in our own right, we can leave semitic racism to the Israeli Zionists.

Let’s echo the international calls to Boycott Israel. Follow university campuses across the world to call for Boycott, Sanctions and Divestiture of Israel, until the Palestinian people are returned their human rights. Until Israel ceases its blockaid of Gaza, ceases its illegal collective punishment, its extrajudicial executions, its torture, and disproportionate use of military force.

Zionists accuse their critics of anti-Semitism because America and Britain commit these crimes too. So of course activists must not ignore that we have blood on their own hands. But that doesn’t grant Israel carte rouge.

As long as Israel sends envoys to urge American support for an attack on Iran, antiwar activists must protest. COLORADANS FOR PEACE URGES YOU: Send Jacob Dayan packing. We can protest his arrival outside, and lambaste him with ridicule inside. If his lecture-circuit colleagues are any indication, Dayan’s message is a sitting duck for critical thought.

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist

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orwell pacifism fascismEven the most violent totalitarian system hasn’t enough weapons to outnumber the masses. For fascists to rule with an iron glove requires well deluded pacifist theologians to tamp the populace spirit. By example they can martyr themselves silly for all the overclass may care. The future of industrial man is a boot in your face for the eternities of all your successive lives. Pacifism is the acceptance you offer in hope that eventually you’ll reincarnate wearing the boot.

Give this lackey a new directive

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Lekki PeninsulaBagnewsNotes has juxtaposed two photos of African colonialism. One taken more than a century ago shows a white bwana being ferried by two porters, the second is the recent image at left. The difference is that today’s servants are trusted with weapons because they have to double as security, the continent being more dangerous now than when it was darkest Africa. According to photographer Paolo Woods, the colonial industrialist beneath the umbrella, stands before a 544 villa development in Nigeria, built on the Lekki Peninsula to suit Chevron Oil. For this go-round of postcards from the outlands, could anti-imperialist venture capitalists raise funds to give these Nigerian servants more than pieces of silver? The-world-is-watching age of the internet could offer these henchmen several times more their pay to gun down the light-skinned slave masters point-blank, instead of defending them against Nigeria’s oppressed victims.

Colo. Dem reps only half Blue Bounders

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Neither of Colorado’s Blue Canis Familiaris Democrats acted the heel enough to merit tar and feathers on yesterday’s HCR vote. But these Dems need to go. 64 Democrats voted to load an anti-abortion provision unto the House healthcare bill, among them District 3’s John Salazar. The Stupak-Pitts amendment passed, but 23 of the blackguards later voted against the bill, meaning they had acted to try to sink health care reform. Here are their names, via sharedferret/dkos:

Jason Altmire (PA-4), Bobby Bright (AL-2), John Barrow (GA-12), John Boccieri (OH-16), Dan Boren (OK-2), Ben Chandler (KY-6), Travis Childers (MS-1), Artur Davis (AL-7), Lincoln Davis (TN-4), Bart Gordon (TN-6), Parker Griffith (AL-5), Tim Holden (PA-17), Jim Marshall (GA-8), Jim Matheson (UT-2), Mike McIntyre (NC-7), Charlie Melancon (LA-3), Collin Peterson (MN-7), Mike Ross (AR-4), Heath Shuler (NC-11), Ike Skelton (MO-4), John Tanner (TN-8), Gene Taylor (MS-4), & Harry Teague (NM-2).

For future vigilance, Colorado’s Blue Dogs in Dem clothing are Mark Udall, Michael Bennet, Betsy Markey and John Salazar.