And John Walter got beat to death by the Fremont Co Sheriffs deputies for talking back.
Blankenship gets 1 year for 29 Murders, Bruce 2 years for his thefts…
Reply
The Queen can’t name her own successor, get it right.
One of the few good things coming from the Cromwell Regime civil war in England was the Union Constitution. That’s the “British Empire” as represented by the Union Jack flag. Their constitution was much more liberal than that of the US and a hundred years earlier. My apologies, IS more liberal still.
And one part of it is that the succession is decided in Parliament. But there was another (yet another) gaudy news headline on a gossip “news” paper at the checkout line in King Soopers. Stating that QE2 had chosen Prince William to succeed her on the throne.
By the way, all through the time I spent thinking of this and now writing it, I’ve had this Python routine being an obsessive waking dream… “strange ladies lying in puddles distributing swords is no basis for kingship… true executive authority comes by a mandate from The Masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony” and you either know the rest of that or you really should buy the DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and just damned learn it. It is worthwhile. What Mrs Saxe-Goetheberg needs to really do is make a big grand gesture, not the one involving the middle finger nor the brit version which is a backward peace sign…
Instruct the Prime Minister to push a bill in Parliament to dissolve the monarchy, have all her heirs executed and abdicate. Charlie and Camilla almost got their asses dragged out of their limo and street justice would have prevailed, blue blood would have run in the gutters of London etc…
5 years ago more or less. I was impressed that the London Anarchists had found a neat way to block and defeat “kettling” and that the issue at hand was BessTwo planning a royal pain in the ass I mean “Royal Wedding” which cost the people millions of USD (only in euros) while and at the same time the Tory government which licks her feet was demanding austerity measures for the peasants.
But in return of the original thread, even though the most recognized Hereditary Dictator on earth, she is powerless to name her successor in advance. I don’t know if Will and Kate actually are the sweetest people in the world. Wouldn’t matter. Nobody is actually born to serve under or rule over any other person. It’s that simple.
As for the niceness of any of the Royals, their family has trained their bastard get to be nothing like nice for generations. Nature v Nurture but they sure have a lot of the latter. And it’s almost universally bad. The family has Dracula, Jack the Ripper and the Bush family tagged onto them.
Very ugly indeed.
Yeah, That’s right, I’m saying the U.S. Navy committed piracy
The day was 20 March 2014. Eastern Med. N Korean tanker Morning Glory departs from a port disapproved of by the American Corporate Police State. The New Libyan Puppet Dictatorship gets a call from the U.S. that the “rebels” had been intercepted and that the oil, claimed by the ‘Oil’-igarchy, is to be turned over to the Puppet “democracy”.
The picture is a “quick sloppy” but the issue at the top shows the front cover. It’s for sale on Ebay as a collectible but I don’t give a damn by whom. Piracy. The date, sometime in 1978. National Lampoon magazine publishes a “revenge” issue.
Showing on the cover is a person who is clearly Arab being punched in the face.
Why and how is it “revenge”? Because the OPEC ‘cartel’ demanded the price they wanted for THEIR property from the US/British Oil Cartels. Oh my, those dark skinned people need to be punished for their impudence. One of the suggested “revenge” tactics suggested was “what if a lot of American Navy crews uh.. “mutineed” and ehrr “Stole” their ships. It wouldn’t be our fault if these Bad Fellows became the Terrors of the Seven Seas, now would it? (Queen Elizabeth I did the same thing to the Spanish)” Which is true, the English DID that. It goes on with a US submarine with a skull and crossbones (!) flying and the legend “Yo ho ho and $2 a barrel for Arabian crude!”
So now, according to the not-very-abandoned-or-even-noticeably-modified Bush Doctrine, the Navy thieves and murderers don’t even have to mutiny to enjoy their fantasies about being Captain Hook and Captain Kidd and Blackbeard and Long John Silver. The American Taxpayers subsidize their piracy on behalf of the richest 1% who skirt paying their own way through taxes as quickly as they dodge military service for themselves and their demon spawn piglets.
They get to sit around on their fat arses collecting the blood money and not pay nor fight nor work to earn the spoils.
That’s what we of the “Peasant” class get to do for them.
Virginia Dare was an “Anchor Baby”
Not meaning to poke fun at young Ms Dare who disappeared along with the rest of the Roanoke Colony more than 400 years ago. More like mocking and reproving redneck bigots who make a big stink about other people having the same immigration privileges as THEIR ancestors did. Especially as it’s an election issue.
Along with the Religious Refugees. See, the first English immigrants were notably religious extremists fleeing from other religious extremists. Virginia the colony was named not for the Virgin Mary, but for Queen Elizabeth. The one who bullied Parliament into passing the Conformity doctrines. Which led to some hugely large massive horrifying monstrous big “civil” wars in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland. Then exported to America along with the ongoing British v Spain and France wars. The plan was then as now (think Israel) put a large amount of people who are just too contentious to allow them to stay in the Motherland, give them discount passage and sell them limited supplies and weapons. And do a lot of it on credit. The French term for it was pioneers. A support system for military adventures. Make sure they’re likely to piss off the natives, but not likely to survive without some “emergency” backup from Momma England.
Others did the same thing, the English just were the ones who got away with it. Davy Crockett was part of two such maneuvers. Born in Tennessee when the Revolution hadn’t been worked out, Tennessee having been treaty land which the Crown was refusing to allow English expansion. One of the sore spots that the sorehead revolutionaries used as an excuse for the revolution. It’s referenced in the Declaration of Independence. The British government honoring some of their treaty obligations by selling weapons to Natives. And blankets (ahem!) and other goods. The Treaties in question being the peace agreements after the 7 Years War which was fought mostly in Europe but in American History class we’re taught to call it the French and Indian War. And since he was born in 1786 which was just barely almost 20 years before the Louisiana purchase, where the kings of France and Spain took turns financing each others wars by selling land in The New World which had never been visited by any European king. They sold land back and forth that they had never seen. Along with the people of the region. Subject of Spain one morning and France the next. The English and their bastard child The United States did the same thing.
to tie it all together….
Definitely Davy Crockett was born of illegal immigrants on Cherokee land. The Roanoke colony was located in what’s now the Carolinas, named for one of the Kings Charles of England. The Conformity Acts caused such frictions between English Christians that Protestant groups like the Pilgrim Church, Puritans, Presbyterians and of course Catholics were slaughtered and persecuted whenever their factions weren’t persecuting every other faction. And a whole bunch of Christians who just could not conform to other Christian doctrines fled to America to set up shop. And put up shot. There was for instance a running feud which often broke into gunfire between South Carolina and North Carolina about the difference between Presbyterian and Episcopalian and another cross-Potomac same thing because Virginia was mostly Protestant and Maryland was predominately Catholic. You didn’t have to be across the Catholic Protestant line to piss off the authorities. Just being a Non Conformist protestant would do the trick. I got that from the Oxford World Almanac which interestingly enough is sponsored by the Episcopal Church.
Whatever happened to Ms Dare and the rest of the Roanoke settlers is pure speculation but there sure is a lot of that too. Some have said in my hearing that the Roanoke people assimilated into the Cherokee or other nearby tribes. No documentation of that, all the documentation is on the lines that they Never Were Found Again. Some of the speculation seems, to me, very cult like.
And a lot of the ones who promote that kind of conspiracy theories are also heavily into the Birther and Minuteman militias. And with ties to the Klan.
But with all these centuries of Christian v Christian slaughter, it’s somehow the fault of Jewish merchants (who say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas)and Muslims. There have already been calls for the opening of internment camps for American Muslims.
Although the Hate Groups keep telling us that Muslims can’t be Americans. Or Native American Church. Or Jews. Or anybody who doesn’t attend Their Church. Ask any of those who proposing a Church State which one is to be the State Church and he’ll probably (eventually) say his own church of course.
Before any of all that comes around, maybe Christians better stop hating each other first. And your fellow Americans regardless of whether you think we’re actually Americans.
Human rights for even Anders Breivik
In retrospect, awarding the newly elected Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize was about as smartly ambitious as it gets. Everyone knows humanitarians don’t do it for the reward. A Nobel Prize is wasted if there’s not some eligible sociopath who might be influenced with the pressure to behave themselves. President Obama’s Nobel medal was an experiment in paying it forward. Who knows how much more bloodthirsty Obama might have gotten with his drones had not the Nobel committee tried to extort him with its higher expectations? The Nobel award givers took a lot of ribbing for their foolishness from those of us who weren’t idealist enough. AND SO IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE when Norway’s mass murdering overachiever Anders Breivik sued his jailers for abusing his human rights because he wasn’t getting sufficient visitors in his cushy prison suite, that the Norwegian supreme court would rule Breivik was right.
Of course they did. If you’re not going to give a death sentence to a crazed bigot who guns down 76 children, if you’re not going to throw him in a hole but instead give him a spacious accommodation, if instead of a life sentence you let him pursue university studies and limit his incarceration to twenty some years, then you don’t want to isolate your prisoner from human contact if it might appear even as a semblance of solitary confinement. Because lesser cultures do that.
Lesser capitalist flagship states isolate, execute and torture. I so appreciate that Norway wants to set a high bar, but I despair that the land of Guantanamo and waterboarding and indefinite detention and ILLEGAL detention and rendition and extrajudicial assassination and no habeus corpus can’t even see this bar to reach it.
Hastert being a pedophile is not the story! Where did a former wrestling coach get millions to bribe his victims?!
If Dennis Hastert was being treated like a convicted serial pedophile, he’d never see the light of day, you’d think. Instead the judge was asked to take into account his years of public service. Which is almost not missing the point of the whole scandal. Dennis Hastert being a pedophile pales next to the number of victims of his white collar crime. Paying hush money to the former victims of his predatory sexual abuse was the petty crime for which he was sentenced to 15-months in prison. Hastert’s biggest crime was his corruption as the longest serving Speaker Of The House. Dennis Hastert was a high school wrestling coach before running for office and becoming a multimillionare land speculator. Could Hastert’s record stint in Congress mean he didn’t break records for stealing from his constituents and their interests? It’s obvious where Hastert got the millions in cash with which to pay off his many underage victims. THAT’S the crime for which Dennis Hastert isn’t serving enough time. BY ALL MEANS, DO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT HIS PUBLIC SERVICE. Award his millions to his abused victims, put Dennis Hastert in jail forever, then, for betraying the public trust, hang him.
I have to ask: if Dennis Hastert was a perv as a wrestling coach, what predilections do you suppose he indulged as America’s second most powerful office-holder and corrupt multimillionaire? Are we to imagine Speaker Hastert kicked his pedophilia habit for graft? Those are two distinct abberations. One’s a mental disorder, the other is calculated greed.
At today’s sentencing the judge called Dennis Hastert a “serial pedophile” and expressed it was shocking to say serial pedophile and House Speaker in the same sentence. I doubt that. Mostly because we only learn these things after the fact. I think it would be more accurate in the future to wonder which if any of our speakers are not pedophiles.
If fellow congressmen and staffers knew anything of Hastert activities –and how couldn’t they not?– they should face prosecution as well.
Third Guy Fawkes Day case dismissed as Denver continues to arrest marchers
DENVER, COLO.- Last night Denver police mobbed a demonstration protesting the officer-involved execution of unarmed suspect Dion Avila Damon in front of his wife and child. At the end of Tuesday’s march, Robin Hamm and Nathan Stickel were arrested for obstruction, failure to obey, and destruction of private property. They were still in custody when fellow activist, Joaquin dela Torre-McNeil, arrested at an identically uneventful march last November, showed up for his court date today only to hear the city motion to dismiss his case. Joaquin was charged with interference and resisting arrest, both accusations without merit. This morning the city admitted as much.
This marks the third of nine arrests made November 5, 2015 which have been dismissed. Peter Lewis, 31, was snagged as an obstructee, then detained on a possessions charge until all charges were dropped November 20. Brandon Deaton, 24, was charged with obstruction. He was represented by attorney Frank Ingham and his case was dismissed March 23.
Joaquin’s dismissal bodes well for the remaining six cases, which are equally unfounded.
Four are charged with interference and obstruction, plus the odd sundry misdemeanor: David Croisant, 29, is represented by attorney Birk Baumgardner; Selayna Bechtold, 19, is represented by Venkatesh Iyer; Mark Iannicelli, 58, is represented by Katayoun Donnelly; and Justin Berding, 25, is represented by Cheri Deatsch.
Two are charged with felonies: Damian Stasek, 25, represented by attorney Lon Heymann; and Jake Pauly, 25. Both are charged with assault of a peace officer, which happens whenever physical contact is not initiated by the police, although in both cases this was a technicality.
Bumping into police officers is going to happen if they get in your way, especially when they have no right to get in your way, given that your first amendment right was the reason they were supposed to stay out of your way. If there’s no obstruction, there’s no interference, and your collision with their obstruction of your civil liberties is not assault.
The November 5th march was uneventful except for the arrests. There was neither property damaged, traffic impeded, nor lives endangered. The police acted purely to intimidate and squelch protest. They succeeded but now the courts are not supporting their actions. As charges fall, the accusations lose veracity. Certainly the crowd’s anger at their demonstration being curtailed with such heavy-handedness is being shown to having been legitimate. You can’t arrest people for objecting to your unlawful conduct.
But DPD hasn’t been taught that lesson yet. Last night’s march for DPD victim Dion Avila Damon was equally harmless. Arrests were made for the usual show of force. Two activists remain in custody. The bureaucratic delay is now excused as a 24-hour processing requirement for fingerprints to clear the system. Only then will bonds be calculated and allowed to be posted. Detainees will then wait a minimum of five further hours to be released. When last night’s charges are dismissed, Denver will have to account for two more wrongful imprisonment cases.
Hillary, Trump Hold Historical Meeting
DLA News Service, Denver, Colorado
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, along with Bill and Melania have met privately to discuss the fall election. The meeting was conducted at a closed door meeting on Wall Street late Tuesday evening after sweeping wins by both candidates in Super Tuesday primaries. The candidates have made a tentative agreement, that after their nominations in their respective party conventions, they will suspend this fall’s Presidential election.
They have agreed that this is an effort to get their money out of politics, whereas they agree on so many of the political and social issues, they will each serve a two year term as President and vice President as soon as the Negros are evicted from the Whitehouse.
Due to the limited number of bedrooms in the Whitehouse, it was decided that Bill and Melania would share a bedroom while Hillary and Donald shared the Presidential Suite.
The one undecided issue is, who will get the first two year term.
There was also some discussion on merging the Democratic and Republican parties to simplify the Presidential elections, with a ban on all other political parties as a cost cutting maneuver.
The selection of all Senate and Congressional seats would then fall to the Vice Presidents office with no need of costly future elections.
A slum lord as front runner
Some of the issues of today are so far into the wrong, like Trump,
it’s just staggering. Like, where do you start on a mess like that? The
dude reiterated his boast of ripping off “screwing” Gaddafi, and still
calling for the death penalty for the Central Park teenagers who spent
more than a decade in prison for shit they did not do. The lack of
response from the republicans is frightening. Giuliani should have
prosecuted Trump for the hundreds or thousands of New York State tenant
relations laws and especially the one about Gaddafi.
And Tump is the front runner. It’s like reality as we knew it just went
down the rabbit hole. My brother Luke who supports the Bernie candidacy
thinks that the Republicans are playing to lose, and that they’re
playing a spoiler/agent provocateur role for which 9/11 was just a
practice run. And that seems to be the zeitgeist. Fatalism on a scale so
massive that the term “massive” isn’t enough.
Draken Harald: the Vikings are coming!
Apparently it was the traditional Viking practice to wait until launching day of each Operation Rape & Pillage before affixing the dragon heads to the bows of their long ships. Modern Norway’s largest replica Viking ship, the DRAKEN HARALD, began its transatlantic voyage yesterday but press photos circulated to promote the event featured a headless ship instead of a fearsome surface raider. The Vikings were pioneers of exported extortion and exploitation, though apparently they lagged behind on fearmongering propaganda. Just kidding. The dragehode was the original Shock and Awe. The berserker reputation preceeded the Vikings, literally, as the prow of their ship hit shore.
Norwegian reenactors will be rowing the Draken Harald to the New World anew. This time to visit with the Vikings of this age. Gluttons, slavers, and despoilers of an exponentially vast scale. The replica ship is heralded as the world’s largest, but it’s tiny next ships of today, including those belonging to many of today’s celebrated chieftans which they call yachts.
Here’s the itinerary of the Draken Harald vikings, crossing the Atlantic as friendship ambassadors.
Med Vikingskip over Atlanterhavet til USA
Reiserute:
24. april: Avreise frå Haugesund
3. mai: Reykjavik på Island
16. mai: Quqortoq, Greenland
1. june: St Antony, Newfoundland, Canada
15. june: Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
1. – 3. juli: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
8. juli: Fairport Harbor, Ohio, USA
14. juli: Bay City, Michigan, USA
27. juli: Chicago, Illinois, USA
5. august: Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA
18. august: Duluth, Minnesota, USA
September: Oswego, NY Canals, New York, USA
15. september: New York City, New York, USA
Oktober: Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, USA
Don’t miss the big fight: Bernie “Birdie” Sanders versus Hillary the War Hawk!
A Damn clever poster for the 2016 DNC. Forgot to list fight venue. SHOWDOWN IN PHILLY.
Biggest U.S. national political showdown of the century.
Democratic Convention. July 25-28, 2016 at 8:00 AM.
Mainstreet vs. Wall Street.
Bernie ‘Birdie’ Sanders, aka Lefty Sanders, aka The Bern, aka The Sandman, aka El Sabio (the wise) vs.
Hillary ‘War Hawk’ Clinton, aka Goldman Girl, aka Monsanto Mama, aka The Fracker, aka Not My Abuela.
Spouses discuss: internships at the White House, favorability polls vs GOP, FBI investigation, independent voters of the USA, Bernie or Bust reality check, election fraud, political revolution or status quo, public interest or corporate interest.
Tickets are $27 bucks for general admission or $250,000 VIP seating.
At the WELLS FARGO CENTER in PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, USA.
A death in the Fremont County Jail
I have to write an article about how the Fremont County Sheriff Department, with the help of the Ku Kl/ux Kounty coroner, judges, prosecutors, Medical staff at the Jail and even Paramedics, killed a man named John Walter, beat him to death, for daring to insist that he needed health care. They broke nine of his ribs, witnessed by the Paramedics, and threw him back in his “medical observation” dungeon and left to die. Two years ago.
Now there’s a lawsuit for wrongful death. They murdered the guy for talking back and not a single pig is going to be even censured for doing it. Just a civil suit.
And I’m a witness. I don’t know how the lawsuit will come out, never am optimistic about it, and these same Fascist Police State minions did the same thing to me, minus going all the way to the death.
So here’s the deal-io … I’m going to publish it in the court of public opinion. It’s safer to be way out in the open about such things. Makes it harder for the Fascists to toss one into their cell and wham bam thank you ma’am you’d be just as totally disappeared as if you went into Abu Ghraib, Khandahar, Bagram AFB or Gitmo. It took Mr Walters family two years just to get the ball rolling. And Mr Walters physicians, the ones who had prescribed the medications the Jail Private Nursing Corporation denied to him. When they broke his ribs he had already lost quite a bit of weight in a matter of weeks.
The Chickenshit pigs who did it were probably Sgt Greene and Corporal Maas. Sick sadistic bastards who get sexually aroused by beating up on helpless victims.
Just like cops around the world and throughout history. Fascism in full bloom.
People who don’t like that, like my t-shirt published on cafe press says, “y’all can just line up and take turns helping yourselves to a Texas Size all you can eat buffet of Kiss My Liberal Ass”
Founding Fathers dumped Bill of Rights
Religious freedom was passed by popular vote but only after the Official Founding Fathers rejected the entire Bill of Rights, which is why they (ten out of 13, not complete) are the first Amendments to the constitution. Now we have neo-fascist pigs like , well, the entire Republican party wanting to make Muslims wear identification, be registered and monitored like Megan’s Law, all dark skinned persons denied immigrant or refugee status etc.
So much for freedom, respect of the constitution and the “Clearly Defined Original Intent” of the so called foundering (sic) (or maybe just “sick” (I get a little weird about midnight and isn’t it the last night of the full moon?)
Of course the unfounded fatherhood who are supposed to be all knowing made up less of the population than just any others. People who didn’t own land were excluded from any vote. Black people in slavery including those who were owned (and fathered) by such benign leaders as Jefferson. You would think such a great man would at least grant freedom and the vote to his own descendents but no…
Name 40 of the “founding fathers” whose intentions are to be the basis of all our law. Why that number, you may ask.
well, I might answer, there were 4 million people in the bounds of the original United States so 40 would be 1 percent OF one percent of the total population, counting everybody who were on the census…
Yeah, I made an arbitrary statistical standard. Sue me, it would cost more to haul away my chattel than you’ll get paid for it.
But I would bet the moot question won’t be answered unless the Wrong Wing learn how to use Wikipedia. Maybe they could just lift the names of the Rich Bastards who signed the Declaration of Independence.
Paupers, Indians, slaves, women of any race or social status, etc. were denied the voted. Maybe “protected from the brutal duties of suffrage and civic involvement”
A quick guess would put it that a Ten Percent minority elected the representatives.
And we still have the proud symbol of Fascism on our state seal.
Proud to be an American against war, with the exception being this election.
A good friend of mine used to wear this button everywhere. If it wasn’t the button, he wore the t-shirt. “Proud to be an American against the war.” Tonight he sported a button for BERNIE. Of course he did. We were joking around and he intimated he was not wholly disinclined to favor TRUMP. ME NEITHER, I told him! Trump coud bring down the empire single handed! No need to spark a revolution, Trump would pull a Samson out of sheer egoism! He’d gold plate our drones and they’d be grounded! He’d build a great wall and then we’d have a Great Wall! For tourists of all nationalities! A Great Wall couldn’t stop the Huns, even Disney knows that! And reportedly, billionaires are against Trump, so what’s the problem? Remember when we’d attend rallies dressed in suits and pretend we were “billionaires” advocating for war or bank bailouts? If billionaires wanted it we were against it. What the One Percent fear, we need! Haha! My friend would prefer Bernie of course, but Trump is definitely his third choice he told me. “Third” I asked? Well, first Bernie, then Hillary naturally, then Trump. OMG WTF.
Earth Day, Hour, Minute now Memory. KRCC’s Democracy Now, Then, Was.
Remember Earth Day? It became Earth Hour, then I think Earth Minute. If there was an Earth Second you and I missed it. With every chance for commemorative environmental actions squeezed out by the newest condensed schedule, the Earth Moment became a void. Now for Earth Day we do nothing. We reflect in acquescence. It’s become another holiday, minus the time off, which is not ironic. Our uninterrupted industry on Earth Day is fitting. Earth Day is like Valentine’s Day. Happy Earth Day! 🙂
Earth Day
Who were those assholes who decided a whole day was too much for consumer culture to spare in reflection, potential enlightenment and transcendence? Those reformist subverted all hope of drawing popular support to the movement. They’re the same moderates who think people need warm cookies to be attracted to a revolution. They are the same Sunday schoolers who think protest must be made safe for picnic goers and their children.
These “innovations” appear well meaning, if naive, but sometimes outside-the-box thinking falls outside of all effectiveness. What passes for unschooled, so consistently, is very likely shepherded by handlers as clever as fox.
The function of subversives used to belong to the anti-establishment. The dark side is using them much more effectively. Rooting them out is depicted as fingerpointing by the Left, which initiates the circular firing squads. And we’re played for idiots.
So let me tell you about my Earth Day.
Democracy Now
My Earth Day featured a visit by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. She came to Colorado College to speak on behalf of her program and her most recent book which is a twenty year retrospective about the social movements she’s covered. Amy spoke in the tiniest of lecture halls which was full because it was tiny.
Because guess what? The public radio station on which the program used to appear didn’t promote the event. The community radio station which streams her for now isn’t on the air as yet. Word only spread through a student organization on campus. Thus the audience was kept small. Amy’s previous appearance filled a venue much larger, and the one before that filled the school’s largest. Someone shrunk Democracy Now’s local reach by a combination of destructive intent on the part of CC’s regents and a lack of vigilence on the part of her local station KRCC and its supporters.
Not only did the cretinous traitors at KRCC sabotage the potential of Amy’s personal appearance, the event was put into the hands of a strange new student association dedicated to the project of nuturing communication between two Colorado Springs campuses: Colorado College and the Fucking U.S. Air Force Academy. Because apparently the two vocational vectors have things to share with one another.
So two students, one from each school, introduced Amy and before they did they spoke about the importance of people going into civil life collaborating with those heading into military leadership. As if.
These two insipid dwarf-people introduced DEMOCRACY NOW, the flagship news program of the PACIFICA Radio Network, dedicated to a media independent of corporations who profit from war.
The two representatives were clueless, as were their faculty sponsors, and of course they were applauded by liberals who probably think that the educated liberal arts students will have a chance to infect or soften the warmonger mentality of the military academy.
Except it’s of course the reverse. This exchange normalizes the jerk-off war lovers by giving them a seat at the table of academia as if Air Force Academy professors and students have anything to do with university level education.
Amy of course was gracious and didn’t offend her oblivious hosts or their audience. One can only hope the audience was patronizing, but probably not. Instead we’re all thankful for what civic engagement and communty building there is, regardless if it’s subverted by the poisonous outreach of the military state.
Too many do-goodests among us haven’t a clue we are carrying water for the purveyors of contaminants. They fracked Earth Day right under our noses. Where our shouting mouths are supposed to be.
Have a Nice Earth Day! 🙂
The Children’s Escort Act?
From: The Denver School Board
To: All parents of the greater Denver School District
The School Board has received several calls from concerned parents in regards to the use of the children’s restrooms. The following directive will be sent to all parents and schools.
The Children’s Escort Act:
Children wishing to use the school restroom will be allowed the use of these facilities only while being escorted by one of the following certified volunteer escorts. ?Each parent must select from the following approved list by 4/30/2016:
1. Your local republican congressman.?
2. Your local catholic priest?
3. Any member of you local Denver Swat Team.
All volunteers have been trained in garment removal and are prepared to assist your child.?
This program has been funded, supported and approved by your local Republican Party, Tidy Bowl Cleaner and Port-A-Potty.
Prince the Artist Formerly
Everybody has something to say about Prince, RIP, the artist formerly known by a pseudo-hieroglyph. Of his own design, it was pseudo-silent and un-typeable so he became “Formerly Known as Prince.” Before that he was the single-named Madonna-esque “Prince”.
The media’s gushing last chance push of the Prince back catalog reminds me how completely the “independent” maverick was integrated in the pop crap industry.
I’m addressing Prince’s pioneer branding because up until today his musical legacy was illusory. An earlier hit gave Prince a comeback when “1999” became relevant to the turn of the millennium. The musician’s second act was to impersonate a Hendrix tribute icon. Tormented, gifted, undead.
WHAT PRINCE REALLY TAUGHT US was that you can forbid the media to speak your name and they will obey.
What a crock! You try it! I have a friend who goes by just “Lotus”. He has a hell of a time getting local journalists to report his name as only that. They usually write “Lotus, he doesn’t use his last name, etc.” Often they don’t quote him because one name is too weird. By royal purple edict apparently, Prince was even let to declare his hieroglyph was unpronouncible.
The real lesson was about everyone’s complicity in the manufacture of marketing campaigns.
You’d think that the music business or our corporate celebrity culture might be reported like news. It appears to be. It certainly makes up most of mainstream news. Its happenings are not irrelevant to a consumer economy. But no.
Instead, publicists dictate how their brands are sold, just as lawyers insure trademarks aren’t violated, and the media divisions of the same entertainment corporations comply. If the news tellers don’t play along, products like Prince wear no clothes.
#NuitDebout occupies Paris. March 51 marks 20th day of mass protest siege.
NUIT DEBOUT started as a protest against the weakening of labor protections. It’s grown since March 31 into a pan European movement driven by students who resume daily protests every night at six. What’s being lauded as a Paris Spring is also being likened to Occupy Wall Street because the assemblies have no leaders nor do they make any demands. They do present an ultimatum. The month of April will not begin until economic policies are reformulated. Until then the Nuitdeboutistes are counting successive days against March, not April, so today is March 51. If you think mainstream media is ignoring #DemocracySpring it’s unanimously mum about this spontaneous uprising spreading across French cities and European capitols.
Did the media ignore Democracy Spring because staged arrests are not news? Do 1,200 ceremonial zip-ties matter?
The US corporate media will ignore protest movements when it can, thus the coverage of last week’s DEMOCRACY SPRING demonstrations in Washington DC was scant if not at all. Arrests totalled 1,240 by the event’s finale on Monday and the number is being reported with indifference. Of course we can rail against the bias of corporate interests, but what of viewership interest. I’d have to count myself among the public who is interested in acts of political dissent but even I am not compelled to read about ceremonial submission to zip-ties. Who can bame journalists for shying from the awkward task of interviewing activists about the meaningless gesture?
Whose hand is raised to go to the toilet off limits to trans students? It’s ALEC.
So all of a sudden in most of the southern states we have a lot of people afraid to use the toilet. The question I have is who is behind all these “Toilet Bowl Bills”? I’m not paranoid but it sure seems strange that all of a sudden these bills keep popping up. Who’s behind all this? Sounds like a lot of folks down south are shiting their pants afraid to go to the toilet.
Denver Homeless Out Loudest Ray Lyall
Here’s a better picture of Denver Homeless Out Loud activist Ray Lyall and colleague, with the usual Denver protest entourage. Ray Lyall was found guilty of trespass last week, like his cohort DJ Razee before him. The two were among nine DHOL members arrested defending Tiny Houses on October 25, ten if you include a follow-up action, but Ray and DJ are the only cases to come to trial. Four more are scheduled soon: April 20, May 9 & 10, and June 1.
You might well ask, what of the remaining four? They PLED GUILTY.
It is customary not to condemn another’s self-preservation needs, but let’s be honest, taking the plea deal does hurt everybody. Pleading guilty implicates your co-defendants, validates the police probable cause, and sacrifices the opportunity for which arrest and detainment were the ante.
Ray Lyall took his case to trial, compelled five police officers and a Denver Housing Authority to take the stand, opportuned an eloquent lawyer to speak about homelessness and the bigger picture, tied up a municipal courtroom profit center for two days, and was sentenced to peanuts: one year probation plus community service. Probation is essentially what’s been on offer for plea deals, so Ray risked only being found not guilty.
DJ’s sentence admittedly was not peanuts, it included jail time. The judge declared she would rather have imposed probation, but DJ knew probation would hinder his options as a street activist. DJ stipulated jail so that afterward he’d be free to protest without the spector of a deferred sentence weighing upon him.
Plea deals have shaped a lamentable pattern for Denver activists. Owing to inadequate legal representation or financial hardship, many political arrestees have been tempted by offers of deferred prosecution or deferred sentencing which have necessitated their abstention from further protest. Some who have continued to participate in demonstrations have been in the awkward position of encouraging others to do what they could no longer risk, perpetuating the cycle of arrests and plea deal emasculation.
The Denver activist community has some serial plea dealers, who always take pleas and ensnare newbies with them every cycle. As a result, fresh activists become burned out and regular police oppression is emboldened.
The irony of course is that the vast majority of Denver protest arrests have been violations of civil liberties. It will only stop when the police are challenged and sued. Obstruction, interference, failure to obey, resisting, trespass, disturbing the peace etc, are the habitual pretexts which Denver police have been using to curb street protest. Even the felony charge of assault of a police officer has been succesfully used to scare activists into taking pleas. Usually such “assaults” were simply collisions or confrontations where police officers were the actual assailants.
Not everyone is in a position to fight their charges to the bitter end, but asserting the illegitimacy of political arrests is critical to bringing Denver police to heel.
If you are going to plead guilty because you don’t think you have the right to march in the street or to ignore unconstitutional orders or to defy unjust laws, DON’T DO IT. Spare the rest of us the bad example of capitulating to wrongful authority.
U.S. protest photo of the millennium: post 9/11 Neodemocracy in American
MEDIA BLACKOUT ON 400+ ARRESTS AT WASHINGTON DC #DEMOCRACYSPRING –You don’t have to be there to support the work of these activists. You can help by making others aware of their action. Add your voice and share. They are standing up for us. It’s time we stand with them and spread the word of their action.
Ask the candidates: who, as president, vows to jail Obama, Clinton and Bush?
If Americans really want to differentiate which presidential candidate represents change, a good question would be, which will prosecute America’s celebrity war criminals? Who, among them, will jail past leaders guilty of crimes against humanity?
Obama 2008 didn’t do it. President Obama didn’t even close Guantanamo, end torture, or disarm drones. By failing to curb Pax America’s wars of aggression, Obama too should now stand in the docket. Wasn’t it hoped, as Bush and Cheney helivac’d from the White House, that Obama’s “change” meant calling that chopper back for a return to accountability? At minimum, superficially? Justice didn’t happen, Obama didn’t want to look back, and the villains remain to foul the political discourse as foils to perpetuate high crimes and to normalize the forgiving of greater trespasses.
Is American exceptionalism fathomless? ISIS hasn’t grown out of the terrible twos yet already John Kerry wants to charge it with genocide; not to haul ISIS perps before the Hague –extrajudicial assassination by drone circumvents that– but because genocide law holds that those who do not condemn it are its accessories.
How far does culpability reach among our active enablers of war crimes? It extends into our pool of candidates certainly, but how far? Does Senator Bernie Sanders, at one edge, consider himself an accessory to the crimes of past and current administrations? It’s possible Sanders voted against the wars, interventions and regime changes, but will he prosecute those who did not?
Donald Trump stands on the periphery as well, avaritic criminality is not alas a purview of the International Criminal Court, but he does seem an unlikely candidate for honoring the rule of law let alone conscience.
Still, would it hurt to ask? An independent party candidate might have the only acceptable answer. Who, as president, will honor humanity’s highest laws? Who will hold state terrorists accountable?
Ray Lyall Denver homeless man loses home in legal battle over tiny houses
DENVER, COLORADO- Ray Lyall was among nine homeless rights advocates arrested last October trying to defend a row of Tiny House model homes they built on public land administrated by the Denver Housing Authority. All were accused of trespass and today was Ray’s day in court before a jury of not quite his peers. Though the jury perceived Ray’s act to be political and were shown the paradox facing the city’s homeless, they found in favor of DHA and its SWAT eviction team. Denver’s lack of sympathy for the homeless is shared by Denver residents serving jury duty. All of whom were conscripted through addresses, many of them gentrified.
Like his co-defendant DJ Razee, the first of Ray’s colleagues to take a stand in court, Ray was found guilty of trespass.
Instead of jail time Ray was sentenced to twelve months probation, forty hours of community service, and a protection order to stay clear of DHA stooge Ryan Tobin. Ray also has to write a letter of apology stating that he understands trespass is not an acceptable protest act. Most significant however is an area restriction. Ray can’t return to the area bordered by Arapahoe and Lawrence, 25th and 26th, the block where Denver Homeless Out Loud erected “Resurrection Village”.
If the tiny houses were demolished the night of the police raid, and the vacant lot has been locked ever since, what does Ray’s area restriction matter?
The where to which Ray cannot return is under the tree he and DHOL’s real-life homeless members have called home before and since, a tree along the sidewalk of the DHA property, outside the fence but now inside Ray’s area restriction, where Ray & co. never bothered anyone, though maybe they troubled Ryan Tobin’s view, which is what prompted the heartless crackdown in the first place.
Ryan Tobin is not just DHA’s manager, he owns a $650,000 gentrified home across the street from the restricted lot. While urban “housing authority” entities purport to supply all income residences, they profit by redistributing properties to developers and relocating low income communities to the lesser desirable areas.
Denver inaugurated Spring 2016 with homeless sweeps to clear the gentrified neighborhood of its street dwellers. Where police can’t harass for “encumbrances” to move homeless along, they prosecute with “trespass”.
Each of the DHOL defendants who’ve reached trial or have taken plea deals have been given the area restriction. Restricted from a fenced lot surounded by no trespass signs. The legal overkill recalls the army of police officers deployed to assault DHOL and their tiny homes.
Ray isn’t going to jail but now he really has nowhere to go. Ray was houseless, a distinction that’s not just a technicality. Now Ray is homeless.
Turkey: where Europe hides its refugee internment concentration camp slums. And this time, Arbeit Nicht Macht Frei.
The European Union has made a deal with Turkey to return escaped Syrian refugees to their cages. The escapees are civilians fleeing the war zones of Syria, where many of them already lived in refugee camps after fleeing Iraq and before that Palestine. So many people are seeking the safety of non-destabilized nations that the EU is full up. Too many refugees have survived the perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece that the EU wants to ship them back. To the internment camps blotting the Syrian boarder, tented slums encircled by razor wire, where huddled masses yearning to be free are concentrated and forbidden to leave. At the same time that the West demonizes Turkey, we’re counting on Turkey to jail the innocents fleeing our wars. One sticking point are the maquiladora sweatshops which exploit the captive cheap labor. EU labor laws protect against such abuse, thus slave labor pools are only profitable outside the EU. In 21st Century camps, Arbeit nicht macht frei, whether your work is weaving rugs for discount superstores or treading the waters of the Aegean.
