Tag Archives: 2004

John O’Donnell mistaken for Democrat

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What does it mean to be a progressive Democrat in Colorado Springs? I’ll tell you, it means shit. No matter how progressive you are, or how democratic. You’re judged by the company you keep and Democrats stick themselves with lousy company.

Take for example obstruction du jour, parade organizer John O’Donnell. I don’t bear a grudge for how he excluded peace marchers from the St Patrick’s Day parade, I bear a grudge for what he said afterward: that he’d do it again. Violence, trampled rights, brutalized elders, and O’Donnell says in hindsight he’d acted correctly. Though his assistants may have mistook a KIDS NOT BOMBS sign for BUSH KILLS BABIES signs, O’Donnell insists it was right to keep the peace message out of the St Patrick Loves Warmaking parade. Is that the kind of dim-sighted power-tripper “progressive democrats” call an ally?

O’Donnell’s a good guy I hear. A life long liberal. A progressive it’s said. A solid party fundraiser. I saw his name myself on a Governor Ritter dinner invite. I’ve even heard it said that you can’t get elected as a Democrat in this town without the support of John O’Donnell. Well that would be a damn shame.

I’ve also heard it said that it is impossible for a Democrat to win in this city. Small pockets are about all you can get. El Paso County Democrats count as victories elections in which they fared better than they hoped. The latest senatorial loss for example, which delivered the embarrassing Doug “Pigmy” Lamborn to office was hailed as a victory!

Now, on a losing team, exactly how valuable are your leading players? On a losing team?

On a consistently losing team, doesn’t the leadership need to go? The players who’ve delivered the losses and kept new blood from revitalizing the team, they too would need to get the axe. For the Democratic Party this was obvious in the 2000 election, and all the more so in 2004. Why pass the ball, up from the grass roots, to players who know only how to lose?

I ask you, what kind of Democrat can look at the 2006 election and think the public didn’t vote for peace? Democrats can support the military as staunchly as the next guy, the military is not anathema to peace, it keeps the peace. But a Democrat to subvert the call for peace? That’s someone running the ball for the other team. That’s a Goddamn traitor Son of a Bitch.

Nice guy? John O’Donnell should be, he’s in the business of PR. But John O’Donnell is a goon and I’m glad he’s unmasked. He should never again hobble another Democrat with his counter-productive piss-ant power-brokering playing for the other side. Throw the lout out.

John O’Donnell, the city’s organizer of St Patrick’s Day parade, now caught in his own lies and hypocrisy

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John O’Donnell says that his ‘rules’ prohibit social statements from being made by participants, so he had to have city police assault pro peace parade participants and then have us expelled from the parade. John and the City of Colorado Springs government and police are totally in bed together on this one, and it pays to see just what O’Donnell and the city government have been doing and saying in the past. Check it out below.

Thank God we have the internet to help expose liars and hypocrits like the Colordo Springs city police spokepeople (police blotter), the Gazette editors, and John O’Donnell. See just what John O’Donnell actually means when ordering folk to not make any social statements at St Pat’s Day.

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Fort Carson veteran is St. Pat’s grand marshal
Sgt. Wong returned from Iraq in January

Sgt. Robert Wong, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, has been named grand marshal of the 22nd annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade Saturday, March 12 in Old Colorado City.

Fort Carson selected Sgt. Wong, who was the post’s Soldier of the Quarter for 2004, at the request of the Parade Committee for O’Donnell & Associates, a promotional firm that org-anizes the annual parade.

Hailing from Baltimore, Md., the sergeant is with the 759th Military Police Batallion, which returned from Iraq in January. A contingent of 10 soldiers, all sergeants, will escort him during the parade, according to Parade Committee Chair John O’Donnell.

“We are delighted to have Sgt. Wong as the Grand Marshall,” O’Donnell said. “As a representative of all of the active duty troops at Fort Carson, he serves as a reminder of all of the active members of the armed forces here and abroad. By honoring Sgt. Wong, we hope to honor our military family and friends who can not be with us during this joyful family event.”

To become Soldier of the Quarter, a soldier must be nominated by his own unit, and is then evaluated against nominees from other units, according to Lt. Justin Journeay of Fort Carson’s public affairs office.

More than 110 entries are scheduled for this year’s parade, including bands, floats, dancers, politicians and riding groups. Starting at noon, the parade will go east on Colorado Avenue from 27th to 17th Street.

The festivities will begin March 12 in Bancroft Park with the “5K on St. Patrick’s Day” Race at 10 a.m. The Children’s Fun Run will begin at 11 a.m. Runners can register online at http://www.csgrandprix.com, at the Runners Roost (107 E. Bijou) or on the day of the race at 9 a.m.

from Westside Pioneer article/press releases

Statement regarding The City of Colorado Springs responsibility for its police attack on the St Patrick’s Day peace marchers

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Statement regarding The City of Colorado Springs’ responsibility for its police attack on the Saint Patrick’s Day peace marchers
 
As has now been widely reported, the citizens that decided to march in the peace section of the city’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade were violently dispersed by city police officers. Many of us received no notice at all to disperse, let alone a reason for why the already paid permit for was being declared invalid. What process or procedure was there in place for revoking this permit, other than the police telling us to get off the city street in an abrupt manner?
 
Our only ‘notice’ for most of us, was actually to turn and see some of our friends and companions being manhandled by police officers, wrestled brutally to the ground, and threatened with tasers and choke and pressure holds. Most of the officers involved gave no verbal identification of themselves, and it was hard to see any name tags in this abrupt melee instigated by city police officers.

The City of Colorado Springs police acted in reckless disregard to our rights, our health, and appeared to relish the opportunity to stick peaceful people in a heavily tax subsidized city event, with criminal charges, instead of engaging in trying to resolve an issue in a way where nobody would be hurt.

What was especially egrarious to us, was the fact that officers in their 20s and 30s were assaulting people principally in their 60s and 70s, in front of children, some below the age of 10. Why was this done? What real and solid rules had been supposedly broken by us? Why the millisecond notice and in this rough a manner?

Afterwards, some of us made efforts to look for the rules we had been charged in the media with breaking. We looked for literature and we looked for web sites that might fill us in with info and guidelines for participation about this event? What we found was nothing. We wondered how was it that in such an unclearly organized event, with an unclearly identified organizer, the police moved in on us like a hurricane?

What we discovered is unsettling. The press afterwards repeatedly declared that police were asked to remove us by ‘event organizers’. Such was the story that city police spokepersons gave. So the search began to find and identify the ‘event organizers’, and to try to find their relationship to the city itself. What we came up with, was that a rather shadowy company called O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc had declared themselves the private party involved. They were in charge of issuing the permits. So we wondered, just what were the costs involved, and did the city itself pay much of the cost of Saint Patrick’s Day? And we also wanted to find out what other events were organized by this company?

What we found, is that the organizers, that call themselves a private company, were not really the priciple oraganizers of events they are involved with in this city at all. In fact, other events supposedly ‘organized’ by O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc were actually mainly organized by the US military, plus local Colorado Spring’s city officials in many different municipal departments, using both federal and local tax monies.

In short, that O’Donnell and O’Donnell’s principle role other than passing out permits, is mainly to pose as private organizers of what are really heavily publicly subsidized events in our area, promoted mainly by government agencies, and having largely a pro-militarism message. In short, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. is nothing much more than a small outsourcing of city and federal organizing projects, events oftentime more paid for by the tax monies contributed by all the citizens of the community than by the few few dollars picked up these hidden individuals posing as private organizers.

For an example of how this operates, ‘The Welcome Home Parade’ ‘organized’ by O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. in 2004, was actually paid for almost entirely by city and federal government moneys, and in fact, like the Saint Patrick’s Day parade itself, was heavily slanted to being pro war/ pro uniform/ pro we support the troops (read war) message. As to taking no ‘social stands’ in public parades , the O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc ‘private’ ghost front for the city actually does take political stands, and that has been consistently pro war, pro militarism, pro military industrial complex.

To give another analogy, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc operates with the public citizens of Colorado Springs, much in the way that Halliburton and other Pentagon fed private contract operators do in US occupied Iraq. Just as Halliburton is nothing more than an extension of US government operations in that country, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. is little more than an outsourced extension of the government of the City of Colorado Springs. In fact, the City of Colorado Springs was more the public provider of where to go for permits, than O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc was themselves. Part of the city building of this celebration, was merely privately outsourced to O’Donnell- O’Donnell, Inc., that’s all.

In short, we reject the legal fiction that the police were responding to a private call to eject ‘gate crashers’ at a private event when they attacked us. We have a right to these public streets, too, especially when an event is in actuality more a municipal government operation than not. And the Saint Patrick’s Day parade is just that.

We demand that the city fully disclose municipal costs for this public event, and disclose publicly how much of the entire bill was paid by the city, and how much was paid for this shadow operation calling itself, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc? Further, we believe that the city has a duty to fully publicize the regulations for participating in an event subsidized by tax dollars.

If guidelines are hidden from easy view, then how can the police ask citizens to abide by rules that have not actually been seen? It is not enough to just have permit purchasers to see, one time in small print, what others cannot ever see for themselves. We are not our brothers keeper, and if a guideline is only shown to one person out of say a hundred, this is not full disclosure of the regulations. Instead of hiding in the shadows, the municipal government of the City of Colorado Springs has a duty to admit its fundamental role in the organization of this annual parade. This they are not yet doing.

We ask that all charges against particpants in this event be dropped, and that the city government fully disclose its financial involvement with O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. Who pays for the policing of this event, the legal procedures against any of those charged with crimes due to this event, the publicity, the office space to issue permits, the costs of interrupting the normal routine of the downtown area, etc.? Certainly it is not the price of the permits paid by participants that does so alone. In fact, in large part, it is the municipal government itself that does, and that’s what makes this more a public sponsored parade than a private one.

Contrary to what some of the media have charged, those pro peace people in our city would no more crash a private event than the overwhelming majority of other Colorado Springs citizens would do. But the Saint Patricks Day parade is hardly much of that, and politicians tooting their own horns, mini-military squadrons of little kids draped out in olive green military fatigues, corporations advertising their commercial products, and all the other manifestations of people making a multitude of ‘social statements’, only underlines the reality of our argument.

This is in fact a public event in large manner publicly funded, and the city police should not try to hide their abusive actions against some participants behind the skirts of a pretense that they were mereley urgently mobilized by a private sponsor that the city government really had mainly outsourced the giving out of participant permission slips to.

Further, we would ask that the individual owner of the shadow company O’Donnel and O’Donnell, Inc., come forth, and together with us and the city government make some small effort to keep this conforntation from becoming a permanently embedded confrontation within our community. What could well have been a small problem solved via a short discussion with the parties involved, now risks becoming yet another permanent festering sore inside our diverse city. There is still time to stop this from happening if there would be the will to do so. The police should drop the 7 charges filed against the pro peace participants, and let us all move on with our lives without further bitterness. We are all deeply divided in how we feel about this war, and we don’t need to add further to that if we can avoid doing so.

To: Bush and Gates Re: OUR Plan

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Dear Messieurs Bush and Gates.
    Today you have once again proposed that anybody who does not support YOU and YOUR War have some obligation to put forth a better plan for victory in YOUR WAR.
   Also Mr Gates has presented the idea once again that LEGITIMATE PROTEST of YOUR WAR somehow emboldens YOUR enemies. Which would be an accusation of Treason, (a capital offense) against the majority of Congressmen and a majority of the people of the United States.

Apparently you are both somewhat confused about what exactly your legal status is.

Mr. Bush, you are at most an elected official. In a Democracy, or if you prefer, a Republic, THE PEOPLE are the ones who are the Decision Makers. You are our employee and NOT our master.

I realize that you have the mistaken notion that as a public employee you have no obligation to listen to the clearly expressed will of the people. You call it “leadership by polls”, and sneer at the prospect that mere mortals can criticize you or tell you what to do. You call yourself the Commander in Chief. Mr Bush, there are somewhat less than 2 million members of the Armed Forces in America. That means 298 million citizens of the United States are in fact Civilians, and therefore NOT under Your command.

   Now, Mr Bush, I realize that Laura will have to read this to you. I would ask Mrs. Bush to point out that 298,000,000 is substantially a larger number than 2,000,000.  In other words, as your Poppy used to say, YOU do the math.

      You and Mr Gates and Mr Cheney are OUR employees. WE are the deciders and WE have decided to support Our Other Employees, the Men and Women of the Armed Forces. Current and Future.

These men and women, and the children your ROTC and recruiters are grooming for future employment in the Armed Forces, have been placed in Harm’s Way by your stupid policies. Your policies are based on deliberate manipulation and deception of the American People, and the Congress, for more than 6 years now.

Apparently you don’t listen to polls. You keep repeating this, so I and others like me will have to repeat our reply: When the American People voted for President in 2000, more people voted against YOU. The only way you managed to attain office was by skillful manipulation of the electoral process by your family and their henchmen. Men like Mr Cheney and Mr Gates. You again failed to get a Majority of the votes in 2004, yet somehow you have represented that failure as a mandate from the people to allow you to lead us.

I know you can not read fast, so I am writing this very slowly… The people who you feel should obey you, are not going to obey you.

Your policy has continually failed since the day you stole your job. It has specifically failed with respect to YOUR personal war against Saddam Hussein. You have, through a long series of Lies, unlawfully targeted the people and government of Iraq as the Enemy, and demanded that we do the same. You have had Mr Hussein killed. You have done what you said you wanted, i.e.; Killed Mr Hussein, been allowed to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction throughout Iraq, been allowed to install a New Puppet dictator in Iraq, taken the Oil Fields of Iraq to give to Mr Cheney and your other Henchmen in the petroleum industry.

    In the 4 years since the unlawful conquest and pillage of the nation of Iraq began, exactly zero none nada zip bupkas of your promised Glorious Victory have emerged. You have murdered more than 3,000 members of the Armed Forces. At the lowest count, you have Murdered 75,000 citizens of the nation of Iraq. The higher count of up to 300,000 Iraqis is disputed by you and your Lying cabinet and lying supporters.

     Your unofficial Spokes Freaks at the FOREIGN owned Fox Television Networks have made the threat, repeatedly, that people who oppose this systematic Murder and Theft and Deception that you have been doing for so long, should be rounded up and punished for their Patriotic defiance of your unlawful policies.

      Today, YOUR henchman Mr. Gates has used the same lie, that not supporting you is giving “aid and comfort” to the alleged Enemies .

These people did not declare war against the United States. The people of the United States did not declare them to be the enemies. YOU and your Chicken Hawk Cabinet and advisors did. By allowing your spokespersons, either the official ones like Cheney and Gates, or the unofficial ones like the employees of Mr Rupert Murdoch, to threaten Americans with nothing short of DEATH for opposing your murderous policies, is Terrorism.

Mr Gates and you, and the people at Fox Networks, and other corporate information media, know very well that threatening Americans with death or in fact any punishment for engaging in conduct which is not only Lawful, but mandated by Our consciences, is unlawful in and of itself.

       Perhaps you believe that Americans who oppose you have no resolve. To cling to that mistaken belief, you would have to neglect and ignore the fact that we have not been cowed into submission, We Have Not Backed Down, but instead grown stronger in our Resistance.

       Many of us are former members of the Military, like you, Mr Bush. However, most of the former military who oppose you, unlike you or any member of your cabinet, are actually combat veterans. The Congressmen you and Mr. Gates say are traitors, AND MAKE NO MISTAKE you have openly accused us of TREASON, are likewise Combat Veterans.

      The fact that we have been using every Lawful Means to resist and defy your so called “leadership” is not an indication of weakness on our parts, it is instead a strong resolve to not destroy our nation further by abandoning Rule of Law.

         This restraint has kept the Opposition to your Dictatorship from taking up arms against our fellow citizens, in spite of you and your henchmen making terroristic threats and in many cases actually carrying out such threats.

The time for such restraint is rapidly approaching its end. If you and your lapdogs insist on making war against The American People, you and your lap dogs will have to be restrained, by force if necessary.

     Your New Plan for Victory, which you have arrogantly commanded us to support or propose a better, is the same Old Plan, which you have insisted on following, at the cost of our National Treasure, in short our relatives and friends who are in the military. Also you have spent the National Treasury and any conceivable payments into that Treasury, for generations to come. You have taken away our ability to respond to Real National Threats, as opposed to Non-existent threats from people like the late Mr Hussein.

Your plan has been given 4 years to work, it is not working and, even though you and your goon squads and lying henchmen keep saying otherwise, We The People are capable of seeing that it has not worked, and will not work.

      We do not owe you a better plan. You owe us your respect, and your obedience to the People. You, and your cabinet, owe us your resignations. You owe our fellow citizens in the military your respect, for their lives and for their service.

You can no longer hide behind the lies that a dictatorship is somehow a guarantee of freedom.

    Your incompetent dictatorship is instead a guarantee of slavery, but ONLY if we fail in our real duties, to bring your dictatorship to an end.

The people who you and Mr. Gates threaten, are quite capable of forcibly ending that threat. Mr. Bush, Mr. Gates, I strongly caution you not to make the rash mistake of continuing in your terroristic campaign.

Democracy Now on KRCC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Obama outta my face

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

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

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

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

The underwhelming Barack Obama

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The media is already pushing the delusion to liberal Democratic Party voters, that Barack Obama is their Great Black Hope in 2008. And today he announced he was a candidate for President. They are trying to pass him off as the antiwar candidate, same as Howard Dean was similarly imaged in that manner in 2004.

Not only is he not that, but his positions on almost everything are not liberal, neither. As Colin and Condo are to Dubya and Dick, Barack and Jesse are to Bill and Hillary. Yuck.

I encourage everybody to go to Obama’s website to get a glimpse of his mealy mouthed political approach. He is for education, but not a mention of supporting public schools versus privatization. He is for health care, but nothing about keeping abortion legal, nor anything about supporting a single payer comprehensive national health care system, where all are covered. He speaks out on immigration, but says not a word in opposition to the Border Wall being built. He says not a word about maintaining Social Security, but talks of ‘modernizing’ it. Hell with him. We know what ‘modernizing’ really means. It means cutting SS, that’s what.

Similarly, he blabs on about National Defense, supporting the police, being against sex offenders, crime, and meth. Bullshit is what it is. Pure bullshit. He is for a ‘phased withdrawal’ from Iraq, but not a word about Afghanistan. And what is a ‘phased withdrawal’ to this sort? Over 3 months, or over 10 years? Or over forever? Not a word about cutting our excessive military spending. Why not? This is no liberal speaking, but a mealy mouthed duplicitous worm. Yet another one the Democratic party has spun out.

In the weeks and months ahead, all of America will be encouraged to put their hopes in this man. He was already being touted as the only genuine antiwar candidate tonight on the national news. Lies, lies, lies/ liars, liars, liars. About all the Democrats are hashing up with Barack Obama, is a man to help neutralize the possibility of Condoleeza Rice starting a run for the presidency. That’s about all.

Obama at best would be a return to Clintonism, but this time with a black face in office playing the role of the Slick Willie. Liberals need a better vision than that to offer America, otherwise the slide down hill will continue. And most of all, liberals need a better political party than the Democratic Party. Stuck in that Yu-don’t-go of a vehicle, we will get a wreck of America.

What a demoralized America we have now, minus a genuine third, and anti-corporate, party.

Charter school infection

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War criminal given immunity from prosecutionDo you wonder how this nation’s infection of immorality keeps spreading? For one, the Colorado Springs charter school Classical Academy is employing former Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman to coach its students. The Gazette front page today tells of Sassaman, the Army commander, disgraced but given immunity, who tried to cover up his men’s attempted and probable murder of two Iraqi captives on the banks of the Tigris River in 2004, is now shaping young minds and bodies of fragile charter school students. I say fragile because remember what kind of parents are sending their children to these “charter” schools.

John Edwards for Santy Claus

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Ho ho ho. John Edwards declares himself a candidate for aught eight, counting no doubt on the votes of Virginians who haven’t been told about Santa Claus.
 
John Edwards, half of the Kerry-Edwards day-after concession speech givers will, instead of doing his upmost to get to the bottom of vote tampering, vote fraud, voter intimidation and obstruction in the 2004 election, will instead ask the Barnum and Bailey crowd to throw their votes at him again.

In a carefully stage-managed photo-op in a black-Ammerican’s backyard, in New Orlean’s still neglected Ninth Ward (for whom he did what exactly?), Edward’s voiced the same middle of the road platitudes which -we’re told- endeared him to the American public the first time. “Let me be clear.” “Let there be no misunderstanding.” Ad infinitum, sin explicity. The Republican strategy in Iraq is wrong, no mention of what could be right. But he wants it firmly understood, so there’s no misunderstanding, it’s so clear it doesn’t need saying, know what I mean, nudge, nudge?

This is the straw man technique used by the Republican yellow press. Put a spotlight on the weakest opponent and pretend he’s the best they got.

No John Edwards, if you’re any bit the patriot at all, step aside and let somebody lead the Democrats to reclaim justice for the people. We do not need your poison pill of Benedict Arnoldry. You are a baby-faced son of a bitch God-damned traitor opportunist carpert bagger fraudster’s shill. Confess now or go down with the rest of them. Fall all the harder for the extra effort your treachery presents.

You could have contested the 2004 vote, if nothing else to bring to light the rigging of American elections by the well-placed Republican voting officials and their black-box contractor cohorts. You could have spent some of the Democratic Party funds earmarked for the fight instead of capitulating and forcing appalled Americans throw in even more contributions to aid the likes of Bev Harris and independent party candidates challenge the voting irregularities. Instead you handed George Bush the keys to the hen house, with already thousands burning inside it, and slithered away to surface another day, Christmas 2006, to ask for a chance to do it again. Fat chance Mr. Edwards, no promotion for you, you’ve been very bad elf.

The guilty among us

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Jose Padilla kept in sensory deprivation
Continuous sensory deprivation has rendered Jose Padilla effectively useless to his own defense lawyers.

A sense of optimism before the 2004 elections had me anticipating a reckoning for the perpetrators of the Iraq war. Not just the Neocon architects, but everyone who had supported their murderous, larcenous enterprise. Not just the Bush cronies in the media or think-tanks or GOP hierarchy. I fantasized that every American even smiling in pictures beside the president or a cohort would be held to account. I imagined leveling a war reparations tax on all Republicans, a stupidity tax so to speak. Make those who supported the war pay for it.

With no sea change yet in sight, I’ve lowered by sights. Save the flag waivers for later, let’s address the other foot soldiers, the foot soldiers. Our troops in Iraq are the war’s hands-on perpetrators, each and every one should be held to account. There might be no justice we can enforce as yet, but let the soldiers know it will come. It won’t be a hard case to prove. Kill indiscriminately? Violate humanitarian law? Too thick to understand right from wrong? Sorry Charley.

Support the troops. Give them a good swift reprimand.

Military prison guards at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,may have been trained to behave terribly, maybe their orders explicitly state to do terrible things, maybe they some bring stateside experience from regular US prison practice. It’s no excuse. Being ignorant of the law, being dumb at crew-cutted doorknobs, does not excuse anyone from responsibility. They are all part of the reign of terror and they will burn with it as soon as justice is given a match.

Come tell Cheney not to torture!

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Meet at Lake Avenue and Second StreetCome protest Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign stop at the Broadmoor. This is your chance to tell him you don’t think the US decision to use torture is a “no-brainer.” (Read about one of the first US female casualties in Iraq. A recent FOIA has revealed her death was a suicide, covered-up. Her motive? She did not want to participate in US methods of torture.)

CSAction Activist Alert from Mark Lewis:
On Friday, November 3 at the Broadmoor Hotel, “The Dick” cheney will come to do a fund raiser for lamborn, who is close to loosing the 5th congressional district seat to Fawcett. The supporters will start arriving at 4 pm (according to the local GOP office) and must be inside for the security sweep at 6pm just before cheney arrives up Lake Avenue.

We need to be there in force to “welcome” cheney (that’s Mr. Dick to you) with orange hunting vests, signs about halliburton, war profiteers, Abu Ghraib, POWs, Gitmo, Iraq, “Who would Jesus torture?”, maybe a “water board” display?

Maybe the same location as the 2004 NATO protest at 2nd and Lake, where the motorcade will have to slow for the “round about” and where there is parking in the church lot?

The sat trucks will go live at 5 for TV coverage, so we need to be in place at least by then. Spread the word.

The absentee election reform solution

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Here is the Democratic Party plan to combat black box voting. Mail in your ballots. That’s the plan to overcome the GOP control over the registration of the voters, over the administration of the voting, over the programming of the electronic voting machines, over the electronic counting of the votes, over the poll taking at the voting centers, over the reporting of the voting results and over the concession by the losing party. The Democratic party plan to enforce an inviolate paper trail? Encourage the use of absentee ballots.

Sit down, it’s already too late to request an absentee ballot if you don’t have one already. And asking for an absentee ballot on the cusp of the deadline increases the chance that you will be struck from the list of voters permitted to vote on election day, as well as receive no ballot in the mail.

The call to encourage absentee ballots was not made very loudly, presumably so as not to diminish confidence in the voting process thereby losing more prospective votes than the Democrats could save. But in the end, whose purpose will that serve? How will we overcome GOP election fraud if we do not cry foul?

Election 2000 was rigged, as was 2002 and 2004. What are the indications that 2006 will be otherwise? Are there now fewer Diebold voting machines? Fewer Republican election officials?

The press reports that a landslide of voters are disenchanted with Bush and the war in Iraq. Yet it’s predicted that many of the candidates are neck and neck. It’s being forecast that Decision 2006 will be a tough call. Wow. Well. Kick in a few more bucks to your party. Is the election really going to be anybody’s call? Or is that anybody making the call already a Republican?

The fundraising portent

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I don’t know, I got the same feeling before the last election…

In 2004 Bush was messing up. It was becoming plain as day what a smug, incompetent shyster he was. A landslide for anybody-but-Bush seemed virtually assured. And yet-

And yet you’d hear that Bush was still raising money, finding backers, hosting dinners for rich people ready to bet Bush was going to win again.

Who puts money on a losing horse? Especially people who know how to handle money. It wasn’t a good portent.

What do you think nowadays when you hear that Bush still raises thousands at a fundraiser? Are people giving money to the GOP as a thank you for the job Bush has done? The huge tax break for the rich for example, or the defense contracts, or the oil revenue windfall?

Really? Do you think so? They paid for those favors the last go-round. The GOP hasn’t backed a single bit of legislation that wasn’t for constituents who weren’t already big GOP contributors.

More certainly Bush is still able to raise money because the rich are angling for new mega-billion dollar favors to come. These people know that to earn money you have to spend money.

The most disquieting aspect about this fund-giving to the GOP is that the rich are counting on further GOP victories. They’re not in the business of throwing their money away. They’re not betting that the GOP will stay in power, they’re anteing up. If they thought the Democrats would be winning in November the rich would register their bribes with the Democratic party.

That Bush is holding closed-door affairs while on the public payroll is the least of his offenses. Throughout his presidency, Bush cannot have acted with more discourtesy toward our Constitution. He is guilty of impeachable offenses and it doesn’t take a judge to see it. Every solitary person who hosts a fundraiser for him, or who gives him money, is behaving so selfishly un-American, I’d call it treason.

It’s graft, it’s undemocratic, and it’s cynically counting that you and I will not be able to see through the media blackout on the issues, the rigged voting system, and the false two-party choice.

Are the fundgivers scared? It appears not a whit. That scares me. Big win for the Democrats in November? They don’t think so.

Here comes Hurricane Che

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The Red Peril at our shoresGoogle it. “Ernesto.” See what you get: Ernesto the hurricane and Ernesto Che Guevara. This season’s brightest prospect for an action weather spectacular has been given a decidedly un-American name.
 
To me it’s reminiscent of the 2004 season when the National Weather Service would not conceal its election year partisanship. The 2004 hurricane names alluded to three countries which led the opposition to our planned Iraq invasion. Frances, Ivan, Karl. Not to say anything about last year’s villain, invoking a perennial nemesis, “Katrina.”
 
It’s coincidence no doubt, but as Hurricane Ernesto was downgraded to a Tropical Depression, Jeb Bush still kept Florida in a state of emergency because as he said, “a hurricane is a hurricane.” Doesn’t it sound like he’s talking about a commie?

The boogeyman looming in this hemisphere is the growing Latin American sovereignty movement led by Castro, Chavez and Morales. It’s the Red Menace at our shores.

What next from our Minutemen at the National Weather Service? Hurricane Fidel? Tropical Depression [Subcomandante] Marcos?

Unfree unfair elections

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Ask a Democrat when you have the chance, to what do they owe their sense of optimism about the upcoming elections? Do they think they can beat Diebold and GOP election administrators this time around?

Really, what went wrong in November 2004, and before that 2000? What could the Democrats do differently this time to win? (If not dismantling black box voting?)

Mexico’s popular candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador expected a clean win in this summer’s election. But the voting machines came up dead even, and then tilted toward the bad guy by a smudge. Sorry Charlie. The Mexican public suspects foul play.
 
Millions of Mexicans are protesting in the street, asking for a recount of the election.
Do the Democrats imagine that they will be able to rally a disenfranchised American public? 		  Mexico City protest

 
Except for Robert Kennedy Jr, a good many ostracized experts, and a growing progressive cognoscenti, few voices in the Democratic Party are even addressing the issue of crooked US elections. When will Democratic candidates and party leaders concede that previous elections have been stolen? How are Democrats to win if they face rigged results?

Instead Democratic Party members are urging us to concentrate on grassroot fund drives.

What kind of idiots do they take us for? To condemn them less cynically, what kind of idots are they? Or, less insulting, are they in collusion with the GOP?

Local Democratic organizers expect the rank and file to do their utmost this time, to walk the streets for the candidates, to contribute their money and their hope. The party is expecting all of us to place our hope in middle-of-the-road issues, nothing too radical for the sake of having a broader appeal in the next election.

Without electronic voting reform, I don’t think we have a chance in the next election. And I think DC Democrats are advocating centrist objectives to keep pertinent issues from the public discourse.

And it looks to me like Democrats are preparing to tell us, after lots of grassroots work, at the close of another lost election, that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Kerry 2004 deja vu

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Speaking at IWY3 rally
Where are the Democrats on Anti-War? Why are they not standing at the forefront of this issue? The PPJPC held a well-attended Iraq War Year III rally in the park downtown and we saw not one politician in attendance.

Why do Democrats not recognize the visceral strength of the opposition to war? Americans may not vote in their own self interest for the simple matter of pride. Social issues are often too selfish for Americans to see themselves supporting. And the American Dream, if even just the Lotto, keeps Americans thinking about the interests of the priviledged as perhaps someday their own.

But the plight of the Iraqi people, a people we’ve terrorized and decimated, that’s a selfless cause. Americans join the world in their abject remorse for our actions. This is the issue which ignited the American populace in 2004. This is what can motivate the American voter again.

2.
In my humble opinion, knowing nothing about politics, I’d like to suggest that the Democrats have not a chance in hell in the next election unless they differentiate themselves from the reigning asshole party.

It’ll be Kerry all over again. Except this time I don’t think anyone will get too excited at the prospect of electing someone who’ll merely betray us.

Is there any reason to believe that there is any difference between Republicans and Democrats in DC? You can’t get Democrats there to move for impeachment, for censure, to investigate anything, to repudiate the Patriot Act, or to end the illegal war in Iraq. What good would it do necessarily to send Washington more Democrats to supplement the morally retarded ones they have already?

I don’t think you’re likely to entice Americans to support a party of do-nothings, especially when those losers are looking more like cohorts of the Republican kleptocrats.

Federal investigations, American innocence

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U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzales has just called for another Justice Department investigation. This time they want to know what government official leaked the story that President Bush has been conducting illegal surveillance upon U.S. citizens without the proper warrants.
 
Does this recall the investigation prompted by the revelation that our CIA has been using secret prisons in Europe to detain people illegally? They’re against European law and against American law. But Gonzales wanted to know the same thing: who told.
 
Soviet era prisonKiejkuty- a Soviet era prison in Poland, revealed to be one of the “black sites,” the secret network of CIA prisons for keeping ghost detainees from domestic scrutiny.

Remember the indignant reaction in 2004 to the suggestion that America was operating “gulags?”

Illegal activity on the part of the president. Illegal activity on the part of the CIA. Where is the investigation into the members of this government who failed to leak these stories?

Not only are there laws which protect whistleblowers, there are laws which punish people who keep mum about wrong-doings which they’ve witnessed. Is Alberto Gonzales interested in any of those laws?

Perhaps Gonzales authored another position paper advising Bush administration officials that they needn’t worry themselves with notions of personal responsibility in this the shiny age of Neocon omnipotence.

Need for warrants
President Bush claims that he ordered this domestic spying to protect our nation against terrorists. Since the warrants he would have needed are practically rubber stamped anyway, why would he need to act without having obtained them, in accordance to the law?

A leader elected in a democracy is not supposed to be able to declare all by himself who is an enemy of the state, just as a police commissioner is not supposed to be able to pick on whatever neighboor’s household he wishes. That’s what judicial review is for. “Got a warrant?” We all know our right. It’s in the Constitution. We put it there.

Freedom of Information Act requests have shown that Bush’s surveillance extends beyond looking for Taliban suicidal hijacker suspects. Perhaps Bush feared that the judicial oversight which comes with having to apply for a warrant might preclude those other categories. That’s what the oversight is for, to prevent a dictator from usurping a democracy.

Because someone is a particular religion is not a probable cause which would justify spying on them. No, George, because someone is protesting for peace, this is not a cause to spy on them.

A judicial review board trying to uphold the constitution will not issue a warrant because someone is blowing the whistle on a major energy company, or because they are making a competitive bid against Halliburton, or trying to organize a union against Wal-mart, or trying to expose the Bush family financial ties, or challenging Tom Delay’s redistricting. Those are not illegal activities and thus do not justify law-enforcement attention.

And what are you trying to learn from eavesdropping? What they are up to? What they are up to is generally known, that’s how you became worried about them in the first place.

Instead, are you looking for a vice, or a family secret, or some vulnerability which you can exploit, either through blackmail, coercion, brute force, or by sudden secret unconstitutional detention, to stop their activities which you say are a threat to your America?

The National Dumbshit List

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Our business card
The 2004 election provided an invaluable opportunity to identify the Republican support base. Progressive grassroots organizations were able to record which houses in their neighborhoods put up Bush/Cheney lawn signs. AMERICANS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY has solicited those names and addresses to gather into a national list. This information comprises not just who voted for Bush, but who was enthusiastic about the idea. Thus the National Dumbshit List!

FINALLY A REPUBLICAN dumbshit DIRECTORY!

The National Dumbshit List will be used to raise funds for anti-Republican causes such as education, health and the environment. The list will be sold to telemarketers, lotto commissioners, real estate speculators, military recruiters and others who thrive on exploiting the less intelligent. The draft board for example is looking for gung-ho Republican families with teenagers, as they are running fresh out.

The yard sign locations will be cross-referenced with County Clerk records to reveal accurate property owner names. Residences valued at over $750,000 will be footnoted because their owners may not have acted against their own self-interests in supporting Bush. But if not necessarily dumb, those Republicans were certainly shits.

If you suspect you may be included in the latter group and you do not feel that your name belongs on the shit list, you may rehearse the case you will have to make with your maker. It is our sincere hope that you can be reconsidered to have been merely a dumbshit.

Wasn’t there a hayseed comic, darlings of Republicans, who used to ask “where’s your sign?” Thank you to all Republicans who came through.

Reprinted from dumbshitlist.org

Ivy Leaguer accosts car stabs driver 2am

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My attention was grabbed by a recent headline, IVY LEAGUER STABS BOSTON TEEN.
 
But let me tell you another story. In Colorado Springs, April 26, 2002, a friend of mine was driving back from a Thursday night concert in Boulder. Her girlfriend was half asleep, half intoxicated in the passenger seat. It was around 2am as they were driving through the Colorado College campus within a block of their home. Slowly rounding a quiet street corner, the girlfriend remembers something struck out at the car, perhaps a rock.
 
Lest I betray how this tale ends, I must point out that the subsequent events are entirely the recollection of the tired, inebriated passenger. The driver, Jocelyn Sandberg, 41, community activist, KRCC radio station manager and beloved on-air personality, did not survive the encounter.

Suddenly the car window was down and Jocelyn was having a shouted exchange with a youngish man on the street. Before the girlfriend could refrain her, the door was open and Jocelyn was getting out to confront the man. Jocelyn was very confident physically. Stocky, not butch, Jocelyn was back-on-her-heels jocular, the kind of girl it wouldn’t occur to you to offer to see safely to her car after dark. In fact Jocelyn usually worked a second job as a baker, walking there and back in the middle of the night.

The girlfriend remembers yelling for Jocelyn to return to the car. She watched as Jocelyn confronted the man at the curb. The man was in his mid-twenties or thirties. He struck Jocelyn, she fell to the ground face forward and he ran off. The girlfriend got out and ran to Jocelyn, but before she could get to her, Jocelyn had risen and taken after the man, north into the campus. Yelling after Jocelyn, she saw her disappear behind an administration building. Disgusted at Jocelyn’s typical stubbornness, the girlfriend returned to the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and drove the last block home. While waiting for Jocelyn inside the house, she fell asleep.

When the girlfriend awoke an hour later, Jocelyn had not returned, so she called the police. By the time the officers arrived, Colorado College maintenance and security personnel had already discovered Jocelyn’s body. Jocelyn had bled to death on the SW side of Armstrong Hall, two hundred yards from where her car had been stopped. She suffered stab wounds in the face, neck and chest. The first cut may have been struck at the initial altercation at the curb.

Except for the girlfriend’s foggy description of the man, there were no witnesses. This was neither a robbery nor a premeditated assault. As for leads, Colorado College is a fairly insulated campus, buffeted by upscale neighborhoods, with very tight security. It’s not on the migratory route to anywhere, and the campus grounds present an inhospitable and unlikely hangout for transient males.

The girlfriend was of course considered the main suspect because it seemed improbable that a man could accost a moving car at 2AM in the morning. However other Colorado Springs residents can recall having snowballs thrown at their cars, in that same general area, by Colorado College students who would then dash off, leaving drivers unable to reciprocate their frustration.

When the police failed to produce any leads, the most persistent rumor was that the knife-wielding man had been a Colorado College student who was then perhaps whisked off campus by well-heeled, politically-connected parents. This could also explain the lack of concern shown by the college administrators. There was plenty of DNA evidence at the scene to test against the student population but such tests were not done.

A year later a stabbing in Boston revived that rumor. On April 12, 2003, a Saturday night around closing time, a Colorado College grad, Alexander Pring-Wilson, now studying at Harvard, was stumbling home drunk. On the way home he accosted a stationary car and stabbed the driver. Immediately after the event, still drunk, Pring-Wilson left this message on a friend’s answering machine:

“Hey, Jen. How’s it going? I just, um, I got attacked. I just got attacked by a group. I fended them off. I stabbed him a couple times and, don’t repeat this to police, um, but yeah, I’ve got a fucking killer headache. I just walked a couple of miles home. I think I’ve got a concussion. Anyway, I had a swell time tonight. I hope you guys made it home. Okay, bye-bye.”

Colorado Springs police were alerted to the stabbing death of Michael Colono and noted the similarities of the MO. Colorado Springs Detective David Edmondson inquired about obtaining DNS evidence from Pring-Wilson to test against the Jocelyn Sandberg stabbing case, Pring-Wilson’s lawyers refused.

Much was now made of the fact that Jocelyn’s witness described their assailant as weighing perhaps 150 pounds, not 200. And being 5′ 8″ instead of 6′ tall. But there was enough doubt. In a woman’s world, couldn’t 150 pounds denote a heavier person? And Jocelyn’s passenger was not making her observations from a sober perspective. Otherwise the age, hair and clean-cut description did fit.

When asked to present evidence of Pring-Wilson’s whereabouts on the 2002 date, lawyer Jeffrey Denner produced emails and credit card charges as proof that the suspect had been in Boston. Pring-Wilson had “accessed a Boston server” to send his mom an email. Likewise his credit card was charged on the next day. Naturally Colorado Springs police regarded this evidence as inconclusive.

But circumstantial evidence drawing Pring-Wilson to Colorado Springs grew. Pring-Wilson maintained a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend in Colorado Springs. And friends recall seeing him regularly at his alma mater. A fellow CC rugby forward estimates seeing Pring-Wilson back on campus “maybe 10” times in the two years following their graduation in 2000.
 
On a map showing the locations of Colorado Spring’s downtown bars, including Jose Muldoons which featured a Raggae band that night, and Pring-Wilson’s residence, the most likely route between the two points intersects with the corner where Jocelyn Sandberg’s car was accosted.
 
It should be an easy thing to prove or disprove: flight schedules, cell phone statements, Colorado College alumni events or no. Certainly his girlfriend Janice or his parents should be able to say either way.		   Walking off a drunk

 
Pring-Wilson’s family and friends are petitioning the governor of Massachusetts to reduce his sentence for the Boston stabbing. By their descriptions Pring-Wilson seems like a nice enough guy: accomplished, dedicated, compassionate, gentle -when sober, no doubt. No mention of his drinking. And according to everyone he was unassailably non-violent, notwithstanding having been captain of the Rugby team, playing forward, the offensive position. And how many gentle souls carry around four-inch Spyderco knives? Pring-Wilson’s drinking companions in Boston recall seeing the knife in the bar that evening. Seeing the knife in the bar?! Not everyone is agreed obviously that it’s such a common thing to carry around.

Could it be we’re talking about a sweet guy -with a drinking problem? Friends who haven’t signed the Pring-Wilson petition do attest that he was an obnoxious drunk. So we’re talking about an obnoxious drunk with maybe a chip on his shoulder and certainly a knife in his pocket. Maybe we’re talking about a 200 pound drunkard who cannot be dissuaded to do anything but whatever he wants. A person who parties hard, then wants to walk home, to walk it off, a couple of miles whatever, alone.

In October 2004 Pring-Wilson was convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of American-Puerto-Rican teenager Michael Colono and sentenced to six to eight years. The killing was found not to have been in self defense because the evidence indicated that Pring-Wilson had fisted his knife before the altercation began. Also, if he was jumped by the two teenagers as he claimed, Pring-Wilson came out of it relatively unhurt. Most damning, the knife blows were struck straight into Colono from a position above, not from wild slashing from a defensive position beneath, as Pring-Wilson claimed.

In their petition to Massachusetts Governor Romney urging him to remand their son to home-custody, the Pring-Wilsons threaten: “You must know that if any harm should come to Mr. Pring Wilson during the duration of his sentence you will be held accountable along with the Commonwealth of Mass.”

Strong words from understandably desperate parents, but who then shall be held responsible for the death of the Puerto-Rican teenager? Jose Cuervo? Spyderco knives?

Why do the parents not suggest, at the very least, that their son promise to disavow heavy drinking and knife-wielding? Nothing against gentle 200 pound rugby forward Alexander Pring-Wilson, it’s his knife-carrying drunken alter-ego that might be a danger. (Knives, drinking, middle of the night personas? A combination not unknown to the annals of crime or western literature.)

How often exactly did Pring-Wilson drink and insist on walking home alone, after his friends had taken cabs? Once a year? Spring break? One less aggressive drunk guy on the street with a deadly knife on Saturday nights would be a good thing for everyone.

There are also hundreds of Jocelyn’s friends in Colorado Springs who would like to hold somebody accountable for her death. Maybe Pring-Wilson could step up to the plate so that we could eliminate the possibility it was him. The sooner we can identify the aggressive man who stabbed Jocelyn Sandberg, the sooner we can prevent him from picking a fight with someone else’s car.

The Colorado Springs 2005 bid committe

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The Colorado Springs 2005 hosting bid to host the upcoming U.S. war crimes trials has been officially accepted by INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIME TRIALS .US! We now approach phase II. We must continue to raise awareness for the trials and widen the circle of Colorado Springs citizens who support the calls for reconcilliation to international law.

1.
How can we bring the International War Crimes Trials to Colorado Springs? The advent of hosting war crime trials will be a reality if John Kerry wins the US elections in November 2004.

Kerry has already expressed his intention to make the United States a signatory to the International Criminal Court, at which point the indictments can begin.
President Bush has stated that his objections to ratifying the ICC were to protect American soldiers from facing charges in international courts. But this reason is disingeneous because the prosecution of common soldiers is not the purpose of the ICC.
It is not the intent of the ICC to prosecute regular crimes of war in those cases which already fall under the jurisdiction of military tribunals or domestic courts. As we can see from the ABU GHRAIB cases, the US government has every intention to prosecute the common soldiers it holds responsible for those abuses.

The unique capability of the International Criminal Court is to indict heads of state and otherwise unassailable diplomats, functionaries, administrators and conspirators.
Preparations have already begun with the IWCT to document the charges, gather the evidence, and prepare the briefs. Efforts are well underway in Japan, Greece, Turkey and Belgium to organize the extra-judicial tribunals to supplement the ICC staffs.

Colorado Springs must act as early as possible to offer our city as a potential US host to the trials!

2.
The first objective of the COS2005 bid project is to make the concept of international law more tangible in American minds. Today when someone hears a protester denounce President Bush as a war criminal, it sounds like so much rhetoric.

But the charge is more than an opinion or an academic argument. The war of aggression which the U. S. pursued against Iraq is a war crime by any number of international laws. As a result there is an inevitable legal action coming against the U. S. for waging an illegal war. International law is not hyperbole.
Criticisms between presidential candidates might be political, but charges of war crimes are out of everyone’s hands. No one is exempt from prosecution for war crimes, and there are no statutes of limitation.

The concept of impending war crime trials thus become an election issue. Can we consider re-electing leaders who are guilty of war crimes, chiefly, the war crime of “crimes against the peace?”
An American voter might hesitate to endorse someone who they can imagine will go down in history as having been the bad guy in the black hat. We believe most people aspire to be law-abiding god-fearing citizens, of America, and of the world community as well.

Reprinted from ColoradoSprings2005.com