Tag Archives: Absolut

Life in the fast lane

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Have you ever fasted? We all have heard about people who do, but why do they fast? Why on earth would they fast? Self deprivation and delayed gratification have no place in the American way of life. Growing up Catholic we always tried to give something up for Lent. Usually it was something that we didn’t much care for to begin with, like black-eyed peas. But to truly take oneself out of a state of constant satiation seems unnecessary, if not downright crazy.

I’ll tell you something unbelievable. Fasting is fantastic. It is healthy. It is powerful. Physically, the process of digestion consumes more energy than nearly anything we human beings do. It is nonstop and tiring to the body. The garbage we put into ourselves on a daily basis overwhelms our systems…thanks in part to gluttony but with big kudos to the food industry who has meddled with the food supply to the point of absurdity.

The absolute best way to fast requires copious amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables, an expensive juicer, lots of time. A simpler fast that I’ve discovered has been around for 50 years or so. 3 ounces of fresh-squeezed lemon or lime juice, 3 ounces of Grade B maple syrup (this is not the syrup you buy at the local supermarket….look at a health food store or buy it via the internet). 2 or 3 capsules of cayenne pepper. 24 ounces of distilled water. Drink this all day long.

Day one is the most difficult. The body begins to release toxins. You may feel sluggish. You’ll certainly feel your addictions to various foods. Day two is a bit easier. By day three or four you’ll begin to feel powerful…akin to runners’ euphoria. Your body is free, your mind is unencumbered, you are living life on a higher plane.

Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days. Do you think that this was a sacrificial act? If so, it certainly pales in comparison to death on a cross. No, I believe Jesus fasted to release himself from the bonds of human frailty….to put himself in contact with the divine. That’s why yogis fast, why Muslims and Christians fast. Why I fast. Try it. It will certainly change your body. Perhaps it will change your life.

The obscene IMF and Afghanistan

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How obscene is the IMF? How obscene is international capitalism? Pretty damn obscene and Afghanistan is just one case of why and how. The BBC has an absolutely idiotic report today called Afghanistan to Obtain Debt Relief.

What does this ‘debt relief’ consist of? Afghanistan will now have it’s payments on its $12 billion debt cut to 51% of what it is now! And this is called relief?????

Let’s see now? The US has fomented and funded war for 3 decades in this sad country and continues to do so. The US current specialty is in bombing Afghan villages from way up high and killing huge groups of civilians that might, or might not have, an armed man or two down below. A poppy is safer from NATO forces in Afghanistan than a civilian.

And the per capita income is far below that of $1,000 per person per year. Just how generous can the IMF be? Debt payments cut in half? Oh, whoopee! Bombs Away, IMF!

Mass murder of civilians their only strategy left

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The US government war to control declining world oil supplies for itself is running into obstacle after obstacle. A foreign policy that ultimately has no real political aim other than pure theft, in the end always finds itself to resort principally to using pure violence.

Mass murder of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan has become the US government’s only strategy left. How ironic that a war that has had as its stated #1 goal a design to stop terrorism, has now absolutely devolved into having its #1 goal to simply do nothing more than spread terrorism to others, and therefore supposedly away from ourselves.

Map of GDP comparisons

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How does the US economy compare with other countries? Check out The Map. Kind of explains the US ruling elites’ addiction to imperialism.

East Timor has the distinction of being the world’s most pitiable economy, closely followed by other places that US foreign policy has helped make absolutely miserable; places like Somalia and the Gaza Strip.

The Map given above is only one estimate of world and state economies, and may be dated. Here is another grouping of the numbers

The lesson of Vietnam

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As Congress voted today to approve funds for prolonging the bloodbath in Iraq, a vote which included a butt-load of Democrat shits, absolute idiots for shits, fork-tongued, pandering, corrupt asshole shits brought aboard last election selling the hope that they would represent the people and put an end to Bush’s fiddling recital while burning the US constitution over the fires of Holocausts unleashed on millions of Iraqis, Afghans, Palestinians, Somalis, Colombians, et al, the pretender-alternative party caving to the Necons for absolutely no reason, it occurs to me the lesson learned with Vietnam.

The lesson that Americans learned after being responsible for the deaths of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians is that we got away with it. Shamed, chastized but ultimately let off, we forgave ourselves, forgot the deeds, Lieutenant Calley retired a midwestern jeweler, revelations of the Tiger Patrol’s atrocities obfuscated by miscreant swiftboaters, and Joe Public who went along, waved the flags, those who beat the drum, smiling, ridiculing voices who sought to get us out. What happened to those people. Nothing. They’re back. They’re doing the same thing, again, getting away with murder.

US threatens Iran with war

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Nine US warships are now in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran just 2 weeks after Dick Cheney threatened that country with an attack. What does it take to waken the international public to the reality that the US government plans to extend its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq into new attacks on neighboring countries?

Meanwhile, the US’s allies in Lebanon have been bombarding a refugee camp in their own country of 40,000 people with the Bush Adminstration cheering this on. It looks like we might just be days away from a major escalation of the US-made war on the varying people’s of the Middle East into new countries, like Iran and Syria.

The Democratic Party has refused to act against the plans of the Bush Administration to spread their war throughout the Middle East and it is now up to the world population to act decisively in opposition to this US governmental terrorism. It is absolutely the wrong thing to do to await until after the bombing of Iran begins to show opposition. Unfortunately, that appears to be just exactly what the Peace Movement in the US is doing right now.

Act to end the Endless War now. It just takes a couple of people to do a corner peace vigil and show opposition to continuing the carnage. US Troops Out of the Middle East Now!

Protest is patriotic so what are you waiting on? And contrary to popular cynicism protest does work when done with sufficient numbers. Add yourself to those willing to protest this evil war. It’s not really all that hard to do a peace vigil, even on your own, so don’t sit around acting utterly paralyzed.

Police Chief Richard ‘Liars’ Myers

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In the last week I have had 3 opportunities to see the new Colorado Springs police chief, Richard Myers, do his job as public relations head of the law enforcement division of the Springs City Government. Because of what I have seen of him in a little less than one week, I feel that Myers is totally deserving of having ‘Liars’ Myers become his new nickname.

Having testified at a city council meeting post the police attack on the peace contingent attending the city promoted St Patrick’s Day Parade, I received an invitation to attend a meeting held last week with Lionel Rivera, the mayor of our city, and other top officials of city government including the police chief, Myers, himself. This came about because I had stated at a city council meeting that I felt that the personal security of me and my family was endangered by the actions taken by the police at the St Pat’s Day Parade.

These police are employees of city government and receive their direction from city government, therefore I had informed the municipal government of Colorado Springs in my testimony, that I held them personally responsible for the uncalled on police assault on our peaceful group, and I asked them to take personal responsibility for what had happened. The assaulting actions of the police had threatened me and my family with physical harm and/ or unlawful arrest during that parade, and their behavior needed to be changed in the future for me and others to feel in any way safe.

At this meeting, Chief Richard Myers and others of the city government attending, had assured us of the pro-peace community, that the police and city government were only concerned that ALL citizens would have their safety assured (even us), and asked us to help work with them to help bring that about in the future. They made great effort to assure of us of their supposed sincere concern that we, too, be kept safe from assault by those who might disagree with us. They assured us that the altercation had been an embarrassment to the city, and that they had a desire to work together with us instead of against us in the future.

I must say, that this appeared to us as pretense on their part, since we had not been in the least endangered by anybody other than the police themselves at the parade. They ambushed us there, and seven of us continued to have our security endangered, since the city and the police insisted on pressing criminal charges on these seven of our friends, even though it was the police’s own use of uncalled force that was at issue. Never the less, we agreed with them to work together to stop this abuse of police force from further becoming an even more hardened pattern of local law enforcement in the future.

Some few hours later I then attended a projected forum held at a nursing home, that was to have been a part of conciliation court ordered as settlement for a previous attack by the police on a group of peaceful protesters at Palmer Park way back in the year 2003. The court had ruled against the city of Colorado Springs, where the police had tear gassed and assaulted people in an unlawful manner while protesting the beginning of the Iraqi War. The court had ordered that the police and the citizen plaintiffs against the police assault of 2003, hold a joint forum together in order that the police could help absolve themselves of their guilt in this uncalled for police attack on peacefully mobilized citizens, and extend a discussion to help assure that nothing similar would once again occur. Of course, it already had.

What happened at this planned court settlement forum, is that when the plaintiffs showed up to attend this event (most arriving from Boulder), the city of Colorado Springs and their police had taken it upon themselves to give themselves the power to have the final word in how this event would be condensed and edited for a later official release to the public. The plaintiffs said that this was contrary to what was agreed on previously through the court, and that they would not participate with a farce. Attendees from the local peace community then walked out, too, when the police and city encouraged us to take the plaintiffs place on the panel assembled for this forum. Talk about dishonesty here!

Actually only one fool answered the police/ city call to participate on the supposed peace community panel for this forum. The forum did not actually much get off at this point, and was terminated within minutes. Nobody from the peace community wanted to be tagged as scabbing on the plaintiffs who had been victims of the police back then.

Move to just three days later. The mayor and his police chief, Richard ‘Liars’ Myers, together had put on the tail end of the city government meeting agenda the official telling of the tales by the police ‘investigation’ of itself. They had not informed us of that, and had planned to pretty much be alone with the press to try and convict ( in the press) the Seven pro-peace folk facing criminal charges.

What makes this so reprehensible, is that they had spent, and would spend also with this report, much time accusing the St Pat’s Day Parade peace participants of having engaged in dishonesty and trickery. Further, they had repeatedly told us in our private meeting the week before supposedly aimed towards obtaining community-city government-police reconciliation, that none amongst themselves could comment on events relating to the St Pat’s Day Parade arrests. So what happens now?

Here, at the city council meeting where nobody from amongst us could counter until the day after, the new police chief, Richard ‘Liars’ Myers gave about 20 minutes of detail by detail comments before the public about the arrests. His account was so full of lies and distortions, that it would be impossible to even begin to detail them here.

Suffice it to say, that after pretending several days earlier to be holding a discussion with us where he and other police present told all of us that they could not comment or respond due to it somehow being counter to due legal process if they did so , that ‘Liars’ Myers then went ahead and did just that, and nobody in the city council saw fit to tell him that this was wrong and dishonest after having pretended that this was against police rules and regulations to enter comment about matters being currently discussed in court.

This is total sabotage of any effort to build public trust in the police. This is a new police chief whose only comments before the city council were lies, distortions, and denial of any police responsibility for their excess at the St Pat’s Day Parade. Instead of admitting that the police had used force when it was absolutely not necessary, he pointed the finger at the pro-peace participants who were roughed up and criminally charged. True, he did also point a finger, for a sec, at the official organizer of the event, John O’Donnell. This was supposed to impress the public as being even handed, it is supposed. Myers said that O’Donnell could have responded differently, which is as comical an understatement as any I have ever heard.

He whined about 35 cops on duty that day as not being enough. Oh brother! They could have policed that event with 3 police, and not 35 and the results would have been much, much better. What a self serving pile of nonsense we heard.

The most interesting part of the session was when several council members tried to figure out just who in the city was in charge of issuing the permit to John O’Donnell, supposed private organizer of this event, to hold the parade through downtown streets? The answer? Why the city police themselves. Go figure? It turns out that the city government of Colorado Springs is hiding behind their police who are hiding behind John O’Donnell, the contracted out organizer for the city, who then turns out to be directed by the city and city government regulations themselves! And then this circle of irresponsibility points their joint index finger at the private citizenry for being supposedly deceptive! It kind of takes the cake.

The city government of Colorado Springs is responsible to hold their police in check. They will not be able to do it hiding behind the phony smiles and lies of Police Chief Richard ‘Liars’ Myers. They should release to the public the official police transcripts of communications between them and parade organizers. There the truth stands, and it is not like the official smoke screen version at all. Meanwhile, there is little reason to pretend to work together with Police Chief ‘Liars’ Myers. He lost our confidence in him being an honest player in a little less than a week.

has anybody heard this?

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I was on a Democratic forum, somebody mentioned that last Wednesday was supposed to be Loyalty Day, and we were supposed to fly flags in support of The Chimp?

Did that freak really declare a Special Day in his own honor?

I don’t know if it’s real or not, Kind of torn between disbelief and humor while and at the same time totally amazed that the Commander Guy would have that much gall.

The dude reminds me of Hitler more and more each day….

He’s also stating that the War Authorization granted during the heat of 9/11, actually gives him unilateral authority for LIFE or until the end of the never-ending “war on terror” whichever comes first.

Which you may well remember is to only be declared over when there are absolutely no terrorists left in the world.

Of course, their definition of “terrorist” is so vague that it includes people writing shit like this about them.

Pelosi and Olmert together support Bush’s planned attack on Iran

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Much fanfare has been made about how Nancy Pelosi’s recent trip to Damascus was somehow contrary to White House policy. ‘Oh don’t go, Nancy’, shouted the Republicans. Then they called her a traitor for when she did visit Syria. And now Israel’s Olmert has gotten into the act (and I do mean act) as he met with the US Secretary of Imperialist War, Robert Gates, and the 2 of them did a DC photo op with Israel’s Olmert stressing that Israel wants to be friends with Syria. Why didn’t the White House lash out at Olmert as they just had with Pelosi?

The answer is simple. The lashing out in the media at Pelosi was just a media cover offered to the Democrats by Bush, while Pelosi got to pretend that the Democrats oppose Bush’s foreign policy of pushing for an extension of war from Iraq into Iran. Syria is an ally of Iran and all Pelosi was trying to do with her visit to Damascus was to try to split the 2 allies, Syria and Iran, by offering one the ‘carrot’, if only Syria would abandon its ally, Iran, who will then get the US-Israel ‘stick’.

Divide and Conquer is an ancient US government policy that both Pelosi and Bush are totally in agreement on. Take Syria to the side and offer it relief from the coming US-Israel attack on Iran, but only if Syria’s government abandons its alliance with Iran? There is no split between Pelosi and Bush at all. And both parties are absolutely ready to now have the US military attack Iran whether Syria accepts their ‘carrot’ or not. What will Syria’s government do? Dealing with the US and Israel in this way is even more suicidal than staying firm in alliance with Tehran.

Bush threatening military intervention into Sudan (thanks to Democratic Party liberals)

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Congratulations go out to the ‘Save Darfur’ community of liberals. How pleased you have to be now. Your campaign to send US troops and US directed troops to intervene in the affairs of yet another nation are now bearing fruit, and the Bush Adminstration is now mobilizing itself with Democrats to invade yet another country, that country being Sudan. Oh for sure you never called it a ‘Send in the Troops campaign’, but called it a ‘Stop the Genocide’ campaign instead. How clever! How so ever decent of you.

Funny though that genocide was never used to describe what happened (and still probably is happening) in the Congo, and not once did I hear you sweethearts call for a campaign to stop the US GENOCIDE in Iraq. Since 1991 the US has killed several million Iraqis through war and economic sanctions, yet somehow that never sparked your indignation and labelling of the US as a genocide perpetrator? Why not? Instead you call upon the genocidal US forces to ‘save’ others, all located far outside US borders. How very bizarre. I just don’t get it? Are you liberals total numbskulls. or what?

Yesterday John Negroponte, Ronald Reagan’s master architect of screwing up Central America during the ’80s, was in North Africa threatening US military intervention into Sudan. Joseph Biden, a leading Democratic Party hack, is also calling for US troops to be sent in. Anbd unbelievably in this context, many liberals ac`tually are holding a week of rallies around the planet in 2 weeks to rally support to this cause! Two weeks from Sunday there is one to be held in Denver, and liberals lost in fantasy land here in Colorado Springs also plan to attend the rally! How about using some of that gray matter in your skulls and reconsider what you are actually mobilizing for?

I will be attending this rally, too, with signs calling for the US to get out of Africa, not into it. What a radical concept, ay? I will have signs calling for the US to get out of Somalia, and calling for the US to terminate its new military African command center called, AFRICOM. We need to be calling for the demobilization of US controlled military forces, not calling for further extension of their warfare. Activists working for US and European intervention into Darfur are doing the absolute worst thing possible at this time when they should actually be working to pull US troops out of Iraq instead. Stop getting yourselves lost in space, Space Cadets! If you are against genocide, then at least educate yourselves enough to know which countries perpetrate it. The US would be at the top of the list, FYI.

Liberals sometimes just seem to be totally living in a fantasy world. Just this week I was at a Justice and Peace event where the speaker was actually praising the United Nations! How ass backwards is that? The US controls the UN Security Council and has these military forces doing its dirty work around the globe. The UN is now a thoroughly controlled and thoroughly reaccionary force everwhere. It specializes in mop up operations for the Pentagon, from the Balkans to Haiti to Iraq and Afghanistan. It will be a blissful day in heaven when liberals in the US can begin to put 2 plus 2 together and begin to differentiate reality from their fantasies some little bit. Praising the UN and/ or calling for African Union troops, NATO troops, and UN troops to intervene in places like Sudan is not a move towards world peace and an end to conflict, but are words and actions that will just help increase US military interventionism everywhere.

US OUT OF AFRICA NOW, not into it! Nobody likes the mass deaths inside Africa and that’s why we need the imperialists out, and not in. Demonstrate to withdraw US forces now. Get the US Out of all the foreign places where they are now repressing the world’s peoples. Our government has absolutely no progressive role to play in world politics until we can radically alter it. Since we are not even close to doing that at this point, the call for troops to be used elsewhere is about as backwards as liberal Democrats can be. You should be trying to demobize the military-industrial complex, not use it abroad! Get with the program, Liberals. And I’m not talking about getting with the Bush program for Africa, as you are currently doing.

St Patrick’s hooters

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Well here’s some absolutely salacious news -that may not be the word I mean- on the much over-talked subject of the St Patrick’s Day parade. The PPJPC was accused of having crashed the parade, of having signed up under a false pretense, the BOOKMOBILE, even though we’d done the same thing a year before. But guess who really did crash the parade? The Hooters Girls!
 
Hooters was not among the registered parade participants, but marched with entry #56, the Colorado Springs Fire Department. But I guess nobody deemed the Hooters message of family-fun-in-orange-rayon to be either social or objectionable.
 
On a recent note, parade organizer John O’Donnell was just asked if the PPJPC would be permitted to march in next year’s parade. He said “no.”

Medicine for profit is a world disaster in march

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Medicine for profit is a march down a blind alley and the reason why is quite simple to understand. ‘Care’ for an individual for an individual fee, is the ultimate non-holistic approach possible since health is so absolutely connected to the environment that people live in.

To treat the individual in an effective manner, doctors have to also treat the environment as well. But just go and try telling this to your average numbskull private-profit doc that the American medical schools turn out so in mass. These think-they-know-it-all degreed idiots are sure they know what’s best for you, but the medical machine they are part of never does jack shit to treat the environmental conditions that make people sick. Logically and scientifically it makes no sense. But that is medicine for profit for you, is it not?

Take as just one tiny example, the cathedrals where many of these doctors often practice in; the hospitals. The doctors often stroll in with their coats and ties on, while the patients and medical worker peons that the doctor boss around are most often passing their days in areas more nasty than your home toilet area. Most of these doctors are cynical bastards that almost entirely identify with the corporate structure they have melded and immersed themselves into. They say they care about the patients they take in for a fee, but the ‘care’ most often stops when the bucks stop. Or it never begins in the first place.

Don’t believe me? Then try going into an average doctors office without medical insurance cards in hand. What’s the first thing one gets asked when they show up half dead into the ER? It is always, ‘What’s your coverage?’ And if you got none, you most often will get sent packing. ‘Dumped’ is the word now used, and that’s not exactly treating the patients holistically. Not at all.

Truth is, the medical doctors are not allowed (nor allow themselves to even contemplate) to treat the environment. That is seen as the terrain of the corporations and their government alone. The average American doctor concedes that area without even a bleat of protest. But why? Public Health is certainly important in the treatment of disease, isn’t it?

Why treat the farm worker, say, after his exposure to deadly pesticides? Why not treat the environment to prevent the disease, Doc? No money in it for you? Why not treat the lack of food, the lack of clean drinking water, the lack of a decent living space, the lack of a decent wage, instead of just treating the now already sickened individual who comes to you with insurance card in hand, Doctor? Too scared to fight disease? Too bought off by the hundreds of thousands you are often making?

You are a fraud, corporate medicine and corporate model doctors. You turn all of us in your medical factories into dehumanized entities with only titles and employee numbers in hand, and not even our own humanity which you strip away from us bit by bit, same as you strip away the sick and elderly folk’s dignity. You turn us all into an Evil Empire that churns out your profits, and destroys people’s health. You destroy the environment same as your corporate cousins in agriculture, mining, and military goods production do, alsdo.

You are strip mining world health, not bettering it, all to make bucks. And the US doctors are all aboard this gigantic con game on society, hiding behind a facade of being all high tech and scientific. Instead, you business doctors are as nasty as an MRSA sore, a Vancomycin resistant diarrhea, a brain dead corpse in the ICU, a multi drug resistant TB, and all the other products of made by your corporate medical model and your human devolution as system into monster. All you hold now to bedazzle the crowd with, is some sort of future tech fix that is the pie in the sky you always promise. Meanwhile, you turn our environment into cesspool. You are turning all of us into ‘medical waste’, Corporate Doc.

St Patricks Day duplicity

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The duplicity accusation is excusable for people who have never faced trying to voice dissent with urgency. You want to play the game by the rules? Go apply for a permit to march with a message of peace in a pro-war parade. Have the organizer tell you no. Hire a lawyer to write him a letter, threatening to sue if you are not permitted to join the parade. Receive his lawyer’s response. No. It’s a private affair, you are not invited. Have your lawyer write another letter, citing the legal precedence in parades in other cities that were sued successfully for discriminating against minority views. Receive another formal reply calling your bluff.

Okay. File papers with a court and sue the organizer. Six months, a year. Maybe win, maybe with a conservative judge, you lose. Take it all the way to the Supreme Court even. That used to mean that the nation’s best minds would apply themselves to serve justice. These days it can mean that George Bush is declared winner of an election he stole.

Meanwhile the war in Iraq, the cause in dire need of your message, rages on.

The courts do not favor the voice of dissent. Anyone who wants to run the battle for freedom of expression through the court system has money to burn, has a delirious notion of the nobility of our judicial system, and is completely out of touch with what the dissenting voices are raised against: injustice and bloody-murder.

The helpful citizen who wants to tell the eyewitness to a mugging that he must regulate his cries for help according to local noise ordinances is very plainly a jerk, and quite possibly a criminal.

Were we trying on St Patrick’s Day to call attention to the crime of war-making? Absolutely. Were we trying to change anyone’s opinion? Naw. We were crying out to the 70% of Americans who want peace and may be timid about expressing it. If you are among those who don’t think a crime is being committed, get out of the way unless you want to be counted an accessory to mass murder.

Fire in a Crowded Theater

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This of course is a response to what I have heard NeoCons say many times in response to any claim to free speech.
They whine about “it’s not legal to shout Fire! in a crowded theater”.

In other words, the Riot Act, and it’s theoretical justification. The NeoCons who wish to apply that little bit of rhetorical chanting to our part, the Victim part, of the St Paddy’s Day Massacre, miss the point of the Riot Act all together.

The Riot Act is about speech that is deliberately intended to incite civil disorder. To encourage murder, riots and other crimes against the peace.

Such as the NeoCon agitators in the crowd who were screaming for the pigs to kill Eric and Elizabeth and the rest of us. THAT would be a violation punishable under the Riot Act. Another classic example from the same Right Wing Fanatics would be urging other people, who like us, were Licensed to be in the Parade, to run over us.

The fact that these Right Wing Lunatics were essentially cowards in their own rights, was demonstrated by the fact that I and several others faced them, as individuals and as the screaming mob they were hoping to become, and told them to their fat porky faces what REAL freedom is all about.

When that happened, they kept trying to get OTHERS to attack us, because they of course lacked the physical courage to do it themselves.

They were the ones trying to Start Trouble. Not us. The fact that the onlookers, for the most part, disagreed with them and refused to join in to their madness and blood-lust fanaticism, speaks well for the citizenry of Colorado Springs.

Not, however, for the Police and the parade officials who unjustifiably and with absolutely no provocation attacked their fellow citizens for daring to express a point of view with which the Police and Parade Officials, and their Right Wing Lunatic Fringe Comrades in the audience, disagree.

The soldiers who decided to take a passive stance, broke their oath, the same one I took 28 years ago, to Uphold and Defend The CONSTITUTION of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC.

Those in the Lunatic Fringe who chanted “freedom isn’t free”, well in this case, they were partly right. The LICENSE we had to express our views in the parade cost money.

To these I say, YOU have shown your children what true contempt for freedom and the laws of America are all about. You might lie to your kids and tell them all kinds of twisted logic sophistries that demonstrate that War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Big Brother is Always Right,
but your kids will know, by YOUR actions, not mine, not Elizabeth’s, nor Eric’s, YOUR actions, what you truly believe about freedom in American.

That is apparently the same “freedom” you have given the people of Iraq, and what your pathetic little Mad Emperor is now offering to give to the people of Iran as well.

You have once again, with your pipsqueak shrieks that Freedom of Speech is limited to “As long as it doesn’t conflict with the Established Policy of the Dictator Bush”, shown all the world, and most importantly your children, what Low and Loathsome Cowards you truly are.

Capitalism- the culture of disrespect to the individual

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One of the most comical aspects of those who defend capitalism, is their idiotic notion that anti-capitalists hate the rights of the individual, while capitalism is supposedly supportive of the dignity of the individual. How patently absurd!

Capitalism is an inherently authoritarian system where most of us get reduced down to a payroll number or code. And if you get sick, see what I mean exactly. Instead of having a name you will then have a patient ID number. Fall in, Number Not #1. Check the wrist band. Follow doctor’s orders, please. At work, do as you are told. We need you to work Tues. night shift, Number Whatever. Be on call on Thursday. Hold up you wrist , Patient #9.

All of our society works to dehumanize the individual. Many identify with this and if you try to assert your dignity as a human being, many other human beings will resent you for it, since they themselves have totally internalized their assigned lack of dignity as individuals under capitalism. How dare you do otherwise?! Who do you think you are?

Children at school, or elderly in the nursing home? Get used to musical chairs, musical beds. Take the Colorado Sap Test and be good. Chew your mush, I got no time. And to think that this is labelled the culture that frees the individual within each and everyone of us? Bizarro World thinking that our society is the epitome of freedom!

Capitalism enhances indiviualism they say! And then they talk of ‘collateral damage’. What a disrespectful to the individual and baldfacel lie. What nonsense. What a pile of total crap. Repeat it a billion times over, and perhaps you might buy it? Without the capitalist you have no freedom, and you have no dignity they chant like mantra. Of course, we all feel the absolute contrary. We see the lack of dignity given people daily in our lives. Capitalism tries to squash the dignity of people at every step. Only money is allowed to buy it. The dollar rules over the people everywhere. And yet they repeat otherwise.

I guess I am writing about this because today I saw the brute force of the police state against the dignity of the elderly. What is there much to say, when you see the police throw elderly, with physical handicaps, to the ground? I had a handicapped parking space permit in my car, while the police were assaulting the person who needed it, my friend and passenger in my car. Such utter and complete disrespect to the dignity of the individual, as they tore off this friend’s clothing by dragging her across the pavement without a thought in the world to the dignity they hoped to destroy. And to think that most in our society cling on to the fantasy, that only through supporting an authoritarian economic system can the individual be protected? What fools our delusions can make us. What cold blooded killers to dignity some become. I hate this culture of disrespect. The capitalist and his portfolio are the antihesis to human freedom.

It’s against the law to be for peace and not for war

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The Tejon Street stand off, taser versus maracaTodays peace contingent in the Colorado Springs Saint Patricks Day parade was physically attacked by the police about 5 minutes after we began the walk. One or two people were told that our permission to participate had been revoked, and within seconds the police assaulted us.

Most of us never even heard that they were revoking the permission that we had to participate at all, before we found ourselves watching the police assault selected members our our group. This assault occurred as hundreds looked on in shock. Children began to cry as they saw their parents being taken down and put into choke holds while in handcuffs behind their back face down on the pavement. One of us who was unable to actually walk was pulled from the vehicle accompanying us onto the pavement and bruised badly enough as she was pulled across the pavement to need ememrgency care at Memorial Hospital. Leaders of the 2 main peace groups in Colorado Springs were assaulted, placed in handcuffs, and then held in police cars while being processed. Several children became lost in the parade as they were slightly ahead of their parents who found themselves in the melee.

There was absolutely no cause for our permission to be revoked in such a manner. We had our signs out, our peace shirts on, and a few green flags with peace symbols on them before the parade even got off. The time between the notification for us to remove ourselves from the parade and when the police began their attack was just a second or two. It was as if this was a deliberate plan to have an excuse to physcially assault us, since being for peace in a parade of this sorts in Colorado Springs certainly was little more than being mere balance to the army fatigues on children in some groups, plus the contingents of pro war city council parading their campaigns in front of the crowd. No problem for those people at all, yet we evidently merited a police assault in the middle of the parade!

I have just seen some of the local TV coverage where the only comment about this assault is that people for peace had no permission to protest here by parade organizers. We had gotten permission to participate in this event, and then within seconds we had this permission revoked and an assault on us began. Certainly if the parade directors had felt we were not wanted, they could easily have notified us with more than a few seconds before having the cops beat on us. The fact that they did not, speaks loudly to the piossibility that they delberately cherished the idea of assaulting peace people walking with them, even as pro military contingents were widely evident and welcomed everywhere in the parade.

There was even one group of about 20-25 kids dressed up in Rambo fatigues, but our peace signs were used as reason to assault a group of mainly retired people! Pretty sad stuff overall. I think that the kids with us learned a lot about America today.

Democracy Now’s adulatory interview with Gen. Wesley Clark, war criminal

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America’s ruling elite have split about whether Bush’s decision to expand the War to Steal Iraq’s Oil into the neighboring countries of Syria, Lebanon, and Iran is likely to succeed or not. Wesley Clark, Clinton’s mad war criminal bomber of Yugoslavia, certainly is on the side that fears future failure by the Bush Administration.

He even has his own website dedicated to trying to stop the expansion of US government started warfare into Iran. But in the Amy Goodman interview, it appears that he actually wanted to attack Iran, and not Iraq, first. Now he feels that it is a mistaken strategy to do this attack he previously supported, after 6 years of Bush’s bungling, incompetence, and failure.

Amy Goodman all but begged Wesley Clark to run for president, echoing the incomprehensible stupidity of Michael Moore in the previous election. These liberals seem to be looking for some Dwight Eisenhower type to latch on to? How pathetic, since Wesley Clark is absolutely nothing more than a war criminal who started a war with a sovereign country illegally, and sat quiet as Clinton/ Gore killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents through economic sanctions and continual bombings of Iraq during the 8 years of that Administration. These are the type of imperialist liberals who now talk of helping citizens of Sudan out, when during their time in office they were bombing illegally targets in that country, specifically one of Africa’s largest pharmaceutical factories. Clark, and his Slick Commander Clinton, sat and twiddled their thumbs, while hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were cut down. The US and French could easily have stopped that slaughte, but they were occupied with ‘stopping the Serbs’.

After much of the interview with Clark by Goodman conducted on a chit-chat friendly level, Goodman eventually felt the need to let Clark pretend to respond somewhat adequately to his record of continually bombing Yugoslav civilian infrastructure when he was top general in command of the Clinton war of Aggression Against Yugoslavia. This record includes the deliberate bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, also bombing the Serbian television station in that city killing journalists and and other civilians at work there, and bombing various factories along the Danube River, thereby contaminating that important waterway for years afterwards with toxic chemicals, as well as killing workers and neighborhood residents. The few parts of his miserable terrorist record Clark was asked to account for by Goodman, was predictably blamed on Milosevic and the Serbs themselves. Goodman made no effort to illustrate the dishonesty of his responses.

Further, Clark went on to support the continued US use of nuclear weapons and cluster bombs in US war making. Amy Goodwin let him walk on all of this, absolutely free as a breeze. How very sad to see this desperate desire for allies against the neocons turned into Goodman’s covert prompting of Clark towards a run for US presidency by this war criminal. Shame on you, Amy. I respect your show immensely but felt ashamed for you Friday night. Don’t let these rats off the hook when they try to desert the ship that Bush is trying to run aground. These imperialist just want a better vessel at hand to continue their imperialist aggressions against other countries. Certainly everything about Wesley Clark points towards continued disaster if he were actually to gain the presidency in 2008. Why prompt for more capable imperialists to regain command? Wesley Clark couldn’t even muster up a call for the impeachment of Bush or a description of the invasion and occupation of Iraq as being illegal. I guess not, since that would have been to illustrate how he himself had carried out and commanded an illegal war against Yugoslavia.

Nigerian Episcopalian hatred leads to draconian homophobic legislation

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How many times have we heard the sorry and hateful Right Wing Christian refrain, that ‘We hate the sin but love the sinner’? Much more honest would be a retort to these people, that ‘we hate the lie, and don’t particularly respect you liars’.

When the British Anglican Church appointed an openly homosexual man to be a bishop, the Nigerian Archbishop Akinola, leader of 18.5 million church sheep, decided to split the entire world Anglican Church last year. Many Episcopalians in the US used their own homophobia to follow along. So just what were they supporting?

Well it turns out, the Nigerian Archbishop was supporting new legislation in Nigeria that would throw people in prison for five years if they openly showed in any way that they were gay! What a loving example of Christianity the archbishop is, NOT.

How absolutely shameful and backward can Right Wing Christianity get? Ask Adolf and Pope Ratzinger, I guess? Though not Episcopalians, they might shed some light on where following Holy Scripture their way might ultimately lead? Not much has really changed it seems. Christian religious hatred is making a big comeback worldwide and this is sad news.

Amazing George, the Health Care magician

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Like the Wizard of Oz, Amazing George promises all, yet delivers a rabbit out of his hat. As we watched his State of the Union speech unfold hypnotized in front of our boob tubes, George told us all that it wasn’t right what we have now, that we needed to be empowered, and that we need to be informed consumers of health care. So he said he was going to simplify the health care billing system we all have horror stories about? Well NO. Instead he was going to tie our health care to the the Infernal Revenue System! What genius is that!

Most of America is so befuddled with this tax scheme called (by Dubya) a medical system reform, that few have actually commented on Bush’s proposals. This is a sign of not even taking the whole preposterous thing in the least bit seriously. Heck, who can figure out a health system actually being tied to a nation’s tax codes? Sick? Well now you’re also being tortured. Why not now make the deadline for choosing your health care plan AND paying your taxes, April 1, April Fool’s Day, Amazing George?

Lest we forget, this is Dubya’s 2nd foray into ‘health care reform’. The other rabbit out of the hat trick was to announce the HIPAA ‘medical privacy’ law in 2003. That one generated oodles of paper, oodles of ‘education’, oodles of administrators running in circles ‘implementing’ absolutely nothing, oodles of no enforcement of whateveritwas anyway, and oodles of non relevance to anything including guarding or protecting any sense of privacy we might ever have regarding our health, and the records of it that insurers and employers float about everywhere today, just as they did before the great privacy ‘reform’ took place.

Poof! Smoke and bluff. One step forward, and two steps back. Bush in charge of privacy, no less! Now, the doctor is protecting our health care, too? Too sickening for words.

Good golly, Miss Molly

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Miss Molly being my favorite Outspoken Strong Irishwoman. Except for my mom, of course…
 
Molly Ivins is hospitalized this weekend with her ongoing battle with breast cancer. Join me in wishing her well, yes? And if you aren’t absolutely opposed to the notion of Prayer, join with me in praying for her as well. She is expected to come home from the hospital on Monday, according to her personal assistant.

Bush declares war on Iran and Syria

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To all effects Bush declared war on Iran and Syria tonight in his State of the Union address. He pretty much made it clear that the so-called ‘surge’ targets these 2 countries, and has little to do with the situation in Iraq itself. His speech was an announcement that he plans to further regionalize the war. All that is left is simply to find the suitable pretext to start the bombings off, but Bush left no doubt that that would be just right around the corner.

Out of babes comes the voice of wisdom and reason. I watched this speech in the presence of several kids. One of them asked me, that “if the Democrats are against Bush, then why are they there with Bush?” Exactly. It’s not like they had to come. It’s not like they had to stay quiet and not Boo the president. It’s not like they had to stand up for him and clap throughout the speech. Why are kids smart enough to ask this reasonable question, yet American adults are too brain dead to do the same?

How nauseating to see the triangle of Bush-Cheney-Pelosi in front of us on that TV. Sure Pelosi made a face or two, but then again she clapped, shook hands, and almost engaged in sex with the president in front of the entire country. This is opposition? And the rest of the Democrats were no better other than in perhaps stage managing their facial gestures slightly better. Ed Kennedy was the grand winner in that department, as he seemed to have down pat the holding of his head as if with a horrible migraine. Utterly ridiculous.

This is not an opposition, and America is not a democracy. A country that has opposing political factions does not behave like this. We need to move on past all these Democratic Party controlled MoveOn liberals and their poli gurus, and begin to build a real opposition party to these (DP-RP) shenanigans. We are going to have this war carried on, and yet almost all the country seems to be in some sort of trance of denial. So damn ready to buy more stupid lies from the venal thieves that are out there trying to destroy any possible stability within the Middle East, all to grab that oil like the imperialist vampires they most certainly really are.

I challenge the Colorado Springs radicals and liberals. We did not get it together enough to build anything in coordination with this weekend’s national demonstrations against the war. But Denver did. We need to get on over there this Saturday 12 noon at the State Capitol building, and add our numbers to this protest. It’s way too little and way too late, but much better than to do absolutely nothing.

Governor Ritter will be speaking at 9AM at the ‘Unity’ meeting in Denver, and should be challenged as to why the hell he’s not protesting this war at noon at the capitol building in person, being the grand big shot liberal that he represents himself as? It’s time to call these Democratic Party assholes-donkeyholes on the carpet just as we should do with Bush and his cronies. They’re really the same people and they’re going to sit on their butts, clap, and go along with this new barbarism being prepared for the Iranian and Syrian people by their Republican buddies.

We either get out into the streets, are we become utterly complicit with the crimes being prepared by the bipartisan corporate gang we currently have in power. They are in it together. It’s as simple as that and we need to get going. They are going to extend this war, and not close it down. That’s the state of the union.

The Alamo and the war on terror.

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This one is a blatant insult to everybody’s intelligence. It’s one of those “c’mon, man, you’re shittin’ me” type deals.

I was watching teevee a couple months ago, really bad habit and fortunately I never developed it into the stupor addiction that seems to be running across our land like a horrible Biblical plague.

There was one of those History Channel shows, Histories Mysteries or some bullpoopoo title, examining the myth, legend and whatever evidence remains from the battle of the Alamo. One of the most controversial things about the show, they spent 15 minutes of air time(about a third of the entire show) on the subject of the evidence that Davey Crockett didn’t fall in a hail of bullets and flashing swords as depicted so often in the romantic press.

The theory has been, since the seventies, that Mr Crockett and a few others actually surrendered, but were lined up and shot anyway. Which would have been an atrocity, right? Even more so than the order to give No Quarter.
But this one Texas historical society (and there are a lot of them running around, we just usually manage to keep them confined to Texas, where they are safe) insists that the Very Idea of Crockett Surrendering was slander against Mr Crockett. And the others who were apparently shot with their hands behind their backs.
They pointed to the source of the Slander, a Mexican lieutenant, as being proof positive that the thing was made up. Ignoring that the only Anglo types who survived were some women, children and Colonel Bowie’s slave Moses, who was manumitted (legally set free) in Bowie’s will.
And they were held in the chapel until the bodies were disposed of, so there was no way for them to witness whether or not the killing stopped before or after, lacking or in spite of, a surrender by some of the men.
This account was also written down by some of the women in their journals.

And in Texas it is traditional to treat General Antonio Jose y Maria Lopez de Santa Ana as the worst kind of villain, and it is also generally thought that Fannin and his men surrendering at Goliad and then being massacred took naught away from their status as Heroes.

But here is the sicker kicker….
The spokes-dude for the historical society went on and on about the 70s being a time when it was acceptable to question the (undoubtedly) spotless history of morality of the US military.
(and ignoring the fact than neither the Alamo nor Goliad was officially a U.S. military endeavour.)

And then said that not fully believing and accepting at face value the John Wayne portrayal of Davey Crockett’s last stand was so anti-patriotism that it actually encouraged al Qaeda to attack America….

I know, I know…just take a few deep breaths, pick your jaw up off the floor… breathe in, out, relax. ommmm calmmmm ommmmm…

And said that Americans needed the absolute faith in these legends to keep up the Morale of Our Troops while they face down the relentless brown hordes. And made the insinuation that “historical revisionists” were traitors and complicit in the terror America is so bravely fighting now….

And this show has aired at least twenty times in the past year.

This is the mindset facing us.

US gov’t says they had nothing to do

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With the execution of Saddam, the timing or the way it is carried out.

Also the independent and sovereign Iraqi government, which of course takes absolutely no instruction from Washington, announced today that they had arrested a couple of the guards/witnesses at the hanging, charging them with being agitators who infiltrated the lynching party, started the Shiite-oriented harassment of Mr Hussein, the comments which are triggering the latest round of “civil” war, and taking the cell-phone videos of the whole charade.
There was also a statement from the officer in charge of the American jail detail which handed Mr Hussein over to the executioners, that the execution IF IT HAD BEEN CARRIED OUT BY AMERICANS would have been more respectful and professionally handled. This all, of course, from Yahoo news, courtesy of the Associated Press syndicate.

The officer also noted that Hussein, until the Iraqis took control of him from the Americans at the door of the execution chamber, was polite and courteous to the Americans. And that he was ALWAYS polite to them.
heh.
You know, I haven’t seen so much B.S. in one place since living on the ranch when I was 8.

A Wii of One’s Own

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wii.jpegVideo game playing in my household has never been a sedentary activity. I think that my boys, all three of them, came hard-wired with a gene that had lain dormant in human DNA for millions of years, waiting for the Japanese to self actualize. They are video game phenoms.

When my David was barely two, we got an English au pair who had apparently spent plenty of time in Cornwall video arcades. She taught him to play The Lion King. He was an amazing player from the start. He couldn’t speak yet, but he developed a whole video game language….a series of barks and whoops and shrieks reminiscent of Tourette’s Syndrome. He stood and leaned and squatted and ran back and forth. We once filmed him for America’s Funniest Home Videos. I know without a doubt that we would’ve won had we followed through.

We’ve had every Nintendo system invented. My boys reminded me every day for a month that the Wii came out November 19th. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re not getting one. I know what it will take and I’m not doin’ it. Deal with it.”

I’ll admit it. I have standing-in-line-in-the-dark-waiting baggage. The previously-mentioned English au pair once brought home two absolutely cute stuffed animals. A giraffe and a zebra. “Oh my gosh,” I said. “These are incredibly adorable. Where’d you get them?”

My first-born son, Brendan, was about ten at the time. Somehow, because of him, and partly because of my love of all things cute, cuddly and/or sparkly, we fell headlong into the Beanie Baby craze. I’ve stood in line in front of Little Richard’s, clad in a ski parka and mittens, clutching Starbucks and handwarmers, with myriad other weirdo collectors waiting for the “bear du jour” more times than I care to admit. We’ve dropped hundreds, if not thousands (sorry to the poor), of dollars on BBs.

Truthfully, Beanie Babies taught my children a lot about life and entrepreneurial pursuits. Once Bren said to me, “Mom, if I get $800 can I buy a Go-Cart?”
“Well, how much do you have now?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, okay. If you earn $800 I’ll let you buy a Go-Cart.”

Little did I know that my dad, a major coin and art collector, had been lured into the BB web. He took Bren to a weekend BB trading show in Denver and, yep, the boy came home $1000 richer. I was proud and amazed. Mostly I was horrified because Bren was able to purchase an obnoxious, street un-legal, very dangerous Go-Cart. To this day, a decade later, he is persona non grata at the Country Club of Colorado for racing across the greens late at night.

Then there was the Star Wars stuff. I recall when Toys ‘R Us, very inconsiderately, decided to sell the newly-released toys at midnight on a school night. “Oh, Mom! You have to take Brent and me there or we’ll get nothing!” So, gamely, I sat in my car, with pillow and down comforter, while the boys raced around collecting loot for two hours.

McDonald’s added joy to my life by topping their extra-big colas with a Star Wars lid. Brendan insisted that I take him to MickeyDs every day and then he sold the lids on a very new eBay to collectors in Britain for nearly $200 each. From a $2 soda!

You can probably guess the end of the story. My sweet boy, now 21, showed up on my doorstep with a Nintendo Wii for his younger brothers. He had to draft a friend, stand in line overnight, but he got the goods. Just like I used to for him.