Tag Archives: ALF

Attitudes and Resistance

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After spending the last year interacting with many folk in the local liberal community, I have become utterly depressed about the future. In some ways, the liberals of Colorado are just as conservative, if not more, than the conservatives of this state.
Ike was not right, he was on the Right 
In Texas, I didn’t think much about this, simply because there really wasn’t even the smallest pea-sized liberal community in most cities there. Here, it is somewhat different, though not so much better if you really want to see some changes made in America.

It seems that liberals most often have the increased knowledge (in relation to conservatives’ ignorance) to change things, but have little of the attitude necessary to do so. Liberals are much more timid and repressed than even most conservatives. And that is simply not the attitude that gets things done.

I recently saw a major local activist wearing a tee shirt that informed the world, that ‘Ike Was Right’. No he wasn’t, so why in the hell would a liberal say so? A desire to meet conservatives half way with a dialog? This is not how you do it though. This desire to find common ground with pro-militarists and American nationalists is an attitude not of resistance, but of passive surrender.

The attitude is just not here in America that would win at resistance. It is not here in Colorado Springs, as even the supposed leaders supposedly doing something for ‘peace’ exhibit the most submissive and passive attitudes and approaches to political matters. The liberals here want to hold ‘dialogs’ with power, rather than to build resistance to power having impunity. As one Picture of Dorian Gray example of this, the example of Richard Skorman’s political devolution is illustrative…a liberal who turned himself into lobbyist wimp.

The liberal folk here are scared of appearing to be fanatically for anything. Or even more telling, they are scared of appearing fanatically against anything. That is an attitude that builds resistance not at all, and resistance to what America is today is totally necessary for us to be building. Unfortunately, liberals don’t appear capable of taking strong positions on about next to anything.

They lack confidence, which is not something one can lack if one hopes to build resistance. These are people who will be easily appeased by mere appearance of change. The elections will be promising just that, and we can soon expect liberals to be diving into them head first.

Oh how much time I have spent this last year with liberals preoccupied with changing the vote of some local elected cretin or another. A sad attitude and an attitude missing in resistance, or even having a clue to what is going on. Without having more than one or two people in the local community who have some Attitude, just not much will happen. Colorado Springs will continue to tag along Behind, not Ahead, and the main sign of any attitude ready to resist here in the local area, may well stay a dog who says Moo on a sign. There’s not much immediate reason to have hope for what’s ahead.

How the Far Right targets Africa

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Let’s face it, the US Antiwar Movement has had an abysmal record for mobilizing people to oppose the military-industrial complex. Over a decade and a half since the US first militarily attacked Iraq, the killing still goes on. And the record in regards to Africa is much worse, despite the fact that the US has a large African American population that should potentially be easy to mobilize support against US military interventionism on that continent.

For decades, the US used Portugal and South Africa as its subordinate clients in ruling Africa, much in the same way that it now uses Israel to help it rule the Middle East, but these regimes were ultimately forced to disassemble themselves. Now the US has a plan to bully into formation a new group of subordinate African client regimes. This is an interesting article about what led to the formation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command system or African interventionism. How the Far Right targets Africa In it, we discover the role of the Heritage Foundation.

If we don’t begin to pay some attention to what’s really going on in Africa, we will soon become bogged down there with US troops in the same way as has occurred quite recently in Muslim Asia and the Balkans in Eastern Europe.

Harry Potter meets Laura Bush

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The role she was born to play.I wanted to hate Harry Potter’s latest movie but for one happy surprise: the villainous Dolores Umbridge, played not as a malignant Mimi Bobeck, but instead a spot-on incarnation of First Librarian/Educator guess who?! The First Lady played herself, a smiling headmistress pulling a no-child-left-behind clear-skies-initiative at Hogwarts to subvert the education process lest new skilled wizards graduate to jeopardize the duplicitous aims of the state ministry. With a saccharin plastic grimace and trademark twinkle in her eye, Ms Bush thwarted the young wizards’ magic lessons and exacted Kafka’s Penal Colony punishment on her unresisting subjects.

The unflinching First Lady caricature lent this Potter adventure a semblance of social commentary, but betrayed us thereafter, offering nothing else resembling Muggle/human nature or societal fabric to give a viewer insight into their own lives. Except maybe the ugly scarves at Christmas for comic relief. Otherwise Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was pure entertainment at the cost of two hours of your imagination on idle, but I’ve read no more than a page of Potter, so what do I know?

I also really don’t know enough about Dungeons & Dragons or Tolkien to be able to judge the genre. Is it enough to appreciate J.K. Rowling’s fanciful parallel world like an elaborate puzzle or computer fractal marvel? It’s not my resistance to trivial minutia, it’s that all the clever pieces form an intricate lattice holding up nothing. This is my usual rant against videogame storytelling, always swimming upstream against currents of obstacles, pocketing clues. It’s myth-telling void of any wisdom, natural or historical, unless you count history as keeping a bread crumb trail of Harry’s info quests.

The forces of darkness and light in Harry Potter’s Tatooine lack for every dimension except on/off amplitude, even there without shades of grey. The characters’ actions are driven by neither sociobiology nor mortality. Only at the film’s close does our young Jedi/Chosen One offer an afterthought about team spirit to buoy his friends as they contemplate the battle with evil coming in the next installment: “Unlike Voldemort, we have something to fight for.”

Really? To my mind, anticipating that great evil fights for no reason misjudges its relentless zeal. The misdirection echoes the New World Order fear-mongering against Moslem Evildoers, terrorists apparently who act “because they hate us.”

Surely this underestimates the selfishness or desperation that makes the real world go ’round, motives neatly incomprehensible to young altruist minds. Real evil is an infinitely more ruthless force which preys already on the Harry Potter generation outside the theater doors. That evil is systemic, its motive is greed, and it perpetrates dehumanization. Also like the movie’s corporate makers, it employs misdirection just like Dolores Umbridge Bush to neutralize Harry and his friends.

That said, Imelda Staunton’s flawless turn as our Cretin-in-Chief’s cretinous better half was gloriously, fearlessly in-somebody’s-face.

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!

Stealing daddy’s spotlight…and mommy’s pills

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Ready to be happy?
This morning, catching up on the goings-on after a week in blazing hot and muggy Mexico, I read on CNN.com that Al Gore III was arrested recently on charges of possessing — in addition to marijuana — Vicodin, Xanax, Valium and Adderall. Oh my! The article pointed out that prescription drug use is becoming more prevalent among the young than even good ol’ pot.

Prescription drug abuse is particularly common among upper middle class students, according to Lisa Jack, a clinical psychologist at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “It just goes to show that where you’re from doesn’t matter,” Jack said. (I hope she isn’t speaking geographically).

The article goes on to admonish parents to lock our medicine chests so that vulnerable offspring will be adequately protected from evil.

Okay, done. But it seems to me that a better question would be, “Why are upper middle class bathrooms filled with an array of pretty-colored mood-altering pills in the first place?”

Welcome to the world of the upper middle class housewife. We take Adderall (basically speed) to get through the morning rush and the long list of daily chores. Valium (a tranquilizer) around 3 p.m. to take off the remaining Adderall edge and get through the afternoon kid activities with a smile. Xanax before stressed-out husband walks through the door assessing performance and demanding moral support and a lovely dinner.

After the kids are safely tucked in, Vicodin (an opioid) gives the same buzz as the 2 or 3 glasses of wine that we used to be able to handle easily, but which now lead to belly fat which, face it, is not only unsightly but downright unhealthy.

What the young ones apparently haven’t discovered yet is that Ambien at bedtime puts one into a nice dreamless coma that lasts until the alarm bell goes off and the cycle begins again.

I bet that you wish you could be-e-e half as lucky as me-e-e.

Posted by Marie Walden on July 08, 2007 at 01:44 PM

Farfour Mouse vs Mickey

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It’s hard to believe how lost in LaLaLa Land are America’s proZionist conservatives. One big issue for some of them is the supposed ‘hostage taking’ of Mickey Mouse by Gaza Strip’s Farfour Mouse. I’m not making this stuff up either! See Farfour for yourself.

These lunatics of the American Right don’t get riled up about what Israel and the US have done to the million plus people of the Gaza Strip, way over 50% of them children. It matters not the least to them that Gaza has the lowest standard fo living in the world, and that most of the inhabitants living in this total misery are children. No. Instead they are worried about this mouse, Farfour! They’re worried that he’s a terrorist rat teaching the kids to hate! Can you imagine how lost in nonsense these nuts actually are? They’re our neighbors, too. Scary.

Here is another clip with some CNN commentary of Farfour in action, but go read the American posters’ comments and see who is really sick in the head. And nobody seems too concerned about Farfoura. But then again she’s not a mouse, is she? She’s more the butterfly… The Daffy Zionist Ducks can handle that. But don’t pick on Walt’s pre-WW2 made fascist rodent, or they get all upset.

And nobody seems to care about Walt Disney himself. He wa a rather loathsome character.
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Below is the real situation in Gaza, where per capita GDP is now around $500-$600 per year and falling.
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on the 40th anniversary of occupation my statement in the UN
SPECIAL MEETING TO MARK 40 YEARS OF OCCUPATION
BY ISRAEL OF THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORY,
INCLUDING EAST JERUSALEM

UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK
7 June 2007
STATEMENT BY

DR. MONA EL FARRA
PROJECTS DIRECTOR
MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN’S ALLIANCE

Red Crescent Society For Gaza Strip
GAZA

?Your Excellency Mr. Paul Badji, Chairman of the Committee,
Distinguished guests and Excellencies,

It is my honour to be amongst you today, despite the gravity of the occasion being commemorated, on this 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

First, let me say that 2007 is the 40th anniversary of 59 years of the brutal occupation of the Palestinian people.

As we called for an end to apartheid in South Africa and the right of all people to live together and have equal rights, we must now, before it is too late, call for true justice for the Palestinians.

Today, we heard about the economic plight of the Palestinian people. We heard about Palestinians in Israeli prisons which number close to 8,000 men and women, including approximately 350 children under the age of 14, most of whom have been tortured.

How many UN resolutions must be passed by the UN? How many years of calling for 2 States before there is an understanding that Israel continues its aggression on the ground against women, children and men, the demolition of thousands of homes and the continued building of the apartheid wall?

Let us not just speak of the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza. We must never forget those who live as second-class citizens inside Israel and most of all, those who were forced from their homes and lands in 1948.

Now is the time to call for a real peace, with justice for all the children in the region. This can only be accomplished by supporting the right of return of all Palestinians.

Now is the time to acknowledge that the two-State solution is not the answer.

From Gaza I came, where the children of my country have no safe homes, no safe streets, no proper and adequate health facilities, no proper food, clean water, or regular electrical power, no recreational activities and no good education. The list of deprivation of their basic needs is too long to count.

I lived this occupation as a child, and am still living it as an adult. I can see it in the eyes of my daughter when she is afraid, tired, restless and exhausted because of the unsafe and unpredictable quality of life in Gaza under occupation. I saw it as soon as we crossed the borders on our way to Egypt, where she sensed something new and different: freedom, safety and space. Gaza is like a big, unsafe prison. And it is a very small place for 1.4 million people, half of whom are children.

I face the occupation every day during my work when hundreds of Palestinian patients are denied permits and accessibility to proper medical treatment, outside Gaza. There are a few lucky patients who get a referral and permit for treatment outside Gaza. The majority, however, have to wait and wait. Many die while waiting.

What is more heart-breaking than children who do not have adequate food and a healthy atmosphere to grow up to be well rounded adults? According to the Health Work Committees Organization, 42 per cent of children in Gaza under the age of 5 suffer from iron deficiency anemia and 45 per cent suffer from some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, due to the experiences that they are subjected to as a result of the non-stop military actions of the Israeli Occupation Forces, which almost always affect civilians in one way or another.

I will never forget the story of a woman in labor, who had to wait several hours at a checkpoint last November, during one of many Israeli military operations in the north of Gaza. Eventually she arrived at the Al Awda hospital in Jabalia refugee camp where she gave birth to her baby. When she left the hospital with the baby to go to home in the village of Beit Hanoun, there was no home; her home had been demolished by the Israeli occupying army. There are many cases and many stories, but I believe it is not the numbers that really matter, even one incident such as the above is one enough human rights violation.

I remember a 4-year old child in the same village who was forced to stay in one room with all members of his family for 48 hours while the Israeli Army commandeered their home. The child was thirsty and the soldier was there with his bottle of water, the occupied and the occupier in the same space. The soldier offered water to the thirsty child. The child said “no, no, no”. The child’s natural reaction was a combination of fear of what the soldier represents and the steadfastness in the face of the occupation. This is what characterizes the Palestinian people: steadfastness and resistance in the face of all adversity; even small children can express it with their natural reactions more than any words or speeches. The soldier on the other hand is a human being that has been forced by the Israeli occupation machine to lose his humanity.

Whenever I think of Palestinian children and their lives under occupation, I always think of the Israeli children. As adults, we have a commitment to both sets of children to provide a safe environment for them to live peacefully. It is not the occupation or the wall or the ongoing aggression against my people that will bring safety or security for Israeli children, only peace that is based on justice will do so. Justice means that the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people must be considered. Israel must recognize its moral responsibility towards the Palestinian refugees.

While Israel is physically outside Gaza, it still completely controls our lives, all aspects of our lives: health, education, economy and freedom of movement.

Life under occupation is degrading to human dignity. It has deprived us of our freedom, and only free people can make peace. It is most peculiar that we are forced to deal with the patterns of life under occupation as normal, well-established facts and when people lost hope and faith in the world or any future chances for change, and when the world turns its head away.

On the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, it is fitting to call once again on the international community to put pressure on Israel to fulfil its obligations by abiding by the UN resolutions related to Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israeli occupation should be ended now and the right of return must not be forgotten.

Thank you.

Condoleezza Rice pushes for US into Sudan intervention

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The liberals pushing for US/ European ‘action’ on Darfur seem totally delusional. Right now, they are pressuring Rice and Bush to do what Rice and Bush want to do anyway, which is to push US governmental intervention into Sudan. The Save Darfur crowd thinks that necessary to stop genocide.

And who’s to stop US genocide against the Iraqis and Palestinians? In a decade and half of US intervention in Iraq, 10 times the number of Iraqis have lost their lives compared to those lives lost in the Darfur conflicts. Two million+ Iraqis have lost their lives while the US has lost less than 5,000 dead. In Darfur, several hundred thousand have lost their lives inside their own country of Sudan. It is a civil war, unlike the Iraqi vs US War/ Invasion/ Occupation.

GENOCIDE, that is what the US has been about for decades now. Not just in Iraq, too. How stupid to ask genocidists like the American government to intervene, supposedly all to stop a supposed genocide. It is crazy to be doing just that.

Next weekend, the CS Justice and Peace group will be holding a ‘benefit for Darfur’. I will be there with a sign that demands that the USNATO stay out of Darfur. Those inside will be demanding that the US take ‘action’. That’s what Condoleezza Rice plans to do. See BBC commentary about the Paris Summit and Rice and the result will be a US firmly planted in Africa and yet more bloodshed across that continent.

Comfortably Numb

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lights on
Sitting in a puffy leather Barca-lounger, jacked full of Valium and Demerol, God Doctor enters the room. He squats down so that we are at eye level, introduces himself (as if I don’t know who he is..I’ve driven to Denver three times so far to see him), stares into my nearly blind eyes and says, “Did you take something or are your pupils always this huge?” Even in my half-drugged state I had the presence of mind to say, “I took a handful of ‘ludes before the surgery; I hope that was okay.” He stands up without a word and walks out of the room.

Shit. Here it comes. We are so sorry, Ms. Walden, but we can’t do your surgery. You are destined to stumble around, squinting, creating giant furrows in your brow that even Botox can’t touch, ignoring friends and family waving at you, generating hurt feelings and animosity everywhere you go. People! I am not unfriendly (okay, sometimes I am, but only to stupid and/or boring people and for that I won’t apologize). I am blind! I don’t see you. If I did….I might wave back. I really really might.

Fortunately, within moments, in comes a cute Asian scrub nurse in a blue surgical hair thing (I am wearing one too…which, I must say, totally proves my point that sexiness is very very very related to hair…more on this later). She takes me into a room, puts me under a huge frightening contraption which is going to make a completely computerized laser cut on my oh-so-thin cornea. THIS is the new technology. In the past, the corneal flap has been created by a blade and has been the source of nearly every resultant complication of laser surgery. The actual corneal correction has been done by laser. The cut…by a BLADE….like skinning a squirrel. This new technology is so precise….they are talking microns….MICRONS. Three MOTHER FUCKING MICRONS. Me likey the precision.

After this first step, I am nearly blind. Kind over-sized women gently guide me to another dark room, put me on yet another comfortable chaise, pillow under my knees so there is no pressure on my lower back. Let the correction begin! Here’s where it gets a bit sci-fi. A soothing voice narrates as I am experiencing Laserium…on drugs…like at CU-Boulder back in the day.

You will see a green light within a white circle ….. Is there anybody out there? ..Try to focus on the green light even when it disappears… There is no pain you are receiving ……Then you will see flashing red lights…..A distant ship floats on the horizon……..Try to focus on the red light. It will appear to move, but that is an illusion…..You are only coming through in waves……Very very good, Marie…halfway there……Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you say…..Now you will see a series of dots…keep looking straight ahead…very good, Marie….When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse….Almost there, Marie. Keep looking straight ahead….Out of the corner of my eye.…Very very good. Now we will move to the next eye…I tried to look but it was gone…Marie, shift your shoulders a little to the left….I cannot put my finger on.…Very good, Marie…now focus on the green light again… a child is born, the dream is gone….We are done…you can relax now, Marie….I have become comfortably numb.

Within minutes of beginning, I am back in my Barca-lounger, drinking Gatorade, feeling no pain. Cute Asian nurse comes in…sees me with my wild blond hair everywhere and says, “Oh! I didn’t think you would look like that!” I have no idea what any of this means…maybe she thought my features were so average that I should have a June Cleaver haircut…..can’t really contemplate the comment but I still think it proves that hair is an important part of a woman’s appearance.

Okay…so I am 2 days out. 20/20…..I got glasses in second grade…have struggled with vision my whole life. Have been told by countless opthamologists that I’m not a candidate……Thin corneas, large pupils, astigmatism, poor vision.

If anyone out there is similarly afflicted, Dr. Jon Dishler in Denver….he brought this technology to Colorado…he holds patents on many treatments…..He is internationally known for Intra-Lasik. Usually $4600 for both eyes…through August…because of his 25th anniversity….$3000 for both.

I am not his marketing gal…he doesn’t even know my name…I just know the struggles that I’ve had…and if you have complicated vision, or you know someone who does….let me share this gift with you. I am COMPLETELY AMAZED. And happy as heck.

Vacation en Nicaragua

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This post is dedicated to a good friend who got me thinking of Central America once again. It is about a vacation to Nicaragua and more. Let’s start with a beautiful concert at the height of Hope in the early ’80s, before the US government crushed that hope by its horrible imperialist military interventionism. Nicaragua Nicaraguita sung by the great Left folk singer of Nicaragua, Carlos Mejia Godoy.

Then let’s cut almost 1/4 century later, to see a beautiful vacation film in a visit back home to his country and family made by a Nicaraguan in exile far North. The beautiful music of the Colombian salseros, Grupo Niche, is followed in the second half of the film with more music by Carlos Mejia Godoy once again. A beautifully made film that shows Nicaragua at its best. The music is great and worth listening to on its own merits.

US Military Spy on Hundreds of Antiwar Demos

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The Pentagon spied on hundreds of antiwar demos says the ACLU. Unfortunately, many activists in the proPeace crowd (and even the ACLU itself) seem to act as if they cannot draw the logical conclusions from this and act accordingly. Instead of helping publicize this reality of police and military surveillance and disruption of Peace proponents and their activism, they act as if doing so might be a hindrance and derailment of the Antiwar Movement! Therefore they run from the fight when it gets down and dirty. Isn’t that sad?

Without battling on behalf of those that might very well be the direct victims of this surveillance and rather instead acting as if they are chickens with their heads cut off who can’t come to the defense of those vilified without cause, is not helpful but harmful to the Antiwar Movement.

We must show solidarity with people when they are attacked and found supposedly guilty without due process. We must act forcefully on behalf of these people. Otherwise, we are accepting of the reality of those that want to make the whole world into one enlarged Guantanamo, where allegations need not ever be proven, but simply accepted as given fact by authority.

Activism without Solidarity is empty of content. The US military spy on hundreds of thousands of us, and we should not act as if the harm that falls upon some of us for our activism merely has innocently fallen out of the sky. If you know this, then work as if those peace activists that have been slandered are in fact innocent until proven guilty. If you do not, then in fact you are working with the saboteurs of The Movement For Peace, and not against them.

St Patrick’s Day Six plus One

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Get a lawyer! Get a lawyer! Yes, go get a lawyer! In days gone past, people would shout, ‘Get a witch doc, he will intervene for you with the Gods!’ Well, us Justice and Peace folk got a lawyer for the St Patrick’s Day Seven, and we seem just as credulous as the most primitive of people about this magician playing against the legal Gods on behalf of those criminally charged.

No need to stay together, the lawyer says. Split into two! And get another lawyer, two. Two, three, many lawyers! I’ve seen folk meekly following the worst guidance of doctors many a time before, but now I guess I will get to see pro-peace people hypnotized by their legal, uh friend, the lawyer.

Eric seems to have accepted the advice to split The Seven into Six plus One, and so has the Six. Solidarity now thrown out the wind. This is now a legal issue and stand still.

It seems, we will stand still until the court rules against The One in favor of the city and its police, that the city government had assault people who tried to walk against the Pentagon. Gone is the issue of how John O’Donnell is mere front man for how the city issues permits and tries to stifle all but Pentagon led (and fed) parades, air shows, and assemblies in this city. No counter social issues Now! It’s divisive! Eric misled the poor city of Colorado Springs. Guilty as charged. Now stay out of any parade.

What is typical here, is how this decision to split the case was made not by our group discussion, but by a lawyer or two in our midst. And perhaps a publisher, too. In fact, most of the Justice and Peace still have yet to hear about how there will be two trials, not one. So sez the lawyer and we shall follow and do. All fall down. We got the lawyer, and he will be our downfall. How often this happens when Movement activists fold up, and allow themselves to be led by the nose by ‘legal specialists’. Deals and decisions get made in secret, and input of commoners get wiped out.

Such faith! To oppose the guidance of our legal counselor would be ‘inappropriate’, they would say? Of course, what was once a political matter that needed the mobilizing of public support, has now been turned into a hidden away, private court matter with all the rules to be followed of a legal system that allows Guantanamo to happen. People who still believe in following the rules of a democracy that doesn’t really exist, also seem to be content following the rules of a legal system that only exists in skeletal remains, too.

It looks bad in the days ahead for the St Patrick’s Day Six plus One. Shaking hands and hugging the police by the ACLU (as done at their recent annual meeting) will lead to defeat in the court room, but good relations between wanna-be power brokers and power. Lawyers most often get the people beat, not saved. A ‘good lawyer’ gets the Six saved, the One beat, and the Movement down the drain. And for that, he will be thanked.

That’s the better scenario. The worst, is well worse. Solidarity would do better.

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

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Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!

G8- Why the protest?

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AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the Group of Eight are.
JOHN PERKINS: Well, the Group of Eight are the wealthiest countries in the world, and basically they run the world. And the leader is the United States, and it’s actually the corporations within these countries that run it. It’s not the governments, because, after all, the governments serve at the pleasure of the corporations.

In our own country, we know that the next two final presidential candidates, Republican and Democrat alike, are going to each have to raise something like half a billion dollars. And that’s not going to come from me and you. Primarily that’s going to come from the people who own and run our big corporations. They’re totally beholden to the government. So the G8 really is this group of countries that represent the biggest multinational corporations in the world and really serve at their behest.

All of commentary at… John Perkins (author of ‘The Secret History of American Empire;…’) interview by Amy Goodman Kind of an ‘Imperialism Made Simple’ for American university miseducated Bachelor Degree dunderheads, perhaps?

RU one of those credentialed? If so, write to us. You can be helped.

Two and a half for Scooter

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Poor Scooter, fall guy for Bush and Cheney’s record setting criminality. He got a 2 and 1/2 year sentence for something you and I might have gotten life, and yet, he will probably not even have his golf games interrupted. He now faces a likely pardon or time at a country club ‘prison’. Such disgrace!

The funniest part of the whole thing, is who gave him personal references in front of the judge. They were Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld! Write your government representatives and ask that his time be spent at Guantanamo instead. They say he looked red eyed and ashen faced when he left the courtroom. Let him look like Padilla when he comes out Guantanamo. That would teach the bum a lesson, would it not?

Memorial Day jingoism and celebration of death

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The 3 largest Colorado papers all had the same headline pictures this Memorial Day. Graduating Air Force Academy Cadets all throwing up their caps into the sky in unison with jet planes flying overhead. Thus we arrive to half time in America’s annual jingoistic display. Second half of this supposed public patriotic display of support for imperialist foreign policies will certainly be the 4th of July.

We are awash in ‘support our troops’ brain wash. Don’t you dare not support them! And not supporting the constant and continual warfare is always construed as not ‘supporting the troops’. Thirty of us met the parade of cars entering into the Air Force Academy base and they penned us dangerous folk in behind chains and concrete barriers. Up on the hill mounted Calvary watched us terrorist Injuns down below. What a sad lot the people entering the base seemed.

It gave me great pleasure to hold a sign demanding that the torture of American held POWs be ended. Just how proud can these graduating cadets actually be, when the employer they will be working for has such a low reputation from routinely torturing people? How about their parents? How proud can they really be?

This Memorial Day’s celebration of death just seemed more gruesome and pathetic than it has ever been. There was something pathetic about it all that seemed etched in the faces of the people in their vehicles as they came in. Next step? Buy some fire works and pretend that one is having a good time. Eat some turkey dogs and drink a little. Red, White, and Blue.

NATO Out of Somalia and Sudan Now!

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Last night, a nice person called me up and wanted to assure me that she and other pro-Peace activists in Colorado Springs had not called for military interventionism into Darfur when they recently met at Poor Richards. I was half asleep and there was background noise on her end of the line, so the conversation didn’t really go on for too long. But for several hours now I have been thinking of this call. What to make of it?

Actually, it brought me back to the days of when so many nice liberals (and socialists, too) were demanding that Clinton do what he wanted to do anyway. They demanded that he intervene against Yugoslavia. They always made it clear that they were not calling for NATO to bomb the living day lights out of Yugoslavia, but that is just exactly what they helped accomplish. Today a US military base stands in Kosovo, and it has been deemed Europe’s Guantanamo since American held POWs are sent there to be tortured and held in secret.

Even worse, by being complicit in the NATO and US campaign against Yugoslavia, the liberal supporters of ‘action against Milosevic’, essentially sat on their butts for 8 years, while the Clinton gang killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and spread lies that Bush later used about there being WOMD in that country, all just waiting to be used to kill millions elsewhere. Today, Iraq is occupied with American troops. Surprise!

Fast forward a few months to Africa… NATO is in Sudan, and is now being considered for use in Somalia. And this good person who called me wants to reassure me that no Peace activists are pushing that this be the case. Yes, but it is the case, so why not ask (demand) that NATO get out of Africa? Instead, what is it the ‘action’ that is actually being demanded of by ‘Save Darfur’ folk?

I just don’t get this?! They are demanding that economic war be waged against Sudan as NATO troops intervene in country after country as forces of occupation and reaction! Why in the world would Peace activists want economic ‘sanctions’ to be applied to any country in the world by Britain and the US, 2 horrible imperialist and genocidal powers?

I am going to call this woman back up and ask that she, or any of the people who met at Poor Richard’s, write to explain on this blog what ‘action’ they want, and to explain their reasoning. I just don’t get it? I would think they would be more thoughtful about asking for ‘action’, when their allies on this taking of ‘action’ are Dubya, Condi, Madelyn Albright, and Tom Tancredo. I just don’t get it? The best action that can be taken is to demand that the US and Britain, NATO and the UN just get out of all of Africa. And while we are at it, how ’bout demanding getting these troops out of the Balkans and Afghanistan, too?

Thank you, Larry Small

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I was able to attend the city council meeting where I made the effort to correct some of the more recent baloney that The Gazette had published regarding the city’s pro-peace community. I stated that local peace activists were neither harshly unconciliatory towards the city government and its police, nor were we into a love fest with the new police chief, Richard Myers.

Further, I offered our thanks and appreciation for the concern offered to us by some on the city council, and thanked Larry Small, vice mayor of the city, in particular, for the remarks he had made 2 weeks previous. He had stated that he apologized if any of us paraders for PEACE had been harmed emotionally or physically, by actions taken at the St. Patrick’s Day parade by law enforcement.

On behalf of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, I was able to tell the city council that we were appreciative of these remarks by the vice mayor, and that it was indeed noticed by us all and that we were grateful for what had been said. Still, that 7 of us faced criminal charges, and that we were now totally aware of the role that John O’Donnell has constantly been used as pro-military organizer for city sponsored events. While we are appreciative of the role taken at conciliation by the city council and police, we still were unable to allow the city government to continue to hide behind the pretense that John O’Donnell was a mere private citizen and that we should somehow be considered as illegitimate gate crashers at a private event.

We ask that police be restrained in their use of unecessary force in the future.

Mexico slides into political chaos

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There is little news in the US press about it, but Mexico is beginning to sink into chaos. After stealing the Mexican federal presidential election in mid 2006 with US support, Felipe Calderon (FeCal), now acting president, began a struggle to obtain some public legitimacy by initiating a war with Mexico’s drug lords. He is now losing that war.

Of even more potential interest to the Mexican public as well as to the international public, is a split forming in the Mexican political establishment, exemplified by a new book by long time PRI leader, Roberto Madrazo entitled ‘La Traicion’ (The Betrayal). Madrazo book claims that Mexico was betrayed, as well as himself, by a secret pact made between previous Mexican presidents Ernesto Zedillo and Vicente Fox. He dates that secret pact as having begun in 1994.

The essence of that pact was to seemingly end the over a half century dictatorship of one party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI, and to begin a planned-on ‘alternancia’, where political power would alternate between the PRI and PAN kind of like it does in the US between the Democratic and Republican parties. Except the pact was actually broken when Felipe Calderon followed Vicente Fox into presidential office, since both are from the same political party. Madrazo knows about this secret plot well, since he was a full participant to it when it was initiated. But he thought that it would guarantee him the presidency in 2006. Instead, he came in third, hence the ‘betrayal’.

But what political forces actually launched this secret plot? Roberto Madrazo dates this well and it is easy to follow the money. He dates the plot as beginning in 1994 and it was in precisely the time that the Clinton Administration and Mexican PRI government were negotiating an economic ‘bailout’ to stop the Mexican economic crash of that time. In 1995, the cash began to flow to the tune of over $55 billion dollars from the US into Mexico. What was purchased by the US government?

The US was sick of having ties to a corrupt Mexican dictatorship that had no world legitimacy. The European Union was formed as an economic bloc, but the US only had Mexico and Canada to work with, and Mexico had a most unsavory reputation. What was purchased by the bailout was an agreement to open up the Mexican system to another pro-big business political party, the Partido Acion Nacional or PAN. That way, the US would not be seen as dealing with a dictatorship.

The PRI establishment wanted some guarantees as to their future though, and Roberto Madrazo wanted the 2006 presidency to come back to himself. Well it simply didn’t, as change began to spin out of control of the PRI bigwigs in charge up to that time of all that was Mexico.

So where will the political chaos brake at? A lot will depend on what happens in the war of Mafias now engulfing Mexico. Presidente FeCal (Felipe Calderon) thought he had the best armed and best situated mafia. Perhaps not? Like Colombia, Mexico might now best be considered an evolving Narco-Death Squad state. Lots of dealing and wheeling gone bad. And FeCal as well as Roberto Madrazo may well fall to the wayside.

Peaceful vacation in New Mexico, Anybody?

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Half a million can buy some PEACE for you in Albuquerque next week. You get Rigoberta Menchu, the Dalai Lama, and some Gandhi, too…. all for just $65/person, price of hotel room and organic vegetarian nourishment not included. I feel like flying there in a hot air balloon! New Mexico Peace Conference

Why did the city police attack the pro-Peace group at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade?

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The city police and parade organizers did not fully think out the consequences of their actions, but the attack on the peace group at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade was not unintentional. In fact, it followed logically from the political direction given by the Colorado Springs city council and mayor.

The city police are employees under the control of the city council and mayor, and it is the city police on behalf of the city government itself, that gives out John O’Donnell his own permit each year to hold a parade. In all effects, John O’Donnell is merely a sub contractor for the city who is given a permit to issue yet even more permits, that simply allow and disallow who amongst the general public can participate in a city sponsored parade each year.

John O’Donnell has a long history of operating city promoted events in our city, and most of them have a highly charged social message of support for the wars waged by the US government. He takes positions on social issues, and they are almost always relatively in support of war, and many events he has helped organize have been fully funded by the city of Colorado Springs city government. Though some have only been partially underwritten.

In fact, less than 3 years ago, John O’Donnell, the city government, and the US military (US government) used large amounts of city and federal tax moneys to parade troops through Colorado Springs streets in support of the Republican Administration led US invasion and occupation of Iraq. They called this ‘supporting the troops’, and called the parade a ‘Welcome Back Home’ rally. Of course, we now know that the troops have been redeployed over and over from Fort Carson, and the public has slipped dramatically in its support of this US government war making. At that time, nobody appeared too much concerned to see the city government and federal government working through O’Donnell to parade for a partisan cause.

Because the city government and John O’Donnell are so intertwined in supporting the partisan cause of celebrating the constant US government wars and aggressions that destroy other nations, it is no surprise that the city police acted to thump peace partisans for entering into the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. It was a natural reflex on their part, and to their credit, at least they did not get so totally out of hand and severely injure anybody they manhandled. That is the reason that the new police chief, Richard Myers can posture that ‘nobody got hurt’.

However, the city government and its police do hurt others when they take up partisan causes like supporting a US government war, and make no mistake about it, that is what they have been constantly doing. Driving down Cascade Ave. one sees the city tax money’s paid-for signs that say ‘Colorado Springs Supports the Troops’. Hint, hint… That means that the city government is supporting the Iraqi War. How clever the city government thinks it is to phrase their support for the Iraqi War in this manner.

In short, the city has a history of taking up the ‘social issue’ of supporting the US war on Iraq and uses the tax monies of all its citizens to do so. The annual military air shows each year are yet more ways that the city government uses tax monies and facilities to sponsor pro-war Pentagon fed propaganda. And through this steady city support of military aggression, now 7 people face criminal charges coming from a police action that could easily have led to no arrests, no threats, and no physical take-downs if the police had only had directions to use restraint, instead of heavy force.

To the city police, it seems natural to stop pro-peace participants from participating in city events. They have received no city government direction to do otherwise, and Mayor Lionel Rivera’s continued refusal to admit that the several police ambushes on us through the years have been totally totally uncalled for, only will lead to repeats of the same excessive use of police force in the months and years ahead. Too, he has repeatedly shown so far that the city government will refuse to accept that it has real bias in what events are allowed to parade through city streets. The bias is in favor of the military and war, and against peace advocacy by any public pro-peace assembly that would appear against war. The police are directed in their activities with this bias in effect no matter how much they might state that they are out there to protect us all. It will surprise no one that the police actually protect some more than others, and endanger many.

It is highly symbolic that John O’Donnell and the police decided to use the intersection of St Vrain and Tejon to have the police ambush us on St Patrick’s Day. This is the same intersection where the city and federal governments had him lead off the ‘Welcome Home Troops’ pro-war parade in June, 2004. They marched the troops with our tax monies around in a circle and then ended their pro-war demo at the same point. They had no problem with pushing social causes at that event at all. They do have a problem with us when we cross that fatal intersection calling for PEACE instead.

Mayor Lionel Rivera and his city police will do what they can do to try to stop us from participating in future city organized events. As it has been said already, we got roughed up for the message we carried, and not just for how we went about bringing it to the public. They will try to deny us the use of the public streets again unless policies are changed now.

The police and the mayor have refused to accept any blame for what was done St Patrick’s Day. To the credit of some of the city council members, others have done the opposite. Our thanks goes out to them for that.

We do want to work together with all to assure that all do have a way for public assembly without censure. Let the military march with kids in their camouflage khaki uniforms on, and let those that have the opposite message march alongside. The city belongs to both of our groups, and both of our groups pay tax dollars to open up city streets for public parades, and to close it off for other tax paying citizens who might even be against what the parades might seem to them to be about. After all, we don’t want the type of sectarian violence that the US military now has brought to the Iraqi people inside America itself. Do we? So city government needs to stop bias in what social causes it funds and endorses.

The destruction of Iraq is not a US government policy aberration

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Iraq is no mere aberration by the US government. The Democratic Party would have us think otherwise, but just as top Democratic Party officials set the stage for supporting Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, they have also gone along totally with Republican policy in Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Somalia, too.

There the Democrats supported policies of destroying these other countries by illegally fighting wars under false pretenses, and using proxies to do most of the fighting for the Pentagon. Nothing is different from Iraq.

The fighting in Afghanistan threatens to continue to extend itself into Pakistan. The fighting in Lebanon threatens to extend itself into Syria and Iran (especially if Israel has its way). The fighting in Somali, threatens to extend itself into renewed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Everywhere the Democrats follow along behind the leadership of the Republican Party, large areas of the world start to crumble into deepened anarchy, destruction, and despair.

In Afghanistan, the Pentagon is directing its most cowardly war. There, the Pentagon regularly is dropping bombs into civilian areas from thousands of feet up high. They just don’t seem to care about the ‘collateral’ damage done to innocent people, as long as Pentagon allied casualties are kept as low as possible. We cannot ‘support our troops’ in that country at all, as they have been turned by the Bush Administration into nothing more than a bunch of mass murderers.

In Somalia, the Pentagon send in troops from Ethiopia, and then has taken thousands of new prisoners to torture in hidden jails throughout Africa, all done Abu Ghraib-Guantanamo style. Close to half a million refugees have been sent scurrying out of Mogadishu alone, where most now face starvation and death by disease.

In Lebanon, much of the country still is in ruins, with cluster bombs everywhere in unknown locations for civilians to step on. Will the US give the Green Light again for Israel to start the fighting up once again? Will the US and Israel attack Iran and Syria, too? The failures of the Iraq War to do anything other than destroy are not aberrations of one Republican Administration, but is only one face of the entire fiasco of America’s bipartisan foreign policies. We need to stop all these wars now. Shame on us if we fail to act, and if we The American people don’t act, the carnage will be extended and extended and extended, all in our name. Protest is patriotic now, and sitting on our butts is not.

America’s Colombian friends

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Horrrible testimony is coming out daily in Colombia about the American government’s Colombian friends, the Paramilitary death squads.

All of Colombia is following the continual unfolding of new scandal about the Colombian government and military’s deep connections with the paramilitaries. Check out the video some even though it is in Spanish. Your tax monies went to help make these atrocities happen, so don’t hide your eyes and ears away. Take a look.

America made this level of total criminality possible by funding the Colombian military for decades now. The techniques used by the death squads organized by the Colombian military rival the worst crimes of the Japanese and the Nazis during WW2. Still, our US corporate media keeps it all quite hidden away from the American public, and most Americans still continue to think that the US government is only there fighting drugs, if they think about Colombia at all.
…………
from ‘El Tiempo’ below which is the New York Times of Colombia….
…………
…Villalba assures that for the cutting up learning they used peasants who brought up together during the occupations of neighboring towns. “They were older people taken on trucks, alive, tied”, he described. The victims arrived to the estate on topped trucks. They were taken down with their hands tied and moved to a room, where they remained locked for several days, waiting for the training to start.

Then the “bravery instruction” came up: people were separated in four or five groups “and there they were cut into pieces”, Villalba told during the deposition. “The instructor told me: ‘You stand up here and secures the one who cuts’. Every time a town was occupied and someone is going to be cut, the ones doing that job must be provided with security”.

Men and women were taken out the rooms on their underwear. Still with their hands tied, they were taken to the place where the instructor awaited to start the first recommendations: “The instructions were to take off their arms, their head, to cut them alive. They came out crying and asked us not to hurt them, [they said] they had a family”.

Villalba describes the process: “The people were opened from the chest to the belly to take out the guts, the innards. Their legs, their arms, their heads were ripped off, with a machete or a knife. The rest, their remains, [were taken out] by hand. We, who were on instruction, took out the intestines”.

The training was compulsory, according to him, to “test [their] courage and learn how to disappear people”. During the month and a half Francisco Villalba says he was in the course, he saw cutting instructions three times. “They chose the students to participate. Once, one of them refused to do it. ‘Doble cero’ [a paramilitary chief] stood up and told him: ‘Come here, I can do it’. Then he ordered to cut him up. They made me to cut one girl’s arm. She was already taken her head and one leg out. She asked them not to do it, because she had two children”.

The bodies were taken to common graves at the same place, La 35, where it is estimated 400 people were buried….

much more, including video of the undercovering of the 10,000 PLUS bodies at El Tiempo.

The ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ propaganda in support of US African military intervention is utterly reactionary

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Sunday in Denver one of the many nationwide rallies by the so-called ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ will be held, demanding that Bush, John Negroponte, Condaleeza Rice, and The Pentagon move troops into Sudan supposedly to help stop a civil war in that country.

Their incredible demands pushing for yet more US militarism come at the exact same time that the US government has just created close to half a million refugees in Somalia in the short time span of just 6 weeks! The US is the cause of genocides worldwide not the relief of any of them.

One cannot imagine anything more totally reprehensible and retrograde than what these nitwitty do-gooder liberal types are doing now than in currently rallying to justify to the public yet more US global foreign interventionism at this particular moment. It’s like they haven’t an ounce of common sense about them at all? It’s all very sad to see liberal peaceniks actually push for US governmental militarism rather than opposing it as they should be spending their entire energies doing.

Sure, all in the antiwar community want the end of warfare in Sudan as well as throughout Africa to occur. But calling for ‘peace’ to be implemented by the Pentagon meddling is hair brained at best. And asking for the Pentagon to intervene in Darfur is exactly what the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ is doing despite their stealth tactics in going about it.

Their ‘Call to Action’ is the polar opposite of the mainstream International Peace Movement’s strategy, which is to call for the US to end the Made-by-the-US genocide currently being implemented by the US military against the Iraqi people. It is the job of the Peace community to oppose one’s own government’s imperialism and not to help justify it, as the ‘Save Darfur Coalition’ is currently doing.

With the construction of a US military African command center (AFRICOM) now underway, the ‘Save Darfur Coaliton’ should be opposing this. Instead, they are actually demanding that it be put into service! And once in Darfur, where else in Africa will the call go out to to send in US or US directed troops as directed by AFRICOM? We know already, do we not? AFRICOM is directing the war against the Somali people now and abducting POWs taken there to be taken out and tortured in other countries, same as has been done in Afghanistan and Iraq. The call to ‘Save Darfur’ in actuality is a call to plan out more genocides, rather than to eliminate one of them.

US troops out of Africa, not into the continent! Stop the Pentagon! No more military adventures using supposed humanitarianism as the justification.

PS… here is from the ‘Save Darfur’ blog. The same types that had the US kidnapping and removing President Aristide from Haiti and occupying that country with US directed troops are the same people now running the “Save Darfur Coalition’. This is not a group of humanitarians at all. They are from the US State Department.

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Global Day for Darfur III – A Critical Initiative Now!
Posted on Monday, 04/23/07 – 9:23 am
Cross-posted at Globe for Darfur

Amb. (ret.) Lawrence Rossin, Senior International Coordinator at the Save Darfur Coalition, is responsible for designing and leading implementation of the Coalition’s outreach to foreign governments and non-governmental organizations to advocate on behalf of the people of Darfur. Rossin joined the Coalition after serving as Assistant Secretary General and Principal Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, and as part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. He has also served in a number of diplomatic positions in the U.S. Department of State.

Sand Creek No Gun Ri

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This morning will be the dedication of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. The headline of today’s Gazette? “One man’s battle” about whether the 1864 slaughter was a massacre or a battle, and reporting the re-release of a 1925 first hand account written by Irving Howbert who, 61 years after the fact, did not recall the atrocities ascribed to his unit. Whatever kind of near sesquicentenial slap in the face is this? Do you think the prominent placement of this insult could have something to do with blurring America’s vision about current military massacres?

Normally respected Old Colorado City historian Dave Hughes is republishing the book, and wants to repaint the Sand Creek Massacre as, well, not a massacre at all. A quick recap: One early morning in 1864, 700 cavalry volunteers swooped into a village of 500 Arapaho and Cheyenne refugees, killing nearly 200 (the Gazette says 150) committing unmentionable atrocities, following the command “Kill or scalp all, big and little; nits become lice!”

I first heard Dave Hughes talk about the glories of war at, of all places, the traveling Vietnam War Memorial. It reflected a myopic immoral tide change I would never have been cynical enough to foresee, and it presaged our national sanction of the US war of aggression against Iraq and acceptable collateral damage. In the shadow of the traveling wall, remembering the 58,000 American dead, where not often enough did someone mention the millions of Vietnamese dead, Dave spoke of his immense pride of commanding his men, suffering the terrible casualties they did in Korea. The heavier the toll, the deeper his pride, the blustery commander was volunteering, if it weren’t for old-age, to do it again. I kid you not. Though he lost half his men to the battle, he would bravely venture more.

Downplaying massacres seems to be Hughes’ game. If you Google No Gun Ri, the now admitted deliberate massacre of hundreds of Korean refugees in 1950, here’s what do you’ll get: Dave Hughes on record standing up for the actions of American machine gunners. Here too, he wasn’t there, and relies on the recollection of soldiers who might have reasons to be blanking out on those parts. For shame. I know and like Dave Hughes, but he’s got a moral screw loose. And as we’ve seen in this town, that’s catching.

Elsewhere in the news, a play opens in London which retells the tragedy of Fallujah, in the actual words of participants on both sides. Authorities note 70 breaches of international conventions by the US forces. Soldiers like Dave Hughes can explain to themselves the necessity of sniping, gassing and obliterating hundreds of civilians in the regular conduct of war. Luckily wiser soldiers and statesmen before them have already addressed man’s bloodlust and agreed there are crimes that must never be rationalized.