Tag Archives: ALF

New Age posturing with the ‘pickaninnies’

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Those who grew up in the Old South, remember when racist politicians used to pose with ‘Negro’ children to supposedly show their concern for Black people. That was a crude technique to deflect criticism for being a racist.

White racists often called Black children ‘pickaninnies’, and loved to rub their heads with the different type of hair. They would then comment about how cute and funny Black children were as opposed to the uppity adult Blacks who never fully wanted to acknowledge their assigned places in Apartheid America.

Why the term ‘pickaninny’ for Black children? Try thinking about what ‘pick a ninny’ means. A ninny means a fool. Black children were considered kind of adorable jesters in the court of White racist America of that era, so Whites often tried to help out the supposedly ‘adorable pickaninnies’ with gifts of food and clothing. That made the racist feel good and generous, instead of feeling full of self loathing for being the miserable monsters that most racists really are.

So enter today’s world, and has the posturing with the ‘pickaninnies’ now disappeared? No, it has just morphed into technicolor instead. Instead of touching the ‘pickaninnies moppy heads’ old style, we have good hearted folk posing themselves next to emaciated, injured, and distraught ‘pickaninnies’. And this is done outside US borders, and not inside them as of Old. Case in point is Mia Farrow posing in Chad today on Yahoo News with her great concern for the welfare of the ‘pickaninny’.

Don’t get me wrong here. Much suffering is underway in Africa, as it has been ongoing for centuries. That’s not the point of the posturing though, no more than it was with the posturing of the past. Why is Darfur THE GENOCIDE, and not Congo or Iraq or Palestine? That is the point of the posturing, simply to deflect attention elsewhere from one’s own crimes.

It is not just actresses like Mia Farrow, doing the posturing with the ‘pickaninny’ neither. Here is from antiwar.com today which links to an article titled… Bush considering Darfur no-fly zone. The title says it all. But look who else is posturing to deflect attention away from their own constructed genocides! It is Israel itself. We have Israel, Bush, and Mia Farrow all posing with the ‘pickaninny’. That little ‘pickaninny’ is called Darfur and we are supposed to forget all context in the real world and cry along with the crocodile tears of the genocidal and racist maniacs running amok across the planet. I refer to the governmental leaders of Israel and the US.

They can’t be racists and genocidists at all, look at their concern for the ‘pickaninny’! ‘Save the Pickaninny!’ they seem to be all shouting at one time. Send the candy distributing troops (our boys) in to save the ‘pickaninnies’ of Darfur! Hands off the ‘pickaninnies’! In the link, it is noted that ‘The Holocaust museum has taken the lead on behalf of Darfur’. How nice. Not noted is why the Holocaust museum has not taken the lead on behalf of the Palestinians instead? And why is Bush not trying to impose a no-fly zone over Iraq at this time instead of Darfur?

Let’s face it, New Age posturing with the ‘pickaniny’ is just as nauseating as it was in the Old South of another era. In fact, it may be even more repulsive than before.

The United Nations is complicit with US war criminality and genocide everywhere

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The United Nations is fully supporting US war crimes in multiple nations around our planet. It has become nothing less than a total satellite captured in the orbit of the US Pentagon. In Iraq, the UN has sat by without ever condemning the US genocide in that country, but rather participating in it. Over 2 million Iraqi casualties have been killed solely due to US interference against the Iraqi people over more than a decade and a half, and the role of the UN has been in total support of that.

There are currently over 4 million Iraqi refugees, 2 million inside and 2 million outside Iraq. The UN has little to say about that, and little relief offered to the victims. All its efforts go to help the US government intervene around the planet.

Jordan alone, with a population of a little over 5 million has taken in almost 1 million Iraqi refugees! That would be the equivalent relative to population as if the US had had to take in 60 million destitute refugees from some war zone! Syria, with a population of slightly less than 19 million, has had to take in an even greater number of Iraqi refugees from US violence than the almost 1 million in Jordan. And as the US and Israel are currently threatening Syria with attack alongside its ally Iran, the UN sits back nodding its head in acquiescence! Lest we forget, Syria was Iran’s ally while the US and its Arab client states were funding Saddam Hussein in its war upon Iran. It is the US that supported Saddam, not Syria or Iran, and the UN never did anything to stop him from killing hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians. .

The situation is the same around the globe, as the UN everywhere is running backup for US foreign policy and the resulting mayhem and atrocities that follow in the wake of US war crimes. The United Nations is helping the US occupy Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Haiti as well as Iraq. These are all nations where the US violated international law and bombed, invaded and occupied these countries with its military. The United Nations has acted as an integral part of these war crimes, lending the support of the troops of its misnamed ‘Security Council’ at crucial intervals. In short, the United Nations has become the Pentagon’s whore, constantly pimped out to service America’s reactionary foreign policy.

We move to Africa, and the United Nations today is calling for occupation of Somalia with its troops instead of condemning the US-Ethiopian invasion of that country. The United Nations offers no security to the people’s of the world from US war crimes and genocides. In Africa, the countries of Rwanda and Congo can attest to that.

The UN rushes into action everywhere behind US military interventionism and it offers political cover for the US just to help perpetuate this criminality. With its history the United Nations can no longer hope to be reformed but instead should be impeached and dissolved the same as was done to its predecessor, The League of Nations.

The people of the world need to get the UN out of the nations it currently helps occupy on behalf of the US. We need an international body of nations, but the UN has defaulted on all its responsibilities, and is not acting as anything other than an agent of the richer imperial nations of the world, all bullied into line by US firepower. This is a body that can not be reformed any more, just as is the US 2 party system of corporate political control. It’s time we admit that the UN is complicit with all the US war crimes being committed and not innocently continue to back this organization as some possible alternative to the US government itself. It isn’t, and never will be.

Stop the war now and get the United Nations troops back to all their home countries. These troops are nothing more than mercenaries in the same vein that Halliburton’s are. They are not peacekeepers, but rather nothing more than another type of privatization of US military operations. Dissolve the UN Security Council Now and Help Save the World from US imperialism. The UN is no friend of anybody, other than friend to the rich and powerful corporate state creeps heading up the US government.

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.

9-11 has nothing on 2003

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I’m thinking about the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq, an unimaginable aggression that yielded unspeakable suffering, speakably unsurprising. Millions of people took to the streets in 2003, an unprecedented two thousand in this city, in a desperate renunciation of our government’s blood thirst. Today as the US war machine mobilizes to demolish Iran, I wonder what has changed, where is the outcry? Where are the double-decker buses rushing to the Gulf to put human shields between the US warships and the Iranian people, lest the cowboys dare bomb white people?!

But life was simpler in 2003. We had yet to learn what a drunken, swaggering half-wit would do at the helm of the most powerful military. A half-wit propped up by malicious connivers shifting capitalism’s ultimate human-life harvester into irreverse gear.

The media likes to talk about how 9-11 changed the world. Nine-eleven was America’s first taste of violence brought home, to the tune of a Madison Avenue catch phrase. As it turns out, it was the overture. The world didn’t change until 2003.

It was a buildup to be sure, of crooked deals in high courts, back room contracts, corporate election tampering, transnational suppression of sustainability, collapse of sovereignty and law serving the people’s discretion, and the incomprehensible judicial malfeasance of Guantanamo, culminating in a climax of lunacy and self-deception with Iraq. I believe shock and awe was the dawning of awareness of the new world order: unchecked capitalism bearing arms, baring its steel molars, its black gloves and crew-cutted vacant soul, with nothing any dedicated resistance can do about it.

What was becoming evident to globalization’s victims about the race to the bottom is that the push has become a shove and they’re already trying to throw the dirt in over us.

What’s Australia doing occupying East Timor?

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East Timor, remember it? It was the cause celebre of liberal minded world imperialist do-gooders for quite some time, and now much forgotten. Liberals in the English speaking world demanded that East Timor be split off from West Timor and the rest of Indonesia, and then established as a new ‘nation’.

Never mind that the off shore oil under the poor Third World nation of Indonesia’s control would then go into the hands of Australia. Never mind that this tiny new political structure would not be independently viable or sustainable, economically, politically, or socially outside of Austrlain government directive.

Now where are some of the liberals today? Do they support Australian troops out of East Timor? No. In fact most have totally forgotten about East Timor after it got captured as a new satellite of Australian imperialism, a junior imperialism tied in with British and American imperialisms in their region. People in East Timor are half starved and unemployed, and have their Lilliputian pseudo ‘nation’ occupied now with Australians, and not Indonesians as before. And the Australian liberal socialist group called Democratic Socialist Party that campaigned for Australian imperialism to ‘liberate’ the 1/2 of an island from Indonesia is not pressing for Australian troops to come home from East Timor now, but rather is pressing for more ‘humanitarian’ interventionism into other parts of Indonesia, to split yet more islands away from that country into Australian government control.

What’s Austrlalia doing occupying East Timor? Under the pretense of peacekeeping, they are supporting one side against another in a civil war there. Time to get these Australian troops out and back home where they belonged all along.

Just how stupid is the American public?

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A recent Washington Post poll reports that over half the US public believes that in the last 4 years of war waged by the US against Iraq, that only 10,000 or less Iraqi civilians have lost their lives!

True, polls often claim to be accurate opinion takers when they are not, but this one seems to ring true. The poll goes on to report, that now, still less than 6 out of 10 believe that the US made a mistake by assaulting Iraq with its troops, which would make sense if over half of Americans also believe that less than 13,000 people (Iraqi civilians and American military personnel combined) have lost their lives, in 4 years of a war that has blown away more than a trillion dollars of US and Iraqi money when combined resources are put together. Or maybe they think that there have been ten to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi combatants killed, while all the civilians got off relatively Scot free? This illogic is not ignorance, but stupidity.

This is more than willful ignorance, too, but actually is just pure gross stupidity. Actually willful ignorance as Americans practice it routinely, over the long run will produce pure stupidity over time. How on earth would any rational person believe that so much money for war making could produce so little civilian casualties? It’s not like the money was going towards Iraqi reconstruction, because it is widely known that nothing works there. Not the oil lines, not the potable water, not the hospitals, not the electrical power grid, not the sewage systems. It takes pure stupidity to believe that all that Pentagon power only killed less than 10,000 civilians in 4 years. Not even Bush and Cheney would state that! So we are left with a population where over 1/2 of the people are even stupider than are the lies they receive from the charlatan liars in the highest offices.

What can we ever do with such a stupid population at hand? It’s not as if we can give half the US population brain transplants. to remedy the situation. It’s not mathematical ignorance that leads so many to add up 2+2 and not get 4, but rather it is lack of any brain power at all. And how many in the US believe the world is only 10,000 or so years old? How many believe in ghosts? Just how stupid is the US public? PLENTY.

Rebecca Tinsley and Darfur- when ‘Waging Peace’ is calling for imperialist military action

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Rebecca Tinsley, head of a British group called ‘Waging Peace’, spoke this past Tuesday at Colorado College. Her topic was Darfur and stopping a supposed genocide going on there. The report of the meeting in the Colorado College student newspaper neglected to mention that she was also director of this group, ‘Waging Peace’, nor that Tinsley is also a hotshot within the Carter Center.

And who else is hot within the Carter Center right now? Why it happens to be Madelyn Albright, who once told a CBC reporter that the deaths of half a million Iraqis per Clinton’s sanctions ‘were worth it’. Albright was also a featured speaker last year at an American rally calling for ‘action’ against Sudan. ‘Waging Peace’ it seems, is in reality making propaganda in favor of imperialist intervention rather than against it, though they might try to deny it.

I was unable to get to the Colorado College forum on time, but a quick google on Tinsley and ‘Waging Peace’ is quite educational in itself. Here is Tinsley calling for European imperialist intervention into the African country of Sudan from the website of that group she directs. See their Feb. 15, 2007 press release.

Rebecca Tinsley spends much of her time lobbying Tony Balir and George W. Bush to ‘intervene’ in Africa where she is fond of shouting GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE in every direction. It seems that she is not that interested in the genocides underway against the peoples of Iraq, Palestine, or Afghanistan, though. She specializes in calling for imperialist action, not for calling to stop imperialist action. She calls this ‘Waging Peace’!

Progressives need to educate themselves more about these NGO types that do as Rebecca Tinsley and the Carter Center associated liberal hawks like Madelyn Albright are doing with Darfur. Edward Herman has an interesting commentary today on Znet about Human Rights Watch, another NGO that is prone to shrill for starting off imperialist ‘actions’ by crying GENOCIDE, while staying rather mum on ongoing genocides by imperialist countries. See HRW in Service to the War Party

Of note: Rebecca Tinsley is also a member of the London Human Rights Watch committee.

I need a joint

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I need a joint, but religious people won’t let me have one. I need a joint at times because I suffer from the itch (pruritus, caused by mild pedal edema and skin allergies). No seriously, I do, really and it can be quite uncomfortable.

Marijuana relieves this condition but I won’t smoke it as long as it is illegal and my smoking it could put me in jail, wreck my ability to hold a license to work in my profession, etc. There is another medicine available fo this condition, but it is not over the counter for the same reason that marijuana isn’t over the counter legally. Religion makes for bad medicine, that’s why.

Religion has a long tradition of practicing medicine without a license. Look at all thee food laws in the Torah, Bible, etc. Think of what Hindus are not allowed to eat? Muslims prohibit pork amongst the meats because infested pork causes disease. If you are a Muslim, any medicine such as a ham sandwich is prohibited. Not even with a doctor’s prescription may you have one. Similarly, alcoholism is prevented theoretically for Muslims, by being flat out banned. Uh, for good health reasons I am sure. Hindus are not even allowed good chicken soup! Food is medicine and all religions practice medicine, often quite bad medicine, with their food fetishes. But they practice medicine in other ways too.

Christianity is just as bizarre as the other faiths are in regards to their ideas of what is good medicine. But at least with God’s food laws Christians don’t seem to obey them much anymore. But Christians do yank coca out of coke, the codeine out of cough syrup (despite it truly being the best drug for the condition of having a cough), and marijuana out of personal use and paper making, and make Atarax (a great med for itch of throat and skin) prohibited without an expensive visit to a doctor’s office.

Strangely enough, almost anything that reduces affliction in an effective manner is viewed with paranoia by Christians! Notice how ‘drug stores’ no longer are called that? That’s because drugs DO work, so our new word for drug distribution centers is now the word ‘pharmacy’. That’s because prescriptions most often don’t work, so they are considered superior to what does actually work within our overly religious society! That would be drugs chosen through one’s own efforts, rather than the efforts of the priestly docs.

Have you ever noticed how the major industrialized country with the most religious Christian nuttyness, the USA, has the nuttiest, most preposterous medical system in the entire industrialized world? It is not a mere coincidence. Lots of medicine here is considered good only because it hurts like Hell, delivers you to a Hellish-like state, are delivers you directly to Hell. Not a mere coincidence. Christians like Hell more than they like good medicine. That was a fact way before the Prohibition Era.

Well, since I don’t have the money to get a $5 drug (Atarax) with a $150 visit to the doctor’s office, nor have the illegal mota at hand, tonite I will just whip my feet with thorned branches in the manner of some wild extreme Christian penitent once again, as the itch comes across me after the swelling of my feet and the itch begins, shortly after the socks come off (pedal edema). And if I have a hard cough from a cold then I’ll do without the codeine, all because my Christian neighbors are all so damn nutty as Hell. They’ll let you rot ’till half dead, then spend a million dollars keeping you half alive. I need a joint. It’s too depressing thinking about it.

North Korea-US peace accord

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As the whole world waits for the coming US attack on Iran to begin, there appeared to be little interest in the announcement of a North Korea-US peace accord. That is kind of stunning, since the US has waged war against the Korean people for over half a century with disastrous loss of life as a consequence. Over 2 1/2 million people died in 3 years of conflict back in the early ’50s, and subsequently the US economic warfare waged against North Korea has killed millions more.

Wikipedia reports that between 600,000 to 3.5 million North Koreans lost their lives due to famine after the Soviet Union was bankrupted by the US imposed Cold War. This cut off the principal outside trade that was the lifeline of North Korea’s economic sustainability, as otherwise the US blocked out almost all foreign trade.

It helps to understand the context of all this loss of life. The US took over from the Japanese as being the principal imperialist occupiers of the Korean Peninsula at the end of WW2, and blocked the establishment of one country governed by Koreans themselves. Instead, the US installed a puppet regime in the south, very similar to the one later established in the South of Vietnam when the French got the boot from that country. When the end of the hot conflict ended in the US-Korean War, the US did not leave like they had to eventually in Vietnam. The US occupation had destroyed over 80% of the civilian infrastructure in Korea by mid 1953, and coming after the Japanese occupation of Korea during WW2, left the country divided and in total shambles. Plus, the end of hostilities left the US firmly in control and with military bases in the South of the Peninsula.

Is the new treaty real, or just a US ploy? Basically, it calls for North Korea to incrementally receive fuel oil supplies in exchange for incrementally dismantling its nuclear power program. As such, it runs directly counter to the US economic warfare against North Korea that has been the mainstay of US government foreign policy for decades. Condoleezza Rice hailed the accord as being a break through, while John Bolton panned it as being an ‘appeasement’. Actually, it appears that his main disagrement might probably be to having an accord which the US will deliberately not abide by in the months ahead. That will then make the US look rather bad, even if it allows Bush to now bide his time with North Korea as he wages war against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran in another part of Asia. In short, this appears to be a ‘peace’ that is not even paper thin in substance.

Not only is the US not prepared to help the North Korean economy economically, it is not prepared to do its part in removing nuclear weapons off the Korean Peninsula. The treaty appears to be more game playing than anything much else. It bides both North Korea time to further strengthen its weapons program in self defense, and time for the US government ot wage war in regions more important to its imperial plans regarding seizing energy supplies. Hopefully some day peace will finally come to the Koreans, but this is not the day.

US Out of Korea! Bring the Troops Home Now!

Pablo Picasso’s (US) Massacre in Korea

Democratic Guv Ritter betrays Colorado Labor-What a surprise!

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The Guv has just vetoed HB-1072, a Colorado bill that had already been passed in both houses of the Colorado State Government, and a bill he had promised the unions he would support. In doing this, he acted on behalf of the Republicans and business interests that want it to continue to be almost impossible to unionize work places in this state.

This veto was a total betrayal of the workers who voted for him, and believed his promise that he was pro-labor. He is not, and now has shown his true colors but only after he was elected by those in the Colorado Labor Movement who supported him with their votes, and in return got conned.

Workers would have been electing a union shop when they vote union if this legislation had been allowed to take effect. Now, if they vote to have a union, they don’t really get one since the current state law allows the losers of any employee vote to just opt out of paying dues, even as they still would benefit by any contracts negotiated to their benefit by the dues paying union workers in their workplace. This of course destroys the cohesiveness of those trying to present a solid front on behalf of the employees against the bosses, and as a result, makes it next to impossible to unionize.

The type of betrayal done by Democrat Bill Ritter is par for the course. Labor unions have been pumping billions of dollars through the years into the corporate Democrats, and as a result, is now so pitiful and debilitated in the US that essentially we have no functioning unions here in America. People don’t want to join the unions even if there is one around, simply because the laborcrats siphon off most of the dues to themselves, and into lobbying a political party, the Democratic party, that is pro business, and not pro worker. How stupid is that?

There is one bone thrown still tossed out by Ritter to the labor bosses of Colorado that spent union dues money in helping him get elected. They got a man with a Spanish last name, Don Mares, appointed to head up the Colorado Department of Labor. Oh Wow!

Mares is an attorney and vice president of the LAEF (Latin American Educational Foundation, and ex candidate for Denver mayor. The LAEF is a total corporate write-off and public relations group funded by the Coors Foundation, a major funder of Right Wing causes throughout the US. Some ‘labor’ rep Don Mares will make! The union hacks might as well throw their rank-and-filers’ union dues paying money to the wind as to keep funding these types of con artists. What losers they are, these trade union honchos lined up with the DP!

Governor Bill Ritter is just another case in point that the Democratic party sucks big time. Progressives need to stop wasting their time and money on these charlatans, and it sure is no way to rebuild the union movement in this state, or this country, to be trying to buy and lobby votes from the Democratic party politician scoundrels. All that good money wasted and for about next to total Zilch.

Coahuila, gay marriage capital of Mexico!

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While the NFL was promoting male chocolate wrestling during its halftime, Mexico’s PRI (Partido Revolutionario Institucional) decided to try to make its image gayer, Moo.

The PRI is the party of long time Mexican dictatorship, and suffers from shall we say?… a poor marketing image? So how to deal with that and contrast themselves as hot compared to their stodgy Catholic companions, the PAN? They decided in Coahuila to allow gay marriages!

That’s like if Idaho or Arizona’s state governments were to do such a thing here in the US. Plus, it helps the tourist trade in economically depressed Saltillo, the state capital. Look out Las Vegas! It will become a gay Mecca.

Saltillo is the new sin city of North America! Andale! But who the hell is ever going to see the PRI as the party of Mexican liberalism?

Win one for the Man(ning)!

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Peyton Manning signed photographYeehaw, Peyton won the Superbowl!
 
Lots of articles this week. Is football America’s religion? Unless you go to New Life Church, hell yeah! We worship. We sing. We dance. We praise. We repent. We are slain in the aisles. We are redeemed. We are brothers and sisters. We sit at the right hand of God. NO DOUBT.

I have to admit to being a rabid sports fan. I don’t know why. I can’t explain. But last night, when it became apparent that Peyton was gonna bring it home, I cried and cried. My kids gathered silently around me in an adorable show of compassion, not completely understanding but knowing that my tears were not tears of sadness.

I guess it’s about connection. I think it’s about dreams. Drama. Victory. Superiority. I honestly don’t know.

My ex-hub is a maniacal Northwestern University fan. He attended both undergrad and Med School there. Unfortunately, NW is an egghead school. No one, except Fisher DeBerry, wants to talk about what that means. It means NOT GOOD FOOTBALL. I’ll go no further.

In 1999, Northwestern won the Big Ten championship. I cannot tell you what an astounding feat this was with the likes of Michigan and Ohio State as competitors. It’s like Vandy winning the SEC. Dave and I, of course, went to Pasadena to see the Rose Bowl Parade (amazing) and the game against the USC (the University of Spoiled Children….better, the University of Low Class Jerks where OJ Simpson was an idol). Never a ruder crowd have we seen. No appreciation for the history. No appreciation for the record books. Just masses running around drinking beer being assholes.

The next year Northwestern barely missed another Big Ten Championship. They, instead, went to the Citrus Bowl. Again, Dave and I went. NW played the University of Tennessee, clad in unbelievably garish orange, speaking with heavy Southern drawls. Because the game was in Orlando, not too far from Tennessee, the crowd was comprised mainly of Vols fans. A pep rally was held on the eve of the big game, thousands of people clad in orange celebrating, partying, laughing. Peyton Manning, at the tender age of 22, stood at the podium and admonished the Vols fans to acknowledge NW’s accomplishments and to invite us to participate. It was a much different experience than we’d had at the Rose Bowl. Real people. Kind people. A classy Peyton Manning understanding the greater significance of football and history.

I am the same age as John Elway. So is Dave. We spent much of our married life loving the Broncos, living and dying by John’s performances and his screw ups. I remember Craig Morton. A great man but unable to move well. Enter John Elway. Bliss and pain. Our lives forever different.

John’s contemporaries are some of the best in NFL history. Dan, Joe, Troy, Boomer, Steve, Bernie, many more. John was stellar. He was amazing. He was bright and classy and visionary. Somewhat erratic in the beginning. Then just magic. Especially in the fourth quarter.

The Superbowl victory eluded John for years. Though he was one of the most accomplished QBs in history, he was diminished by the fact that he never won a Superbowl. Sure, he didn’t have much to work with but, in history, no one cares about that. When the Broncos won in Miami in ’99, I was there. I was overwrought. I was crying and laughing. I think the Rolling Stones performed at half time….I hardly remember. I just wanted John to have his scepter. And he did.

Peyton has had a similar experience. A first round draft pick, like Elway. An incredible record, like Elway. Victories. Accolades. Press. Passion. Love. But no Superbowl ring.

Dan Marino, possibly the greatest QB in NFL history, never brought home the big one. That will be his legacy. He will always be known as the great QB that never brought home the prize. I’m so glad that Peyton won’t have that monkey on his back.

Peyton! Peyton! Peyton!

Algonquin, Iroquois, Hmong, Montagnard, Pashtun, Kosovars, Bosnian Muslims, Kurds, Timorese

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What a tragic list. The list is actually much, much larger than the one I put here as the title of this thread, but the unifying theme is a simple one. It is a list of smaller national groupings that have cooperated in some way with major imperialist powers, usually with tragic results to themselves. It is a list of smaller cultural, racial, national groupings that have gotten historically used and buffeted by much larger powers, that themselves were acting in their own perceived interests within much larger world conflicts.

An interesting and poorly taught history, is the history of the conflicts between the Algonquin vs the Iroquois, French vs the British, then enter the Americans, too with their own internal conflicts. Much easier to teach are the fables of Pocahontas and that of ‘Thanksgiving’. How much brutal warfare for the Algonquin and the Iroquois as they tried to side with one group of Europeans against the other. Their efforts to survive were only minimally successful.

Then are the stories of the Hmong and Montagnards, who cooperated in one degree or another with the French and the US in their imperial efforts to dominate SE Asia. They did so in rebellion against their own domination within their regional societies by the more numerous Vietnamese, Lao, and Khmer peoples. But as a result, they became soon ‘strangers in their own land’, so to speak. Many ended up in far away exiles in the US and elsewhere.

And look what has befallen the Pashtun, used by the US and the US allied Arab dictatorships to battle against the exSoviet Union which backed different Norht Afghan groupings of other national backgrounds. Much more complicated than just blaming it on the Taliban or ‘Muslim extremism’, as the idiot US Right Wing does so.

The Kosovars remain with 60% unemployment years after Clinton/ Gore’s war. What have they gotten by cooperating with US imperial interests against their neighbors, the Serbs? Little, it seems. Would ‘independence’ bring any better? It is doubtful, since Serbia is unlikely to easily forget such an evil alliance between Albanian and American. And the Bosnian Muslim? He faces a backing that now is in a religious war against the very same religion backed just yesterday.

The Kurds? They had certainly legitimate reason to rebel against Saddam Hussein and the his Arab Sunni grouping. But now they are linked irremediably to the CIA and Pentagon, even as those same sinister forces back Kurd oppression next door in Turkey. Iraqi Kurdistan is now the better off section of Iraq, yet what a dangerous situation for the Kurdish people long term.

And the Timorese? Half of Timor remains part of Indonesia, and the other half is now an impotent pseudo state, dependent on the UN, Australia, and the US for its semi-starvation bound existence. Its 1,000,00 people are divided into an incoherent number of language, tribal, ethnic, and cultural groups, whose only field of unity is that most everybody is of Christian religion, legacy of Portuguese imperialism.

US/ Australian imperialism split off a Christian portion of Indonesia and mainly to help control better the oil resources for themselves, and not the people being manipulated. There can be little independent and local economy in such a miniscule and divided half of an island. Meanwhile, Indonesian Timor has more population, more economic activity, and is not a society that is essentially a colony dependent on White racist Australia. It is part of the Indonesian archipelago of 17,000 islands, and not a colonialist split off.

How sad the results most always are, when small national, ethnic, and cultural groupings get picked up and carried along in the power plays by various imperialist world powers. What will happen to the Balkans, will they ever be able to restabilize themselves now that imperialism has reentered into their affairs in such a major way? What will happen to the Kurds, Shia, and the Sunni/ What about all the ethnic groups of Afghanistan and Pakistan? All now victims of US power plays.

Boston goes bananas!!!!!!!!!!!

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Yesterday, the stooges from Homeland Security blew off a cool half million plus dollars attacking other cartoon creatures who were apparently discovered by a subway worker. Terrified, she called ‘the authorities’ who immediately mobilized a bomb squad and apparently ground Boston to a complete and total stop. Details are so embarrassing that they have been declared top secret by our whorish corporate press, and are being withheld from public scrutiny. Ted Turner has fled the country and is now being sought in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

In other news, Russian babies found gagged in hospital and Al Franken declares his candidacy for Senator from the state of Louisiana. And another country, Andorra, has now indicted CIA agents to stand trial for kidnapping one of its citizens that was rendered to an American military base in Kosovo where he was then sent to Afghanistan to later be tortured. Along with Italy and Germany, this is now the third European country to be trying to locate American CIA agents for acts of common criminality on that continent. Liechtenstein may soon follow.

Mexico’s oil is running out so up goes the Border Wall

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Americans are under the impression that Mexico is an extremely poor country. It is not. It is the world’s 5th largest oil producer, and the US economy’s 2nd largest foreign supplier of oil. Canada is #1, while Saudi Arabia comes in at #3. It’s per capita income is significantly higher than that of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina. China is considered an economic super power, yet Mexico has 4 times the per capita income of that country. Mexico even has the world’s 2nd largest oil field. There is only one problem though. Mexico’s oil reserves are running out.

Yes, it is predicted that Mexico may only have about 10 more years before its 2 major oil fields go dry. What then? It is a country of over 100,000,000 people, and its government gets over half of what it spends from its oil revenues. As a result, the national oil company, PEMEX, is billions upon billions in dept, even as it funds the nation. Mexico wants to join up with US prosperity, even as the US itself is running into problems finding new sources of cheap oil to float its own economy. And Mexico is in much worse shape in that regard.

In this desperate world of energy depletion we are now entering into, it’s all for one’s self, so up goes The Wall. A decade ago, the promises were made that all would enter into a new world of prosperity through NAFTA. Free flow of everything! But how quickly dreams built on mirages can fall. We are now in a war to steal the energy resources away from the people of Iraq and Iran, and there is not about to be any US elite misgivings, if they have to screw over the Mexicans in a few short years ahead. A brave new world awaits us.

A small note… wikipedia states that with current rates of consumption, the world’s oil reserves will run out in 32 years. Be sure to check your tire pressures .

Also of interest… Mexicans stage tortilla protest

US National Surveillance State issues out the national ID cards to us

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There used to be a lot of worry about the government issuing a national identification card to all of us and then requiring us to carry it all the time so that they could monitor us, The People, all the time. Well now that they are actually slipping that noose half around our neck, the population of the US is without a bleep of protest against it. Maybe it is because the name of the national ID card sounds so familiar and appears as nothing much new? The national ID card is called a passport, and it will soon be required for all travel outside the US, even to Mexico and Canada.

What? Don’t think of the passport as a national ID card? Well that’s what it is becoming in graduated steps. When you apply for one, you are registering with the federal government. They already have a list of grading people on supposed ‘flight risk’, and it will be an easy task to meld this to the passport. And what’s to stop an ‘overland travel risk’ list from being added on now? After all, one can hijack a bus and do some major damage with it if one wants. All America must be protected from that, they will say.

These new passport requirements were slipped in by the Bush Administration without even the most minimal discussion and with zero protest within the House and Senate. Millions of people (Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans) who never had passports are now being herded into having to obtain one. Our whole county is being turned into a gated community, all under the excuse of bettering our own security. In fact, much of the North American continent is being turned into a high security zone, where people will travel between countries while under a secret surveillance pegged to their passports.

This secret surveillance does not now, and certainly will not in the future, have any due process as to who gets to go, and who is made to stop at the series of gates that will be put into effect. That will be a military decision, since the Department of Homeland Security and MIGRA really are part of the military model, not civilian one. If this reminds you of Palestinians within the areas controlled by Israel, then you get the picture of the model being used by this passport system of surveillance. It is all quite arbitrary and beyond the reach of legal rules and observations.

We are only now in the first steps of this new, comprehensive surveillance system being put into place. but the fact that we don’t even recognize much what is really being done is not promising for stopping and reversing course. All the blame for ‘inconveniences’ will be placed on Osama bin Laden, and not our own misleaders. We will be told that it is wartime and that our liberties must be compromised. We will be told that there are certain elements of our society that are high risk to the rest of us. Wait! Did I say we WILL be told that? We are already being told all this, and most of us nod our heads in acquiesence.

An Iron Curtain is Descending is a good article at the counterpunch site about the already occurring effects of this new surveillance system upon people. Check it out!

Don’t blame US, Iran did it!

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It looked for a while that the Bush Administration would use WOMD as their excuse to attack Iran. Then came along all the rhetoric that Iran was led by anti-Jewish leaders who were rearing to go at Israel with nuclear weapons. Then Iran was accused of destabilizing Lebanon, as if the US and israel had not done that themselves. But at last, we get to the current grand lie that the US media is using to sell Bush’s new strategy to regionalize the war to Iran and Syria. It can be summed up as, ‘Don’t blame US for the mess in Iraq, Iran did it! We going to kick their ass!’

The beauty of this line of unreason by the US government is that it not only takes all the blame of Bush and his cronies for the debacle there in Iraq, it takes the blame of the Iraqis themselves. For weeks Bush and all the gang have been blaming Iraqis for what has befallen them, with statements that US ‘patience’ was not unlimited and blah, blah, blah. There were exhortations that the Iraqis must get their act together, etc. The US ruling class love to think of themselves as the adults, and their colonial victims as children! Bad Iraqis! Go to your room now! But that line of crap was getting quite old real fast with the American and world public.

So with this new propaganda blitz to encourage the American dummy to support yet more bloodshed in the Middle East, it’s just great to be able to blame, get this, Iranian Muslim militancy for what’s gone wrong in Iraq.

“Shucks, Folks. We done nothing wrong. I take full responsibility, it’s the Iranians that are attacking our troops that done the damage, not I, George Bush.” How clever! So let’s go bomb them!

One of the most incredible nonsense possible to see, is the bipartisan pretense that the US is there to help Iraqis out. Hell we’re not there for our own health, but because the Iraqis need us. Damn Iranians now messing that up! How dare they interfere in their neighboring country, when we have come halfway from around the world to show the dumb Arabs how to build democracy. “Stay out, you terrorist bastards! Our patience is limited. You attack our troops, as we know you are already doing, and we’ll nuke you before you can develop nucler weapons!”

The fun thing about this new threat to National Security that must be blown up, is the Hollywood will now get to make new movies where American heroes (one Black, and the other White) now will get to route out and shoot down Persian terrorists, instead of the Pentagon standard Arab ones! This will be the White House inspired movie script… US soldier super-heroes save innocent Iraqi children’s lives from Persian super-villians, who are on the verge of killing them all off with chemical weapons, even as they laughingly munch on Gi Joe’s candy handouts. Thank you, US Department of Defense.

Don’t blame Bush, Iran did it! So we’ll have to blow them up, too. Shop till you drop, American consumers. Or, Stop Escalation

iraqi body count

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 http://www.iraqbodycount.org/names.php

this is an listing of the IDENTIFIED bodies. Of Civilians killed in Iraq since the invasion. Up to February 2006 meaning the list is a year old.

3,670 individuals, including a minority for whom only a PARTIAL name or Familial relationship could be established.

quote 

“In any use of these names please give due honour to the unidentified
dead not in this list whose numbers far exceed these named victims. For
every identified individual on the list there are another 9 confirmed
Iraqi civilians killed for whom we do not have identifying information.
In contrast, virtually every coalition soldier killed can be identified
by name and other biographical information.

There is no
organised effort to name all victims of the war. Only when all have
been identified and duly recorded can there be any talk of respecting
their memory.

To those who knew and loved them, and are in no need of reminding, we offer our condolences.” end quote.

By mentioning that those who are unidentified number at least 9 times as many as are identified, that once again leaves open the Question:

 How can the United States Government and The British Crown both insist that every Iraqi killed has been an Insurgent, When they can’t even identify more than 10% of them?

How would you know for sure that somebody is a radical or enemy if you don’t know who the hell he was?

If your smart bombs are so smart that they can’t possibly kill anybody but the Bad Guys, then you would know exactly who the targets were before bombing them, wouldn’t you?

If your agencies had the intelligence as to who they were bombing while they were still alive why are only 10% of them identified, post mortem?

It would make a sick kind of perverted sense to withhold the Identities of people who you have captive, and are torturing for information, but what harm can it do to disclose the names of the Dead?

Who do you think you’re fooling? Ok so I got that last one from a song by Rhymin’ Paul Simon.

The lists are organized into 2 formats, A4 size and US letter size, .pdf files and about 3 megabytes each.

3 and a half thousand out of one estimate of half a million. That’s more like a half a percentage point. Even at the admittedly low estimate of 150 thousand that only ramps it up to just over 2%.

I am reminded of the fellow from Yahoo answers who said that the American Left were more concerned about the Iraqi civilians than “Our Troops”, and too many cameras recording the killings and somehow portraying the Evil Notion that the Iraqi people are… well… People.

and there were a couple of others who posted in the same Answers question that made the Administration talking point that we are over there to help the Iraqis.

If they are there to help the Iraqi people, shouldn’t they actually BE CONCERNED about the people they are “helping”?

That post was deleted by Yahoo!Answers. They never sent me any answer about why it was deleted.

US out to control Iran’s natural gas

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Most thinking people in the world now realize that the US invaded and occupies Iraq in order to control the oil underground there. While other oil producing countries were rapidly depleting their major oil fields of the precious natural resource that lay underground, that was not the case with Iraq. The country lagged far behind in developing their oil fields due to its disastrous war with Iran and the economic sanctions that the US later initiated against them. The oil largely stayed in the ground for about a 20 year period of time. But what about Iran? Why is the US government on the move to try to regime change there?

Iran at first seems to be not as worthy of Iraq to fall victim to a US energy grab. Their reserves of oil are in decline, and that is one reason that the government seeks to develop nuclear energy. However, there are 2 other carbon energy forms that are also of vast importance besides oil. Natural gas and coal. Iran has three and one half times the reserves of the US in natural gas, and is only behind one much larger country, Russia, in underground stocks of that commodity.

As we know, much of Europe is dependent on Russia’s natural gas to get their communities heated each Winter. This is an extremely important fuel resource even if it is not as central to the world’s growing energy crisis as oil is. And just like oil, both India and China are looking to increase their imports of natural gas, too. Being Number 2 in reserves of natural gas in the world is no small matter. And world natural gas supplies are due to peak in several decades, all the more to make Iran’s naturla gas a very important target for other’s greed.

It is true, that the American government’s political desire to destroy Iranian influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf is probably as large a factor to the US drive to engage in war against Iran as just the desire to commit outright theft.. But the drive to rob and control this huge reservoir of natural gas plays almost as prominent a part in the neocon ‘surge’ to fuck Iran over, as does the desire to only politically neutralize/neuter them. Excuse the bad language. But when I discuss the American mafia imperialist strategy, for some reason I begin to talk like Richard Nixon?

Natural Gas. All cause for more war profiteering.

We are weeks, and maybe just days before the US assault on Iran begins. No Blood for Oil! No blood for Natural Gas! This is not the way to begin to deal with the world’s energy crisis. A continued world wide resource war will only make the transition away from the unsustainable excessive misuse of carbon energy forms, even more painful and disastrous than it has to be.

America’s rolling invasion of Somalia

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The US invasion and occupation of Somalia is like that of Haiti, nobody is paying much attention. And like the current occupation of Haiti, it ‘rolls’. What do I mean by describing this as a ‘rolling invasion’, for it is a term I think that describes the now prototypical US intervention into the affairs of other nations? Lebanon, too, is being violated by an American rolling invasion as yet another example. So let’s take a quick look at Somalia then, to get a glimpse of the US strategy everywhere for its misnamed ‘war on terrorism’.

In Somalia, the US first arranged an invasion of that country using Ethiopian troops. Then it followed by bombing the country from US ships. Just several weeks after the initial assault using another country’s military, that of Ethiopia, the US is switching them out, and moving a contingent of another country’s military in, 1,500 Kenyans troops. In turn, the US is pressuring Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa amongst other countries, to follow. And without any interest at home what-so-ever, the US bombed Somalia once again just yesterday!

Imagine how the Somalians feel? As a Muslim country they finally get some semblance of government after 15 years of chaos, but then the US returns once again to topple the cart yet one more time. The US sponsored troops? Thousands of Christian Ethiopians! And to follow up this humiliation using a traditional enemy of one nation, the US brings in yet a second nation’s troops. See the roll? Like rolling waves of a heavy surf on the beach. This will then be followed by an eclectic assortment of other nations, none of which have anything in common with the natives, except for their racial coloring perhaps. And that of being sponsored by George W. Bush!

We could go to Iraq or Afghanistan to see the same nonsensical outsourcing of imperialism once again. But let’s look at Lebanon first. US invasion launched using Israeli troops first. Less than successful, so the Jewish forces pull partially back out. The US then has an unwanted UN move into the country as so-called ‘peacekeepers’. The US then threatens Hezbollah. The US then has France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, and others to cajole the country with being given possible funds to rebuild itself some. The US threatens Syria and Iran. What will Bush roll in with next? US troops? Or maybe Polish troops? Don’t joke, they are already in Iraq and Afghanistan in large numbers. How about Japanese? Don’t joke, they are in Iraq! At the end of 2006, Yugoslavia had its area of Kosovo occupied by troops from 30 nations! Talk about a Tower of Babel!

OK, enough of Lebanon. More rolling imperialism, the grand daddy of idiotic imperialism, Haiti! US invades, deposes the legitimate president, and then partially removes itself, bringing in Canadians (some speak French) and Brazilians (many are Black)! Haitians in the streets improve their language skills in French and Portuguese. But wait! Troops arrive on behalf of Dubya from China, Chile, Argentina, France,Nepal, Jordan, Peru, Sri Lanka!, and Guatemala! (80 of them). I especially think the Haitians are impressed with Sri Lanka and Guatemala coming to visit. Those 2 militaries have such great reputations! And Haitians love a circus!

Isn’t all this rolling imperialism reminiscent of the Romans? They would send in all sorts of barbarians from one end of the Empire into the next. Can we even begin to imagine our own reaction if we were ever to be disrespected with such occupations and warmaking against us, as the US uses against so many others? Imagine if the former Soviet Union had won the Cold Ware, and followed it by occupying our country with troops speaking 20 different languages, 30 different cultures, etc.? That certainly would have gotten us into an enduring peace, for sure! lol.

Where will the US invasion of Somalia roll off to? What new group of heathens to trample on? Will any American ever really give a damn about these smaller societies that get run roughshod over by their government? Liberals are too busy trying ot get the US to send troops to Chad and Darfur to notice much where the troops are actually at. Some have yet to figure out that there is a war going on in Afghanistan, for example. Though it is encouraging to see that the latest poll finally finds over 1/2 of Americans are for withdrawal from that country at last. No thanks to the Democratic Party, I might add. Afghanistan is a dirty word for them to mention.

These rolling invasions create nothing but chaos and misery.

Made in the US- Iraq’s wave of refugees

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WalMart may be as Chinese as rice these days, but there is still one product that’s made still in the US of A. Our government still leads the world in making refugees out of people. Let’s look at Iraq alone, where 2,000,000 have fled outside the country’s, and 2,000,00 more are internal refugees at ‘home’. Iraq’s population was only about 27,000,000. One out of seven then, have been made refugees by the violence of the US invasion and occupation.

Before that, when the US gave Afghanistan the Taliban and Osama, 1/5 of the population there had already become refugees. I don’t know how they can even do a count there now? It is hopeless, after decades of US warmaking there, to even try. And US war making in South America has made about 1,000,000 Colombians internal refugees, though that number may be down at moment. And who can forget how US foreign policy has kept 4,500,000 Palestinian refugees in place, and who can forget the refugees of SE Asia? Those of Central America? So many everywhere…. US made.

From time to time there are contenders to our throne, especially form locales like the Congo and Sudan. But the US has always been a leader in Africa at refugee making, too. The US heyday was back when it was supporting the South African and Rhodesian Apartheid regimes, as they waged wars across half the continent. Millions became refugees due to that US African foreign policy, in just Angola and Mozambique alone. And the US vs Russia in the horn of Africa? Well who can count them?

One strategy of the US to stop the iraqis from fighting the theft of their oil underground? Shoot! Well why not just make ALL THE COUNTRY refugees? Totally depopulate it then! Maybe that’s what’s really behind Bush’s hidden strategy, The Surge? Like a tsunamai wave on shore, all to wash all out to sea! Brilliant! Made in America, the 21st Century refugee. How proud can we be, with the American production of this product of our Great Society? Go for Iran, too?

Democracy Now on KRCC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Super bowl Janet Jackson and Republican morality.

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This is something I published a couple of years ago. Every bit as relevant as today. And every bit today as then, some things are timeless.
This one contains a “dirty” word, so you might go ahead and set your browser Content Filter to profanity blocking. Better to censor yourself than try to censor me.

But now, once again, we are going to have the hyperbole and rampant commercialism pushed onto our senses, over and over and over and endlessly and I bet you thought I was going to say over again and again and again and repeatedly.

I don’t know the exact date of the Super Bowl. Just that it’s about a couple of weeks. I know the Chicago Bears are going to be one team, because of the hype I got as soon as I opened one of my email servers.

I am sure everybody is going to get lots and lots of Emails saying Bears or ? you choose… or New Poll: Who will it be Bears or ?

There will be jockeying to find out what the commercials are going to be for the half-time show, there will be much breathless wide-eyed awe and stories about what the commercials and so much (ok, I lied, there are more than one “dirty” word in this) all kinds of who-seriously-gives-a-fat-rat’s-ass-about-it bullshit, to lead us up to the Big Game.

A lot of the commercials are going to be for beer. And other drugs, especially alcoholic drugs.

You know the ones, they say at the end of it “(name of brewer/distiller) urges you to DRINK (notice they put this word last) responsibly”.

It is dope dealing at its finest. The crack house and the opium den and the weed corner are blown away (sick dope reference) by this magnum opus of Purveyance of Demon Rum.

And it is on a Sunday, a Pagan holy day, co-opted by Christianity, for worship of our respective God or gods. Pastors in Churches across the land are going to schedule their services, especially the evening services, around this latter-day Circus Maximus. And their morning services too, because the worshipers are going to have to rush to the store after services so they can score their dope and munchies for the BIGGGGG DEALLLLL…….

So I got the Super Bowl part embedded in our consciousness, right?

Now to the Republican Morality part, for a quick tease, then to Janet Jackson and the Infamous Titty Incident, then back to a slightly longer rant on Republican “Morality”.

The owners of the NFL teams, virtually all of them, are supporters of the Republican party. And the R’s pay it back in spades by supporting legislation that makes the PUBLIC TREASURY pay for the stadia, (yes, I spelled that last word right, I’m practicing my Latin, are you?) the security, the traffic control, and in-stadium dope I mean Beer Sales. That last because some stadia, like the ill-fated Cotton Bowl in Dallas, are in dry precincts. Which is the real reason the Cowboys don’t play in Dallas, for decades it has been in Irving, and next year it won’t be in Dallas County even.

The cities have to pay for the construction of the stadia out of bond money, and they are always told that it will boost the local economy.

Also here in Colorado, there was a guy running for Senator, you might recognize the name Pete COORS. And yes, he is heir to the beer fortune.

On to The Titty Incident.

Janet Jackson, during the half-time 3 years ago or was it 4, I lose count of things like football. Got her costume deliberately torn at the end of a song and exposed part of her (gasp! the HORROR!!) breast. Now, I didn’t get to see this. I don’t watch football. The homo-eroticism of 22 very large gentlemen throwing their bodies at each other doesn’t do it for me.

There was much scandal. Much public outcry. Much Breast Beating in the halls of Congress, (yeah, I know, that last joke was horrible but I had to get it off my chest) even the Commander in Chimp of the United States saying that he hadn’t watched the incident, but it was a lovely breast.

Ok so I might have taken a little liberty with that last statement, but I don’t keep abreast of the off the wall statements of Mr Bush, every time I try to watch one of his speeches my brain tries to escape by crawling out my left ear.

The Moral Outrage sweeping the country was amazing, especially in the R party.

Like Mr Coors.

 During the 04 super bowl, and I know I know, the Super Bowl calendar starts from S.B. I and S.B.II and so forth, with the not-very-subtle Roman numerals numbering system. Instead of A.D. or C.E., measured from the birth of Christ or the birth of Christianity, depending on your faith viewpoint. But I don’t worship the oblong ball. So it matters naught to me how the Hell many S.B. there were.

Mr Coors was OUTRAGED about this public impropriety. How dare they interrupt his half time show where he had a commercial or two over the years, with scantily clad women whose costumes showed a substantially higher percentage of overall Breast Acreage than Ms Jackson did, telling the poor saps watching that somehow they would have a shot at touching these breasts if they only buy his brand of Dope. For people who keep up with such things, these are the modern version of the Vestal Virgins performing their religious duty at the modern Circus Maximus, the Cheerleaders, who get paid a paltry amount for their Services on the field, but get much more opportunity working in commercials. Like for Mr Coors.

Since this was an Election Year, when all the Noble Laws about the Half Time show being lagged 4 seconds or so just to protect America from such an awful sight ever again….

And the Republican NFL team owners who pimp out these Vestal Virgins as part of their Circus, were also outraged, that Ms Jackson would Dare To Expose America to a sight of substantially less breast-age than their own cheerleaders and even most of the Female fans and even some of the (ewwweewwww) male fans show during every game. I mean, one team has its fans wear cheese on their heads, and paint their naked upper torsi green and yellow, and show over and over again one in particular a set of udders that would make a topless dancer envious (or nauseous) and who happens to be a guy (I think)

So this year we will be (or you will be, I plan to be out riding my bicycle, while the streets are practically deserted for four or five hours) watching a heavily subsidized, heavily censored, erotic commercial enterprise, knowing that the GOP Big Brother apparatus will be protecting us from such unseemly behaviour ever again occurring.

Where to host the war crimes trials

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War Crimes Trial in privateNotMyTribe is soliciting proposals for where to hold the impending War Crimes Trial. Brent Green replies:
 
In my van downtown.

This is kind of how I see it going: I’ll drive my van downtown- there’s a huge parking lot right on the bank of the river behind the UPS packing center. It’s unmarked, which I see as my biggest asset here, the secrecy of an unmarked van will keep these officials on familiar ground. I’ll hold out my dictionary (the only title the used bookstore wouldn’t purchase from me) and say “Place your right hand on this Science Bible, and promise that you’ll try hard not to fuck up.” W says “I swear.” I don’t believe him, he seems insincere, but I didn’t really give myself a backup option, so we move on.

I guess Bush will take the stand- a comfortable cloth spinning captain’s chair (one of Bush’s demands I’ll have to meet in order for him to submit to trial). I’ll grill him mercilessly.

“True or False: you are _______.” The correct answer is that tricky T/F hybrid that everyone mastered in elementary school quizzes, but that’s a very hard letter to say, so he’ll probably get this one wrong.

Whereupon I’ll make a powerful and moving objection “HEADS WILL ROLL!!!” I’ll shout, the wind shaking my ride.

We’ll turn on the radio for intermission. Some Mexican college rock station. Yo la tengo espanol.

And if you want experience and variety, this is your location. It’s seen it all. I got it from my Uncle Oscar who met Jack Kerouac once (not in the van)- it’s seen all there is: Illinois, DUI, DOA, FBI, Florida and a charging wild elk. Before Oscar raced dogs he used the van as an ambulance.

I pretended I was a lawyer once, to get my girlfriend a paycheck her boss was trying to keep for hisself.

Back when Great Uncle Oscar had the van it was always kept in tip-top shape. Uncle Oscar was rich. He was always saying “Get in the fucking van!!”

Uncle Oscar got more money than the government racing dogs between the cars on Wall Street.

Uncle Oscar lost his mind when his mistress died, and grew a cancerous hole the size some governments between his throat and his lungs. Wheezing like an elephant chasing dogs no one else could see up and down the cellar stairs. (Later, up, down and back up the street.)

Uncle Oscar’s legs went numb on Christmas Eve, a cart pulled by his dogs brought him to our front door (he was sitting on the hood, hollering whiskey fumes above the engine’s roar). With two strong hands and a trunk full of stuff he invited us “Come on In!” tramping snow through shoveled flowerbeds. He wasn’t yet, but he already looked dead.

After a long hard chase, Oscar liked to climb in his van and “help people.” He’d go ambulancing with a stethoscope and pliers and a bottle of Mescal. Mescal is terrible. Just everyone thinks so. Hitler didn’t like it ’cause it made him mean. But apparently it cures everything. Even road rash. Just say you’re halfway between the cab and the sidewalk and an ambulance turns you into a chalkline- Oscar’s there before you wake up. He cleans the blood off the hood with your shirt and puts you in the back. He opens the bottle, wraps your lips around the funnel, and moves the muscles in thee jaw (with his right hand- the left tipping back the bottle) ’till your teeth and your tongue eat the worm. Ambulancing was fun- even though I guess it directly led to my disbarrement (it was the only cause). I always told him it wasn’t his fault- but it was. Entirely.

Anyway, I guess Oscar should be the judge. He’s the oldest person I know, and he always says he’s done his share of courting.

Old Uncle Oscar, all hopped up on Viagara, screaming at Conde Rice “I hear my zipper shaking!”

I need these war crimes trials.