Tag Archives: ALF

I have a pacifism problem

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Mahatma Gandhi Ghandi GandiIf a pacifist falls in the forest, does he save anybody? I do not mean in the metaphysical sense.
 
If a hundred thousand pacifists fall, out of sight from anyone to witnesses their deaths, struck down every last one by anti-pacifists, do they increase pacifism or simply deliver their own extinction? What if it’s a half a million in East Timor? Or several million in a Turkish desert? If there are no witnesses to report it, no writers to remember it, no masses to empathize, there is no outrage, no call to common humanity.

Gandhi had the accruing outrage of the British people built on a century of brutal massacres of unarmed Indians. He also benefited from an honorable free press. Both ensured that Gandhi’s non-violent actions could spark an outcry and tip the scales of social justice. The Native Americans had no such good fortune, quietly annihilated far from civilization’s eyes. The Palestinians are not faring any better, interned by the Jews, suffering the steady attrition designed into concentration camps and Indian reservations.

My problem with pacifists such as the Dalai Lama is that their goals lay in another world, the next. Their escape for the Dark Ages would have been to proceed further into darkness. The answer to getting Tibet back from the Chinese lies not in relinquishing it. Pacifism may soothe the soul and calm our anger only that it allows us a serene death. Pacifism resolves the conflicted feelings we have about losing a homestead. It will not win it back.

As the barbarians breach the gates, religious leaders always call for non-violent acquiescence. The purpose may be to die with dignity, or else it’s the hopeful belief that “they can’t kill us all.” But history has shown, from prehistory to the present, they most certainly can. Look up barbarian in the dictionary. Their savagery extends beyond the scope of human beings to imagine it. Had that feeling lately about today’s unspeakable acts? Is it beyond your comprehension that elements of mankind might be immovably barbaric?

Perhaps you are of the mind that if barbarous cockroach man dominates the earth, it will be a world in which you no longer choose to live. But be square in such case about your call to pacifism. Others may not share your abdication of responsibility to this life.

Youth revisited

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(Author’s note: this entry has been revised due to the offense taken at its initial publication. It was not intended to make fun of anyone in particular. This article is about the strange cultural pressure for women to look unnaturally young. Woman have always sought to look youthful, but modern medicine now allows them to try for bloomin’ youth, except of course around the edges. We need to dissuade women from this folly because plastic surgery has yet to sculpt a feature that can age with you.)
 
Tissue wrapped in a corn fieldNicole Richie. What is she selling with this dress? I’m asking because I just attended a society function and this look was everywhere. I don’t mean the unwrap- me-my-body-is-a-gift-to-you look. More the faded- beauty-but-I-feel-fresh-as-a-pop-tart- popped-tart look. What is that?
 
I can imagine these women think that they have to compete with teen porn on the internet. So how’re they doing?

Do they resemble anything in nature? Nicole’s not the gaudiest example, but she’s already flirting with recreating something she is not: in this picture, ripe corn. With her hairline and sallow eye sockets, indian corn would be more like it, and the dress would be the loosely affixed branches and twigs which frame it on your door. A welcoming semblance of bounty, pretty but plainly inedible.

Can any amount of skin cream, Botox and muscle sculpting refashion a woman to her teenage bloom? Surely their mirrors do not deceive them. Do they think that an ersatz bloom-of-youth is anything but monstrous, especially in the spookiness of twilight?

I shouldn’t begrudge Nicole the half-peeled banana look. She’s put a great deal into her physical appearance and she can maximize its exposure. I ran into the same phenomenon at the society fundraiser. A woman there, who it’s said is quite self-effacing about what she’s spent on her boobs, wore a dress which half revealed them. I don’t know if she meant to upstage herself with her breasts, but that was the effect. Very nice to look at certainly, but quite an effort to talk to her.

Perhaps these youth costumes are not intended for men anyway. The creams and oils and aromas and salts may be all about a virtual reality more sensual than a man’s imaginary visual-based surreality. If a woman can wear something that makes her feel like a spring chicken’s bare bottom delivered on a silver platter, who am I to complain? Outside of the privacy of their baths however, I wonder if both men and women are rather more interested in people who inhabit their age.

Revision 11/25
Why do I hold so tenaciously to this argument? Because when I beheld those many augmented women, I could not image what it was like for their husbands. I defy anyone to tell me, as years pass, they look at their spouse and say “my goodness she’s getting old!” She’s the only one thinking that and God Dammit where is that coming from?

A mate can exercise and recover his or her health, to perhaps some notice, but otherwise our eyes grow only fond and familiar. On the other hand, the person you love coming home from a clinic in bandages, to be unveiled as looking like a strange somebody else, could only be shocking, as welcome as a disfiguring accident I think, sad.

No matter how much a surgeon is an artiste, facial reconstruction is at best face-saving. It is no match for what nature gave us, and as we wither, it takes away. We may not all start as beautiful, but of all the physical traits that define beauty, two come with age: kindliness and grace. If you weren’t born with those you can get them.

Why don’t they arrest Dumbya?

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Tantrum-meister on tarmacAs we are treated to picture after picture of our president traversing the globe, don’t you wonder why one of those nations doesn’t arrest the little prick? How is it our war-monger emperor doesn’t find himself shaking hands with constables, being informed that he’s being detained for crimes against humanity, most of them already self-confessed?

Diplomatic immunity protects government leaders from politically motivated law enforcement. Technically, a nation has to agree to respect the diplomatic immunity of our officials before we consent to venture overseas. But technically too, the 1968 Conventions on Statutes of Limitations, to which the US is a signatory, prevents any domestic or international law from limiting the reach of war crimes prosecution.

That our little emperor can trot the globe without fear of arrest is an illustration of how virtually the entire planet is our empire. American hegemony insures that while populations certainly oppose our actions, their leaders will not.

The other day I watched a junior high adaptation of hacky-sack. A half-dozen boys take turns trying to keep airborne a beany-orb, that’s hacky-sack. In this adaptation three successive kicks entitle that boy to grab the hacky-sack and fling it as hard as he can at someone, rendering that person out, with a bruise to match. The game goes on until the last man standing. To whom the ball is given each turn is apparently random.

I noticed that one boy was a lot better at keeping the hackysack aloft, and I noticed too that he was given it with much more regularity than the others. I asked later as to why the other boys would keep giving him the ball. Because then, I was told, you’re less likely to be his next victim.

Economic Democracy, some assembly required

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There are many that would have us believe, that we the world are merrily coasting along doing better than has ever been done before. They would have us also believe, that any problems that still confront us can be easily resolved through a combination of new technology and capitalism unlimited. This, in America, is almost always combined with belief that something is special about our country, and that the core spirit of democracy and freedom reside in our nationhood, under God and what they call the free enterprise system. This has become the prevailing national mythology, and it is nowhere more so than in the US, where the talk is constantly of DEMOCRACY, capital letters, we know what it is better than any other people in the world! But actually sad to say to the contrary, there is nowhere more where democracy is less understood than in the US of A. Capitalism is actually the antitheisis of economic democracy, which is the lynchpin of all democracy. Without economic democracy, there is no decision making for the common folk. Instead, there is only dictatorship by the rich, through their corporate control over the government and all economic activity. Yet, lack of economic democracy is considered the natural state of life by the overwhelming majority of common folk in the US.

The economic dictatorship of the rich not only distributes the products of production unfairly to the rich and away from the poor, but malforms production itself. Conservatives say that the market rationalizes what capitalists produce, but the contrary is actually true. As an example, few of us in the US actually want the war industry to dominate our economic life, yet the companies that produce the missiles, bombs, planes, tanks, ships, etc. grab control over the government to insure that production is directed to them through government financing from tax monies. Our energy companies do not direct energy production to conserving scarce natural resources as most of the population would like, but rather to the misuse of it, to motivate wars to monopolize energy resources for themselves, and to create legislation that directs national planning to making overuse of energy the only possibility for the mass of people. So we have the energy monopolies combine in pushing warfare along with the war material industries own push in that direction. War becomes the main highway for production in an undemocratic economic system run by the rich, for the rich.

All economic activity is perverted so that the rich benefit under capitalism. Thus, we have a medical system that’s main purpose is not to provide health, but rather to give out as little real care for as much cost as possible. We have a food production and distribution system whose sole design is to make maximum profits. There is no concern about the public health, or the nutrional value and taste of the food that the public is forced to consume. And in like manner, we have a housing industry whose only desire is to max their own money making, damn the need to make livable neighborhoods and cities. Newly constructed instant slums dot America all over as a result. Our country’s public health is deteriorating, and our cities’ landscapes become more degraded every year.

So how can this overproduction of crap, and underproduction of real value be halted? Not to do so is to doom our planet. Not to do so is to not only have a throwaway economy, but a throwaway world. Not to halt this type of economy run undemocratically for the rich, is to halt world life itself. Capitalist economy is a cancer eating away at world ecology. Since the decision making is undemocratic in this economic system, a resort to what the majority might want will be met by repression. Is met by repression. The rich will not voluntarily give up their undemocratically held economic power. They do not respect the decisions made at the government level if those decision run against their maintaining power held in dollars. The corporations do not like democracy, are threatened by democracy, and will repress democracy.

Let’s be clear here. Nobody thinks it right that criminals hold onto money made by criminal activity. An undemocratic economy runs as a criminal consortium of sorts. It is a form of pyramid scheme. Conservatives will go ballistic at this point, and shout that nobody has the right to tell others what to do with their own property. Well, they are wrong about that. Can you imagine that argument being made by major drug traffickers? Yes, the public does have a right to control the use of assets made by forms of criminal conduct. And capitalism is essentially just that. A series of criminal monopoly enterprises that conspire to deny adequate monies necessary to life for the majority of the world’s population. Their conspiracies, in fact, conspire to endanger and destroy our public life in multiple manners. These criminal conspiracies will have to be broken up for the world’s population to obtain the economic democracy necessary to maintain this world in a liveable manner. Instead of respecting the capitalist, the world should recognize the essential criminal nature of the capitalist. Each starving child of the world has a capitalist robbing them of life. Don’t let the conservative status quo lover convince you otherwise. Capitalism is theft. And the militarism that is the lifeblood of capitalism is theft.

Let’s imagine our biggest company here in Colorado Springs for a second. That company is Lockheed. The capitalist owners will keep Lockheed producing weaponry to kill people on the other side of the globe. They are not about to reform production and turn Lockheed into a company that sells goodwill. Or that distributes food, or that builds schools, community centers, and neighborhood hospitals and clinics. These capitalists are going to insist that their weaponry is for the public good, and that who they kill are the bad guys. That’s how they make their money. They are not going to give their American workforce democratic input into the workings of Lockheed. Lockheed is a criminal conspiracy, is it not? Not only against the people that their weaponry goes out to kill, but to their own workforce.

We need economic democracy before the world can begin to solve its problems. American workers need to stop just going along with the killing. It is not about just one war. They must stop accepting the crumbs that the superrich throw occasionally their way. They need to take responsibility for their own labor efforts. They need to demand input into the decision making. They need to recognize that it is their own tax dollars that go into paying off the rich running Lockheed at present. And if they get thrown out of work because the war is not hot at some moment in the future, they should not cheer on their corporate brass to make up new wars so as to resume more weaponry production. They need to throw Lockheed’s owners into jail for being war criminals, and they need to direct production democratically decided by they the workforce themselves, so as to benefit society as a whole, rather than to murder off parts of it.

Economic democracy is needed, and economic totalitarianism (the capitalist making all decisions, and other people none) needs to be rejected. That means Lockheed needs to be nationalized, and the owners disenfranchised. Their criminality demands punishment.

Best cookie ever

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All your bases are belong to usWhen Consumer Reports Magazine set out to rate commercial chocolate chip cookies against each other, they needed a benchmark. To that end they hired professional bakers to optimize a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Because the cookie itself was a cultural convention, it was perhaps no surprise that reverse engineering backed them into the conventional Tollhouse Cookie recipe. But with a couple twists.

First, the use of dark brown sugar as opposed to regular, second, the addition of vanilla extract, third, unsalted sweet butter, and fourth, particular care in mixing the ingredients.

It wasn’t as simple as throwing everything into the bowl. Each addition would be mixed at slow speed for a specified time with a high speed burst at the end. Texture seemed to make the critical distinction. If you’re going to start now, you’ll have to wait until the butter is room temperature.

What follows is the CONSUMER REPORTS recipe, first published in 1982.

We wanted a cookie with a chewy interior, crunchy edges, well-blended flavor, and a high overall chocolate impact . –Consumer Reports Magazine

2-1/4 Cups Flour
1 level Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 level Teaspoon Salt
3/4 Cup White Sugar
3/4 Cup Packed Dark Brown Sugar
2 sticks (1/2 pound) Sweet Butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 Large Eggs
12-ounce Semisweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 375F.

Mix the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside.

Use a stand-type electric mixer to mix the two sugars briefly at low speed.

Add the butter in small gobbets, mixing first at low speed and then at high. Beat the mixture until it’s pale, light, and very fluffy. Add the vanilla at the mixer’s lowest speed, then beat at high speed for a few seconds.

Add the eggs, again at the lowest speed, switching to high speed for the final second or so. The eggs should be well beaten in, and the mix should look creamed, not curdled.

Add the flour mixture, a half cup at a time, mixing at low speed for about one minute, then at high speed for a few seconds.

Scrape down the bowl’s sides with a spatula, add the chocolate chips, and mix at low speed for about 10 seconds. If need be, scrape the bowl’s sides again and mix for a few more seconds.

Put tablespoons of the mix on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake until the cookies are pale golden brown (nine minutes in an electric oven, 10 to 11 minutes in a gas one).

Remove and let cool on a rack.

Makes about 30 medium cookies.

Lieberman walk the plank

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Lieberman wanted to be presidentNOW that the election is over and Joe Lieberman has defied the Democratic Party to run as an independent, would it not make sense for the party to reject Lieberman’s attempt to label himself once more a Democrat. He’s a Zell Miller Democrat, which is not a Democrat at all.

If Lieberman is let to call himself a Democrat, he qualifies for leadership of subcommittees vital to the new power structure in Congress. He would be in the position to obstruct the investigations and deny the swift justice which Democrats must deliver. They need to kick him out.

But why stop there? The new Democratic majority should initiate censure, impeachment or criminal hearings for Lieberman. He should be charged with the same malfeasance as the Bush White House. With the added rancor accorded Benedict Arnold.

Back when Lieberman was bumped out of the primaries, there was tremendous jubilation at an entrenched incumbent finally being unseated. I noticed pronounced little fanfare at Lieberman’s victory last night. The networks knew better than to broadcast his victory speech. I guess no one wanted to see that.

While I’m at it, I’d like to suggest that the people of the State of Connecticut face some stiff penalty for reelecting this terrible scheister. Of course, most of his votes came from Republicans.

Oaxaca- the people continue to battle back

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Viva La Lucha PopularWhat a turnaround. The Mexican and US elites have underestimated the people’s will to resist in Oaxaca. People arrived from around the country in support of the embattled local population, and the result was a massive demonstration Sunday of possibly up to half a million people. The demonstration was said to stretch for 3 miles along the highway entering the city!
 
Here in the US, this was not really reported on, even though a tiny proPRI demo earlier in the week received exaggerated US media attention. The Gazette, for example, had a big article about this pro sicario action that made it seem huge, when it was certainly not that in the least. There is more great footage of this struggle online.

The turnaround for the people began when the students on the campus successfully beat back a military attack on their stronghold at the university on November 2. This film coverage is entirely in Spanish, but it is obvious what is going on. Once again, we can see that self-defense includes being able to respond in non-pacifist resistance. See the population’s necessary response to military attacks

How the city council ‘Supports the Troops’ and their families- adding insult to injury

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The Gazette today headlined their Sunday Metro section with an update about how a local family was doing with their lawsuit against the city. It is a case where a single dad was having a nervous breakdown and was breaking out the windows of his apartment in the nude, and his three children fled the apartment and called the police to get help for their dad. This was on May 2, 2003. And like so many of the cases where relatives have called the police in cases of this type, the help they asked for turned out to become their personal nightmare. The police came and murdered their dad.

Enter the sister of the dead single father, who took in the three children even though she was already caring for 8 of her own, PLUS caring for her mother who had a stroke shortly thereafter. She had a husband, but he was off in Iraq being paid to help destroy another people’s country. Still, despite all the work she already had piled up on here, she went out and sought justice for her murdered brother, and his now parentless children. She initiated a lawsuit against the City of Colorado Springs, whose police officers had so absolutely mishandled their work, work they are paid to do by our tax money.

Enter Mayor Lionel Rivera and the Colorado Springs city council. Rivera was elected just one month previous to this event. Rivera likes to pose himself as supporter of the troops. Here he had a chance to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk. What has he done for this military family and the 3 children now being raised by their aunt? Nada. He is in charge of the Colorado Springs police, and it was the police that murdered this man. Instead of assisting to right a terrible wrong, he has had the city fight the lawsuit on behalf of these children! And the entire city council has sat by, too.

Enter the settlement. The aunt, Carolyn Moore, decided that she had to settle rather than continue to fight for justice. She says that the settlement is an admssion of the police’s guilt, and she is right. What did the city of Mayor Lionel Rivera payout to the three now fatherless children? A grand total of $19,500! Well thank you Rivera! You know, as well as the entire city council does, that that amount for the wrongful death of one’s dad is an insult, and little more. Carolyn Moore says that it is not enough even to pay for the attorney fees. First, you head up the police force that caused the ‘injury’, and then you preside over the ‘insult’ of throwing peanuts out to the children. You think that quite generous, no doubt, since you have even tried to do less. And how gracious you are in helping out troubled families of our US soldeirs. Not. Instead, it is rather evident that you are merely a cheerleader for the corporations that make their profits off the misery that the Pentagon speads. When it comes to assisting the troops, we have to count you out.

Even now, Rivera, you have the ability to right this wrong. Prove us wrong about how we have stated your character as being. And The Colorado Springs city council as a whole, has the ability to right this wrong, instead of hiding in Rivera’s shadows. I don’t think that one can easily put monetary amounts to compensate for the wrongful death of a family member. But certainly, the amount should be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, and not just $19,500 for three aggrieved children to supposedly get, instead of being raised by their dad. Have you guys no shame? Do the right thing now, and move to have these children compensated in a more just manner for their unjust loss.

No doubt, our representatives are just hoping that this issue goes away. Luckily for the injured children, there is a decent reporter at The Gazette newspaper that has followed up on their actions of denying recompense for this murdered man’s family. Once again, I would like to think our local paper for doing the right thing and publishing this report. Write to the city council and the mayor and encourage them also to do right, instead of continuing on their current sinful path. And write to the papers and show concern for this family. They deserve your help.

Oaxaca and Iraq- The people have a right to self defense

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Oaxaca and Iraq demonstrate that the people have a right to self defense against state terrorism. Today, the Mexican police were assaulting the students holding a radio station use in their self defense against the governmental death squads that have been terrorizing the population of Oaxaca. When captured and jailed, the protesters have been severely tortured. What would the mealy mouthed, American Christian pacifist communkity have them do during the military assault on them? Turn the other cheek? Not throw rocks to stave off the capture of the one piece of media available to the Oaxacan community; the university radio station? Not to set fire to barricades to hold the government thugs back from capturing the protesters, and then jailing and torturing them? The American ‘peace’ pacifists would lecture them about the supposed lessons of Gandhi and non-violence, no doubt, as if self defense was some sort of violence itself! The US pacifist community certainly live with a surreal mindset lacking in clarity and reality. And what would they have the Iraqis do as the Pentagon terrorizes that nation? Sit down in the streets and pray? With their constant prattle about the need to be ‘non-violent’ martyrs, the pacifist community tries to deny that people under attack have the right to resist, by any means necessary, as Malcolm X would have stated it.

The resistance of the Iraqi and Oaxacan communities are two examples of the need to RESIST oppression with self defense, and not just the silly pacifism of overly religious folk. It is not just church mice that bring about justice, but real people using real tactics to defend their rights, and not just always spouting Jesus-Gandhi talk. All the ‘peace and justice’ pacifism that bogs down our Left activism in the US, is a denial of solidarity with those folks under the gun. They are also our heros, and not just US Quakers and US Catholic nuns who might accept arrest here at home. Peace with justice can only come about through united resistance of all types, including armed resistance of some type or other.

I am not advocating picking up the gun and going after ‘them’. But what I am saying is that the message and tone of pacifism is a bunch of religious babble, in general. It does not help in building a US antiwar movement to only talk about Jesus, ‘nonviolence’, and Gandhi. The religious message is not our only one, and should not even be our dominant one. It hinders our ability to communicate with the US community at large to always emphasize only this liberal religious sermonizing about ‘peace’. An antiwar community is about much more than just ‘peace’.

I am overjoyed that there are peoples around the globe that are defending themselves against our government violence, and the violence of their death squad allies around the globe. They are doing it with rocks, molotov cocktails, guns, and bombs. They are doing it peacefully if they can, and not peacefully if that avenue is cut off to them. One just gets sick of Englsih speaking (principally) pacifists saying that that is wrong. Let’s tell the truth here. Much of Anglo pacifist sermonzing is pure bullshit. The people have a right to resist and defend themselves no matter what the pacifists in imperialist countries might say.

Let’s say it straight. We want this government organized, US imperialist army defeated. And it is because the US army is wrong in their battle on behalf of the imperial Super Rich in this PARTICULAR war, not just because all battles and all warfare is wrong to fight. It is not just pacifists that are anti US war making. Non-pacifists also hate this US governmental war making, too. Let’s open up the US antiwar community to those of our population that are not religiously motivated by pacifism and spouting non-violence all the time. A ‘peace’ movement that is only trying to convert folk to liberal religous faith is self limiting. There has got to be more message than that.

May the people of Iraq and Mexico push the forces of US hegemony aside, and build themselves a better world.

A sea salt taste test

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I bought some sea salt the other day. Dead Sea Salt no less. I’d heard a commentary extolling the delicacy that is yuppie salt. Who knew you could spend more on salt?
 
Sea salt costs quit a deal more than ordinary umbrella-girl salt. But consumers spend almost nothing for salt to begin with, probably why working the salt mines is not considered a great job. So the price of gentrified salt is half of a passible bottle of olive oil. Anyway I got the sea salt on sale and I was determined to hold a taste test.

I heard there was a texture difference apparently, and I could see that was going to be true. Sea salt was like so many little crystals compared to refined white sand of table salt. But a taste difference? Malarkey. Salt and pepper is like hot and cold or sweet and sour, absolutes. When something tastes salty it doesn’t taste sea-salty, it’s salty or too salty.

As near as I could recall, mother’s home-ec theory taught that salt was what we added to enhance the taste of a meal. We didn’t taste the salt, we tasted the enhanced food flavor, or we had used too much salt.

But that principle never rang true to me actually. It was like having us kids believe that there was more nutrition in the crust of the bread as opposed to the center. My sisters helped mom bake and noticed that the outer edge of the bread was of the same lump of dough. They called her on it when she insisted they eat the crust. Mom’s salt edict seemed more dictum, this time anti-sodium.

What are we TALKING about, pretending that salt’s a secondary enhancement of flavor?! When we put salt on popcorn, we do it to taste the salt! When we put salt on corn, cornflakes, cabbage or cantaloupe, (I don’t put salt on any of those, I mean when you do) we don’t do it to enhance their flavor, we do it to enhance our eating enjoyment because we enjoy salt.

So let me tell you, when I sprinkled sea salt over steamed spinach like so many croutons, and took a bite, I knew I would never go back. Olive oil and sea salt is all you need to eat anything. I’ll keep table salt to cook the noodles, but I won’t eat it. To eat table salt now, to me it tastes like iodine. Or like drawing a thread up your throat. Or like the second day of an oxygen tube blowing into your nose. Unbearably piercing. Common table salt tastes like poison, and I’m glad to hear people are catching on. No Hellman’s? Forget the sandwich. Or was that Miracle Whip? No matter, imposters all. No sea salt, postpone the meal.

Fort Carson Strangelove

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It could have been Doctor Strangelove. The photograph I wish I had taken was of the Tom Warren, the representative of Fort Carson, assigned to ride over the public outcry about the Army’s plans to annex more land, Pinon Canyon and beyond, for a training ground eventually to extend over the entire corner of Southeast Colorado.

I’m left to describe the picture I wish I’d taken of Mr. Warren. Unbelievable. I sat in the front row of the Mesa Ridge High School auditorium last night as he paced back and forth spewing bureaucratic mumbo for the assembled concerned residents. He walked with a limp, and when his microphone boomed with feedback, he joked about it coming from the metal [inside his leg, presumably].

He stood over six feet tall, long hair, grey and black, brushed straight to his shoulders, full bangs, a large half-trimed beard, and large thick-lensed aviator glasses. The effect was that you couldn’t make out any exposed face. Had he been with black-ops and now fears being recognized? Was he in the Federal Witness Protection Plan? Had he suffered horrendous scars? Mr. Warren loomed larger in a blue blazer with padded shoulders, and lurched about in blue blue-jeans over what must have been motorcycle boots. Cowboy boots with reinforced steel toes perhaps.

I wondered, as Fort Carson’s PR person, to whom was he supposed to appeal? To the ranchers in their wide brimmed hats? To the hippy peaceniks? Mr. Warren didn’t behave like a soldier. He was more like the guy whose eye you didn’t want to catch at the bar. Scarry dude.

His mission, at last night’s meeting, seemed to be to ward off any protest about the future expansion plans. The Army is seeking approval of an expanded training range at Fort Carson and Pinon Canyon, but documents have been leaked showing the Defense Department’s ultimate aim. Most of the public wanted to argue against expansion in light of where it is leading.

Mr. Warren was attempting to preempt that discussion by clarrifying that the leaked plans were only at preliminary stages of approval. He spewed bureaucratic jargon, laughed at himself for being a bureaucrat, but kept right on spewing. He pointed to a slide showing the approval process, and that the matter on the table tonight, the permitted subject tonight, was at step five of the eight step process.

What Mr. Warren failed to point out, as he referenced the approval process diagram, was a fact apparent to everyone else in the auditorium. The current Army plans had been able to get to step five without public scrutiny. Admonishing us to stay off the subject of plans in the earlier stages is precisely how bad deeds are moved along by bureaucrats.

The Westside Pioneer

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There’s a little publication on the Colorado Springs west side that’s notoriously non-political. Maybe I shouldn’t say notorious, it’s just a neighborhood weekly. Let’s say it persistently proclaims its non-allegiance. And it’s true, it won’t print anything controversial or having to do with issues or the means to take action.
 
The other day however, on the lead article, above the fold, there appeared a headline bashing a Democratic candidate for pulling out of a scheduled debate. The scheming had been convoluted, the Republican having chosen a date which conflicted with another more broadly attended event. It was the kind of maneuvering which always attends political match-ups. Democrat Mike Merrifield had to pull out of the debate and the Westside Pioneer was there to flash the bulbs and gloat.

The supposedly non-partisan paper didn’t break it’s apolitical stand, it defends, rather it reported the truth. I say half the truth. Representative Merrifield wasn’t afraid to debate Republican Kyle Fisk, he indecorously had to sidestep the New Life Church protege’s trap. But the Westside Pioneer printed just the first half. The half that made the Democrat look bad.

An apolitical paper weighing in against the Democrats. Why am I not surprised?

Because when someone tells you they are non-political, they are actually endorsing the powers that be. Nothing political about those in power, oppressing, taking advantage, doing the milking, taking the lion’s share of the cream. To attempt to dislodge the corruptness is political. To ask that a newspaper call attention to the graft is political.

So what is the Westside Pioneer but a Bushite, Neocon, Warmonger, Social Security Thieving, Human Rights Abusing, Constitution Burning, Union Busting, Pro Big Business Globalization, Anti-community, Anti-small business, Anti-social safetly net, media tool. Well, the Westside Pioneer is probable nothing but Libertarian, opposing government involvement like overpasses and emminent domain. But that’s the rub with Libertarians. They do give a whit whether their welfare is advanced at the expense of another’s liberty. It’s every Libertarian for themselves.

The guy who sits on the fence, watching the wolves descend upon the sheep, not crying out but instead choosing to cry “nothing to see here,” may not be pro-wolf, but he’s certainly not looking out for the sheep. Too bad the sheep keep buying his paper.

Nonviolent communication

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Non Violent Communication 2nd EditionIn working to communicate non-violently with one another, there is a form of verbal violence that I find very difficult to steer around: the brutality of violence against logic.
 
Whilst the rest of us watch our Ps & Qs, hold our punches and bar our holds, half-wits get a free pass. Here to my mind is the Achilles heel of NVC and most mechanisms of popular consensus: the slowest common enumerator. Critical, analytic tongues are held to standards of civility, but a cowhand’s wag is excused in light of his circumstance, because it’s the best probably he can do.

By design therefore, a non-violent conversation cannot get beyond what the best arguments can prod out of a cow.

As a lesser gifted person myself, I am unable to bear fools gladly. For my benefit, I have a suggestion for an amendment to the NVC code. I’d like to insist that non-sequiturs, and other such imbecilities be considered forms of communication violence. They inflict profound violence on one’s sense of energy, time and passion. They should be as off-limits as knee-jerk retorts.

Or perhaps it would be simplest if half-wits and cows be let to eat only at the children’s table. Camaraderie among all human beings is fine for fiestas, but if there are understandings to be reached, conclusions to be drawn and work to be done, let’s excise the ne’re-do-much.

Or let’s lambast and skewer the damn imbeciles before they befuddle consensus with the rapacity of their foolish lumber.

Death of Brad Will sparks US protests against Mexican government

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Tourist destinationThe murder of journalist Brad Will by Mexican government death squads in Oaxaca City last Friday, has brought out multiple US protests at Mexican consulates around the US. And once again, the international spotlight is being turned on the Mexican government like it was previously, when the Zapatistas began their uprising in Chiapas. Mexico, prodded by the US Clinton Adminstration to allow the reign of another polticial party other than the PRI, has in actuality changed not in the least. The PRI institutional dictatorship of old has now morphed into a PRI-PAN alliance for the updated dictatorship of today. A PRI-PAN alliance that conspires together to steal elections, murder off opposition, and to rape and pillage the country on behalf of the US multinational corporations.

Brad Will was an inspirational younger US radical like Rachel Corrie, who was in like fashion murdered by the Israeli military 3 1/2 years ago. Both were dedicated to helping out foreign peoples who were being repressed with the complicity and political support of our own US government. The martyrdom of both have helped open the eyes of many an American to world events that they had been ignoring. We learn, from the sacrifice of their lives, about just how evil is Amercian foreign policy. And we have learned that there are some Americans who are not complacent, but rather are involved in trying to make the world a better place.

Mexico is not a safe place, neither for American travelers nor for the Mexican people themselves. And it is kept unsafe and desperate, due to American interference into the politics of that nation. Our elites are integrally linked with the Mexican elites, and both are sorry and corrupt. And both elites are bankrupting the common folk of their respective nations through militarism, cronyism, and impunity for the corporate criminals that reign supreme in both nations. Brad Will hoped to open eyes with his independent journalism, which he did for no salary. Sadly, he became another of the many victims of Mexico’s government death squads.

Israel and Mexico hope that the Americans, Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, will be forgotten. But they won’t be. Instead, they have inspired us to do more. The Palestinians and the Native Mexican-Americans of Chiapas and Oaxaca have inspired us to resist more, also. We live in a sick world society led by our own US government, and we owe people everywhere to resist more from inside this nation itself. Let us remember the examples of Rachel Corrie and Brad Will, and not let the official media bury their stories. Thank you, ‘Democracy Now’ for your special report today on the life of Brad Will. He was an inspiring young man.

Highway shoulder felons

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Adopt-a-RoadA close friend of mine wants to give more visibility to his grassroots political group by adopting a highway. In exchange for a small sign giving credit to the West End Democrats, we plan to don safety vests and one morning every month be mistaken for roadside chain labor.

Although “mistaken” might be a misnomer.

What an incredible abuse of the local resident! Adopt-A-Road. They’ve been doing it for ten years already because “it is not possible to keep up with the trash that thoughtless people…” Slash the budget for highway cleanup, then sell little signs on the side of the road in exchange for the priviledge of doing the cleaning up. That’s privatization, shift the burden to the citizen, no one to complain but the public.

And what a time to shift the responsibility! Half the brochure about the Highway Cleanup Program details the further complication of Meth-lab refuse. Amateur Meth-amphetamine laboratory rats know better than to throw their tell-tale byproducts into their dumpster. The only option for discrete waste disposal is out the car window while driving where no one sees you, on the highway. The Meth-Lab explosion has produced a highway litter epidemic. It’s less that the discarded chemicals are needed by the police for evidence, It’s more that they are toxic and endanger the garbage handlers, in this case volunteers in day-glo safety jackets trying to do a good deed.

It used to be there was a budget for these tasks. We built the highways and intended to maintain them. Somewhere along the line, between tax-cutting and graft, the public was handed back the shovel.
The highway cleanup scam looks to me like it shares the purpose of latrine duty. Do the work of untouchables and be seen doing it.

A good thing for the visibility of the West End Dems?

A Veterans Day wheelchair parade

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Colorado Springs Veterans Day ParadeThis year’s Colorado Springs Veteran’s Day Parade falls on Veteran’s Day. The theme is “a nation at war, a community of support.” Doesn’t sound much to do with honoring veterans. Are we holding an active-duty support-the-war parade on honor-the-Veteran’s Day?
 
There will be 92 entries and five helium balloons. There are no entry fees because the city business community is so supportive of our soldiers over there, fighting to make the war safe for the contractors. Lots of military profiteers in Colorado Springs.

Organizers say that fully half of the participants in the parade will be veterans or active duty soldiers. Fully half? What are the other half? By my calculations, that means that there will be more non-soldiers and non-ex-soldiers than veterans. In the Veteran’s Day Parade.

I have an idea about how to involve lots more veterans. The unseen, underappreciated veterans. The veterans not usually invited to join any reindeer games. This year let’s invite the disabled veterans. And since the focus is this nation at war, this war, let’s honor the freshly disabled. This year let’s have a Veteran’s Day wheelchair parade.

I pictured it last year, maybe a handful of malcontents, youthful Iraq War Veterans wearing disaffected-youth garb accessorized with the odd army cloth article, walking with their canes or without, challenging parade watchers to look at them. I imagined it too complex an antiwar statement for most.

This year there could be over 3,000 wounded Iraq War vets from Colorado Springs alone. There would be many more if you count the spiritually and mentally disabled, the post traumatic sufferers, and the yet to be, the terminally unabled. Forming a sea of true veterans, of youth sacrificed to war, in a mass to large to look in the eye.

Our city’s rejection of the EWO memorial, clarified

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May I address City Staff Liaison Bob Stovall’s assertion in the Gazette that, contrary to what was reported, the City of Colorado Springs was willing to host the Eyes Wide Open 2,757 boot memorial? I represented the Justice and Peace Commission in asking the city for the use of Memorial Park. The Park and Recreation Department declined our request, telling us Memorial Park was unavailable because of previously scheduled football leagues. Since it was the PPJPC’s opinion that the first and only visit of the EWO traveling Iraq War memorial might merit relocating a couple days of regular football games, we approached the City Council to prevail upon the park supervisors on our behalf. This the City Council would not do.

In subsequent pronouncements Mayor Lionel Rivera tried to clarify that the city was not opposed to the memorial, only that its organizers needed to go through the proper channels like everyone else. This was bureaucratic doublespeak, like pretending to be accommodating while your subordinates keep the doors locked shut until it is too late. I found it also insulting that a national effort to highlight the sacrifices of America’s men and women in Iraq would be stonewalled and accorded no greater consideration than that given weekly football games.

EWO at Colorado CollegeNow of course it is safe for the city to claim the parks department had penciled us in. In fact we were told no and we had to proceed with our backup choice, Colorado College. Memorial Park was where I saw the traveling Vietnam Memorial and where I felt the Iraq memorial would have been most accessible and most appreciated. All along, Memorial Park was where we hoped the city would accommodate the memory of our soldiers.

Blood diamonds

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Before it was a movie title, it distinguished a type of diamond. Blood Diamond was a diamond industry term, a Scarlet Letter, to characterize an uncertain, perhaps blood-tainted, provenance. To be specific, a diamond bought from a rebel controlled region of the third world where the diamonds are traded illegally, meaning outside the market share of the diamond cartel, because a diamond sold without profiting the traditional diamond merchants is an illegal diamond. Don’t you find that odd?

The price of diamonds is kept artificially high as a result of the diamond cartel. By a tradition of laws, the Antwerp merchants have managed to make anyone else’s trading of diamonds illegal, enforcing their monopoly. If you were to discover a diamond mine and did not want to do business with the Antwerp monopoly, you’d be considered an international criminal. In the turmoil of a civil war, if you seized a mine, by definition owned by one of their partners, the cartel would label your merchandise bloody.

The diamond cartel/monopoly is reeling, so we hear, from the Hollywood release of the movie Blood Diamonds. Not because it enlightens the public about the diamond market, but because the movie embellishes upon the unpalatable stigma of blood diamonds. Diamond sellers are worried that their business will be tarnished by their own ugly creation, in this case the severed limbs of the people of Liberia forced to work in the diamond mines by feuding rebels. The merchants are selling those same diamonds after all, it only depends on who sold which to whom.

Therefore the industry is stepping up its reassurances that showroom products are guaranteed not to be blood diamonds. There are stamps of authenticity, for example, which would be lacking on blood diamonds. Really? Do you imagine they hold huge bonfires to destroy contraband diamonds like so much unwanted weed? A blood diamond captured from diamond smugglers becomes a plenty-fine diamond, once again profitable to the cartel. The logic being that the diamonds were confiscated, thus no money went to reward their bearers, thus no bloodletting was given a monetary encouragement.

Even if this was true, it doesn’t address what blood diamonds are about.

The diamond cartel was a fortuitous monopoly to grow out of a few merchants’ control of the then known diamond mines. It’s a throwback legacy of the early trade monopolies granted by kings to encourage exploration and trade. The Portuguese were once given the exclusive right to trade around the horn of Africa, then later around the horn of America. The advantage was held later by the Spanish, the Dutch and the English. The Dutch East India Trading Company was a corporate example, the Hudson Bay Fur Trading Company another. We’ve long since outgrown the need to grant exclusives to conquering explorers. Except for diamonds.

The diamond monopoly upholds diamond prices which is sort of in everybody’s interest, the everybody who owns a diamond. Unregulated, it’s calculated that diamonds would lose half their value, maybe more were diamonds to lose their “a diamond is forever” allure.

There’s another common interest which I’ll address in a moment.

For now, imagine the cartel/monopoly concept if it had been granted for automobiles. Daimler Benz would be producing expensive cars for the wealthy and Henry Ford’s Model-T would be a blood-car. Only the rich would be driving cars and policemen would be chasing the poor in illegal vehicles.

Today’s monopolies are granted through patents and copyrights. Artificial rights which ensure high prices and that the poor are left out. As this applies to medicines and technology, the price differential becomes inhumane. Aids drugs are a tragic example.

The other important reason we tolerate the diamond monopoly is to maintain stability for the ownership class within the globalized economy. Diamonds are one of the few commodities which compete with a global currency. Drugs are another. The movement of value, as represented by diamonds, can fuel economic activity outside the control of banks and regulatory agencies. Commodities represent real value, as compared to currency which represents but a representation. As a result, diamonds which are easily concealed from government tax collectors, can readily be used to fund counter-government activities such as rebellions and emancipations. Bad for business.

Phosphorous Bombs- US/Israeli Weapon of Torture

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The BBC has a news item today saying that Israel has just admitted for the first time today that it used Phosphorous bombs on Lebanon. The evidence kept piling up that they in fact had, and evidently Israel came to the conclusion that their lie, that they had not used this type of chemical weapon, was no longer defensible.
 
A similar process had ocurred earliet where the US originally denied using this chemical weapon on Falluja, but then later admitted that it had. Both countries have argued that phosporous bombs are legitimate military weaponry, though previously they had attacked Saddam Hussein’s use of this chemical weapon against his Kurdish population.

The US/ Israeli defense of their use of this weapon is similar to Bush’s defense of using torture against POWs. They have merely changed the label on what they say constitutes torture, as they have now changed the label of what the phosphorus bombs actually are. They call them incendiary bombs now, instead of chemical weapons, which is what they called them when Hussein was using this weapon.

The use of chemical weapons against civilian populations by the US military is ancient news, as is their juggling of labels for them. Chemical weapons are often called ‘pesticides’, ‘defoliants’, or described as ‘smoke bombs’, as Israel did with phosphorous, which gives off plumes of camoflaging smoke, which just happens to be poisonous. Israel claimed to be merely marking targets with phosphorus bombs’ smoke, rather than using this weapon to burn the insides out of its targets. That’s what phosphorous does as it burns downward and into the blood stream, where it is later carried to organs inside the body while still burning.

The US/ Israeli use of these weapons explains their political policies in the Arab world quite well. These are the weapons of terrorist countries, rogue staters that defy international law that has tried repeatedly to limit weapons of torture like this, not to mention trying to outlaw the cluster bombs also dropped everywhere by the same two states. These are the weapons of terrorist states, and not merely legitimate countries just trying to fight the terrorism of a few rogue individuals. Rogues, one might add, that originally fought on behalf of the US in other terrorist conflicts directed from Washington DC. These are the weapons of imperial governments that illegally occupy territory of other peoples, peoples they consider inferior to their own. These are the weapons of racists.

Kill Bush

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Kill Bush! Kill, kill, kill. Let’s do it, Julia. In case people don’t know by now, Julia is a 14 year old school girl in California who had posted a photo of Bush with the words ‘Kill Bush’ onto her My Place website. Despite the fact that months went by and Bush had visited her city twice during that time unprotected from Julia, all of a sudden the Secret Service came by. Two big beefy ones, too. Julia had posted this material when she was 13 years old, so their visit was not exactly that of a speedy response team. And it seems that despite the Zillions already spent on Homeland Security bureaucracy, that nationally we still got basically what New Orleans has… which is A Confederacy of Dunces on the security job. So just who called the cops?

Well, we personally don’t know the answer on that one. No doubt, some self righteous super zealot of the Right, since they are all crawling out of the woodwork these days. We got the self-hating red diaper baby, David Horowitz, outing liberal professors all around the country. We got the racist Anglo ‘Minutemen’ calling up cops with info about people not speaking America’s official language, English without acent…. as they compare themselves to Neighborhood Watch, chuckle as you will. And Barnes and Noble has stacks of the excremental works of Bill O’Reilly as you go in. He’s watching you, American liberals! And we got lynch mobs here in Colorado trying to hang Ward Churchill from a pole. If they can’t do that, they’ll probably send him a blanket with small pox on it. And we got the airport security branch of the US military waging war everywhere on our behalf at the airports. Of course, they do do a little collateral damage from time to time. But heck, if you don’t like the gated community called America, then get out, ay?

Just 4 months ago, my high school buddy who I had lost contact with for years and I, reestablished a correspondence. But it got torpedoed for me when he got on the case against a University of Texas prof, an international specialist in lizards, no less! My friend was aghast that this evilutionist expert, Professor Eric Pianka, had just said in a university talk that bacteria deserved to live, whereas mankind really didn’t, since our species was working night and day to destroy the planet. Good Lord, what a crime!

MY high school buddy had heard about it on the Drudge Report. And they had heard about it from some Southern Baptist scientists (yes, unbelievable, isn’t it?) who had called the government alleging that Pianka was advocating biological warfare! And they had called all their Intelligent Design friends, and Drudge, too. So, Homerland Security again went to work. You see, they take our security quite seriously, so they marched out to the Univ of Texas to check out this liberal terrorist. And they examined, under a microscope, all his words of wisdom ever uttered about evolution and lizards. Clear it was, that this non-Creationist had a greater love for lizards and bacteria than he did for humankind. Yet he had not started a biological warfare lab at the U.

Well, in short, both Professor Eric Pianka and Julia remain free. After all, America doesn’t burn witches yet. But Homeland Security does take reports from an alert citizenry, and that’s a citizenry full of finks, evidently. And they do take seriously any jokes at the airport about bombs. We may even begin to see signs saying that ‘This School is a Gun Free School’ posted at our kindergardens. So, Liberals, please join me in my effort to give these nice folk all something to think about.

Kill Bush. Shotgun pellet Donald Rumsfield. Deny Habeus Corpus to Alberto Gonzales. Put Condaleeza in bondage… no… I mean a ‘stress position’. Nuke Washington DC! Go after them in their bunkers, and blow the whole crew to smithereens! Please, do it now.

Liberals, start advocating violence (including the violent overthrow of America’s government) everywhere. If you can’t beat them, then join them. Oops, you do that already by voting for the Democratic Party. So try advocating violence instead. Let it out of your Gandhian souls. Kill, Kill, Kill!

Kill Bush.

A north side protest hazard

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Colorado College studentsI would have prefered to get a better shot, but these boys nearly ran us down. On three occasions, at the noon Monday bannering vigil, we were treated with these hecklers. The first time, Esther and I were crossing the street. (To hold a banner on the other side.) We were halfway to the median and this SUV started bearing down on us. We held a banner extended between us. Esther was behind me and as the SUV sped up, I slowed my pace. Esther was oblivious, struggling to hurry across in any case. As their engine roared, I stopped, waving my arms in admonishment as they finally veered around us. There wasn’t time for a picture, neither was I ready when they passed again, this time to swerve toward us on the curb. Yelling the usual teenager profanities, laughing. They saw the camera and on this pass decided to turn away into the alley between Nevada and Weber. I’m meaning to check if they park their car there.

For the love of our war profits

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The Home Front Cares. This event screams out for parody. The Gazette ran “For the Love of Our Troops” from the website above inside its entertainment pages on Friday, the same time it put the Quaker EWO Boots stuff up on the front page. Here is just a first run idea of how to counter this event:
 
FOR THE LOVE OF OUR UNGODLY PROFITS – HELP US KEEP ON MAKING A KILLING!

$2,500 a Plate Dinner Brought to you by Locknoheed Corporation and the rest of the Colorado Springs Military-Industrial Complex, the trashy local rag, the Colorado Slumlords Association, Mayor Rivera on behalf of Curious George Dubya to thank the US troops for slaughtering off half a million dirty Arab civilians PLUS them dirty Pashtuns of Afghanistan too. So sad some of you good ol’ boys got hurt, too.

5:30 PM, November 8, 2006 Antlers Hotel. Be there, or be shelled! You’ll get food, bad country music, and bullshit philosophy from a basketball coach, and all at the very low price of $2,500 a gold seat!

Leaflet brought to you by peace activist groups who support bringing our Troops Home Now. We’ll be there with you protesting this war without end.

Five thousand Iraqis

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The EWO memorial displays 3000 civilian shoesJohns Hopkins has calculated that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US invasion of their country. Six Hundred Fifty Five Thousand.
 
Quite a difference from the 30,000 by Bush’s estimate, “give or take a thousand.” Or the 45,000 by the official media counts. Or Lancet’s original 100,000 and later 250,000. Both those numbers were contested too, even as they were now probably conservative.

Most people who know that civilian casualties have been understated are still refuting the 655,000. ” I’m not sure the count is that high, but it’s high I’m sure.” Critical thinking without the why. Johns Hopkins methods, like the Lancet’s are peer reviewed for all to see. Our government and its supporters are the only ones to refute the number. When have they yet proven to speak any truth at all?

I’ll tell you I believe the new figure. I read about how it was calculated, based on surveys and statistical studies, with the same means as are used elsewhere in other populations and other catastrophes. I cannot believe, cannot fathom, cannot mourn 650,000 Iraqi lives destroyed by American aggression. What I can conceptualize is the 5,000 more. Tell me you caught a fish one foot and one half inch long, and I’m inclined to believe you measured it.

For those who want to compare the 655,000 to how many Iraqis would have died under Sadam’s continued reign, the number is already taken into account. Let me quote the latest study:

As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions

White Mountain

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Hitch your horse to this manservantWhite Mountain met its match last night, at their homecoming football game. The idea usually is to pick an opponent to beat at your homecoming festivities. Later you might visit a fellow school on their homecoming weekend and lose to them in return. But “South,” the underprivileged shoe-in with half the athletic department and budget, would not play ball. And that was the good news.

There was a distinct home advantage, the bigger, better lit bleachers, the multiple cheerleading squads, the band, the fireworks, everything uphill and upwind from the diminutive visitors stands. But the Indians got whooped by the visiting Pueblo South Colts, and maybe expected it. It felt like a surprise to most, and it was pretty dark out there. Add to that the anonymity of shiny football helmets under high school stadium lights, but if you looked closely you could tell it was darker on the south side of the field. The Pueblo South High School players were black and hispanic.

White Mountain gets its name because there are no children of color there. Well, there are the occasional adopted black children, and the whitish black children of privilege, but few others. Cheyenne Mountain is very very white. Nothing wrong with that, it’s an affluent neighborhood and welcomes all who can afford to be there.

But at the base of Cheyenne Mountain is a racism more overt and the children of White Mountain pass it everyday. Cheyenne Mountain Resort is a terribly exclusive country club with amazingly expensive membership fees and golf tee fees. And all the attendants there are black. It’s the Pullman porter valet concept with plantation era uniforms. They look like lawn jockey figurines. Thin black people in pure white clothes. Smiling black faces, happy to be there. Nothing illegal about the hiring standard, here’s how it works:

Cheyenne Mountain Resorts applies for an immigration waiver to hire international workers. They claim the jobs which resorts offer cannot be filled by the local labor force. The pay’s not enough, the career prospects are not enough, and true enough, the local populace is not enough either. Too fat maybe, poor work ethic, have social problems perhaps, and locals have their own transport to bring or fetch complications for the resort. Locals bring too much financial baggage to the table.

On the other hand, imported laborers are housed at company apartments. They’re shuttled to and from work. When they’ve finished their three month stint they are sent home. Deliriously uncomplicated and cheap. Cheyenne Mountain Resorts does its hiring in Jamaica. Know any white people in Jamaica? Well, they don’t appear to sign up to work across the sea, away from their home and family, on a rich man’s plantation.

The Broadmoor takes advantage of the same immigrant labor waiver to staff its hotel and restaurant, except they hire exclusively in Eastern Europe. I’m not sure that’s not racist to another extreme. The slavic labor force is the least expensive in the world, in the world of white people. There are no colored peoples there.

The immigrant labor waiver is an unfair means for local employers to escape contributing to a sustainable and healthy local community. It’s a foreign aid program of sorts, but at the expense of what could be local jobs. And when it’s racially segregated, it’s ugly. I plan to ask around if White Mountain prefers its golf jockeys all black. If they can’t say it with a straight face, they should stop it.

This isn’t about racism, it’s about economic justice. If we want to believe in the notion that the American dream is available to people of all shades and heritage, we must not teach our children that racial differences dictate social status.

Iran will be next target and why does America’s Left continue to sleep?

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Are we all asleep? The Bush Administration is planning to bomb Iran, and yet there is no effort to stop this. What in God’s name does it take to wake up an American Left? Let’s face it, most liberals have their thumbs stuck up their asses and their only plan is to just keep voting for the offal that runs under the Democratic Party banner, go to church, and pray. The Democratic Party supports Bush’s plans to attack Iran, therefore all the liberals once again have fallen into a trance behind their corporate misleadership on the question of stopping an attack on yet another country. It’s like Iran doesn’t even exist on their radar screens. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Pentagon is already moving into action once again.

Instead of moving with the times, the Colorado ‘peace movement’ contemplates its own navel this week. Are we to be out there mobilizing opposition to the planned bombing campaign against Iran? No, instead something called ‘Eyes Wide Open’ moves across the state this week. It involves a bunch of boots, and people both for the Iraq war and against it are encouraged to stare at these boots and what….? they will be encouraged to ‘reflect on the true cost of the Iraq war’! What a pile of crap! People should be encouraged to PROTEST the damn thing, but the good liberal church folk who come up with this sort of pseudo event impede the very organization of real protest events against the Pentagon, and substitute silliness instead. What next, an inaction to get us to ‘contemplate’ the evils of torture, instead of protesting the newly legalized and open use of it? Hey! Some people might not know that it hurts, I guess?

So what we have is a sleepy, milktoast American Left led by nuns, Quakers, and the Clintons and the Gores amongst us. Iran lookout! We can only ‘reflect’ here after you have been strafed, not before. Not all American Christians support Bush though. Some wait till he’s been bad, and then go ‘tsk,tsk,tsk’. They’ll be encouraging you to non-violently resist the new generation atomic weaponry their country’s military forces will be using on you. And they will be encouraging multi-faith reunions with any moderate Muslim clerics available, if not taken out already by Christian soldiers ahead of time. Let’s hold hands and pray together now. We will light the candles for you, as the troops put out your’s.

Wouldn’t it just be nice to actually have a more secular, and less Democratic Party controlled ‘peace movement’? Hey, let’s rename it an antiwar movement, too, while we’re at it. How about…whisper, whisper, whisper…. naming it ‘The Movement to Stop the US Military and to Dismantle the Damn Thing? 100%’. Take the idea to your church and/or atheist group. The idea is to protest a coming attack on another people ahead of time, and not just sit around with thumbs up the bum.

Here’s the response of the Christian pacifist to such a proposal as to confront head on the Right Wing militarist. whine…..”Oh, that’s not reaching out to others. They can change.”

To the Iranian Muslim, I apologize for the stupidity of the liberal Christians of America. They’re ready to turn their cheeks, even as you get yours slapped. Instead of an actual movement against the constant war, they just want a movement of the prayerful. They will get around to ‘defending’ you eventually. But first, you have to be crucified. Please don’t respond with a gun. They’ll be ‘reflecting’ on your behalf.