Want a depressing laugh? See what’s passing for direct action strategy

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Eric Verlo

It begins: “Nonviolence is a great power which, when used correctly, can overturn empires.” You see the hole they’ve dug for themselves… For your reading enjoyment, here’s the entire of the Metta Center’s nonviolence page, unedited, gross assumptions, emphasized.

“Overturn empires” –WHICH? Can you name EVEN ONE? Apparently nonviolence has yet to be “used correctly.”

“that power” –Sorry, unproved.

“it’s our only option” –You wish, I guess. You and the forces of oppression.

“the most effective approach” –So you see the problem here. Every conclusion flows from a false assumption.

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Nonviolence is a great power which, when used correctly, can overturn empires. You will be drawing on that power, the full extent of which comes into our hands when we adopt it deeply and consistently, not because it’s our only option but because it’s the option that allows us to preserve our humanity in the process of struggle, i.e. to not further create the problem we’re trying to solve. Just ends and nonviolent means are a powerful combination, and that becomes clearer the longer the struggle goes on. We also get closer to the full potential of nonviolence when we have trained ourselves to the point where nonviolence is practically a way of life, offering unyielding resistance to injustice but never hostility to the true well-being of any person. Nonviolence is strategically the most effective approach in any situation of oppression particularly; however, its full power comes out when we:

have set a determination to identify core issues for which we are willing to make great sacrifices (and compromises on everything else);

have a well developed program of self-improvement and constructive work, building the world we want without demanding that others give it to us;

have a strategic plan that can carry us forward for the long term, using constructive program whenever possible and active resistance when necessary.

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“great sacrifices” –Martyrdom, victimhood. “compromise” –Punked.

“self improvement and constructive work” –Blame the victim. Onus for change is apparently the responsibility of the oppressed.

I’m sick already. What follows is nothing better than bad religious dogma, based not on morals but psychological engineering. It’s textbook Dale Carnegie, How to Make Friends And Influence People. As if corporations were people.

You can almost smell the crap. What you have here are missionary opportunists seizing upon strife to convert the oppressed to their pie-in-sky-when-you-die spirituality. No different than trying to convert indigenous peoples instead of educating them. Or making drunkards sing church hymns before they get soup.

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Points for Consideration:

I. Nonviolent Strategy Curve

Explanation:
Nonviolent strategies help to create a state of positive peace, restored relations and a higher image of the human being. There are times when conflict is necessary for this process. A nonviolent person will never shun conflict but will always use an opportunity to deepen his or her practice and connection with others.

This curve demonstrates how to create positive peace by advancing nonviolent strategies when relationships deteriorate and dehumanization increases.

II. Anger Under Discipline

Nonviolence is not passivity; it is a power in and of itself. There are three faces of power, according to Kenneth Boulding: threat power, exchange power and integrative power. Threat power is the power of a military force; exchange power is the power of money. Unlike military/threat or economic power, nonviolence is integrative power or love in action. In order to use its power on any scale–small or large–we must as Dr. King said, “harness anger under discipline for maximum effect.”

Anger, like other emotions, is a powerful force. But it does not need to be expressed in destructive or short-sighted action. Anger can be transformed into the fuel for nonviolent, constructive action with a long-term positive effect. What are some ways to “harness anger under discipline?”

1. Respect yourself and respect the goals of the movement by using the means that will achieve the end for the benefit of everybody (aka nonviolently).

2. Never humiliate another human being; all who watch and participate are potential allies, including perceived opponents.

3. Make your movement irresistible, not alienating, through education, professionalism, dialogue, restorative practices and nonviolence trainings.

4. Be willing to take on suffering and insult if necessary rather than inflict it onto others, at whatever the cost to yourself.

5. Be able to articulate clearly and effectively the goals of the movement and see the media as a way to persuade others to join your efforts. This takes reflection and serious strategic planning. Keep the message focused, clear and easy to understand.

6. Take time each day to take care of yourself spiritually. You need to be at your best when emotions and anger are running high. Take time to meditate and enjoy that you are working for a higher purpose.

III. Three Components Needed

Nonviolent struggle has three primary dimensions:

Constructive Programme: This means building the world you want without waiting for others to give it to you, e.g. alternative institutions, local economies, nonviolent leadership models.

Obstructive Program: This is what Dr. King called “non-cooperation with evil.” This includes tactics such as reverse and general strikes, marches, sit-ins, boycotts, etc.

Strategic Overview: In order to have the maximum effect, a movement needs to know when to switch between CP and OP, when to walk away from the police or when to allow for confrontation, etc.. Strategy can be strengthened by an overall commitment to nonviolence, a coherent message to share with those involved and those watching, and disciplined action.

IV. Learning

Take the time to watch other movements. Do not merely imitate but learn from them: understand what worked and why it worked. For instance, if protesters on Wall Street provoked a police struggle, how effective was it for an overall nonviolent goal and how might a different strategy work better?

Constantly assess and re-assess the situation in light of new information and new situations.

Stay in contact with other movements. Share the lessons with one another.

V. Tips for a Long-term strategy:

Sometimes in nonviolence we don’t get what we immediately set out to change, but in the long-term, the situation is more pliable, flexible and change comes more easily. Do not see short term failures as a failure of the method of nonviolence, and do not let anyone convince you that violence would be a better strategy to take. It isn’t. If one needs greater strength, one can “purify” one’s efforts. A simple way is to increase one’s commitment to nonviolence in thought and word. At this point, other practices such as meditation will be tools.

Statistics show that even if violence “works” in the short run, in the long term, it never makes a situation better. As Gandhi said, “violent revolution will bring about violent self-rule.”

The more comprehensive our nonviolence, the greater effect it can have. This means that instead of focusing all of our efforts on outward change, we can learn to deepen our awareness of how nonviolence works, not only on the level of the deed, but in our words and thoughts.

Nonviolence is a form of persuasion and dialogue, not a one-sided form of coercion. Respect the escalation curve model and always try to deescalate a conflict; avoid using the wrong strategy at the wrong time (this is where a strategic overview is essential).

Satyagraha is a last resort strategy for a discussion (looking for a win-win outcome) and can lead to the need for self sacrifice at the highest degree possible. Do not make this sacrifice before it is necessary e.g. promises of fasting unto death without first a willingness to try other strategies are always ineffective. Satyagraha is a method which “compels reason to be free.” We must be reasonable ourselves to awaken the reason of another; we must be willing to take risks and sacrifices (even to our ego) to open the heart of another.

(At Metta, we would like to change the slogan to “Create a New World! Stop the Machine! because in creating a new world, the machine dissolves more readily.)

That’s right, METTA CENTER can’t help themselves from second guessing the OCTOBER2011 slogan. It’s like antiwar detractors insisting message be FOR something instead of ANTI war. You can be AGAINST injustice, inequity, crime, greed, et al, without having to be on the hook for condescending an alternative.

Pseu Pseu Pseudo-Do-Dah-Day

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Steve Bass

For Rob. Thanks buddy! Say hi to yer Mom.

We’ve been toying with some pretty weird bits of thinking here, and it’s already getting hard to follow. Lemme try and tie a few things together. Also, if you’re still with me, now’s a good time to point out that this humble site is best read in conjunction with the discussions on my Facebook, (Steve Bass), and for this bit, especially within the PPCC Philosophy Club page linked from my Wall or wherever it is.

Remember my mention of Pseudo-statements back at Willie’s story? Elsewhere, in Stage Magick and around about, notably at the PPCC Philosopy Club linked off my Facebook, I put up the business of our inability to prove a negative. The assertion that “This statement does not belong in the set of all true statements,” is a nice example. The statement is internally self-defeating, negated by paradox; it’s internally inconsistent, self-contradictory, neither true, nor false– a pseudo-statement. The “set of all true statements” statement is a tidy example in that attempting an answer produces a nonsense response awfully reminiscent, at least to me, of the sort of thing that happens to those hapless physicists when they try to crunch their numbers beyond the event horizon and into the heart of the Singularity. Lots of PHDs get real pissy if you try and take their numbers and drag them into the “real” world here. Like most of us, abstractions are fine for them. Hanging flesh on the ephemeral turns it into a monster for some. I, on the other hand, have no such qualm. If matter isn’t made of matter, as some rather esoteric physics appears to indicate, that most assuredly effects us, sez me.

The problem of proving a negative is stickier than the “True Statements” statement, because we can somehow tell the essence of the genuinely self-defeating pseudo-statement is True. Something about the very idea is akin to the business of the Singularity–we can’t seem to get there, or even define the nature of that There, but we know there has to be Something, OK? And thinking about it produces notions that resonate in our world.

We’ve also talked some about politics, and here’s the clincher. Our whole system, our World, maybe even our very Selves combine to make a big ol’ Pseudo-statement, overburdened by internal paradox and contradiction, and decorated with infinite concentric, overlapping circles and waves of Pseudo-reality.

The “Doctrine of the Many,” claimed by Zoroastrians, Jains, some Gostics, among others, avers that we humans are compound beings. Some scientists at the fringe have claimed this as well, but let me keep this as political as I can for a moment. The concept surfaces in Western thinking when we speak of “talking to ourselves,” which we all know can be quite an argument at times, and in notions like multiple personality. Most U.S. citizens will agree that we are a “Christian” nation in spite of that pesky 1st Amendment. We’ll acknowledge “diversity” in religious matters, but obviously those other guys are wrong and belong in Hell where they won’t fuck up our Christian Zen, see? The foundational Christian documents upon which the edifice of the world’s biggest group of religions includes a whole lot of admonitions about Love. Yet it is hardly necessary to provide examples of the embarrassing fact that a whole lot of Christians are rabid, violence-loving haters dribbling foam from their chins as the rail about how, “God hates fags,” or whatever. Don’t feel so smug if you’re a Buddhist or an Agnostic or < insert your favorite dogmatic crap here> and you still get that rush of glee when you see Saddam dangling from a rope or hear about the supposed demise of Osama. I may argue that a thing can be both A and non-A at the same time, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that killin’ a motherfuckah is the same as turning the other cheek. Where is the Love in this set of systems/politicals/religions/nationalisms? It’s in there, but only in the sense that it sets the whole business up as a sort of cosmic, (and often comic), Pseudo-statement.

I spoke a bit with my homeless friend Rob yesterday and he told me about a guy he knows with some brilliant talent–musical, I think–that lives outside. Rob had burned himself accidentally and the topic brought to light his friend’s plight; the guy is a multiple, and periodically his alter will emerge and industriously destroy his life. The fellow named his alter Jack, I think, and knows of his existence from observing the destruction “Jack” leaves in his wake, but the two never interact. The guy blacks out and has no recollection of moving about in the world while Jack is in control. Once Jack put his feet in a campfire til the shared body required a lengthy hospital stay. One day Jack just may kill the both of him.

I’m saying Christendom is just like Jack and his host, and so is American society. So is the whole freakin’ society of the whole freakin’ world. Only we suffer from a far more advanced stage of the condition and our legs are buried in hot coals. Our hair is on fire. Those homeless dudes don’t worry about a house, but we’ve been building a huge edifice on a foundation of shit for so long we think we can’t backtrack, but backtrack we must. This house is collapsing upon us right now, as we speak, so to speak, and we need to get the fuck out, tear down the M.C. Esher thing we’ve been trying to build, and start the fuck over or we’re all going to be buried. Our society, societies, lives, and now even the solid earth is/are collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions of our own making.

Most who’ve read so far won’t need me to explain the function of a keystone–the stone at the top of an arch that concentrates the force and thereby holds the arch in place. When the capstone at the top of an arch at, say, a Medieval cathedral erodes, the arch collapses. The capstone of the Christian faith is supposed to be Love, right? Isn’t that key to a great many doctrines? It seems hard to find a player in all the world that will openly advocate for a doctrine of Hatred. Even the nastiest Devil-worshiping headbanger seeks Love, if only amongst his own within the particular bit of the Chaotic waveform in which he finds himself. Whatever. Our shit is missing its capstone. And its foundation is shit, too.

Don’t you dare get all dogmatically ideological and ignore the fact that I’ve NOT preached Jesus here, or any other tributary. We–and I mean all of us, including those of us clutching the notions of enmity so close to our hearts, and those addicted to power–need to stand back, tear the whole house down, and rebuild something with a thoughtfully drawn blueprint. We need to build an edifice on a foundation of Love, designed toward the capstone of Love. When we do that–oh, what a mansion we’ll have!

What did that one dude John say? “God is Love.” Right? Can I get a witness?

Right. Thus sayeth the housepainter.

http://samaelgnosis.us/books/html/revolutionary_psychology/chapter_12.htm

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

#OccupyDenver gains speed in spite of counterrevolutionaries hitting brakes

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Eric Verlo

You can point the finger at the angry Anarchists, or at the nonviolence biddies who refuse to mingle, but in the end the Occupy Denver General Assembly emerged unscathed. At issue was the third of the St Paul principles, that activists will not condemn each other over divergent tactics. Of course condemnation provokes… condemnation, so the disruptors succeeded with their divisive interjections, until participants concluded that violence versus nonviolence was a non issue. No one wants or plans violence, why pretend it requires sanction or prohibition? For my part I wonder who says youthful exuberance has anything to learn from voices of experience, experienced at failure? Occupy Together is the common goal. The Denver occupation on the capitol steps is now encamped 24/7 and has organized a permitted demonstration on Saturday Oct 1. Local unions have signed on to march, which mirrors the interest labor is now paying in several dozen cities worldwide, just as Occupy Wall Street garners more and more celebrity and media attention.

Yer in the Army Now….

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Steve Bass

So much has been happening lately I’m afraid this will be a big confused mess, but what th’ hey, right?

The world is in a Meltdown. Hell that’s the reason I have time for this crap, ya know? This is NOT a surprise. We’ve all known it’s been coming for a looong time now, though it’s hard to nail down that specific moment when we knew. Maybe we always did. I’ll get to how I think we’ve known, and how we didn’t know we’ve know a different time. For now, a somewhat more imminent thought. Here’s one place to find a buncha bone-chilling stats http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/index.php . The numbers are everywhere. This is only one source, and far more officious, (don’t mess with me, I used that word on purpose), sources are available. YOU look ’em up. Anyone wanting to look fuckin’ stupid can tapdance around them til–well, til the Apocalypse–and they’re not gonna change, cause tapdancin’ won’t change it. If it was gonna, it woulda! I already put it more or less in a nutshell: WE’RE FUCK-ED!!

But we’re not. We’re still breathing, still eating, drinking, fucking, pumping out babies, and so on. I have two accidental children whom I love without bounds. I genuinely thought it would be rude, at best, to sire a new Person and foist all this bullshit upon him16 years ago when the pertinent romantic interlude took place. Maybe it is, in way, but in plenty of other ways life is as always a thing of such great, broad, deep beauty that I think all potential for its fulfillment ought to be pursued. (Don’t imagine I’ve converted to Catholicism or something–that though was rather more metaphysically driven, and you should put on a raincoat if it looks like rain. Or waders if it looks like–you know ;)) Look around, though. We’re ALIVE!! More than we know. And life shows us in every discrete packet of light entering our retinas that it will rise, no matter what. We can’t kill the Earth. I rather think she’d prefer us to work this out, but she’ll be fine. We can certainly destroy our ability to live here as Humans, though.

In Consider the Lilies, I started to explain what I’m up to here. Every time I approach that question, the answers that come to me sound more and more absurdly grandiose. Save the world? I mean, reeealy! when I was a young child, like in the 3rd grade or something, (no shit–ask Mom), I was politicized and set in a frame of mind opposed to fascism, oppression, and unkindness, for lack of a better term. Everyone knows this is the course of idealism, though, right? I got out in the “real” world and it struck me that one must make some pragmatic concessions to get by. Right? We all learn this, don’t we? Usually when it “strikes” us it’s like a brick in the head. It’s usually thrown at us by some cog in the Fascist machine.

If you’ve read the earlier posts, or caught my live rant, you’ve likely been puzzled by my carryings on about money being a bad metaphor. It’s outdated poetry, good for a time, now hopelessly outdated like that ridiculous, overwrought Victorian romance shyte you may have read in college or high school. (Leave them kids alone, teacher!). “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling, ” wrote Oscar Wilde, and the old thing has gotten us a long way, in fact, it’s gotten us right here. Fucked. Or on the cusp of some spectacular event(s).

We live in a competitive world. Whichever doctrinal approach one embraces, whether scientifically mechanistic or holding out for divine fiat, it’s the scrabbling over game pieces that has us in this sinking boat. Everyone has to have a buncha shit they don’t need, in order to display for all the other poor losers how dominant they or their team has been in the Game. This isn’t a fuckin’ game anymore, though. Look at those numbers again. Do you really think a little half-assed reduction in increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 100 years or whatever is going to save the human race? Get real! Do you really think we might someday pay off our $23 trillion debt, or whatever it is? What’s that shit, anyways? To whom do we owe it? When did we sign that contract? Didn’t someone steal that from us last month? Do we really think we can survive a collapse of the oceans, the food chain, the watersheds, etc, etc, and so on?

I may be grandiose and ridiculous, but I can read the writing on the wall, in the sky, on the face of the Moon. We’re gonna need to stop fiddle-fuckin’ around and wrestle this shit to the ground, or we’re all gonna die. Our kids are gonna die. Our grandkids, if we live to see them, will be mutant freaks like Goldbloom’s fly monster, just like the poor fucked up three-eyed fish around Chernobyl and downstream of a BHP Billiton mine , (BHP: Broken Hill Properties. It’s only a secret if you close your eyes, kids). They’ll die miserably, and the Earth will breathe a sigh of relief, having fought off a pestilent Virus. Or we can CHANGE EVERYTHING.

I saw a panel discussion at the community college yesterday, (PPCC). A Bahai, a Buddhist, a Pagan, and a Christian philosopher walked into a bar and the bartender said, “What is this, a fuckin’ joke?” Oh–sorry. They actually sat behind a table and spoke as cogently as they were able, and we all took them fairly seriously, if with the standard portion of salt–you know it’s still all bullshit, right? A thematic keystone was the notion that we’re all One, that it’s all All-One. You’ll notice me playing that riff for all I can wring from it. It’s got a lot of Soul, and it sounds good. When I say we’re all gonna die, I don’t mean all us minor league players. The whole stadium is collapsing. It’s already collapsed in a lot of ways. Check out my friend Skip’s posts about the Federal Reserve. Don’t be tapdancing when you read. The Fascists will die with us. Their secret bunkers won’t do. Competition is over; the game pieces are reduced to Parker Bros. parts. Cooperative living is at hand.

Only LOVE will save us. That’s right, y’all.Think that’s hokey? Sure. It is. But that’s a view from the old game. I put this shit up because I believe it. I’m just as much like water as anyone else. I’d stay comfortably here at the lowest level if it seemed for one second to me like that might be an option. It does not. It is not. Change or die. Right now. Today. Look me up. I have a couple ideas, and I bet you do too, if you were to stop concentrating on that tapdance.

There are many, many more things to say about all this. Come back and see us, eh?

Viva la rivoluzione!
Viva l’Esercito dell’Amore!

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

To the Fine Folks at the PPCC Philosophy Club

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Steve Bass

I feel like a point is at hand where any of you who have observed or participated in the conversation between David Arnold and me, including David, deserve a pause for breath. The two of us have come to dominate the message board, it seems to me, and this has never been my intention. So I’ve given the thing a little thought and here’s how it comes out, extemporaneously for you all to consider.

I love Philosophy. I think it’s fundamental and unavoidable–an existential imperative–that is, intrinsic to the condition of existing as a live, conscious human being. No matter how we live, or what we do or do not do, it depends directly from how we think. I also believe that we have little, if any control over what we believe, that being further dependent from what we think. I find the whole business of such dramatic import that I obsess over it all the time, and seek out forae like this one from which to further explore the mutiple, if not infinite facets of the jewel.

Having said that…this board is a tool for the furtherance of education for students enrolled at PPCC. Neither David nor I are any more than interlopers, guests in your house. I am grateful to the club for the experience as it has already unfolded, and I truly hope to continue. I believe I have a couple assets to offer and I hope you’ll all receive me with the humor with which I intend myself. Please–argue. I will not fight.

David, whom I address here personally, though I will continue in the second person for the group’s sake, has suggested that I am guilty of unspecified errors in reasoning. I would love to treat those errors specifically here, hoping the rest of the club will engage as well. In fact, given the best of all possible outcomes, I’d like to be allowed to invite David and the entire Stanford University Philosopy Department to debate the question of Materialism v Theism as the conversation has been tentatively labeled in our previous chatting, and to have the thing judged by an unbiased panel, right here on the PPCC club’s site.

I WILL NOT be an imposition here. I insist on explicit permission from the club, its officers, and Bruce if he considers himself in a position to arbitrate. This is about your education far more than it’s about mine. I’ve seen to my own learnin’ for some while now. It’s working out plenty fine for me. I’ll go away quietly at the simplest word from one with a legitimate say.

You’ll notice I carry on about what I “think,” and my “opinion,” quite a lot, and that’s part of what David finds elusive in me, I think. I don’t “know” very much at all, and I think you all will discover soon enough that nailing knowledge down is a very slippery business indeed. I do think I have something of interest to the average PPCC philosophy student, though, if not the average Stanford variety. Though the halls of Stanford may be filled with a rarified air too thin for my blood to endure, I ain’t ascairt.

Spread the word David. Even if they’re not game here at PPCC, Stanford’s been called out publically by an insousciant housepainter with a full 8th grade education. It’ll be FUN!

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

NY #OccupyWallStreet protest is going to be this generation’s Woodstock. Are you going to miss it?

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Eric Verlo

If you can’t bum a ride to New York City, you are going to miss out, it’s plain as that. But you can make the revolution happen where you are. The Egyptian victory in Tahrir Square wasn’t achieved without simultaneous demos in Alexandria and Suez, etc. The earliest heavy casualties actually happened outside Cairo. In the Colorado capitol, a nascent #OccupyDenver is building steam. President Obama is making a campaign stop in Denver on Tuesday at Lincoln High School at Evans and Federal. That will be an excellent chance to force the media to break its blackout against the anti-capitalist uprising. What’s there to say to President Obama? Nothing right? He’s shown he answers only to Wall Street. But the message to the TV coverage of Obama, and to the people of Denver can be: Why is the bank-owned corporate media not telling you about #OccupyWallStreet? Reclaim our democracy from the bankers.

Colorado Springs is gaga for warmongers, bigots, Zionists and conservative educational campuses. The local Intelligence Quotient doesn’t rise to the level of critical thinking, which is a heartbreaking trait in its youth. But there is an ongoing effort to aid #OccupyWallStreet’s visibility. It’s held on the noon hour, at Tejon and Colorado Ave downtown, at the Booz Allen Hamilton Building, where area war profiteers laugh all the way to the investment banks across the hall, passing by the local FBI office, btw. Our protest doesn’t have the music, mahem & hijinks of NYC Liberty Plaza, but none of the beatings either. Come a few minutes late and you get to pass reserve cops hiding out of our view in the alleys around the critical intersection, in case the bankers want their critics squashed. Possible messaging: DON’T LET BANKERS FORECLOSE ON DEMOCRACY, OCCUPY WALL STREET NOW!

WALL STREET BANKS ARE STEALING YOUR HOME, HEALTH, RETIREMENT, STANDARD OF LIVING, & WORLD RESOURCES. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET –LOOK IT UP.

The revolution will not be televised, emailed unfiltered, or allowed to trend on Twitter, but it’s starting without you

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Eric Verlo

OCCUPYWALLSTREET- Eighty nonviolent #OWS protesters arrested Saturday by NYPD, some penned in and maced, others manhandled, as they marched in NYC against America’s bankster oligarchs. Wall Street proper remains fortified by anti-invasion barriers preventing pedestrians and demonstrators from getting anywhere near. The protest encampment in Liberty Square enters its second week and today’s baptism of police brutality ensures that the Second American Revolution is taking wing.

What are their demands, everyone asks? At the crux, the same as Tahrir Square, REGIME CHANGE, a decapitation of corporatist imperial fascism. The trouble of course is that to average Americans, a “regime” is a foreign entity, usually incorrigible. So long as the MSM defines the terms, the concept of a US regime doesn’t compute. Another reason why #OccupyWallStreet has to be vague about its goals is because calling for the overthrow one’s masters is not legal. For now, what the protesters against Wall Street say they want, is what they want. If you want to have a say in what direction they take, go there and take part. Otherwise, settle for this, their ONE DEMAND:

A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Five)
Published 2011-09-22 07:51:42 UTC by OccupyWallSt
at OccupyWallStreet.org

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

On September 21st, 2011, Troy Davis, an innocent man, was murdered by the state of Georgia. Troy Davis was one of the 99 percent.

Ending capital punishment is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, four of our members were arrested on baseless charges.

Ending police intimidation is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, the richest 400 Americans owned more than half of the country’s population.

Ending wealth inequality is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, we determined that Yahoo lied about occupywallst.org being in spam filters.

Ending corporate censorship is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly eighty percent of Americans thought the country was on the wrong track.

Ending the modern gilded age is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly 15% of Americans approved of the job Congress was doing.

Ending political corruption is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of Americans did not have work.

Ending joblessness is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly one sixth of America lived in poverty.

Ending poverty is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, roughly fifty million Americans were without health insurance.

Ending health-profiteering is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, America had military bases in around one hundred and thirty out of one hundred and sixty-five countries.

Ending American imperialism is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, America was at war with the world.

Ending war is our one demand.

On September 21st, 2011, we stood in solidarity with Madrid, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Madison, Toronto, London, Athens, Sydney, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Portland and Chicago. Soon we will stand with Phoenix, Montreal, Cleveland and Atlanta. We’re still here. We are growing. We intend to stay until we see movements toward real change in our country and the world.

You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the bosses. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the past comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument, and on this theme, the struggle for existence, the people will speak. Join us.

We speak as one. All of our decisions, from our choice to march on Wall Street to our decision to continue occupying Liberty Square, were decided through a consensus based process by the group, for the group.

Consider the Lilies

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Steve Bass

My friends are no doubt a scrappy bunch. It’s no big surprise that guys like Jon and Adam and–holy shit–Skip, are pissed off and ready to burn a few barns down, so to speak. I don’t think I need to look up a bunch of fancy references to convince anyone that things are dire, dire, dire. The college students I went hiking with yesterday afternoon will have to live what, like 20,0000 years to pay off the stupid shell-game debt they supposedly owe. Some guy on Adam’s page was trying to convince me the whole business is thus because we never pay our bills. Bullshit. It’s like this because a buncha paranoid Fascist clowns have set up a little magick trick to try and convince us they have some legitimate claim to all the cheese. THEY DO NOT!!!

So there’s a fight working alright, and I’ve been in it since I was a potential in my Granddad’s genetic line. But I recently noticed–this is so weird–we’re all fighting the wrong guy, and he is us. If we collapse our little bubble here in our little gob of the quantum foam, we’re all screwed; not just us little guys. And we really do have enough guys to kick their Fascist asses on the way down. But guess what, we’ve all got it wrong!

Like it or not we’re all in this together. We’re each and every one of us as fucked up as the Devil!!! Shit he may have been the only sane one all along–but now I’m just picking at scales. Sorry. Didn’t meant to. Ahem. Point is some of us are fucked up differently than others. It doesn’t matter. That crackhead? Fuck-ed. The cop beating him down? Fuck-ed. Dominique Kahn-Strauss? Fuck-ed. Who else? The Pope? Me? You? Yeah, you’re starting to anticipate if not grok me.

I’m a tool. Sometimes I’m also a dick and an asshole. That’s another matter–I’m happy about being a tool.

A while ago I came back to Colorado from a trip back to Cleveland for the great John Covert’s 95th birthday party. The moment I returned to my adopted home town, every television set in the danged known Universe began to trumpet the imminent falling of the sky, talking heads of every political stripe and linguistic camp bewailing the unavoidable collapse of the American dollar and the entire foundation of all civilization along with it. I found myself with time on my hands, so I started tinkering with this blog as nothing more than an outlet for some frustrations, and a place to sling a bit of my ordinary schtick, mainly just at myself, assuming I’d be the only one reading. I played around on Facebook a little meaning nothing more than to hunt down a few friends from the distant past. That’s what FB is for, right? A series of rapidly developing events took place and I soon found myself in the position I mean to describe right now, as best as I am able.

I guess I can’t recall the first moment I was told I could write. It hasn’t really mattered til recently–everyone knows writing is one of those career choices pursued by quixotic artsy-fartsy types that were willing to sacrifice creature comforts on the off chance someone might give a shit, and that the big bucks might roll in, easy-pleasy. Like hitting the lottery or breaking into the billboard charts with your high-school garage band, right? Besides, writers as a breed must, by necessity, possess a form of self-deluded arrogance that they have things to say of such verity and import that people will be compelled to actually pay money to subject themselves to the grief of listening to the blather produced in the effort to be a big deal. It was never like that. I just wanted something to fill the time that wouldn’t dissolve my brains like the all to comfortable slide into awareness of regularly scheduled TV programming was beginning to do.

Somewhere in the midst of Facebooking about how we need a new econo-political paradigm it became apparent that bitching about this need had long been a habit of mine, as well as of many of my friends. I’ve always been a pretty good bitcher, too, in fact, when I entered the foundationless world of a self-employed remodeler it was a sense of the futility of bellyaching about how paint companies were managed. My brother and I had enough faith in our pooled abilities to believe we could do things better than the people running outfits for which we had worked to strike under our own banner. The key words in this were and remain “faith” and “believe”.

So it occurred to me that if I really believe my own drivel, I ought to live it out.

Well that was an eye-opener. Very little pursuit of that idea led me to examine just what I actually believe, which turns out to be quite a bit, and quite at odds with the established order of things. I started, as is my wont, to contemplate God, and the deeper nature of things. I thought about how this transposes to something manageable in this “real” world. We have to work at a job, right? We have to round up bacon we can trade for goods, services, support for our children, and so on. But wait a minute–20 years of self-employment, and I was broke, money-wise, and most of my relationships were broke in some sense as well, though in most instances I couldn’t tell how, or how to fix it. Seemed the thing I was best at doing was bitching. Where’s the fun in that?

But I do believe in God, right, even though I’ve managed to get myself thrown out of both Christian churches and sorta like devil-worshiping occult groups because my notions of God are…unconventional. Enough so I’m usually inclined to put quotation marks around “God” when I type the word, and to feel compelled to issue tedious disclaimers about how I differ from the general milieu of thinkers on the matter.

An experiment in ontological ideoplasticity.

This whole thing is about stuff I believe. I’m kinda stuck at that level, since there’s not much I know. Some of what I believe has to do with what other folks believe, so I’ll be pretty much doing what a lot of other folks do, in a lot of ways. In some

Whoa!!! Blah Blah F-ing Blah.

Mt 6

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

My apologies to any devil-worshiping freaks I may have just offended. You’re wrong, anyhow–that’s for another moment. Point is–and I’m no ordinary Christian–this is stuff we all learned from the cradle. I’ll be using Christian doctrinal talking points throughout this whole conversation because that’s where I learned this shit. It’s also where I learned it was all crap.

I’ve had a real hard time with this one, cause by now I can usually say, “The point is….” Right now I still can’t do that. The whole collection of thoughts in my head begins to ooze its way into the point when I come at it this way. Bear with a little, OK?

Christians say they believe the book that stuff up the page a little came from is the sacrosanct Word of God, equated with the Logos–God on paper, if you will. With apologies to those real Christian human beings in the world, Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit!!!!! If you shitheels really believed one word of the shit in that book, this conversation would be intrinsically inconceivable. See that at the end of that last sentence? PERIOD.

On the other hand, I believe the Bible to be a beautiful collection of fine literature, some of which may be divinely inspired. We have all these cultural heroes, like Gandhi whom I linked to on FB earlier, Jesus, John Lennon ferchristsake. We pay a bunch of lip service out to them then grab a beer and flick on some stupid nonsense on TV, or punch a child, or throw rocks at a cop, or bust a protester. Fuck that, I decided I believe it. Whatever it is.

You may have noticed me carrying on about a new paradigm, money’s a bad metaphor, we’re all in this together, &c., &c. All that is real, real important to what this is about, but OMG kids! This was a bitch to get off. I’ll be hanging flesh on it all as I go, but be patient. what ended up here just now was way different than what I’d meant to do. A writer has to possess a pretty ridiculous quantity of arrogance in the first place, just to have the motivation to sit here pouring all of it out. I mean, I think this tripe I’m typing is valuable enough, and that you all will want to see it–need to see it–to occupy me at 3:30 in the fucking morning. Even worse, here and round about, (get wit’ me on Facebook, if you came from somewhere else), I’ll be arguing with Hegel, Gandhi, Paul the fuckin’ Apostle. Can you believe it? Whatever, I believe the finer points from all those guys. I’ll explain everything.

This hasn’t been the clarification I’d promised to put up, but it defines some of the questions, I guess. You can have it.

Now don’t forget. A little review: It’s All Bullshit!!!

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

Make Wall Street pay for bankrupting, debasing & corrupting American dream

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Yeah I know, it was SEPT 17, SEPT 17 and detractors laughed because the denizens of New York’s financial district are not there to see a weekend protest, but Saturday was to get a running start on the morning bell Monday. Wall Street is not a street, a square or even a market, it’s a den of thieves, privately owned, publicly subsidized, licensed grand larceny. Demonstrators are asked, why protest Wall Street when the decision-makers are in DC? Uh, candidate Obama’s biggest backers were investment banks. We thought it was because they were opting for sanity over Dumber Bush. Turns out it was for the bailout, ongoing, and to ensure he’d laissez faire their free market, globalist usury.

Stage Magick

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Steve Bass

For Bruce McCluggage

Had some words with my friend Bruce yesterday–OK, lots of words. In fact, the Spirit moved me, so I was blasting words all over the place like that guy from the X Men, only with a gag instead of a visor. All the way toward the end of much conversatin’–and yes, Bruce held his end respectably in the face of my torrent–we came to a summation.

The idea is already on the pages here, so it’s important, and needing some flesh, but it’s also very simple. We all know we can’t prove a negative. Any third grade philosopher know this as an unshakable verity, right? So who will step up to prove that? No one, that’s who–we can’t do it, and mind you, I don’t hearsee that term coming from myself often. I’ll beat my kids senseless if I hear them using it. (Hi kids! Molto amore!). Hell the notion is generational. My totally outstanding 95 year old Granddad banned the word from his brood’s vocabulary, and he started his family during the Great Depression. But we can’t, and we know we can’t.

We can’t even prove that we can’t prove that we can’t prove a negative. We can add layers to our investigation to Eternity, and never can we prove a negative. And yet we know that we know that we know (&c.) that we can’t do it. What the Heellll!!? This is why: Reason breaks down at a point between proving and knowing right here for us to examine like a fascinating diamond, cut in some diabolically ingenious fashion to as to hide its facets from us like a tesseract or something. There’s math that explains this pretty succinctly. Look up Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, (here’s a good start http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel/). Godel, whose name I’ll be disrespecting til I figure out how to add an umlaut on this thing, wrote a bunch of High Math, way beyond my capacity, that shows us in terms even I can grok, that any closed system can never possibly contain all the tools necessary to fully describe itself. With me so far?

This shows us another Eternal Verity: Truth transcends Proof; and further–our ability to know does the same. Now, Bruce is a philosopher, and kind of a Christian, so this sort of shit doesn’t bother him like it may the Scientific Determinists that may read this. What we are gazing upon, through the lens of our little diamond, is an example of our ability to “jump out of the system”, and view it from outside, in some manner as indescribable as how we can know there’s no proving a negative. (Apologies to Doug Hofstadter for abusing an idea I came across in Godel, Escher, Bach. I’m about to depart from his comfort zone, I think. He did, give him mucho credit, respectably describe the idea within the closed system of those pages). This is an ability we share with God. This, I think, is why some tidbit of western scripture says, “Ye are gods,” (Psalm 82, for you skeptics; read it all and get some context before attempting to argue, please).

This whole line of thought is closely associated with the Ontological Argument as proof of God, if not fully dependent upon it, (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/). For the uninitiated, this is a supremely brilliant bit of philosophical tomfoolery that attemtps to prove the existence of God by reason alone, in an orderly procession of thought utterly divorced from empirical evidence. If anyone would care to take it on, I’d love–no LOVE–to see a genuine debunking. It’s very slippery indeed, and feels for all the world like a stage magician pulling infinite decks of cards from his sleeves. But it’s irrefutable, in my stupid little mind. It jumps the system.

I’ll readdress the crap we’ve mulled over here, but this is good. Put simply–arithmetically, one might say–We can’t prove a negative>We know this>Truth is superior to proof>We are therefore superior to the closed system of All-There-Is>Only god is thus>We are gods. (Yes, I took a leap there at step 6. I only have so much attention span. Roll wit’ it for now, OK? It’s in the Ontological Argument if you feel like getting ahead of me). This is arithmetical, yes, and handily sums up my points from yesterday, Bruce and friends. But, as you’ve seen by now I guess, that doesn’t mean one can’t do a bit of Algebra, Trig, or (Meta)Physics with it.
***
Jeez, I hope you all enjoyed that. Please don’t burn me at the stake yet. There’s more. It’ll take a while to work around the mess of toroidal thinking here. See Bruce–I didn’t forget that part. I’m only human, even if we are all gods. Bear in mind all, that Nothing here is any more valuable than the opinion of one idiot house painter. And any of you who have read the stuff before this will know already: It’s all a bunch of bullshit.

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

Willie and Waylon and Some Other Guy: A story about weed, marriage, and Texas tall tales. Part I

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Steve Bass

I like telling the story of the time we went to Telluride with my brother David to catch the Bluegrass Festival there. Dave is a pretty dang famous fiddler, and this happened 13 or 14 years ago when his Freight Hoppers were riding a crest, having two then current Billboard Top 20 Americana list releases on Rounder, (Rounder is pretty much a ripoff, but that’s for another time). The Freight Hoppers were hot in Colorado, and their set would draw some 30, 000 festival-goers, with a respectable bevy of hairy Deadheads looking for an outlet following Jerry’s departure bouncing , flouncing and working their little Tai Chi dance up at the stage. Lots of really notable musicians liked them, too, and still do, actually.

Anyhow, we would meet up with Dave and the band at the festivals after winding through a long cattle-line setup, to get to the will-call desk and pick up our magic-rainbow all-access wristbands and hang out all weekend with all these niche-famous musicians, eating, drinking, being merry, smoking, and playing music together. That shit is great!

So one day we’re back stage chillin’ with Tony Furtado, (hi Tony—rock on!), and someone goes, “Is that Johnny Cash?” and sure enough, the Highwaymen had showed up to play an unscheduled set. We never made it away from whatever we were doing at the time to see them play, but not long later, as if they had come for no other purpose, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson show up looking for my brother to tell him how much they dig his music. How cool is that!? Well, we all got to jawin’, and knowing a little about Willie I pulled a little fairly decent weed out of my pocket and offered it, but Willie said, “Oh, no thanks, son, put that away,” and busted out some G13 mutant weed or something, and sparked the stoniest joint I’ve ever smoked in my life, to this very day. What a day!

Now, Willie has always been a hero of mine. His heroes have always been cowboys, he says; mine have always been outlaws, and I always figured Willie for a true outlaw, to the core. I mean the guy runs for president on a platform built of pot smoke, with Ani DiFranco as his running mate. Go Willie! That’s why some things he’s said lately trouble me. I’ll get to that in a minute but the first order of business here is to retell that story one more time, (not that I won’t tell it again—it’s a great staple of mine at parties and such), and to let you in on a secret: It’s all bullshit! It never happened!

***

I am a teller of tall tales, a spinner of yarns, a slinger of bool-shyte. That’s what I do. I’m gonna do some now, here; it’s my schtick, and folks who know me will instantly recognize some of the regular phraseology of my everyday standup, right here on the page. Hi Tim! Hi kids! Hi Willie! Some will recognize little inside tidbits and feel special. They’ll pick out my little eddies and anticipate how I circle back around myself. Hell, if you’re reading you might just as well go ahead and start feeling all conspiratorial and special right now. I mean, this is certainly not USA Today. You can pretty much count on being in an exclusive number by this count.
So if this is a bit of improv by a bullshit artist, how do you know this isn’t all bullshit right now? I’ll let you in on another secret: it is! That’s right—it’s the Lying Cretin. Everything I say is a lie. The Lie is truer than the Truth. Willie and I will be burning one in Austin when I make it down that way in a few months and we’ll laaaugh and laugh about this whole thing, because he gets it, you know. This statement does not belong in the set of all true statements.

Wrap your head around that a spell. It can’t be done. And no side-winding tap-dance involving imaginary words like”pseudo-statement” allowed, either. This is True Lies. It’s a breakdown in reason, a blind spot in our panoramic window to Reality like that thing with the dots you learned in elementary school. You can not manipulate the notions here to fit your mind, though you may, just maybe, be able to manipulate your mind to fit the notions. OK, so I’ll admit we can’t prove the magick here, and maybe someday some mathematician will build a technical ladder up and out of Gödel’s pit, but, we can’t prove a negative, right? But let’s see ya prove that. And now follow it back to the beginning of this paragraph, the beginning of this rant, the beginning of everything you’ve ever read, heard, saw, sensed felt.

And, lo and behold, you find yourself “poised on the wave of explicit Presence, the clockless Nowever.” But don’t forget what kinda bullshit you’re reading.

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

From Syntagma Square to Wall Street, the people want their money back!

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Eric Verlo

If the Wall Street bankers are going to be made to give the world’s wealth back to the people, they’ll ask to “you and whose army?” Your dumb lazy ass on the line would be helpful, but no one’s waiting on you to press the banks for economic justice. Around the world, youth activists are converging September 17 on the international centers of grand larceny. In New York City, that’s Wall Street.

From antibanks.net

Occupy financial districts on September 17:

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET in New York, USA – Read the plan of action.

#TOMALABOLSA in Madrid, Spain – Read the plan of action. Fb event.

#TOMALABOLSA in Valencia, Spain – Fb event

#TOMALABOLSA in Bilbao, Spain – Fb event

#TOMALABOLSA in Santander, in Spain – Camping 2 days in front of Bank Santander. Read the plan of action.

#TOMALABOLSA in Las Palmas, in Spain – Read the plan of action.

#OCCUPAZIONEPIAZZAAFFARI in Milan, Italy – Fb event.

#OCCUPYBANKOFENGLAND, #UKUncut in London, England – Fb event. other fb event.

#USDORSF San Francisco, USA – Read the plan of action.

#USDORLosA Los Angeles, USA – Read the plan of action.

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET in Austin, USA – Read the plan of action.

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET in Seattle, USA – Read the plan of action.

#TAKETHESQUARE return to the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin – USA Webpage

#OCCUPYBAYSTREET in Toronto, Canada – Fb event.

in Athens, Greece – Hellenic Stock Exchange Fb event. Also gathering in Syntagma square at 12:00 and then march to the Bank of Greece on Panepistimioy Avenue. Fb event. Web flyer here.

in Berlin, Germany – Occupy Börse Berlin Fb Event.

in Frankfurt, Germany – Occupy Frankfurter Börse Fb Event.

in Stuttgart, Germany – Occupy börsenstrasse Fb event.

in Lisboa, Portugal – Demonstration in front of Stock-Market headquarters. Fb event.

in Porto, Portugal – Demonstration in front of Stock-Market headquarters. Portugal – Fb event.

in Vienna, Austria – Read the plan of action.

#BEURSPLEINBEZETTING in Amsterdam, Netherlands – Camping in the Exchange Market Square. Fb event. Preparation meeting (13.09.2011) link.

in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Demonstration in front of Stock Exchange Headquarters. FB event.

Colorado Misremembers Nine Eleven w/ help of Zionist GWOT propagandists

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Colorado Remembers 9/11 sponsored by Counter-Terrorism Education Learning Lab Well looky who’s the primary sponsor of Denver’s 9/11 misremembrance: our scaremonger friends at THE C.E.L.L., the Zionist funded terror indoctrination center where you can subject yourself and your kids to the psychological trauma of a bomb attack, because the only fear they have to peddle is fear itself. We’ve covered the odious CELL from its start, whose billboards helpfully warn Denver that terror can happen to anyone, any time, any place. Formerly the “Center for Empowered Learning and Living”, now they’ve dubbed themselves the “Counter-Terrorism Education Learning Lab.” Redundant much? It’s obvious that the GWOT drummers would make a last ditch effort on 9/11’s final hurrah. When’s the next big anniversary? 2026? They’ll be the Crow-Eating Liverspotted Lepers by then. Besides trying to keep Americans motivated to kill Muslims to preempt terror at home, The CELL has another motive to spread fear. Israelis are beginning to bail from Zionism, in particular from the Judification of Jerusalem, because the constant fear of violence is wearing on them. One strategy to stanch the exodus is to make fear of terrorism universal, especially in core Jewish population centers like Denver, Chicago, NYC and LA.

Never Forget 9/11, much less decode it

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Never Forget 9-11 illustrating airliner flying from Pentagon to Twin Towers Never Forget What? The Alamo? The Maine? The Lusitania? Pearl Harbor? Every example of a tragedy our government exploits has turned out to be a fraud. Interesting company then for Nine Eleven… Although the traditional syntax is “Remember the–“. Usually “Never Forget” has been proprietary to Holocaust remembrance. Curious they’d want to dilute the tag line for a mere few thousand WTC victims. It makes me sick at heart. The event was seared into our memories, television broadcast at half mast for days afterward the better to sober the public to a terrorist attack’s ramifications. So WHY must we Never Forget? Revenge? Of course it’s shorthand for “Never Forget, Never Forgive.” You want an eye for an eye? How about vigilance? To prevent an alleged 9/11, we might be best to NEVER FORGET what got us here, brutal imperialist abuse heaped on the rest of the world. That’s the perspective it would be good to remember. Never forget Bhopal. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib, Gaza and Cast Lead. “Never Forget 9/11” is one of the first slogans trotted out at anti-Palestinian rallies. Curiouser and curiouser. So I’ve got more ships for you: Never forget the USS Liberty, or the Mavi Marmara.

As to 9/11, never forget that you haven’t been let to get to the bottom of it. But you don’t have to tell people not to forget something they know. “Never Forget” is for propagandists worried their brainwash is leaking.

It Was Always, Always You

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Sheet music cover to Bob Merrill's IT WAS ALWAYS YOU from Carnival My maternal grandparents had a favorite song, their song, Irving Berlin’s sentimental Always. With “always” capping every line and recurring as a chorus echo, the verbal chime quickly packed a saccharine wallop if it wasn’t you celebrating your 50th or 60th anniversary. I’ve chanced upon another lyric of the stage era that may have Berlin beat by ardor and iteration: Bob Merrill’s “It Was Always You” (also known as “Always Always You”) from the 1961 musical Carnival.
I could find scant trace online, so I’ll transcribe the song here. Weighed by syllable, it’s 25% alwayses:

It was always, always you,
Always, always you.
Though my eyes may wander
To and fro and yonder,
Still my heart’s affection
Always beats in your direction.

Every beat for you, My Sweet,
All the love my beating heart can brew.
It shocks me so, you didn’t know
That it was always you.
Always, always, always,
Always, always you.

Her reprise:

It was always, always you,
Always, always you.
You would cheat your mother,
In your heart a thief, Dear.
Still I want no other
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, Dear.

Life is strange, a man can change,
Though years could find me basking in the sun.
But all the same, I’ll dress for rain…
(melody carries line unspoken)
Always, always, always,
Always, always you.

Though CARNIVAL may have sunk into obscurity, its theme song became the pop standard “Love Makes the World Go ‘Round” –not such a surprise if you consider that Merrill also penned “How Much is That Doggy in the Window.”

You’d also recognize “[Everywhere I Look I Can See] Her Face” now a lounge classic. In performance, this is where the bitter puppeteer Paul realizes he loves the orphan Lili. This number was also reprised in duet where angst is given foil with Lili’s “I Hate Him” sung in obbligato.

If I’m giving CARNIVAL its due now, there’s an entire ode I’d like to write about the spot-on “A Very Nice Man” where Lili’s unguarded extemporaneous praise of the traveling bric-a-brac shop cannot conceal its shabbiness. Sample lyric:

What a very nice pitcher, though the handle is off,
But who says that a pitcher needs a handle?

And so I’m compelled to accord CARNIVAL its proper context, therefore I have to confess that ALWAYS ALWAYS belongs to the secondary romantic plot, between Marco the philandering magician and his forgiving assistant Rose, the semi-comic relief to the show’s center ring. CARNIVAL reconciled its main characters’ darker problems, which would probably not confound today’s Codependent No More audiences.

With audiences wised-up, and CARNIVAL’s stage melodies like “She’s My Love” fading to obscurity, it feels like Paul’s nearly lost love, a fiction except in our hearts, slips through his fingers minus the happy/unhappy ever after, when the curtain comes down forever.

She is soft, she is fair, she’s my love.
She is song, she is prayer, she’s my love.
Though I reach, though I try, she is braver than I
And is far less of earth than she is of sky.

She is moon to my night, she’s my love.
She is sight, sound and light, she’s my love.
Still the one heart I own hungers lost and alone
For My Love’s never known she’s my love.

Still the one heart I own hungers lost and alone
For My Love’s never known she’s my love.

Wikileaked: US soldiers are babykillers

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Eric Verlo

A document released last week by Wikileaks tells of a 2006 raid by US troops on a farmhouse near Balad, Iraq, where the American soldiers handcuffed a household of ten, and executed them with gunshots to the head. Killed: one male adult, three female relatives, an elderly woman, four children aged 3-5, and a 5 month-old infant. Then the raiding party called in an airstrike to cover the crime. Perhaps cross referenced with the Iraq War Logs, reporters will identify which outfit committed the murders, because that’s the only way light is being shed on US war crimes, via Wikileaks. Incidentally, the Ishaqi Incident was reported on in 2006 with the Pentagon dismissing accusations that its actions were anything but appropriate. But this recent cable reveals that the USG knew what they’d done. You’d think the Department of Defense would have an interest in cooperating, because until the killers of zip-tied babies are fingered, all American soldiers are babykillers.

Love is the Reason, with grammatical advice, from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Eric Verlo

I once saw a British TV spot for Hamlet Cigars which featured an oddball posing in a photo booth, but so endearingly. For years on, when asked to smile, I affected his toothy grimace, thinking my rendition channeled but transcended his comically unbecoming turn. I channeled nothing of it, each time, I can confirm.

Now I’ve traced my abuse of adverbs, not to this song, but to the spirit in which Broadway lyricist Dorothy Fields used THREE to frame the verses of Love is the Reason from the musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In this song showstopping comic Shirley Booth advises her younger sister on love, ornamenting her insight with the authority-robbing qualifiers, meant to be irrelevant. Aspire as I might to stop, HANDILY I am my parody.

Love is the Reason
Each line is echoed by the chorus
(Parentheses indicate where reply varies)

Spoken: Suppose your mother never stood in a dark vestibule with your father, they might never have had to get married. Why do you suppose they did it? It was love.

Love is the reason you was born,
Love was the gleam in Papa’s eye.
People suddenly meet, People suddenly fit,
People suddenly hit, And brother, that’s it!

PERSONALLY Love is a kick right in the pants,
Love is the aspirin you buy.
If you’re flappin’ your fins, If you’re climbin’ a wall,
There must be a reason for it all. (What is the reason for it?)
Love is the reason for it all!

Love is a night you can’t recall,
Love is that extra drink you drank.
Love’s a shot in the arm, Love’s a poke in the ribs,
Buyin’ bottles and bibs, And fillin’ up cribs.

OBVIOUSLY Love is an old established trap,
Ten million suckers walk the plank.
If you land on your tail, Ev’ry time that you fall,
There must be a reason for it all. (Who needs a reason for it?)
Love is the reason for it all!

Love is a toothache in your heart,
Love is a gentlemanly pinch.
Love is stubbin’ your toe, Mashed potatoes with lumps,
Wearin’ very tight pumps, Or catchin’ the mumps.

GENERALLY Love is a blow below the belt,
Love is a holdin’ in a clinch.
If you shut your big mouth When his relatives call,
There must be a reason for it all. (Who needs a reason for it?)
Always the teasin’ in the hall; (Hallways are lovely for a call;)
Call it the season, I say, love is the reason for it all.

Colorado Springs corruption detectives sniff desperation of lottery ticket clerks

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Eric Verlo

You’d think Colorado Springs’ many kleptocrats, considering our locale’s famously embarrassing lower than average IQ, must be stupid enough to get caught. Other than the odd treasurer with a gambling habit, law enforcement is not going after them. Instead, according to an article in today’s Gazette, local detectives are policing convenience store clerks, exposing the corruption of workers who have to tender anything over a five into a time-lock safe. A Colorado Lotto sting operation busted two out of twenty clerks surveyed this weekend who pretended their customers had losing tickets, and who later tried to redeem the tickets for themselves. One of the corrupted employees worked at the west side Farmcrest, now she’s on the lam, so I have a personal interest in calling the sweep an entrapment.

Obviously. In her shoes, a likely pretty awful daily grind, what might you have been tempted to do?

Here’s how it worked: the special Lotto detective, yeah, I carry a badge, hits random ticket outlets, equipped with a trick ticket which when fed into the Lotto equipment registers as a $100,000 winner. This is handed to each clerk under the pretext that the pretend-ticket-holder wants to know if his/her ticket is a winner. If it is, hurrays all around, the secret shopper leaves congratulated without further ado. If the clerk palms the ticket, inserts a bum ticket kept handy, and tells the mystery shopper theirs is a dud, the detective returns to the office to lay in wait for that clerk to visit in person to claim to the “prize”.

Now the story doesn’t say that particular clerks were targeted based on flagged irregularities, or for having redeemed a suspicious percentage of winning tickets, or for having entered the same non-winning ticket at repeated intervals during the same work shift. Actuarial predictors could probably narrow the hunt, but there the prey becomes perhaps too crafty. Instead the mystery shoppers cast a wide net, sweetened with a $100,000 lure.

You may think I’m too soft on a miscreant clerk betraying her fellow poverty-wage peers, those who tithe what they can’t afford for the regular vicarious, virtual delusion that any successive investment in the lottery could deliver them into riches. Perhaps it’s more obvious to her than to most that with lottery tickets the payoff is in holding the ticket, the dreams you entertain, before you confirm it’s very very unlikely to be worth more than nothing. Perhaps she knows the only way you’re going to quit the destructive habit is to lose the last umpteenth time. I know in Cripple Creek when I saw a slot machine paying out, or heard someone tell of returning from Las Vegas with a positive cash balance, I thought, oh no, that only encourages the idiots. Perhaps a lottery sales clerk gets to know her regular customers and knows how severely each cannot afford the deprivations which their gambling compels.

Of course the Lotto secret shopper is not going to be confused for a regular. But who knows what profile undercover officers project. Maybe they’re nasty customers, someone a clerk would hate to see win. I have no idea. Imagine you are that detective, eager to trip someone up, with the scruples of a condescending law enforcer who suspects all. I’ll bet you’d be as rude as your undercover video camera allows. If the clerk isn’t alerted by your undercover behavior, it might be the creepiness of your insincerity that prompts her to tell you your ticket is not a winner. Her disdain may even be compounded by the factor that you can’t even verify the ticket yourself at the DIY kiosks. On top of that you’re an asshole.

At the core, what you’ve done is dangle $100,000 in front of a clerk who earns minimum hourly wage, who’s not permitted to work more than 20 hours a week and thus has to hold two or three jobs, earning no overtime. You’ve targeted a person who is cannon fodder for armed robbery holdups, without cause. It’s a tribute to the average clerk’s honesty, or a sign of their heightened state of fright, that more do not fall to temptation.

The Colorado Lotto’s pretense for exemption from the state’s otherwise fairly puritanical isolation of gambling communities is that it’s tolerated because it funds Colorado’s park system. The contrivance of this Lotto police sting operation suggest the program also aims to supplement municipal and correctional system coffers.

You tell me whether publicizing such successful stings gives people more or less comfort in the lottery’s integrity. I’d be inclined to say no. If the Lotto really wanted, system safeguards could easily subvert the best efforts of dishonest clerks.

I draw consolation in thinking this entrapment scenario prompts an obvious defense for my poor Westside victim. She told the undercover shopper that the ticket was not a winner. In fact it was not a winning ticket, it was a fraud.

Will occupying the streets Sept 17, Oct 6 and 15 precipitate an American Fall?

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Eric Verlo

“American Fall” would be a pun, yes. A pan-Arabian-like Spring causing the US anti-democracy to tumble, being the objective. The English riots have put a dark spin on what might be Middle America’s reception to popular uprising, but mark the dates, because the brass ring nears whether you have the courage or not, and you won’t have the stomach for the alternative.

You’ve probably already sensed the buzz about #SEPT17, campus groups across the country have been bypassing the conventional chaperones to coordinate OCCUPY WALL STREET. Can they do it? Not without your help, and that doesn’t mean switching your phone service or knocking on doors to Get Out The Vote.

Donate, organize or help with the logistics. If you’ve the temerity, attend in person. At the very least, you’ll have your expenses reimbursed when the city settles your civil suit against them for false arrest. New York City already budgeted for the insurance policy that will pay the legal settlements for the probably now textbook law enforcement practice of kettling inconvenient protests. Or, thinking positively, you may just witness history. To make history you have to make it. Don’t leave it up to the Little Red Hen if you want a piece.

Next up is #OCT6, although the day varies regionally. The date marks the 10th anniversary of the Afghan invasion, but social justice groups of all stripes are throwing their sundry complaints unto one banner and have organized marches nationwide. Of course the nationals aims to SEIZE DC, where activists will converge on Freedom Square, English for “Tahrir Square”, with plans to camp there until the people’s voice is heard. DC has passed ordinances against overnight protests, but Freedom Square may be cut some slack for being off the National Mall. It’s a smaller public space which lies on the diagonal between the White House and the Capitol Building, abreast of General Tecumseh Sherman’s horse actually.

The determination to reclaim American Democracy with an action in DC hopes to recreate Madison Wisconsin on the Potomac, with the same grassroots support for a broad set of issues to which both parties have shown themselves unresponsive.

A successful DC foothold will get real traction being closely followed by an international call for a worldwide uprising. #OCT15 is being spearheaded by Spain’s movement for GLOBAL DEMOCRACY. Will it dilute regional efforts to have actions running concurrently, or will synchronized demonstrations overwhelm our transnational overseers? We can wait and see, or we can give it our best shot.

Here are more graphics in support of the kickoff September 17. Borrowing from Tunisia and Egypt, and before that Chicago 1968, it’s US Days of Rage.

In the course of a single spring we’ve seen massive demonstrations which provoked governments to interrupt cellphone service, shut down internet access, and answer protestors with direct gunfire. To what extreme will the USG be driven? What rights remain inviolate in the US? Not communication. Activist cellphones were blocked on the BART in San Francisco to thwart protests against police brutality.

Chicago G8 protest planners offer city guarantees of usual ineffectual actions

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Organizers meeting today to plan against next year’s G8 summit in Chicago hit the ground running –backward. On Friday a spokesperson for one of the coalition partners offered this assurance to the Chicago Tribune: “Our goal is a legal, permitted, family friendly march where people can come and have their voices heard in a safe environment.” Interesting. The objective of successful past anti-globalization protests has been no less than to shut the undemocratic summits down.

Nine months out, it appears activism’s old guard is determined to blunt all real resistance welling in American youth. The Tribune found another normalizing voice from UNAC which disavowed any recourse but nonviolence. WTF? It’s one thing not to encourage violence, another to promise to “back off from any violence.”

Hello? Activists with broken spirits need to STFD and STFU. Let younger, hotter heads give you a lesson in courage and purpose. If you are over thirty, hold yourselves among the fucks responsible for this mess. Who are you to deny the young their righteous rage?

As elder activists, precisely what wisdom is it you think you can impart? Have you stopped one war? Slowed imperialism? Ended nukes? Saved the whales? Halted global warming? Attended to anything but the erosion of democracy, the social safety net and the environment? Your exalted nonviolence neither delivered India from class exploitation nor ended racism in America. Stick with fundraising, educating, inspiring others, drawing your peers into social networking; lead, but not by edict, and not by a consensus dominated by your peers. Put your dogma aside for the young leaders, let them make their own mistakes. I hope you will at least admit they can’t fail more miserably than you.

At Sunday’s meeting, the United National Antiwar Committee spokesman acquitted himself when confronted by a young gentleman representing an anarchist entity. Committee member Ashley Smith’s full quote had been: “We will not be the ones to initiate or perpetrate any violence.” And: “We will back off from any violence.” But when pressed at the meeting, he explained that organizers hoped the event would be safe for families, but that younger militants could exercise their freedoms like anybody else. I paraphrase.

I’ll qualify my criticism by pointing out that a number of the organizers were personal victims of recent FBI home invasions, so they are fully justified in having to distance themselves from being interpreted as advocating violence. An additional challenge is presented by an adversarial corporate press determined to squeeze whatever soundbite it wants to discredit or hobble protest.

Of course I’d prefer activists recused themselves from addressing the subject of violence/nonviolence, instead of alienating potential allies by being deliberately exclusionary. And by potential allies, I mean the only allies that will get the movement anywhere, the NEXT GENERATION, because who else are you expecting?

The guard towers of Camp Amache, CO, Japanese-American internment camp

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Visitors to what remains of the WWII-era Granada Relocation Center located on Highway 50 past Lamar, are tempted to conclude that the remote location was isolation enough to restrict the movement of its 7,000 Japanese-American internees. Gone are all 560 buildings except their concrete foundations; the few remaining photographs depict a vast layout of spartan barracks, playing host to ordinary civilian lives, minus the atmosphere of incarceration. Were there cyclone fences and watch towers? The answer should not surprise you. Of course. Camp Amache was ringed by the usual multiple perimeters of prison fences, including six watch towers manned by military police, who were there, it was explained, for the internees’ protection. I think plans to further restore Amache need to begin with the security fortifications. If such blights on American history as these race-based detention centers are memorialized in the hope that our nation not do it again, it dishonors our victims, and blunts the lesson, not to illustrate our heavy hand.

I attended a recent screening of a documentary made of Camp Amache, attended by its producers, who expressed the usual motivation: in remembrance, never again. Special emphasis was placed on the contributions made by Japanese-Americans during the war, and on the magnanimity with which the internees accepted their lot. Survivors were not to receive an official apology until 45 years later, given $20,000 restitution for their livelihoods and families destroyed. It would be safe to say the audience felt well beyond the prejudice that had motivated their parents. Against Japanese-Americans.

Unfortunately both the documentary and the filmmakers’ commentary left the impression that “never again” describes a successful holding pattern. Of course, America has been at it again and as usual, its citizens have been obliviously complicit.

Look at the War on Islam, which has necessitated the internment of Muslim-Americans and Muslims worldwide. Guantanamo is not much different from the Wartime Relocation Authority (WRA) special Isolation Centers such as Dalton Wells, near Moab, where the WRA sent internees profiled as potential insurgency threats.

America has been building a network of fresh detention facilities to house Hispanic-Americans who run afoul of the country’s illegal labor market. Most of the detainees are promptly deported, but many languish while immigration issues and family ties are sorted out. While ICE pretends to protect the American people from the security-threatening unlawfulness of illegal aliens, in reality its detention centers enforce the successful abuse of a Hispanic-American slave labor pool.

You need only visit a traditional prison or jail to see that an overwhelming disproportion of its inmates are African-American and Hispanic-American, far exceeding what can be excused as representative of America’s poor. The American judicial system is still stacked against non-whites, and motivated by the same racist premise of protecting the security of white Americans.

And of course there are the open air prisons which still incarcerate the Native-Americans, the internment camps we call reservations, the original Wartime Relocation Centers.

I know where Congressman Lamborn is – because no one is telling OR asking. Re: media blackout on junkets to Israel

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Calls to Doug Lamborn’s office inquiring as to his whereabouts produces this charade: “Um, I don’t know. Let me ask. They don’t know. I’m not certain who would know. Could you hold please?” And we never get an answer. That his office won’t say, coupled with the media’s strange incuriosity, points to a self-enforced news moratorium on where a fifth of US congress is spending the August recess: as guests of Israel and the most powerful DC lobby. It’s been reported that a record 81 members are on an all-expense-paid junket to Israel, but their identities are a closely guarded secret. The US TV audience can be let to see their representatives give standing ovations to the Israeli prime minister, but visit Israel? The media blackout would have you think there’s something wrong with that.

Middle East peace groups and Palestinian rights organizations have had to painstakingly gather the information from stray news reports out of Israel, or from congressional offices reluctant to let it be know. So far 45 names are known to be on this year’s junket. Doug Lamborn is not on the list, but his office probably has a lower self-respect threshold for playing dumb.

You’d think with the recent furor about calling Obama a Tar Baby, that the media would want to be calling Lamborn to the hot seat. Apparently not. All that’s said is that he hasn’t surfaced to meet with constituents, or give interviews. Last week Lamborn issued a press release unrelated to his recent trouble, probably preplanned, in collaboration with fellow Colorado Congressman Tipton. Tipton, by the way, is among the officeholders known to be in Israel.

Lamborn vacationing in Israel would not be a far-fetched possibility. He attended the junket in 2007 and since then has acted on Israel’s behest in lobbying to drop charges against an accused Israeli spy, in removing legislation which prevented the US from relocating its Tel Aviv Embassy to Jerusalem, and this Spring Lamborn was made co-chair of the Israel Allies Caucus.

What a damn missed opportunity to press them on contacting Tar Baby Lamborn. It would appear that keeping the congressional Israeli lobbying junket on the QT outweighs making Lamborn squirm on camera to explain his non-racist remark. Never mind complicating the issue. What’s a racist WASP doing in the land of Apartheid racism? Well, of course, they’re absolutely related. Oooh, terrible timing. And Lamborn’s a Christian Zionist, so he “likes” Jews, but come the end times, he won’t touch them either.

How is it American elected officials are allowed to behave as agents of a foreign government would be one question, but the more glaring one would be why it is the media is complicit in keeping citizens in the dark?

Partial list of 81 US congressmembers on Israel junket over August recess, according to MoveOver AIPAC

Gus Bilirakis R-9 FL
Mo Brooks R-5 AL
Anne Marie Buerkle R-25 NY
Eric Cantor R-7 VA
Russ Carnahan D-3 MO
Kathy Castor D-11 FL
Steve Chabot R-1 OH (went last month)
Judy Chu D-32 CA
David Cicilline D-1 RI
Yvette Clarke D-11 NY
Mark Critz D- 12 PA
Scott DesJarlais R- 4 TN
Bob Dold R-10 IL (unconfirmed)
Jeff Duncan R-3 SC
Blake Farenthold R-27 TX
Stephen Fincher R-8 TN
Mike Fitzpatrick R-8 PA
Chuck Fleischman R-3 TN
John Garamendi D-10 CA
Kay Granger R-12 TX
Michael Grimm NY-13
Janice Hahn D-36 CA
Jaime Herrera Buetler R-3 WA
Steny Hoyer D-5 MD
Jesse Jr. Jackson D-2 IL
Hank Johnson D-4 GA
Kevin McCarthy CA-22
Gwen Moore D-4 WI
Bill Owens D-23 NY
Steven Palazzo R-4 MS
Ed Perlmutter D-7 CO
Tom Price R-6 GA
Tom Reed R-29 NY
Peter Roskam R-6 IL
Dennis Ross R-12 FL
Loretta Sanchez D-47 CA
David Schweikert R-5 AZ
Terri Sewell D-7 AL (not confirmed)
Adam Smith D-9 WA
Steve Southerland R-2 FLA
Betty Sutton D-13 OH
Scott Tipton R-3 CO
Allen West R-22 FL
Frederica Wilson D-17 FL
Kevin Yoder R-3 KS

Dear President Tar Baby…

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Eric Verlo

Does anyone know if Rep. Lamborn really sent an apology to President Obama for calling him a Tar Baby?
Has anyone seen it? Lamborn’s office issued a press release saying “the congressman is confident that the President will accept his heartfelt apology.” News headlines regurgitated the story sight unseen. The Denver Post quoted Lamborn: “I am sure that he will not take offense and he’ll be happy to accept my apology because he is a man of character.”

How do we know an apology was sent? Because Lamborn says so? That dork told us Obama was a Tar Baby, luckily someone showed skepticism about that. This reminds me of the old gag about the man who returns to his parked car to find a note on the windshield: “Sorry I dented your car. I’m writing you this note so people will think I’m leaving my contact info, but I’m not.”

Until Representative Lamborn issues a public apology, or until President Obama acknowledges Lamborn’s contrition for such a preposterous racist remark, how is this insult to everyone’s intelligence and sense of humanity supposed to be lessened?

To judge by the lack of sensitivity shown in Lamborn’s press release, composed for the public, there couldn’t have been much by way of empathy in a private letter to Obama. Alleged. Try to find it online. Every news article about the purported apology links back to Lamborn’s press release. On his Facebook page, Lamborn has a link called “my apology to President Obama” but it leads to the same PR blurb below. (emphasis mine)

Lamborn Issues President an Apology

Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO-05) today sent a personal letter to President Barack Obama apologizing for using a term some find insensitive. Lamborn was attempting to tell a radio audience last week that the President’s policies have created an economic quagmire for the nation and are responsible for the dismal economic conditions our country faces. He regrets that he chose the phrase “tar baby,” rather than the word “quagmire.” The Congressman is confident that the President will accept his heartfelt apology.

Saying “I told him I was sorry” never passed muster in primary school, especially a pronouncement that was 3/4 filled with more insult. A child who’d offended another was made to apologize to his face, out loud. Why is Colorado’s asinine little congressman being given a pass on a transgression that reflects so unbecomingly on his community?

In response to the local fallout, Lamborn’s office has acquiesced to holding a public forum on Friday August 19. It’s outside of town, go figure, in a church pre-filled with dumb bigots, to ensure Lamborn’s supporters can find him. What’s he going to say there? “My statement wasn’t racist.” “Amen!” “It’s not Obama’s being black that makes him untouchable.” “Amen!”

I don’t want to go — what is there to say to him? I don’t even want to meet Lamborn’s unrepentant eyes, much less sit in an audience and give the stupid creep the impression what he has to say deserves a listen.

Bill Graber, fake lesbian activist, agent provocateur, threatens websites to try to withdrawn his mug from public view

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Eric Verlo

HELP! Any other sites out there being threatened by Bill Graber, fake lesbian blogger, DADT spoiler and Syria false flag propaganda troll? Now he’s pretending copyright infringement, trying to withdraw his ugly mug from public view. He’s threatening to sue NMT, our host, and I guess …half the web. Oh. NEVER MIND.

What a hoser. If the “retired Air Force” dude hadn’t been unmasked as the fake lesbian blogger “Paula Brooks” giving cover to the more infamous Gay Girl of Damascus Amina Arraf dude, he’d still be infiltrating lesbian blogs, sabotaging their DADT efforts and demoralizing fellow contributors, like a typical COINTELPRO op! When outed by the Washington Post, this is the photo he supplied, now it’s all over the internet. In our initial story, we didn’t know how much weight to give either his name, or his photo, considering he was the source of both, uncorroborated. Judging by the comments and emails we’ve received from agent Lez-Dude, he doesn’t mind the name “Bill Graber” all over the place, but boy he seems uncomfortable with the picture being out there. Could it be that he’s worried that with enough exposure the image will eventually catch the eye of someone who knows his real identity? OR did he give a dead person’s picture to the WaPo, and that could be found out? Who knows, it’s not like “Graber” is above hiding behind another identity, when he blogged as a deaf lesbian whose “dad” had to handle her phone calls from those dagblast reporters.

I’d say his claim to have copyrighted his lonesome image is an invitation for someone from the locality of Fairborn, Ohio to snap a real pic. His phone is 937-305-5518, his IP is 65.185.154.156, my bet would be to show this mug shot around Asian massage parlors outside Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Much legwork has already been done on “Bill Graber” sick puppy who insinuates himself into lesbian conversations to speak abusively to women, but his spooky military MO is going overlooked.

Synthesizing the complaints accumulated about “Paula Brooks” yields a pattern unnervingly like an activist-provocateur. Graber claims he was motivated to pose as a lesbian to help the cause of DADT, yet his efforts were chiefly disruptive and harmful. Accounts by fellow bloggers mirror exactly what peace activists experience with undercover cops.

By the way, after his unmasking, Graber handed off his site to another non-lesbian, not a man this time, whose husband is in the military.

Call me a nut, but I’m inclined to suggest that when the WaPo tracked lesbian “Brooks” to a man, it turned out to be a professional infiltrator, and an agreement was reached with the pro-military WaPo where a reasonably believable profile would be tendered to the public, sooner than out an agent. Thus we have “Graber”, this photo, and the following details: retired Air Force, construction worker, 58 years old, from Ohio. That’s all.

Whose photo? Well the longer that mug is online, the more likely such a question will be answered.

Then there will be more embarrassment, considering Graber-dude’s activities weren’t simply to thwart gay rights activists, but to lay the groundwork for US intervention in Syria, and who knows what else.

Of course that’s all conjecture, because I don’t want to out a Federal agent, that would be illegal.

Infiltrating social justice groups is illegal too, so in the interest of solidarity in activism, let’s find out who this Graber-dude is and invite him to come out, so to speak.

Chalk up this further DADT irony: when the military enforces DADT, it can’t hire any real lesbians to infiltrate lesbian blogs, it can only hire fake-lesbians. One hopes the Air Force wasn’t running gay and lesbian blogs to ferret out active duty homosexuals.

Alright, as promised, back to the charade of Graber-dude, ornery construction worker, upset about his likeness being featured on NMT. Here’s what he just sent us, writing as sammy the surf dog, in reply to our telling him to get stuffed:

You obviously need to get up to speed on just what the copyright laws says….

You are to remove that picture at once…. I will be sending the required notices to You… your hosting company and Google

and I’d start thinking about where you going to get the money to pay for the 2 month of unauthorized use….

—
Bill Graber

937-305-5518

Seriously? Google, of all people, will see you coming. Unmasked miscreant wants to erase his tracks online. Good luck with that. Your mug is practically an icon, you could trademark it, except now it’s become generic for fake lesbian dude. Yeah, whatever your expertise, it ain’t copyright.

Graber-Dude, what I’m doing, actually, is contacting others online to see how many are receiving your silly threats. I see one site has switched out your photo with a sketch, but hopefully expressing solidarity the rest of us will just share a laugh.

Obviously we don’t NEED to keep your picture here, it’s everywhere else, let other sites do the heavy lifting, but now that you’re erase-my-tracks-dude, you’ve piqued our interest. Because infiltrators are of special interest to us. Unmasked, they ought to be reassigned to desk jobs with their tail between their legs, not busy at their keyboards exercising their mucking-up skills.

Here’s Graber-Dude’s next composition:

Dear Eric Verlo

It has come to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of my copyrighted image in the preparation of the article entitled “Straight blogger confesses he’s lesbian.”

I have reserved all rights to this image, and I have registered the copyright.

You neither asked for nor received permission to use the image nor to make or distribute copies of said image. Therefore, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 USC Section 101, et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $100,000.

I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from this image, and all copies of it, and that you deliver to me all unused, undistributed copies of it, or destroy such copies immediately, and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future.

You will also need to contact me to discuss the licensing fees incurred by your unauthorized use of this image.

If I have not received an affirmative response from you by 8-19-11 indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, I shall consider taking the full legal remedies available to rectify this situation.

Sincerely,

Mr. Graber-Dude. How about we trade images? You can use mine, you have my permission. But you don’t need it. Unless you’re using my likeness for commercial purpose, anyone is allowed to identify me with my image. Go ahead, I’ve got images all over, you have plenty from which to choose. You on the other hand have only one. Something odd about that.

The Wondrous Tale of Brer Lamborn, Brer FOX & Obama the Tar Baby. Uncle Remus and Racism in Colorado Springs.

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- If US Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) remembered one thing from the Uncle Remus stories, it was not to touch that Tar Baby! You know, the one Brer Rabbit mistook for a cute black infant who would not tip his hat to his better. Or was that a Porch-Monkey? Colorado’s 5th District is unclear about the distinction if the local media and Fox News are to be believed. Either term refers to a poor person whose sticky problems become your “quagmire” if you ignore your natural prejudice to their skin color and you let them touch you. Can a representative of bigots be bothered to know if a racial slur is offensive? According to Lamborn, he can’t. More important, the congressman reiterates –as he professes his apology to people taking umbrage at racism he hadn’t intended to express– is: NOT TO TOUCH THAT OBAMA!

To be clear, Doug Lamborn hasn’t apologized to his constituents, he’s only claimed to have sent President Obama a letter, assuring all that Obama, the black untouchable, will have the grace to forgive him as “a man of character”.

And so this Uncle Remus tale simply goes on…

The story so far
Lamborn calls black US president a Tar-Baby, public outrage ensues, Gazette newspaper lends support to Lamborn’s excuse that Tar-Baby wasn’t used in racist sense. Protests held by NAACP, community groups and local progressives, all which Lamborn refuses to meet. Lamborn office erects sign NO PROTESTS.

ACT II: Lamborn office calls for his supporters to rally, presumably under the “no protest” sign. His office issues a press release: AP, Fox News, national and statewide outlets report before the fact that LAMBORN SUPPORTERS RALLY. Huffpo and Springs activists scramble to get images of said protest sanctioned despite “no protest” sign, find none. Local TV station KOAA which had depicted rally with a photo, hours before it was alleged to happen, omitted to mention photo was from file, conveniently unfocused and likely of a past year election event.

With every shenanigan, the theme resounds: the Colorado Springs establishment supports what Doug Lamborn said about Obama being a Tar Baby.

Racism in Colorado Springs
No one is in denial about the unsavory support behind Doug Lamborn. So does Colorado Springs support his bigotry?

Does the Tea Party shit in Acacia Park? You should see those clan gatherings, you can’t find a parking space for blocks, then it’s a sea of hate-filled white faces, with Doug Lamborn right there up front.

The comment section of every local media blog overflows with indignation that “Tar-Baby” is being construed to be racist. Commentators assert their preference for Freedom of Speech over Political Correctness.

BTW, Colorado Springs is as segregated as Chicago, with black neighborhoods, churches and schools. Many lives never cross the path of another of different ethnicity, so we’re blameless actually when we conclude there’s no racism here.

Except toward Hispanics, grouped conveniently with illegal immigrants, who don’t count, by definition, according to our favorite definition: legality. Same as used to apply to slaves.

The Pikes Peak region was a hotbed of clan activity in the 1930s, and obviously before that. At the turn of the century, the good folks of Limon had to hold up a lynching, make the poor young black boy wait hours in the November cold because hundreds wanted to come on the train from Colorado Springs to see 16-year-old Preston Porter burned alive at the stake.

Lynchings of Native Americans weren’t even recorded, being as they were, sanctioned as vermin control. It was seldom that white men distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of Indians. Pikes Peak volunteers rode with Colonel Chivington to commit the Sand Creek Massacre.

Today downtown Colorado Springs boasts a lone statue of an African-American, a William Seymour, among the city notables immortalized in bronze. His is the only likeness made to take off his hat, outdoors, I kid you not.

Speaking of which, that was Tar-Baby’s offense.

Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Brer Rabbit was passing by the little black figure, and called out a friendly hello. But Tar-Baby wouldn’t answer when spoken to. When he wouldn’t even take off his hat, Brer Rabbit figured he’d teach him a lesson. Apparently, it’s not inappropriate to clobber some status of people if they’ve disrespected you.

Of course that was the only way Brer Fox’s plan was going to ensnare the rabbit, to mire him in the tar.

You might ask, how did Brer Fox know that Rabbit was going to mix it up with the Tar Baby? Would Rabbit have laid his hand on the baby if he’d been white? Would it have mattered if a white baby didn’t answer to his greeting?

Put aside that the Tar Baby expression became a racial slur in itself, the original Tar-Baby character impersonated an African-American child who didn’t show the expected deference to a rabbit.

The accompanying images reflect the changing visual representation of Tar-Baby. He makes his first appearance in an early chapter of the Uncle Remus Tales (as collected by Joel Chandler Harris) called “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story.” Above is one of the original illustrations by artist A.B. Frost. There Brer Fox creates a “baby” made of tar to lure Brer Rabbit into his clutches.

The next images are from Disney versions. First the animated film SONG OF THE SOUTH, then the children’s books which followed.

Disney famously has not released Song Of The South after its theatrical run. The depictions were too ethnic, and Tar-Baby recalled the black-face entertainment that ought not to have so amused white audiences. Black-face is what passes for a negro face to whites. Similarly, a baby made of tar passes for a negro, but only in exaggeration. Oblivious to many, apparently, is that African-Americans are not by any approximation black. If Brer Fox had made a baby out of milk, would white people confuse its color for their flesh tone?

Disney rewrote the tale for its children’s book series, making the tar baby this time out of glue. Not only that, but they gave him ears to resemble a rabbit. This preempted confusing him for a human baby, black or white. Now Brer Rabbit could be seen taking him for his kin, which of course shifts the premise, and might puzzle some children to wonder why Brer Rabbit is so quick to come to blows.

Uncle Remus
Some will probably ask in earnest: are the Uncle Remus tales racist? No, but their context is complicated. The stories emerged from the plantation South, from storytellers who lived in slavery. The lessons imparted are universal, but the particulars were obviously crafted to help slaves come to terms with their unchallengeable fate. Shall I quote a few passages to see if you get the idea?

Brer Tarrypin, he lay back up dar, he did, des es proud ez a nigger wid a cook possum.
–chapter 10

He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer dan a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt un.
–chapter 17

Dey er mighty biggity, dem house niggers is, but I notices dat dey don’t let nuthin’ pass. Dey goes ‘long wid der han’s en der mouf open, en w’at one don’t ketch de tother one do.
-chapter 27

How about this wrenching bit from A Story of War?

Nigger dat knows he’s gwineter git thumped kin sorter fix hisse’f, en I tuck’n fix up like de war wuz gwineter come right in at de front gate.

From chapter 33: Why the Negro is Black:

ONE night, while the little boy was watching Uncle Remus twisting and waxing some shoe-thread, he made what appeared to him to be a very curious discovery. He discovered that the palms of the old man’s hands were as white as his own, and the fact was such a source of wonder that he at last made it the subject of remark. The response of Uncle Remus led to the earnest recital of a piece of unwritten history that must prove interesting to ethnologists.

“Tooby sho de pa’m er my han’s w’ite, honey,” he quietly remarked, “en, w’en it come ter dat, dey wuz a time w’en all de w’ite folks ‘uz black—blacker dan me, kaze I done bin yer so long dat I bin sorter bleach out.”

The little boy laughed. He thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After a while, he resumed:

“Yasser. Fokes dunner w’at bin yit, let ‘lone w’at gwinter be. Niggers is niggers now, but de time wuz w’en we ‘uz all niggers tergedder.”

“When was that, Uncle Remus?”

“Way back yander. In dem times we ‘uz all un us black; we ‘uz all niggers tergedder, en ‘cordin’ ter all de ‘counts w’at I years fokes ‘uz gittin’ ‘long ’bout ez well in dem days ez dey is now.

But atter ‘w’ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon’ er water some’rs in de naberhood, w’ich ef dey’d git inter dey’d be wash off nice en w’ite,

en den one un um, he fine de place en make er splunge inter de pon’, en come out w’ite ez a town gal.

En den, bless grashus! w’en de fokes seed it, dey make a break fer de pon’,

en dem w’at wuz de soopless, dey got in fus’ en dey come out w’ite;

en dem w’at wuz de nex’ soopless, dey got in nex’, en dey come out merlatters;

en dey wuz sech a crowd un um dat dey mighty nigh use de water up, w’ich w’en dem yuthers come long, de morest dey could do wuz ter paddle about wid der foots en dabble in it wid der han’s.

Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain’t no w’ite ’bout a nigger ‘ceppin de pa’ms er der han’s en de soles er der foot.”

And my favorite passage, called Turnip Salad:

“How many er you boys,” said he, as he put his basket down, “is done a han’s turn dis day? En yit de week’s done commence. I year talk er niggers dat’s got money in de bank, but I lay hit ain’t none er you fellers. Whar you speck you gwineter git yo’ dinner, en how you speck you gwineter git ‘long?”

“Oh, we sorter knocks ‘roun’ an’ picks up a livin’,” responded one.

“Dat’s w’at make I say w’at I duz,” said Uncle Remus. “Fokes go ’bout in de day-time an’ makes a livin’, an’ you come ‘long w’en dey er res’in’ der bones an’ picks it up. I ain’t no han’ at figgers, but I lay I k’n count up right yer in de san’ en number up how menny days hit’ll be ‘fo’ you ‘er cuppled on ter de chain-gang.”

“De ole man’s holler’n now sho’,” said one of the listeners, gazing with admiration on the venerable old darkey.

“I ain’t takin’ no chances ’bout vittles. Hit’s proned inter me fum de fus dat I got ter eat, en I knows dat I got fer ter grub for w’at I gits. Hit’s agin de mor’l law fer niggers fer ter eat w’en dey don’t wuk, an’ w’en you see um ‘pariently fattenin’ on a’r, you k’n des bet dat ruinashun’s gwine on some’rs.”

What about “nigger”?
When Russel Means writes of today’s economic and anti-democratic troubles, and addresses America’s newly impoverished middle class by saying Welcome to the Reservation, this is the wisdom I think he’s looking to impart. Welcome to niggerdom, Nigger.

With that word now struck from Huckleberry Finn, the concept of “nigger” becomes harder to grasp and can’t teach us its lesson.

Listen to Uncle Remus talk about what it means to be a lowest class being, beneath the interest of humanity, untouchable, as government functionaries like Doug Lamborn would prefer the underclass laborer remain.

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work. AND
I ain’t handy with figures, but I lay I can count on one hand how many days it’ll be before [“knocking around” will land you niggers] in the chain-gang.

I suggest you reread that last passage of Uncle Remus in its original. Now I’ll try my hand at the last half of that phrase:

It’s against the moral law for niggers to eat when they don’t work, and when you see them apparently fattening on air, you can just bet that ruination is going on somewhere.

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