This deformed thing we call Justice

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Tony Logan

America seems poised to possibly elect a law professor into the White House later this year. Funny that this legal specialist, who taught LAW for 10 years at the University of Chicago, has remained strangely silent as the US government instituted torture into its legal codes, eliminated Habeas Corpus, and trampled whole sale on the US Constitution.

I don’t remember a bleep of protest from this legal specialist during these recent times. Where were you Barack Obama? Your specialty is law, you hide that fact??? It’s because you kept so silent, is it not? You and your party are collaborators, aren’t you?

But this is not about Barack Obama and his loud silence. It is about America’s attitudes toward the police. It is about this deformed thing in America we call Justice. It is about how the people trust the police’s word, even though there is so much evidence that the police consistently fabricate testimony, fabricate evidence, and fabricate the supposed need for their own reproduction as a cancer upon our country… one that is growing, growing, growing., just like the military.

I opened up Parade in the Springs GagShit newspaper this morning to see the question posed, ‘Do we need more police?’ Shouldn’t the question actually be, ‘Don’t we need less police?’ or ‘Are we actually safer with this growing number of police plaguing the US?’ What would your answers be to these questions? Please tax me more, I want more jails?

I borrowed this phrase ‘the deformed thing we call Justice’ from Joe Bageant’s column titled Old Dogs and Hard Time Joe is the closest approximation we have today in America, to having a live Junior version of Studs Terkel on hand. His writings always seem to highlight the real working class issues in America, and I love reading him! Power to the People, Joe!

Here is my last question… Can we really have anything other than a deformed ‘justice’ in a country that hates the common person so much? We don’t respect the common people, for all they do is just work without being able to buy that much. How despicable is America’s attitude toward them.

Dominant elite culture thinks it a crime that poor people who work and consider them lowest on the totem pole! Shame on the common people for being so low and poor!, You Guys. It’s a crime these days to be working poor! Don’t you know it?

Yes, many in America really still want to imprison yet more of the poor and working class. For that, we need yet more police, yet more ‘law’, and yet more weaponry. These perverts… this lowe echelon of worker rabble… are seen to be like foreign Muslims almost. Show them no mercy! Yes, that’s what it’s like in America with this deformed thing the powers-that-are call Justice. ‘Justice’, in the opinions of the authoritarian elites, are them ordering the kicking around of the people who actually do the hard work. The poor are considered dumb louts for doing the work we all depend on! They deserve to be punished think so many of the self- righteous, wanna-be top A-holes!

List of top privately held US companies

Posted on June 11, 2008 by NMT

The shift of businesses into private ownership represents the eroding stake which common Americans have in the Capitalist system. Stock holdings in most public corporations are predominantly in wealthy hands, but private corporations drop even the pretense of serving the middle class economy. Biggest ($90B) is Koch Industries which provides “beef, fuels, fertilizer and plastics.”

Forbes has a list of America’s largest privately held companies, 424 of which have yearly earnings over one billion dollars. We’ve grouped them by category for easier perusal, ranked by their earnings. Colorado is headquarters to twelve: TransMontaigne, First Data, Pro-Build Holdings, CH2N Hill Cos, Vistar, Sports Authority, Leprino Foods, Hensel Phelps Construction, TIC Holdings, MediaNews Group and NWH.

CONSUMER PRODUCTS:
Mars VA -Combos, Dove, M&Ms, Pedigree, Snickers, Uncle Ben’s Rice
Levi Strauss & Co CA Textile – Apparel Clothing
SC Johnson & Son WI Personal Products
Ashley Furniture Industries WI Home Furnishings & Fixtures
Rich Products NY Confectioners
MGA Entertainment CA Toys & Games
Mary Kay TX Cleaning Products
Alticor MI Personal Products
Conair CT Personal Products
JohnsonDiversey WI Cleaning Products
ViewSonic CA Computer Peripherals
New Balance Athletic Shoe MA Textile – Apparel Footwear
Dawn Food Products MI Confectioners to Starbucks, Krispy Kreme
Roll International CA -Teleflora, Fiji Water, POM, Suterra
Genmar Holdings MN Recreational Boats
Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing TX Textile – Apparel Clothing
McKee Foods TN Confectioners: Little Debbie, Sunbelt
Samsonite MA Personal Products
NewPage OH Paper & Paper Products
Bose MA Electronic Equipment
WL Gore & Associates DE Textile – Apparel Clothing
Milliken & Co SC Textile – Apparel Clothing
MTD Products OH Recreational Goods, Other

RETAILERS:
Toys “R” Us NJ Toy & Hobby Stores
Dollar General TN Discount, Variety Stores
Menard WI Home Improvement Stores
Neiman Marcus Group TX Department Stores
84 Lumber PA Home Improvement Stores
Hallmark Cards MO Entertainment – Diversified
Michaels Stores TX Specialty Retail, Other
Belk NC Department Stores
Burlington Coat Factory NJ Apparel Stores
Linens ‘n Things NJ Home Furnishing Stores
Sports Authority CO Sporting Goods Stores
Bass Pro Shops MO Sporting Goods Stores
Fry’s Electronics CA Specialty Retail, Other
Mervyns CA Department Stores
Follett IL Specialty Retail, Other
General Parts NC Auto Parts Stores
ShopKo Stores Operating WI Discount, Variety Stores
Petco Animal Supplies CA Specialty Retail, Other
Discount Tire AZ Auto Parts Stores
Guitar Center CA Music & Video Stores
Academy Sports & Outdoors TX Sporting Goods Stores
Rooms To Go FL Home Furnishing Stores
Hobby Lobby Stores OK Toy & Hobby Stores
Barnes & Noble College Booksellers NJ Specialty Retail, Other
Duane Reade NY Drug Stores
LL Bean ME Catalog & Mail Order Houses
Newegg.com CA Specialty Retail, Other
GNC PA Drug Stores
Goody’s Family Clothing TN Department Stores
Les Schwab Tire Centers OR Auto Parts Stores
Beall’s FL Department Stores
PC Richard & Son NY Specialty Retail, Other
Micro Electronics OH Specialty Retail, Other
Sutherland Lumber MO Home Improvement Stores
Boscov’s PA Department Stores
24 Hour Fitness Worldwide CA Consumer Services
Ritz Camera Centers MD Specialty Retail, Other
Schottenstein Stores OH Home Furnishing Stores
Cinemark USA TX General Entertainment
Marc Glassman OH Drug Stores
Bally Total Fitness IL Specialized Health Services
ClubCorp TX Consumer Services
Forever 21 CA Apparel Stores
BrandsMart USA FL Specialty Retail, Other
Steve and Barry’s NY Apparel Stores

HOSPITALITY:
Hilton Hotels CA Lodging
Love’s Travel Stops OK Lodging
Carlson Cos MN Lodging
Global Hyatt IL Lodging
Delaware North Cos NY Specialty Eateries
Ilitch Holdings MI Restaurants
Buffets MN Restaurants

GROCERS:
Meijer MI Grocery Stores
HE Butt Grocery TX Grocery Stores
Giant Eagle PA Grocery Stores
Cumberland Farms MA Grocery Stores
QuikTrip OK Grocery Stores
Hy-Vee IA Grocery Stores
Save Mart Supermarkets CA Grocery Stores
RaceTrac Petroleum GA Grocery Stores
Wawa PA Grocery Stores
Wegmans Food Markets NY Grocery Stores
Bi-Lo Holdings SC Grocery Stores
Stater Bros CA Grocery Stores
Sheetz PA Grocery Stores
Raley’s CA Grocery Stores
Golub NY Grocery Stores
WinCo Foods ID Grocery Stores
Schnuck Markets MO Grocery Stores
Demoulas Super Markets MA Grocery Stores
Brookshire Grocery TX Grocery Stores
Bashas’ AZ Grocery Stores
Houchens Industries KY Grocery Stores
Holiday Cos MN Grocery Stores
Marsh Supermarkets IN Grocery Stores
K-VA-T Food Stores VA Grocery Stores
Kum & Go IA Grocery Stores
Big Y Foods MA Grocery Stores
Gate Petroleum FL Grocery Stores
Foodarama Supermarkets NJ Grocery Stores
Thorntons KY Grocery Stores
Brookshire Brothers TX Grocery Stores
Minyard Food Stores TX Grocery Stores
Inserra Supermarkets NJ Grocery Stores
Stewart’s Shops NY Grocery Stores

FOOD SUPPLY:
C&S Wholesale Grocers NH Food Wholesale
US Foodservice MD Food – Major Diversified
Reyes Holdings IL Food Wholesale
Gordon Food Service MI Food Wholesale
MBM NC Food Wholesale
OSI Group IL Meat Products
Roundy’s Supermarkets WI Food Wholesale
HT Hackney TN Food Wholesale
Keystone Foods PA Meat Products
Perdue Farms MD Meat Products
Schwan Food MN Dairy Products
Eby-Brown IL Food Wholesale
Schreiber Foods WI Dairy Products
Vistar CO Food Wholesale: ROMA
Alex Lee NC Food Wholesale
Grocers Supply TX Food Wholesale
HP Hood MA Dairy Products
Services Group of America AZ Food Wholesale
Dot Foods IL Food Wholesale
Leprino Foods CO Dairy Products: mozzarella cheese
Rosen’s Diversified MN Meat Products
Ben E Keith TX Food Wholesale
Smart & Final CA Food Wholesale
Maines Paper & Food Service NY Food Wholesale
Foster Farms CA Meat Products
Koch Foods IL Meat Products
Red Chamber Group CA Food Wholesale
Shamrock Foods AZ Food Wholesale
ContiGroup Cos NY Meat Products
Pinnacle Foods NJ Food – Major Diversified
Great Lakes Cheese OH Dairy Products
GSC Enterprises TX Food Wholesale
Michael Foods MN Dairy Products
Bozzuto’s CT Food Wholesale
Goya Foods NJ Food – Major Diversified
Wells’ Dairy IA Dairy Products

FARMING:
Cargill MN Farm Products
Transammonia NY Agricultural Chemicals
Murdock Holding Company CA Farm Products
DeBruce Grain MO Farm Products
Scoular NE Farm Products
JR Simplot ID Farm Products
Golden State Foods CA Farm Products
Dunavant Enterprises TN Farm Products
Bartlett & Co MO Farm Products

DRINK:
Southern Wine & Spirits FL Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Charmer Sunbelt Group NY Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Republic National Distributing Company TX Wineries & Distillers
Glazer’s Wholesale Drug TX Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
E&J Gallo Winery CA Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Young’s Market CA Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Honickman Affiliates NJ Beverages – Soft Drinks
Wirtz IL Beverages – Wineries & Distillers
Topa Equities CA Beverages – Wineries & Distillers

HEALTH:
US Oncology TX Hospitals
Vanguard Health Systems TN Hospitals
Quintiles Transnational NC Medical Laboratories & Research
Golden Living AR Home Health Care
Medline Industries IL Medical Instruments & Supplies
Bausch & Lomb NY Medical Appliances & Equipment
Biomet IN Medical Instruments & Supplies
Iasis Healthcare TN Hospitals
Life Care Centers of America TN Long-Term Care Facilities
Select Medical PA Long-Term Care Facilities
Catalent Pharma Solutions NJ Medical Instruments & Supplies
Ardent Health Services TN Hospitals
FHC Health Systems VA Specialized Health Services
Concentra Operating TX Specialized Health Services
Gateway Health Plan PA Health Care Plans
SavaSeniorCare GA Long-Term Care Facilities
TeamHealth TN Medical Practitioners
Cook Group IN Medical Instruments & Supplies

MEDIA:
Cox Enterprises GA Entertainment – Diversified
Advance Publications NY Publishing – Newspapers
Bloomberg NY Information & Delivery Services
Hearst NY Publishing – Newspapers
International Data Group MA Publishing – Periodicals
Reader’s Digest Association NY Publishing – Periodicals
AMC Entertainment MO General Entertainment
Univision Communications NY Entertainment – Diversified
Quad/Graphics WI Publishing – Periodicals
Ebsco Industries AL Publishing – Periodicals
Landmark Communications VA Publishing – Newspapers
Taylor MN Publishing – Periodicals
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer CA General Entertainment
MediaNews Group CO Newspapers: Denver Post, Detroit News

INVESTMENT:
GMAC Financial Services MI Mortgage Investment
Fidelity Investments MA Asset Management
Capital Group Cos CA Asset Management
Edward Jones MO Investment Brokerage – National
LPL Financial Services CA Investment Brokerage – National

AUTOMOTIVE:
Chrysler MI Auto Manufacturers
Gulf States Toyota TX Auto Manufacturers – Major
JM Family Enterprises FL Auto Manufacturers
Tower Automotive MI Auto Parts
Cooper-Standard Automotive MI Auto Parts
Affinia Group MI Auto Parts
Guardian Industries MI Auto Parts
CC Industries IL Auto Parts
American Tire Distributors Holdings NC Auto Parts
Remy International IN Auto Parts
Plastech Engineered Products MI Auto Parts
Key Safety Systems MI Auto Parts
Interstate Battery Systems of America TX Auto Parts
KAR Holdings IN Auto Dealerships

BUSINESS:
PricewaterhouseCoopers NY Business Services
Ernst & Young NY Business Services
First Data CO Business Services
Allegis Group MD Information Technology Services
SunGard Data Systems PA Business Software & Services
Booz Allen Hamilton VA Technical Services
Grant Thornton International IL Business Services
Asplundh Tree Expert PA Business Services
SAS Institute NC Business Software & Services
Skadden, Arps NY Business Services
Reynolds and Reynolds OH Business Software & Services
Bain & Co MA Business Services
Jones Day OH Business Services
Freeman TX Business Services
Sidley Austin IL Business Services
White & Case NY Business Services
NCO Group PA Business Services
Alsco UT Business Services
Kirkland & Ellis IL Business Services
Affinion Group CT Business Services
RGIS Holdings MI Business Services
Mayer Brown IL Business Services
Lifetouch MN Business Services
Weil, Gotshal & Manges NY Business Services
Keane CA Business Services
Latham & Watkins CA Business Services
Guthy-Renker CA Business Services
Haworth MI Business Equipment
Vertis MD Marketing Services
Towers Perrin CT Management Services
Visant NY Marketing Services

CONSTRUCTION:
Bechtel CA Heavy Construction
Peter Kiewit Sons’ NE Heavy Construction
CH2M Hill Cos CO Heavy Construction
Whiting-Turner Contracting MD Heavy Construction
Gilbane RI Heavy Construction
Parsons CA Heavy Construction
JE Dunn Construction Group MO Heavy Construction
Black & Veatch KS Heavy Construction
Hensel Phelps Construction CO Heavy Construction
McCarthy Building Cos MO Heavy Construction
Yates Cos MS Heavy Construction
Hunt Construction Group AZ Heavy Construction
TIC Holdings CO Heavy Construction
Parsons Brinckerhoff NY Heavy Construction
Swinerton CA Heavy Construction
Zachry Construction TX Heavy Construction
AG Spanos Cos CA Heavy Construction
Turner Industries Group LA Heavy Construction
Barton Malow MI Heavy Construction
M A Mortenson MN Heavy Construction
Day & Zimmermann PA Heavy Construction
Warren Equipment TX Heavy Construction
Austin Industries TX Heavy Construction

BUILDING:
Pro-Build Holdings CO Building Materials Wholesale
Kohler WI General Building Materials
Clark Enterprises MD General Contractors
JF Shea CA Residential Construction
Structure Tone NY General Contractors
Jeld-Wen OR General Building Materials
Andersen MN General Building Materials
ABC Supply WI Building Materials Wholesale
Walsh Group IL General Contractors
Tishman Construction NY General Contractors
NTK Holdings RI General Building Materials
WinWholesale OH Building Materials Wholesale
Brasfield & Gorrie AL General Contractors
G-I Holdings NJ General Building Materials
Bradco Supply NJ Building Materials Wholesale
National Gypsum NC General Building Materials
Hoffman OR General Contractors
DPR Construction CA General Contractors
David Weekley Homes TX Residential Construction
Pella IA General Building Materials
BE&K AL General Contractors
William Lyon Homes CA Residential Construction
Weitz IA General Contractors
Mercedes Homes FL Residential Construction
Rooney Holdings FL General Contractors
Associated Materials OH General Building Materials
Beaulieu of America Group GA Home Furnishings & Fixtures
Suffolk Construction MA General Contractors
Kimball Hill IL Residential Construction
Drees Co KY Residential Construction
Shapell Industries CA Residential Construction
MWH CO General Contractors
Pacific Coast Building Products CA General Building Materials

WOOD:
Boise Cascade ID Lumber, Wood Production
Sierra Pacific Industries CA Lumber, Wood Production
North Pacific Group OR Lumber, Wood Production
Roseburg Forest Products OR Lumber, Wood Production
Columbia Forest Prods OR Lumber, Wood Production
Hampton Affiliates OR Lumber, Wood Production

EXTRACTION:
SemGroup OK Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Flying J UT Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
TransMontaigne CO Oil & Gas Pipelines
Drummond AL Nonmetallic Mineral Mining
Sinclair Oil UT Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Colonial Group GA Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Oxbow FL Nonmetallic Mineral Mining
Ergon MS Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Red Apple Group NY Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Mansfield Oil GA Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Truman Arnold Cos TX Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Hunt Consolidated/Hunt Oil TX Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration
Red Man Pipe & Supply OK Oil & Gas Equipment & Services
Dresser TX Oil & Gas Equipment & Services
Warren Equities RI Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Merit Energy TX Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Arctic Slope Regional AK Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
US Oil WI Oil & Gas Refining & Marketing
Camac International TX Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration

UTILITIES:
Energy Future Holdings TX Electric Utilities
Tenaska Energy NE Diversified Utilities

CONGLOMERATES:
Platinum Equity CA -USRobotics
Sammons Enterprises TX -Midland National Life Insurance, Briggs
Ingram Industries TN
Berwind PA -Elmers Glue
Petters Group Worldwide MN
Washington Cos MT -mining, rail, marine, equip

ELECTRONIC:
CDW IL Computer Based Systems
Freescale Semiconductor TX Semiconductor – Specialized
Avaya NJ Communication Equipment
Graybar Electric MO Electronics Wholesale
Kingston Technology CA Semiconductor- Memory Chips
Brightstar FL Communication Equipment
World Wide Technology MO Computers Wholesale
Infor GA Computer Based Systems

INDUSTRIAL:
Marmon Group IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Southwire GA Industrial Equipment & Components
Aleris International OH Metal Fabrication
Amsted Industries IL Diversified Machinery
O’Neal Steel AL Steel & Iron
Heico Cos IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Renco Group NY Steel & Iron
Metals USA TX Metal Fabrication
McWane AL Industrial Equipment & Components
McJunkin WV Industrial Equipment & Components
Electro-Motive Diesel IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Crown Equipment OH Industrial Equipment & Components
Rexnord WI Industrial Equipment & Components
Tang Industries NV Metal Fabrication
Soave Enterprises MI Steel & Iron
Indalex IL Aluminum
Euramax International GA Metal Fabrication
Advanced Drainage Systems OH Industrial Equipment & Components
Goss International IL Industrial Equipment & Components
Swagelok OH Industrial Equipment & Components
Utility Trailer Manufacturing CA Industrial Equipment & Components

CHEMICAL:
Koch Industries KS Chemicals – Major Diversified
Hexion Specialty Chemicals OH Specialty Chemicals
InterTech Group SC Synthetics
Berry Plastics IN Rubber & Plastics
JM Huber NJ Specialty Chemicals
Carpenter VA Synthetics
Wilbur-Ellis CA Agricultural Chemicals
International Specialty Products NJ Specialty Chemicals
Sigma Plastics Group NJ Synthetics
ICC Industries NY Specialty Chemicals
Nypro MA Rubber & Plastics

PAPER:
Central National-Gottesman NY Paper & Paper Products
Verso Paper TN Paper & Paper Products
The Kraft Group MA Paper & Paper Products
Gould Paper NY Paper & Paper Products
Appleton Papers WI Paper & Paper Products

TRANSPORTATION:
Unisource Worldwide GA Packaging & Containers
Schneider National WI Trucking
Swift Transportation AZ Trucks & Other Vehicles
Graham Packaging Holdings PA Packaging & Containers
Solo Cup IL Packaging & Containers
UniGroup MO Trucking
Altivity Packaging IL Packaging & Containers
SSA Marine WA Shipping
Dart Container MI Packaging & Containers
Plastipak Holdings MI Packaging & Containers
Crowley Maritime FL Shipping
Estes Express Lines VA Trucking
Global Aero Logistics IN Air Services, Other
Printpack GA Packaging & Containers
Pliant IL Packaging & Containers
Crete Carrier NE Trucking

WHOLESALE:
Kinray NY Drugs Wholesale
Consolidated Elec Distributors CA Wholesale, Other
VWR International PA Wholesale, Other
Anderson Cos AL Wholesale, Other
Quality King Distributors NY Drugs Wholesale
Software House Intl NJ Electronics Wholesale
Baker & Taylor NC Wholesale, Other
JM Smith SC Drugs Wholesale
D&H Distributing PA Computers Wholesale
Ma Labs CA Electronics Wholesale
Apex Oil MO Wholesale, Other
ASI CA Computers Wholesale
Orgill TN Wholesale, Other

MISC. SERVICES:
Enterprise Rent-A-Car MO Rental & Leasing Services
Frank Consolidated Enterprises IL Rental & Leasing Services
McKinsey & Co NY Research Services
Travelport NJ Consumer Services
HealthMarkets TX Insurance Brokers
West Corp NE Diversified Communication Services
Boston Consulting Group MA Research Services
Knowledge Learning OR Education & Training Services
Maritz MO Research Services
Education Management PA Education & Training Services
Laureate Education MD Education & Training Services

MISC:
JD Heiskell & Co CA NA
Vought Aircraft Industries TX Aerospace/Defense – Major Diversified
Ash Grove Cement KS NA
Deseret Management UT NA
Safety-Kleen Systems TX Waste Management

McCain was dubbed the “POW Songbird”

Posted on June 1, 2008 by Eric Verlo

An excerpt from prisoner of war John McCain’s November 9, 1967 interview for the North Vietnamese newspaper NHAN DAN:
McCain told vietcong about US attack procedures
Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain have released a fact sheet on the highly decorated hero’s service in Vietnam. If this is reminiscent of the Swiftboat shits against John Kerry, at least these vets have the official records and news reports. Apparently John McCain III crashed a total of five planes, received one and a half medals per hour of service, and while the admiral’s son was pampered in the Hanoi Hilton, his extensive singing earned him the name “POW Songbird.”

FACT SHEET: Military record of John Sidney McCain III

Both McCain III’s father and grandfather were Admirals in the United States Navy. His father Admiral John S. ”Junior” McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe – later commander of American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. His grandfather John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

McCain III, like his father and grandfather, also attended the United States Naval Academy. McCain III finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958.

McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft

1 – Student pilot McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while practicing landings.

2 – Pilot McCain III lost another plane two years later while he was deployed in the Mediterranean. ”Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral.

3 – Pilot McCain III lost number three in 1965 when he was returning from flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. McCain III radioed, ”I’ve got a flameout” and ejected at one thousand feet. The plane crashed to the ground and McCain III floated to a deserted beach.

4 – Combat pilot McCain III lost his fourth on July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk combat pilot. While waiting his turn for takeoff, an accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain Jr’s. plane. He escaped from the burning aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and threatened to sink the ship.

5 – Combat pilot McCain III lost a fifth plane three months later (Oct. 26, 1967) during his 23rd mission over North Vietnam when he failed to avoid a surface-to-air missile. McCain III ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi. After being pulled from the lake by the North Vietnamese, McCain III was bayoneted in his left foot and shoulder and struck by a rifle butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.

1973 New York Daily News labeled POW McCain III a “PW Songbird”

On McCain III’s fourth day of being denied medical treatment, slapped, and threatened with death by the communist (they were demanding military information in exchange for medical treatment), McCain III broke and told his interrogator, ”O.K., I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.” U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain.

It was then that the communist learned that McCain III’s father was Admiral John S. McCain, the soon-to-be commander of all U.S. Forces in the Pacific. The Vietnamese rushed McCain III to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable for U.S. POWs.

By Nov. 9, 1967 (U.S. government documents) Hanoi press was quoting McCain III describing his mission including the number of aircraft in his flight, information about rescue ships, and the order of which U.S. attacks would take place.

While still in North Vietnam’s military hospital, McCain III gave an interview to prominent French television reporter Francois Chalais for a series titled Life in Hanoi. Chalais’ interview with McCain III was aired in Europe.

Vietnamese doctors operated on McCain’s Leg in early December, 1967. Six weeks after he was shot down, McCain was taken from the hospital and delivered to a U.S. POW camp.

In May of 1968, McCain III allowed himself to be interviewed by two North Vietnamese generals at separate times.” May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain In August 1968, other POWs learned for the first time that John McCain III had been taken prisoner.

On June 5, 1969, the New York Daily News reported in a article headlined REDS SAY PW SONGBIRD IS PILOT SON OF ADMIRAL,

“…Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot son of United States Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain, purportedly admits to having bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam and praises medical treatment he has received since being taken prisoner…”

The Washington Post explained McCain III’s broadcast:

“The English-Language broadcast beamed at South Vietnam was one of a series using American prisoners. It was in response to a plea by Defense Secretary Melvin S. Laird, May 19, that North Vietnam treat prisoners according to the humanitarian standards set forth by the Geneva Convention.”

In 1970, McCain III agreed to an interview with Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish psychiatrist who was living in Cuba at the time.

The meeting between Barral and McCain III (which was photographed by the Vietnamese) took place away from the prison at the office of the Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations in Hanoi (declassified government document). During the meeting, POW McCain sipped coffee and ate oranges and cakes with the Cuban.

While talking with Barral, McCain III further seriously violated the military Code of Conduct by failing to evade answering questions ”to the utmost of his ability” when he, according government documents, helped Barral by answering questions in Spanish, a language McCain had learned in school. The interview was published in January 1970.

McCain III was released from North Vietnam March 15, 1973

In 1993, during one of his many trips back to Hanoi, McCain asked the Vietnamese not to make public any records they hold pertaining to returned U.S. POWs. McCain III claims, that while a POW, he tried to kill himself.

McCain III was awarded “medals for valor” equal to nearly a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat

For 23 combat missions (an estimated 20 hours over enemy territory), the U.S. Navy awarded McCain III, the son of famous admirals, a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars, two Commendation medals plus two Purple Hearts and a dozen service medals.

“McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat,” explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs — the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon.

“Since McCain got 28 medals,” Bell continued, “that equals to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys — grunts on the ground — who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I’m sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down.”

No one is faulting John McCain for collaborating with his Vietnamese captors. He survived captivity, however arduous or not. It is enough to say he is a survivor. It would be too much though to call him a hero.

David Rovics on death of Utah Phillips

Posted on May 24, 2008 by NMT

Utah Phillips died Friday. Friends have circulated a May 14th letter he’d sent. The Salt Lake Tribune reprinted a great interview from 2005. And fellow performer David Rovics forwarded this remembrance:

I was watching my baby daughter sleep in her carseat outside of the Sacramento airport about ten hours ago when I noticed a missed call from Brendan Phillips. He’s in a band called Fast Rattler with several friends of mine, two of whom live in my new hometown of Portland, Oregon, one of whom needed a ride home from the Greyhound station. I called back, and soon thereafter heard the news from Brendan that his father had died the night before in his sleep, when his heart stopped beating.

I wouldn’t want to elevate anybody to inappropriately high heights, but for me, Utah Phillips was a legend.

I first became familiar with the Utah Phillips phenomenon in the late 80’s, when I was in my early twenties, working part-time as a prep cook at Morningtown in Seattle. I had recently read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and had been particularly enthralled by the early 20th Century section, the stories of the Industrial Workers of the World. So it was with great interest that I first discovered a greasy cassette there in the kitchen by the stereo, Utah Phillips Sings the Songs and Tells the Stories of the Industrial Workers of the World.

As a young radical, I had heard lots about the 1960’s. There were (and are) plenty of veterans of the struggles of the 60’s alive and well today. But the wildly tumultuous era of the first two decades of the 20th century is now (and pretty well was then) a thing entirely of history, with no one living anymore to tell the stories. And while long after the 60’s there will be millions of hours of audio and video recorded for posterity, of the massive turn-of-the-century movement of the industrial working class there will be virtually none of that.

To hear Utah tell the stories of the strikes and the free speech fights, recounting hilariously the day-to-day tribulations of life in the hobo jungles and logging camps, singing about the humanity of historical figures such as Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill or Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, was to bring alive an era that at that point only seemed to exist on paper, not in the reality of the senses. But Utah didn’t feel like someone who was just telling stories from a bygone era — it was more like he was a bridge to that era.

Hearing these songs and stories brought to life by him, I became infected by the idea that if people just knew this history in all its beauty and grandeur, they would find the same hope for humanity and for the possibility for radical social change that I had just found through Utah.

Thus, I became a Wobbly singer, too. I began to stand on a street corner on University Way with a sign beside me that read, “Songs of the Seattle General Strike of 1919.” I mostly sang songs I learned from listening to Utah’s cassette, plus some other IWW songs I found in various obscure collections of folk music that I came across.

It was a couple years later that I first really discovered Utah Phillips, the songwriter. I had by this time immersed myself with great enthusiasm in the work of many contemporary performers in what gets called the folk music scene, and had developed a keen appreciation for the varied and brilliant songwriting of Jim Page and others. Then, in 1991, I came across Utah’s new cassette, I’ve Got To Know, and soon thereafter heard a copy of a much earlier recording, Good Though.

Whether he’s recounting stories from his own experiences or those of others doesn’t matter. There is no need to know, for in the many hours Utah spent in his troubled youth talking with old, long-dead veterans of the rails and the IWW campaigns, a bridge from now to then was formed in this person, in his pen and in his deep, resonant voice. In Good Though I heard the distant past breathing and full of life in Utah’s own compositions, just as they breathed in his renditions of older songs.

In I’ve Got To Know I heard an eloquent and current voice of opposition to the American Empire and the bombing of Iraq, rolled together seamlessly with the voices of deserters, draft dodgers and tax resisters of the previous century.

In reference to the power of lying propaganda, a friend of mine used to say it takes ten minutes of truth to counteract 24 hours of lies. But upon first hearing Utah’s song, “Yellow Ribbon,” it seemed to me that perhaps that ratio didn’t give the power of truth enough credit. It seemed to me that if the modern soldiers of the empire would have a chance to hear Utah’s monologues there about his anguish after his time in the Army in Korea, or the breathtakingly simple depiction of life under the junta in El Salvador in his song “Rice and Beans,” they would just have to quit the military.

Utah made it clear in word and in deed that steeping yourself in the tradition was required of any good practitioner of the craft, and I did my best to follow in his footsteps and do just that. I learned lots of Utah’s songs as well as the old songs he was playing. Making a living busking in the Boston subways for years, I ran into other folks who were doing just that, as well as writing great songs, such as Nathan Phillips (no relation). Nathan was from West Virginia, and did haunting versions of “The Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia,” “Larimer Street,” “All Used Up,” and other songs. In different T stops at the same time, Nathan and I could often be found both singing the songs of Utah Phillips for the passersby. Traveling around the US in the 1990’s and since then, it seemed that Utah’s music had, on a musical level, had the same kind of impact that Zinn’s People’s History or somewhat earlier works such as Jeremy Brecher’s book, Strike!, had had in written form — bringing alive vital history that had been all but forgotten. With Ani DiFranco’s collaboration with Utah, this became doubly true, seemingly overnight, and this man who had had a loyal cult following before suddenly had, if not what might be called popularity, at least a loyal cult following that was now twice as big as it had been in the pre-Ani era.

I had had the pleasure of hearing Utah live in concert only once in the early 90’s, doing a show with another great songwriter, Charlie King, in the Boston area. I was looking forward to hearing him play again around there in 1995, but what was to be a Utah Phillips concert turned into a benefit for Utah’s medical expenses, when he had to suddenly drastically cut down on his touring, due to heart problems. I think there were about twenty different performers doing renditions of Utah Phillips’ songs at Club Passim that night. I did “Yellow Ribbon.”

Traveling in the same circles and putting out CDs on the same record label, it was fairly inevitable that we’d meet eventually. The first time was several years ago, if memory serves me, behind the stage at the annual protest against the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia. I think I successfully avoided seeming too painfully star-struck. Utah was complaining to me earnestly about how he didn’t know what to do at these protests, didn’t feel like he had good protest material. I think he did just fine, though I can’t recall what he did.

Utah lived in Nevada City, and the last time I was there he came to the community radio station while I was appearing on a show. This was soon after Katrina, and I remember singing my song, “New Orleans,” and Utah saying embarrassingly nice things. I was on a little tour with Norman Solomon speaking and me singing, and we had done an event the night before in town, which Utah was too tired to attend, if I recall.

Me, Utah, Norman, and my companion, Reiko, went over to a nice breakfast place after the radio show, talked and ate breakfast. Utah did most of the talking, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that his use of mysterious hobo colloquialisms and frequent references to obscure historical characters in twentieth-century American anarchist history was something he did off stage as well as on.

I’ve passed near enough to that part of California many times since then. Called once when I was nearby and he was out of town, doing a show in Boston. Otherwise I just thought about calling and dropping by, but didn’t take the time. Life was happening, and taking a day or two off in Nevada City was always something that I never quite seemed to find the time for. Always figured next time I’ll have more time, I’ll call him then. It had been thirteen years since he found out about his heart problems, and he hadn’t kicked the bucket yet… Of course, now I wish I had taken the time when I had the chance, and I’m sure there are many other people who feel the same way.

In any case, for those of us who knew his music, whether from recordings or concerts, for those of us who knew Utah from his stories on or off the stage, whether we knew him as that human bridge to the radical labor movement of yesterday, or as the voice of the modern-day hobos, or as that funky old guy that Ani did a couple of CDs with, Utah Phillips will be remembered and treasured by many. He was undeniably a sort of musical-political-historical institution in his own day. He said he was a rumor in his own time. No question, one man’s rumor is another man’s legend, but who cares, it’s just words anyway.

Neocon just rewards will be bulletproof

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Eric Verlo

This isn’t a Teflon administration. It’s Kevlar. We’ve seen Bushco take direct hits and drum on like the Energizer Bunny. This cabal is Timex, its lies blatantly unmasked, guns smoking, hands bloodied, but if it has a heart, its telltale beat is not pounding, just ticking.

As I fantasize of a 2009 comeuppance, congress submitting our ex-leaders before the International Criminal Court to face the consequences of their audacious crimes, I cannot help but question whether and how justice can be served. Where is the authority to bring these men to justice? Who and whose army is going to wrench Bush and co from their above-the-law protectors?

Even if the weight of national and international law enforcement can pull rank over the intelligence community and its private muscle, can we prevent a Ken Lay possum maneuver from stopping an investigation in its tracks? Who will be able to avert a freak accident where Bush and Cheney and the whole lot will be theatrically killed off, in reality to party on in Paraguay until maintaining a facade no longer matters?

While I worry about the loophole of a remote Patagonian haven for post-Nazi war criminals, if the media is collaborating, is actual exile even necessary? Heart attack victim Ken Lay could even now be living it up in Aspen and Cannes among jet-setters who enjoy the irony. If no news agency reports it, would we know? Even as we don’t hear it, we know the tree falls. Had Elvis been facing a multi-billion dollar lawsuit, or a war crimes trial, I might imagine an ignoble death on the toilet and an afterlife in Vegas drive-throughs would be a small price to pay.

If the Neocons are dethroned in November, and may I say I consider the prospect highly unlikely, they seem awfully powerful enough to carry on scot-free. America can’t even get Karl Rove to obey a subpoena. We can’t even get an independent inquiry into Bush’s pre-political driving records. The Carlyle Group will certainly be able to afford an expert to confirm that the DNA of a chimpanzee found slumped over the presidential excrement-incinerator porta-potty matches that of our dear-departed dope-in-chief. We’ll believe it, even as a simian look-alike paddles his mountain bike around vast East Coast and Texan estates.

Justice denied, I’ll not believe it, injustice will prevail, I doubt very much there will even be the illusion.

Indonesians suspicious of Namru-2 Lab

Posted on May 8, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Bird Flu germ warfare the killer whale of chemical weapon ordnance Have you heard of NAMRU-2? It’s a US military laboratory set off limits on an Indonesian college campus in Jakarta. The lab’s stated purpose is to study tropical diseases coming from the region. But Indonesians have become suspicious about the application of what the US is learning, and why the lab workers need diplomatic immunity.

The secretive lab has yet to share information with Indonesian researchers. There has been no instance when the Navy Medical Research Unit 2 has assisted with Indonesia’s health system. Then there’s the specter of the lab being administrated under the authority of our Department of Defense. Indonesians point to the certainty that this also means the US intelligence community.

Might it be fair to wonder what Namru-2 is working on and for who?

As Indonesians are raising questions about the foreign lab’s legitimacy, their political representatives have succeeded in stalling negotiations for a new lease. Would “curious” describe the current sticking point: Americans are insisting on diplomatic immunity for the lab staff?

Eavesdropping on a tree in the forest

Posted on May 3, 2008 by Eric Verlo

NEUFREISTADT, SL- Wandering a little in Neufreistad last night I came upon a chain hanging from a clock tower. Pulling it would ring a bell far above. It was night in Second Life, the moon and I were alone in the NFS sim, mine the only avatar even in the surrounding sims. The obvious question arose, if I were to ring this bell with no one around, would anyone hear it?

Do I know enough to say? A sim owner or manager, that is to say the person who owns that virtual estate or the person given authority to run it, can monitor SL activity without being online. They have a bird’s eye view, or so I understand, an extrasensory perception relating to the realm for which they are responsible. Ordinary users can see and hear what’s in our vicinity, and can sharpen our sight depending on how lifelike we want our faculties. (actually we can eavesdrop too, with virtual bugs to spy on virtual happenings.) Sim admins have meta power.

Above them, Linden Labs, the real world laboratory which houses Second Life, oversees the mechanics of their virtual creation. Their view is that of lab technician over the maze, watching the mouse try to find the cheese, omnipresent and unobserved if only because of their irrelevance to the reality below.

I cannot say whether any are listening, but I do know that they could. Such is the unexplored, but not indefinite world of virtual reality. You may not have been there before, but someone has, and certainly someone tends to it and has an interest in checking in. And that’s not even to consider the NSA.

Is there a real world anymore where you can act on a thought unobserved? With Google Earth, as an example of surreptitious satellites, could a tree fall, anymore, unheard? Can you travel in your car, sit in your room, whisper out of earshot of your cellphone, and feel you have privacy?

In cyberspace, surveillance is inescapable. But in the virtual dimension, whose landscape is it that’s being watched? Does the virtual world exist on your computer screen as much as it lies your head? From which are the spooks reporting?

The PLO has now been turned into a tool of Israel and the US

Posted on May 3, 2008 by Tony Logan

The PLO is now running operations for Israel and the Bush gang against Palestinians, as they sweep gangs of armed thugs into Palestinian towns like Jenin. What a sad demise to the PLO, who under Arafat turned towards corruption and capitulation in a massive way. Under Abbas, this process is now complete, and little remains of the PLO other than goon squads under foreign control. See Abbas sends forces to north WBank in security push

When Jimmy Carter met with Hamas representatives, he as carrot carrier of the US, was well aware of this relative new reality, one which the American public hasn’t quite caught up to understanding. Hamas, with all its defects and blemishes, at least is not corrupted in the manner that the PLO became when it began to get bought off by the US. Hamas has taken over the leadership of the Palestinian community, while the leadership of the PLO went totally astray, looking principally for personal gain for the ‘leaders’.

The US and Israel want a PLO group that is willing to collaborate with the oppression of the Palestinians, in much the same way that many Jews once tried to collaborate with the Nazis, to curry favor for their own personal selves and families. Iraq and Afghanistan also have clumps of traitors, who collaborate witht the foreign occupiers, too.

The PLO is now dead and should be buried. It was defeated by Israeli and American firepower.

Why is Dale Barlow free?

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Tony Logan

Why is Dale Barlow free? He is the guy accused of sex with a minor. The total of kids taken into custody in Eldorado, Texas now stands at 417, yet Dale Barlow is free!

Does that make any sense? Apparently to Republican Judge Barbara Walther, Republican Governor Rick Perry, and Republican President George ‘Dummie’ Bush, it does. Remember? These are the people that made torture legal under national law, even if it’s not considered so in international courts. We got some real legal geniuses at work here! Now don’t we though?

Still waiting for the national outcry as I am…. ? Apparently we are into the longest night and people are still sleeping….? One really must be kind of contemptuous of the American people as a whole at this point. Just what does it take to wake them up?

Here is the latest info about Dale Barlow, who apparently is still not under custody living in Arizona.

taken from the Houston Chronicle at 7PM MT 4/8/2008
….Still missing is the 16-year-old whose phone call complaining of having an 8-month-old baby fathered by a 50-year-old man sparked the massive raid.

The alleged father, identified by a search warrant as Dale Barlow, has been interviewed by deputies with the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office at his northwest Arizona home, department spokeswoman Trish Carter confirmed on Monday.

Carter would not elaborate on the encounter, but, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, deputies collected a sample of Barlow’s DNA and a list of people living at his house.

“‘At this time, our contact with Mr. Barlow is complete,” Carter said. “We have not been informed of a warrant or any more information being sought.”………

Well, isn’t that sweet? They have no evidence of anything yet! They cannot even make the arrest of the principle person accused of the only alleged crime! And, it seems, he’s not even living in the state where the judge took actions involving hundreds upon hundreds of people! They have not located the alleged victim either! This is certainly our legal and law enforcement systems at their finest, is it not?

You might want to telephone the Republican Judge who put 417 kids into foster control, and ask her,

‘Where did you study law?’

Honorable Barbara L. Walther (R)
State District Judge (Irion)
Term Ends: 12-31-2008
District: 51
Contact and Phone Numbers
(915) 659-6571

African Union ugly iron fist of status quo

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Multistate sponsored terrorism
Comoran and Tanzanian African Union soldiers in Mutsamudu beat a man suspected of collaborating with Mohamed Bacar, the renegade Anjouan leader. Tanzania, with the backing of the African Union, has retaken the small Isle of Anjouan, which has been rebel-held/ independent, depending on how you look as it, since 2001. Members of the African Union, like any collective of largely undemocratic governments, are threatened by independence movements. The UN is similarly flawed when compelled to act against popular uprisings within its member states, to preserve the power of their ambassadors’ regents.

Leaving recruits to fend for themselves

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Eric Verlo

I can’t help but think of this iconic photo as we envision our eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. We say that US success in both depends on surrogate nationals to enforce their own subjugation. Recruiting collaborators becomes more difficult as they foresee the precedent which awaits them.

No occupied nation in modern history, with the exception yet of Israeli Palestine, has not expelled its presumed invaders, and punished its misguided traitors.

In the iconic image which has come to represent the Fall of Siagon, the “last chopper” was not rescuing South Vietnamese refugees from atop the American Embassy. In actuality the helicopter was evacuating the desperate occupants of the apartment building which housed Vietnamese CIA operatives. These were the South Vietnamese who had served the US and now feared the vengeance of the victorious north.

Bruce Vincent loves George is so 2004

Posted on March 4, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Bruce Vincent receives a Preserve America Award in May 2004 The Vincent email has come around again, like flu season, hoping to cast Stutterin’ George Dubya in a pious light. Though it reads like Reader’s Digest bad fiction, even urban myth, the author is authentic, the event is factual, but of course a private moment with George cannot be corroborated. Who knows, the devotional lingo may be the story Vincent had to tell his wife, to cover for a Jeff Guckert/Gannon blue dress affair, if we’ve learned anything about Republicans.

What utter tripe. We’ve all of us looked into Dubya’s eyes enough to know there’s no there there, nothing but air. What reason is there these days to be circulating such a fawning pre-election 2004 profile of Bush? I think folk are trying to rationalize their support of their previous election year candidate. History has already sized up George Bush. I doubt even Bush’s biographer will argue that this president is not the alcoholic, half-wit tool of thieving, war profiteering, war criminals.

About any notion of Bush’s depth or spirituality, I have to point to the interview he gave his friend and fellow reprobate Tucker Carlson for Talk Magazine in 1999 (now reprinted in the National Review) where he made fun of condemned killer Karla Faye Tucker. Declining to offer clemency to the reformed Tucker, Bush mocked her supposed plea by mimicking her voice and pursing his lips: “Please don’t kill me!”

4 weeks now till the next St Paddy’s

Posted on February 16, 2008 by Brother Jonah

You know, the cops handled me pretty much the same way when I was chair-bound from my injuries, lo, these many years ago.

What got my Irish up, and I had to shame a few members of the crowd, really loudly in front of their kids too, was they were screaming for the other floats and parade members to run us over, they cheered when the piggies put the choke-hold on Frank and cheered when they slung Elizabeth to the ground like that.

And then tried to shout me down because “They’re Fighting for YOUR Right to free speech”…

yeah, right.

Free to say whatever you want as long as you have police permission first.

If they were in Belfast or worse yet Dublin they would have been Informants for the British. That’s their level of loyalty to the culture.

They would also be really stupid about trying to hide their collaboration, and the IRA, instead of just killing them, would have taken them out in the middle of a slum street and shot them in the kneecaps.

Mark them as snitch-bitches for the rest of their unnatural lives.

Because that’s the level of their intelligence, and the equal but opposite level of the contempt the IRA would have held for their coward asses.

The cops would have been simply shot down in the street.

Ultimately collaborators meet their due

Posted on January 23, 2008 by Eric Verlo

When I hear our reporters echo the US DoD press releases, “the surge is working,” our troops can withdraw “soon, but not yet,” I like to think of this iconic Time-Life image. Justice was ultimately served on those who collaborated with the Third Reich. Sheared, jeered, run out of town.

Egypt thwarts Israeli starvation of Gaza

Posted on January 23, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Egypt thwarts Israel’s efforts to starve their Palestinian captives in Gaza. Masked gunmen in Palestine were responsible for tearing down part of the metal barrier separating Egypt from Gaza in the town of Rafah, but now Egyptian leader Mubarak has announced his intention to allow residents of Gaza to resupply themselves in Egypt with the food and necessities being deprived them by the Israeli blockade.

“Masked gunmen?” That certainly paints the usual negative picture. Is it fair to label either Hamas or Fatah as [lawless] gunslingers? All warring participants in Palestine and Iraq are masked. Israeli soldiers, Iraqi trainees collaborating with the Americans, even many of the Americans have their faces concealed. Needless to say every combatant is armed with guns. How descriptive is it then to identify Palestinian upstarts in such terms? The Palestinians who dared break down the barrier in Gaza have to obscure their identities to prevent subsequent retaliatory Israeli air-strikes on their particular homes and families. They do it also to avoid arrest and indefinite incarceration in Israeli prisons. Even boys conceal their faces with scarves or kaffiyeh when they throw stones at the Israeli tanks.

If the armed Palestinians had fired on Egyptian border guards, perhaps there might have been cause to call them gunmen. Otherwise the description seems just as biased as another side saying Palestinian saboteurs interrupt Israel’s smooth running genocidal solution in Gaza.

Spook Steve Recca wants us to feel safe

Posted on January 17, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Commander Steve Recca, of the new DoD endowed UCCS Center for Homeland Security, told his Shove Chapel audience last night that Homeland Security is about being safe. That means everything to him from keeping his daughter safe at school to keeping the streets safe from excessive snow fall. Does the DHS want a crack at Climate Change?

Recca also explained that Homeland Security is about community. Yes, community: the local community and the global community. Whatever does he think “homeland” refers to? Manitou? Planet Earth? Before Bush and Ashcroft I’m pretty sure “Homeland” had only ever meant Nazi Germany, needing to be kept safe from Fascist-haters like socialists, anarchists, discontents and others who objected to Nazi land grabs. In the Soviet Bloc security would have been about community: the community of neighbors ready to rat on you.

Steve Recca kept Homeland Security affairs out of Greg Mortenson’s presentation until the end. Then, to cap off the questions from the audience, from the darkened anonymity of the public microphone, Recca asked for everyone’s patience while he read an “email from a Marine at an FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Afghanistan.”

In this “email” a soldier explained how protecting one of Mortenson’s schools was the most important goal of his mission, etc, etc.

The inattentive audience may have become too accustomed to visualizing boiler room letter writing sessions assigned to soldiers in the field, or soldiers laid up in VA hospitals with nothing else to do but hand-write form letters dictated to them by military PR specialists. Those Letters to the Editor sent to newspapers across the country, or emails to Dr Greg in this case, may be outsourced to India for all we know. In any case, the Colorado College audience was bored of it.

I’d like to see Recca explain what role propaganda or jingoism plays in Homeland Security.

Commander Steve Recca is a career spook, now pioneering the post-graduate studying of keeping white America safe. I can understand that DHS might require information sharing with the Intelligence Community. Does it have to be part of that community? Is that the “community” Recca was talking about?

Will Homeland Security be training its airport shoe-sniffers to conduct surveillance and torture too? Steve Recca doesn’t bring transportation or border guard experience to his job. His background is entirely about spying.

1983- graduate (with honors) of U.S. Naval Academy
1990- Master of Arts (with distinction) from Naval Postgraduate School
1990 to 1993- tours on USS YORKTOWN, USS TEXAS, USS AMERICA
1993- Staff, Commander Naval Forces Europe (CNE), in London
Intelligence Watch Officer, Head of the Current Intelligence Branch.
1994- Certificate in International Political Affairs
from University of Zurich
1995 to 1997- Special Assistant and Speechwriter
for the Secretary of the Navy
1997 to 1998- Office of the Director of Central Intelligence,
speech writer, member on Director’s Long-Term Planning Board
1998 to 2001-American Embassy in Oslo, Norway,
as Assistant Naval Attaché,
Joint Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense
2001- Inman Intelligence Chair, Naval Postgraduate School,
Senior Intelligence Officer and Intelligence Programs Coordinator
2003- Department of Defense Chief Liaison
to the German Federal Intelligence Service.
2005- United States Northern Command’s Interagency Coordination
Directorate, policy planning and technology consultant
2007- UCCS Center for Homeland Security

Here is Steve Recca quoted in the August 24, 2007 Colorado Springs Business Journal about a newly formed COLORADO HOMELAND DEFENSE ALLIANCE:

“The whole point behind the alliance is creating partnerships, networking — collaboration with government, military, university and corporations in the aerospace, defense and security industries.”

James Woolsey and Eleana Benador- 2 US sponsors of Middle East terrorism

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Tony Logan

The US government and Pentagon have a broad and wide number of propaganda outlets around the world that masquerade as private companies that are doing humanitarian work, public relations work, and news reporting.

Eleana Benador, a woman of mysterious background, heads up something called Benador Associates, which is a semi clandestine US governmental outlet for Bush Administration war propaganda. Richard Perle and James Woolsey are the neocon shadows lurking behind this woman and her supposed ‘public relations firm’.

‘It was Mr. Woolsey and Mr. Rosenthal, she said, who helped her start her client list—first by becoming clients, then by introducing her to others. Mr. Woolsey was reluctant to tout his relationship with Ms. Benador. He said he had signed on to do a few speaking engagements and that he last saw her nine months ago. “I like Eleana, but I really just know her as someone who was committed to getting into this business and to set up some speeches,” he said.’

That was a brief and chatty excerpt from
SHE’S RICHARD PERLE’S OYSTER
by JOE HAGAN
NEW YORK OBSERVER
April 7, 2003

Many know that James Woolsey is an often voiced proponent of a 4th World War to reshape the Middle East, an ex CIA head, and a Messianic Right Wing Christian that works tirelessly to advance US Christian ideological and political control over the entire world. He is corporate America melded to Christian America melded to US governmental/ military America. Who then is exactly Eleana Benador?

Eleana Benador sponsors herself as Educated Woman, but she herself is sponsored by others. She and her ‘agency’ appear to be a product of the long time CIA and Israeli collaboration inside and against the Arab World. See their launch of something they call the Arab Broadcast Forum.

If you examine the Benador Associates web site some, one will begin to notice the Right Wing Lebanese connections there. The Right Wing Lebanese community is one that is thoroughly integrated into Israel’s military and spy operations. The US and Israel both hope to control Lebanon’s government with the aid of these Lebanese allies who themselves are an increasingly small minority of Lebanon’s overall population.

These Right Wing Arab sources dredged together by the IDF through the many years, are a backbone for the spread of US neocon propaganda inside the Arab World itself. It gives ‘Arab face’ cover to the ideology. The US government is now sponsoring all sorts of info wars within and into the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Following is the type of info war that Benador Associates specializes in… Neo-Cons planted the Iran story This is an info war serving Colorado Springs’ Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy, multiple military contracting firms and the Woolsey family’s personal agendas. Oh, and did I mention again that Susan Woolsey sits on the Colorado College Board of Directors? She’s the VP there, and the US VPs’ daughters and wife graduated from CC. That would be Dick Cheney’s family members.

James Woolsey and Eleana Benador…. 2 US governmental sponsors of terrorism throughout The Middle East. Benador Associates and Colorado College? Yes, there is a connection there in who comes to town to try to feed us misinformation.

Shieldher for her own good

Posted on January 5, 2008 by Marie Walden

Available in five beautiful colors
I had to elaborate on Tony’s clever post about the fun-in-the-stun state of Arizona. I am shocked at the idea of personal tasers becoming as ubiquitous as Tupperware!

Did you ever carry pepper spray, or Mace as it was known when I was in college? It was pitched to women as a sure-fire way to stop a predator in his tracks. Just spray it in an assailant’s eyes and he’ll stumble around yelling “Ah, my eyes! my eyes!” long enough for his prey to flee.

There is a new protection device available from an Arizona company called Shieldher. It is, I kid you not, a personal taser, the TASER® C2. To soften the outright horror at the thought of our already over-armed streets filling with more weaponry, the Shieldher taser comes in innocuous and feminine colors like metallic pink. I imagine this is meant to discourage macho would-be criminals, who might otherwise be inclined to carry one of these weapons to subdue recalcitrant victims.

Shieldher is aware of the TASER® C2’s potential for misuse:

Our mission is to pacify the fears we face daily as women in an effort to increase the quality of our lives! We have received numerous calls and emails that validate the need for this product and we are committed, at Shieldher, to providing the product in a manner that reinforces it as a personal safety device NOT a weapon.

Undeterred by the overwhelming likelihood of sinister usage, the company touts the benefits of the personal taser:

The TASER® C2 transmits electrical pulses along the wires and into the body of the target, overstimulating the sensory and motor functions of the peripheral nervous system, causing overwhelming incapacitation.

I have a daughter going off to college in the fall and, once I overcame my initial horror at the very notion of personal tasers, I began to play with the idea that perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I rather relish the idea of the grabby cocksure frat boy writhing on the ground much to the delight of his drunken brothers.

But mere moments later I recalled what has been beaten into my brain over the years by gun control advocates. A handgun carried for personal protection is far more likely to be used against its owner than his or her assailant. I feel certain that the same will be true for the personal taser. How long until the stopped becomes the stopper? How long until Shieldher’s newly-empowered female client encounters a pretty pink taser tucked neatly into the back pocket of anyone desiring her overwhelming incapacitation?

Prefering to rank the next to high score

Posted on December 9, 2007 by Eric Verlo

I remember a guy in college who just by looking at him you could see he was ahead of the electronics learning curve. Sophomore year he disappeared from campus to complete a project for the Navy. It turns out in high school he’d taught himself an obscure programming language, which happened also to have military applications. The Navy requisitioned the teenager for want of sufficient specialists.

I thought about that classmate today as I watched a precocious gamer blaze through Galaxy Mario. Every household member has a player ID, and for each game a unique folder. And the console connects to the internet. In a couple years he’ll be playing serious first-person-shooters against others online. Who knows when we’ll get a call.

We think about our privacy when we consider that Google and Internet Explorer are logging our activities online. We worry about crackers getting our access codes and credit card numbers. Does it occur to us that our aptitude might too be of interest to others? We know military recruiters are looking at many signs that our children might be ripe for their pitch. Whether troubled, antisocial, low grades, dim prospects, these are easily discerned from school records. Imagine such information enhanced by cable TV or internet records. We think in terms of privacy rights, about protections from revealing our weaknesses and secrets. What about our strengths?

What of a government or military wishing to requisition our unwitting collaboration? What of an intelligence department holding all the marbles, in a position to make an offer we can’t refuse?

US suppliers of prewar Iraqi WMDs

Posted on September 4, 2007 by NMT

Iraq was forced in 2002 to supply documentation of their weapons programs. They delivered a 12,000 page report to the UN Security Council, from which the US censored 8,000 pages. A Swiss reporter with Die Tageszeitung was able to obtain the missing pages which revealed who among US and European companies were responsible for building Saddam Hussein’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons programs. Parts of the UK press carried the story. Except for Democracy Now and an abridged mention in the AP, the story was buried in the US. Here is the list of 24 US companies (includes locals Hewlett-Packard).

Honeywell (rocket program, conventional weapons)
Spectra Physics (conventional weapons)
Semetex (rocket program)
TI Coating (nuclear weapon program, conventional weapons)
Unisys (nuclear weapon program, conventional weapons)
Sperry Corp. (rocket program, conventional weapons)
Tektronix (rocket program, nuclear weapon program)
Rockwell (conventional weapons)
Leybold Vacuum Systems (nuclear weapon program)
Finnigan-MAT-US (nuclear weapon program)
Hewlett-Packard (nuclear weapon program, rocket program, conventional weapons)
Dupont (nuclear weapon program)
Eastman Kodak (rocket program)
American Type Culture Collection (biological weapon program)
Alcolac International (chemical weapon program)
Consarc (nuclear weapon program)
Carl Zeiss – U.S (conventional weapons)
Cerberus (LTD) (nuclear weapon program)
Electronic Associates (rocket program)
International Computer Systems (nuclear weapon program, rocket program, conventional weapons)
Bechtel (conventional weapons)
EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (rocket program)
Canberra Industries Inc. (nuclear weapon program)
Axel Electronics Inc. (nuclear weapon program)

“In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq’s arms programs are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.”

Harry Potter meets Laura Bush

Posted on July 11, 2007 by Eric Verlo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will world agriculture production collapse?

Posted on May 3, 2007 by Tony Logan

World agriculture is facing some dire straits ahead. While most scientists have been concentrating their worries about the ability of agriculture to keep up with the growing population consumption needs for some time, they were often worrying most about the spreading scarcity of fresh water, growing desertification of the planet, increasing soil degradation, global warming, peak oil’s effects on fertilizer supplies, etc. They had not been worrying so much about the death of honey bees.

That has now changed, since these bees are necessary for pollination of flowering plants and the bees are disappearing. We need the bees not just for honey, which alone is a relatively minor item, but we need them most for pollination of crops.

There is a lesson to be learned here, and that is simply that consequences of destructive economic activities are often not foreseen in advance. People calculate one thing, but ‘God’, so to speak, calculates another. Nature is not a controlled laboratory in a university lab somewhere, where reductionist thinking can lead only to reductionist results. So it is deadly to just rely on only a micro-management style, ‘environmental impact statement’ sort of plotting of economic planning in the future. That is precisely what our corporate government and the corporations themselves will try to do, and they will call it GREEN to do so. In fact it is not and is a formula for mass human suicide instead.

Let’s hope that the bees can rally and come back next season? But even if they do, we are hardly out of crisis state in the least. We are just beginning to enter into it. The corporate sector alone is not in any way capable of delivering the type of planning of future economic activity that is needed to forestall disaster worldwide. Temporary profit making, which is what the corporate world is all about, can only be destructive to the world environment we all live in. There is not even a seed of real change that can be accomplished when this mindset dominates. A radical shift is totally necessary in how things are done and made.

Pentagon lies blowback- from Jessica Lynch to Pat Tillman

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Tony Logan

Remember Jessica Lynch and the Pentagon psy-op built around her capture by Iraqis? It was all lies we were fed just like with the bull shit stories the Pentagon has been telling us regarding Pat Tilman’s death. Following is an excerpt from recent MSNBC reportage.

….On April 24, 2007, Lynch was back in the spotlight when she testified before a House committee investigating whether the Pentagon misled the American public about the experiences of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lynch was walking slowly, according to the Associated Press, when took her seat at the witness table along with relatives of former NFL star Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

“The bottom line,” Lynch said in a determined tone, “is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don’t need to be told elaborate tales.”
…..
—————————————————————————————————–
Comment…But they don’t want to tell the truth, simply because it is too self incriminating , Jessica. Full article at MSNBC

Was Jesus really all that into nonviolence?

Posted on February 11, 2007 by Tony Logan

Once again, I attended a ‘peace’ meeting dominated by liberal Christians extolling the virtues of nonviolence. The meeting started off with a film about how supposedly Gandhi and MLK, using only methods of nonviolence, had supposedly accomplished great miracles for people. Pretty sad stuff when one considers the situation of Indians and American Blacks today.

But this adulation of these two men by liberal Christians is really a stand in for their adulation of Jesus Christ, supposed human son of God, and their ideal model of what a human being should be. So it pays to take a brief look to see if Jesus in the Bible really was a model of nonviolence. We certainly know that neither Moses, nor the Christian God himself was, and that’s according to the Bible itself. But what about Jesus?

Jesus lived in a time of Roman imperialism. The fate of the Jews in his time was roughly equivalent to the fate of Iraqis and Afghans in our times. It was equivalent to that fate of Palestinian Arabs today under Jewish occupation and domination. The Jews back then, just like the Iraqis, Afghans, and Palestinians today, lived under the thumb of collaborators in their national and religious community who cooperated with the foreign emperor that ran their affairs. And like then, today’s imperial subjects direct much of their anger towards their own collaborators, and not so much always directly to the soldiers and officials of the Empire itself.

Jesus advocated a policy of no direct rebellion against the Roman Emperor who was viewed as much too strong to directly confront. But the collaborators were a different matter altogether. There, Jesus entered their temple with his followers and whip in hand, overturned their tables of money and goods, and chased them out of their places of commerce. Hardly nonviolent acts.

Since temples back then operated much as combination banks, pawnshops, pay day lenders, and currency exchanges all under one giant WalMart sized roof, when Jesus entered the ‘Temple’, in reality he entered the bank, too. His wrath was severe against the moneychangers (bankers) and collaborators, whom he accused of thievery against the common folk. If you or I were to enter a bank today and do as Jesus did, we would hardly be considered pacifists, now would we, Dear Liberal Christian? So why do you think of Jesus as being particularly into ‘nonviolent resistance’?

And what was Jesus’s punishment for his act of rather non pacifist rebellion? He was given the death penalty by a Roman official, who seemed to find the affair amongst the Jewish camp to be rather amusing. I rather think that any liberal Christian today trying to pull off such a stunt, would find themselves at least with life in prison, too. It’s much easier to push off a false image of how Jesus actually acted, and to copy that instead.

I tell this story in historical and Biblical perspective, simply because I am so fed up with American middle class, New Age liberal Christian pacifist idiocy, and their repetitive chants about the primacy of ‘nonviolence’ always recited like a totally broken record. Far from being nonviolent, Jesus actually was quite assaultive. And that is as the story goes from the Bible.

So let us now pray for liberal Christians to stop constantly reciting to us their turn-the-cheek fables. Amen. And now lets get going, Jesus-like, whips in hand, and turn over the banks and tables of today’s ‘moneylenders’ in the ‘temples’, and chase them out of their bank and church, The Pentagon. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus!

Democracy Now on KRCC

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Eric Verlo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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