Where does the Drake coal emissions plume go when you’re not watching?

Martin Drake Coal-fired Power Plant
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- We’ve seen the mapping of areas most vulnerable to the toxic emissions of Drake, our downtown coal plant. In particular we’ve learned that freezing temperatures mean that emissions aren’t dispersed according to best laid plans but instead linger in the neighborhoods to the southwest. What does that look like? Recent cold temps have afforded a glimpse. That mist in the morning in Ivywild and the Broadmoor hills is setting a mood which affects your mental health more than you know.

Pissing match with trickle-down theory

Banner demonstrating majority of government spending goes to military
Oh dear, is this really the best antiwar argument we’ve got? The share of federal spending which goes to war-making IS astounding, and should give the common citizen pause, but how does it speak to the average weapons industrialist attending the 2011 Space Symposium? They’re trickle-down folks! The more money going to science and skilled labor the better. High tech would be happier if 100% of government spending went through them. Plus the only thing worse than antiwar arguments lamenting OUR OWN casualties, IMO worse too than NIMBY, is making it all about how we can’t AFFORD it.

As per usual, Colorado Springs monied class is unrepentant, gaga for GW Bush

Bush is a criminal, you moronsYep, they turned up in their orange tans, diamonds, black gowns and shiny SUVs, to support Christian charter schools and honor “God Bless Him” George Dubya Bush. This was my favorite sign from the protest.

Jesus Springs welcomes fugitive Bush

After seeing Colorado College gush over a whitewashed CIA murderer, I’m not in any mood to watch local Christian groupies applaud George War-criminal Bush. The plan for Saturday at the Broadmoor is to pummel the arrogant creep with shoes, ceremoniously of course, and probably in effigy. We’ll have a Bush impersonator, a little monkey in a suit strutting about with impunity. And it appeals to me more that we not land any hits, so we’ll have Junior ducking this shoe and that, taunting us with his sick hehehe. And won’t that reflect reality? Justice frustrated by a snickering good ol’ boy. Except, is there outrage left for Bush? I know I hardly feel it anymore. It’s Obama dissembling about torture and dropping the bombs now.

Here’s the list of embarrassing local businesses and idiotri welcoming George Bush to Colorado Springs, they’re even giving him an award, apparently he’s an inspiration to charter school students:

Colorado Springs Christian Schools
Steve Schuck
Dick Saunders, Saunders Construction
El Pomar Foundation
Pete & Jackie Kuyper
Sonya Camarco, LPL Financial
Dewhirst & Dolven, Attorneys
Bob & Kelly McGrath
Dr. Ron & Renee Rains
Interim Healthcare
Clear Ink Foundation
Colorado Custom Decks
Dr. Mike & Kathy Hall
Mateos Salon & Day Spa
Dar Howard
Envision Investment Group
Dave & Lynda Bjorklund
First Western Trust Bank
Scott & Beth Bugosh
Richard King Brown
Freedom Financial Services
The Milestone Group
Clear View Properties
The Sonchar Family
Joseph & Melissa Hornsey
Ken & Rae Driscoll
Rick & Margaret Brown
David & Gloria Neuder
Todd Pickle
Lee & Mickey Bolin
Seelye Group Ltd.
Liberty Toyota
Matrix Design Group
DWG & Associates
Blazer Electric Supply
ACSI
Joe Woodford
Thor Iverson Consulting
Rothgerber Johnson Lyons LLP
Kathryn Emrick
American Iron & Metal
Stephanie Brock Design
Integrity First Financial
Phil & Mary Kiemel
Weavers Online
Rocky Mountain Custom Trim

What would Bush war cabal have to say to America’s insurance cronies?

Why would Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and General Stanley McChrystal be addressing US insurance execs? McChrystal of all people, specifically. How to make war on poor people, even in America? My best guess would be motivational speeches about how to stay out of jail, no matter what the enormity of the crime. Cheney speaks today at the Broadmoor. Come tell the assemblage (7:30-8:30AM) that you don’t approve they choice of mentor.

October

2- “One Nation” JOBS, PEACE, JUSTICE, March on Washington, DC
2-9 KEEP SPACE FOR PEACE Week
4- Arrest Dick Cheney Now, at the Broadmoor, 7:30am
5- Arrest George W. Bush Now, at the Broadmoor, 7:30am
6- Erik Larson, “Devil in the White City,” CC Armstrong Hall, 7pm
7- National day of action to defend education, DC
7-16 YEAR NINE of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan
8- Day of the Heroic Guerrilla
10- Indigenous Peoples Day
10- 350.ORG’s Global Work Party
11- NPR’s Scott Simon, Protest “Evening with a Pro-war Shill,” CC Armstrong Hall, 7pm
11- CLIMATE CHAOS demonstration, DC
12- Day of Solidarity with Laos
14- Reel Injun documentary, CC Cornerstone, 6pm
15- The Heretics documentary, CC Cornerstone, 2:30pm
19- Citizens Project Election Forum, Stargazers Theater, 5pm
19- International Media Democracy Day
20- Churchill v CU, Appeals court oral arguments, Denver, 2:30
26- STREET THEATER for Glenn Beck, World Arena, 7pm
26- PP-ACLU forum “Role of Faith in Elections, CC, 7pm
30- Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, DC

War Criminals Bush and Cheney coming to the Broadmoor, Oct 4-5, bring shoes!

Should-be jailbirds Darth Cheney and Dubya Bush are coming to Colorado Springs! Monday Oct. 4 and Tuesday Oct. 5 respectively. Each will be the day’s 8:30 AM keynote speaker at the Annual Insurance Leadership Forum held in the Broadmoor Rocky Mountain Ballroom. Coloradans For Peace will host a standing room only reception outside, starting both days at 7:30 AM.
If you can’t muster tar and feathers, bring shoes!

At the very least, call CSPD and demand they arrest the pair for crimes against humanity, murder, treason, fraud –you’d think by now you wouldn’t have to explain their rap sheet! Cuff ’em!

In a recent interview on Democracy Now, UK senior statesman Tony Benn explained that he didn’t need to see ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair put on trial for war crimes. Benn leans toward Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s rationale for Truth and Reconciliation, where it’s enough to get at the truth to move on. Of course Bush’s successor offers us not even that.

Where are you on the matter of our previous administration’s guilt?

I’m inclined to believe that if no one from Bush & Co is brought up on charges, what example have we set for lesser or more maniacal criminals? Is it an utterly selfish fixation to want to see the Neocons held to account for their crimes?

Colorado Springs is belly of space beast

X-37B unmanned spacecraft drone mini-space shuttleWhat’s that up in the sky? It’s a mini-me space shuttle with no windows, a former NASA project now entirely USAF. Amateur space object trackers have located the X-37B, the US military’s super secret unmanned space shuttle. What’s so secret about an unarmed, ostensibly inoffensive piece of space hardware? Good question. It depends on what military role you consider to be noncombatant.

Although I’d hope we could all agree by now that Predator Drone pilots wagging remote joysticks at stateside air force bases are plenty lethal if even illegal warfaring combatants. So what harm then, the little mini-me shuttle quietly going about its orbit?

During WWI, observers used to float above the trenches in balloons to direct artillery fire. The (unarmed!) bastards were despised more than the gunners themselves. The early airplane pilots earned the deference they’re shown to this day by the grunts on the ground because they would send the artillery spotters scrambling.

It’s thought that the X-37B is performing such reconnaissance tasks, perhaps with more flexibility and advanced technology than our standard satellites. But that wouldn’t entirely explain why this former NASA project is being kept out of the public eye.

Here’s obfuscating verbiage from a local war-in-space contractor, the Secure World Foundation based in Superior, Colorado.

“The program supports technology risk reduction, experimentation and operational concept development.”

The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office is more forthright about its function:

“development and fielding of select Defense Department combat support and weapons systems.”

“Mission Control” by the way is located at the Air Force Space Command’s Third Space Experimentation Squadron, based at Schriever Air Force Base, right here.

A worrisome aspect about the X-37B is the secrecy, in light of the fact that its path can be charted by amateurs, if obviously also adversaries. The trajectory of the rocket which launched the vehicle into orbit, its spent hull directed now into an orbit around the sun, is also considered top-secret.

When Peace in Space activists are protesting the Space Symposium at the Broadmoor every year, this is what we are angry about: doublespeak pretending to be about space exploration. What will putting arms in space mean but more arms in space, quickly, adversaries rushing to grab a beachhead before the US is in the position to prevent it?

The X-37B is nothing but an near-space preditor drone, armed not with guns but the means to deploy space mines equipped with guns. If serving as the eyes and ears for targeting weapons isn’t immoral enough.

How to get on the terrorist watch list


Impersonate an astronaut? Criticize defense contractors? I have no idea. But at the airport, welcome to the tertiary security check delay, where they dust your hands for potential explosive residue.

“Dust” in an antiquated term relating to the dust detectives used to sprinkle at crime scenes to make fingerprints more visible. These days they “wipe” objects with chemically treated cloths to register the presence of particular substances. The pH strip meets the Swiffer.

I have lost all sense of a control passenger to measure what security measures subjugate the average citizen, as most of my friends do qualify as “persons of interest” to the increasingly hostile corporate atmosphere.

I dropped Protester X off at the bus stop on Lake Circle, between the two roundabouts and went to park the car. I’d left her to don her spacesuit and walk the quarter block to the corner where we’d hold a banner at the Broadmoor’s main entrance. As I doubled back along the sidewalk, I could hear the convention center security radios squawking one after another. “We’ve spotted one by the parking structure” they rang out in alarm. From the next I heard: “She’s at the El Pomar Exit, moving south.” A security official sped by me on a three-wheeled Segway.

By the time I reached my colleague, her new wheeled escort was poised impassively behind her. Here she was, peace flag in hand, looking every bit like a moon walker coming toward me on the sidewalk, with Broadmoor’s grumpy head of security having no sense he was spoiling the imagery. He rolled quietly behind and past us as we assumed our stance on the lawn, and I explained to my fellow astronaut the walkie-talkie hullabalu which had announced her landing. The now usual, annual steps for man, hoping for peace in space, a not inconsiderate leap of faith for mankind.

I’ve had no trouble at airports, perhaps because my actions are an open book. Someone with fewer records or an indeterminate daily schedule, might perhaps rate a question mark on security agency lists.

It’s become more than an inconvenience. Whether your political opinions score the watch list, the no-fly list, or the permissible to assassinate while overseas list, your freedom of expression is abridged.

Broadmoor Space Symposium to show kids the marvel of death squad drones

Banner for Broadmoor Space SymposiumCOLORADO SPRINGS- America’s biggest war profiteers convene on the Broadmoor tonight through Thursday (April 12-15) to celebrate selling weapons in space. And seriously, they’re inviting your kids.

posterUnder the guise of the wonders of space explorations, bus loads of local schoolchildren will tour the weapons exhibits, marveling at everything from satellites to yes, unmanned drones, failing to ponder why astronauts and mission probes are in the clutches of our military. They’ll see the protests outside and wonder why someone has something against Manifest Destiny beachheads in space.

Which would you find more insulting?

COLORADO SPRINGS- I’m not sure which is the more insulting, being accused of murder, or being likened to a hayseed Howdy Doody with nothing between his ears.
Ear to ear mental floss

However cold-blooded the death merchants may be, calling them murderers to their faces is plain rude. The recent Space-weapons Symposium was an opportunity we couldn’t resist to do just that, but I will never assert that our message was for everyone.

If some peace advocates are uncomfortable with a condemning tone, there are plenty of alternative approaches. But the sanctimonious rancor with which protesters chose sides on Monday, in favor of what they considered a more charitable theme, invites a counterpoint.

First let me say that an advantage to having two distinct messages at the scene meant that at first glance, one protest could be confused for being a counter-protest of the other. Which meant we were able to draw the attention, if only for the seconds it took to realize their curiosity was mistaken, of even the many trying to avert their eyes.

This year, the Citizens for Peace In Space group elected to chide the Space Symposium attendees, those warmongers in space-sheep’s clothing, to “Stop Truth Decay,” using handouts and a puppet to illustrate a complementary pun: “Mental Floss.”

Get it? Well, you probably needed to read the flier. There was also a giant toothbrush, and before and after teeth.

The mental-floss demonstration involved a large paper-mache smiling country bumpkin agitating a string, pulling it literally “in one ear and out the other,” to and fro. For some reason I associate that with some sort of international gesture for a person you think is empty headed. As twirling your finger in the vicinity of your ear expresses disrespect for another’s sanity.

If I were a space technology scientist, even if only accidentally murderous, I think I’d prefer being called a homicidal bastard, sooner than a grinning doofus.

Which is to say, I subscribe to both themes, and the spirit demonstrated by the Truth Decay team was convivial, but judging messages based which opens, rather than shuts down communication, which peace contingent then was being the more condescending?

CPIS Stop truth decay vs CFP silly murderers

Actually, a surprising number of attendees took pictures of our MURDERERS banner, many of them posing with us, sooner that stand next to the puppet, much less take a flier.

Of course, I’m not sure what that indicates about the efficacy of either message.

Space Symposium grand finale not a dud

Interstate 25 rollover on Monument PassCOLORADO SPRINGS- According to local sources, this year’s grand finale of the Broadmoor Hotel’s fireworks display, marking the final evening of the National Space Symposium, was not a dud. It simply never came.

Observation was complicated by last year’s unusual 25 minute delay which preceded the final synchronized collision of explosives. Anticipating it was a precedent, we waited.

Twenty five minutes is time enough to speculate about a lot. What caused the different colors, for example, and whether other properties might be reflected in the different combustions, smell maybe, or debris? We speculated that maybe the grand finale was top secret, like the much of the space program, veiled behind the US Black Budget. Maybe what we couldn’t see was a subterranean explosion commemorating the participants’ nuclear testing. We didn’t feel anything. Maybe the big weapons specialists are unimpressed by mere fireworks anyway, like so many legal-sized firecrackers. What dessert celebrates a meal of watered soup?

Who can watch a fireworks display anymore without thinking of Shock and Awe over Baghdad, 2001, when America watched in great anticipation of that grandest of would be finales, our attempt at regime change via techno-regicide? [That was a dud.] I remember one of the networks had an Iraqi university professor on the phone in Baghdad. He was asked if he feared for his family’s lives. He was asked why they didn’t flee. In return he asked “WHY ARE YOU BOMBING US?” It was decided that wires had gotten crossed and this professor was an unintentional interviewee. The phone call was hastily dispatched with sincere wishes that the professor and his children would survive until morning.

Last night no finale came. I hope the average Space Symposium attendee was as disappointed as we. But we noted that tonight’s pyrotechnics, more than the usual, symbolized war of the unending kind. What the military industrial complex entrusts to Development.

Whether we’re talking artillery or naked Spartans, warfare amounts to the continued consumption of one inflammable projectile after the next. Expending one shell/bomb/human being means having to replace it with another. No industry wants a customer who doesn’t purchase its product for consumption, or no one would need return for more. How do you profit from weapons manufacture if there is not unending war?

National Space [Weapons] Symposium

Unveiling latest military technology
REMINDER! The military-industrial complex converges this week on the Broadmoor Conference Center, in the guise of “Space Symposium 2009.” The biggest mercenaries, profiteers, mass-murderers and top brass will gather over cocktails in the late afternoon, after weapons exhibitors have set up their displays. Local news is already hyping the event, this year’s emphasis is, we kid you not, EDUCATION! Citizens for Peace In Space (CPIS) is reprising their STOP TRUTH DECAY street theater at 5pm on Monday, Coloradans 4 Peace has reserved a more pointed message, to begin at 4pm, before the death-merchant revelers retreat inside.

We will also be bannering the arrival of school buses, Tuesday through Thursday, between 8am-10am. Springs schools have organized field trips to the Space Symposium exhibits, without revealing the context of the massive malevolent industry behind it. In the past, the school children crane their necks to see us, but teachers have been able to dismiss the odd protesters as Peace Luddites, giving the children no clue as to why we might be opposed to the event. This year our message will be more succinct.

In the past, organizers have expressed not knowing where to stand, nor when, to be seen by the school buses. But not this year. The days of containing the protest message to only inoffensive slogans, or coordinating with police as to where it’s permissible to stand, ARE OVER!

Silly warmongers, space is for kids

Broadmoor Space Symposium
Once again the Colorado Springs peace community has the unique opportunity to protest the annual Space Symposium hosted at the Broadmoor. First, the event provides unparalleled access to the upper echelons of the US military industrial for-profit killing machine. And this year, their war-in-space theme is not even disguised: “Space as a Contested Environment.” Think they’re talking about Sputnik?

Leave space to NASA, not to baby killers

You can banner in front of weapons industry office buildings, you can have your progress blocked at their parking lots, but at the opening ceremonies of the Broadmoor Space Symposium, you can put your message directly in the faces of the war criminal bosses themselves.

Details to follow.

Things to do in March

MAR 2009
2- Edward Prescott: Economic Integration of Sovereign States, Gaylord Hall, CC, 7:30pm
4- Russell Hittinger: the Modern State: Devolution or Subsidiary, Gaylord Hall, CC, 3:30pm
5- Bill Ayres, Derrick Jensen FORBIDDEN EDUCATION, Glenn Miller Ballroom, Boulder, 7pm
6- PARADE SFPJ/Backbone Campaign, CU Boulder, 3-4:30pm
8- (International Women’s Strike)
9- Ward Churchill vs CU, Denver State Court, Courtroom 6, 9:30am
13-19 –GENERAL STRIKE Stop bankers from plundering treasury
14- St Patricks Day Parade, Tejon Ave, 12noon
15- Day Against Police Brutality
20- UFPJ Iraq War Moratorium
21- A.N.S.W.E.R. antiwar demonstrations
26- Poet XJ Kennedy, Gates Common Room, CC, 7pm
30- PROTEST 25th Annual Space Symposium, Broadmoor Hotel (thru April 2)
31- Robin Bell: Antartica’s Hidden Mountains, Armstrong Theatre, CC, 7:30pm

Tom O’Boyle a local Broadmoor treasure

Tom O BoyleCOLORADO SPRINGS- Every Thursday at noon, over the summer, the City Auditorium hosts what they call a sack lunch concert. You can join several hundred mostly retired devotes to hear a concert performance on an old wind organ. Sometimes the keyboardist will improvise an accompaniment to an old single-reel comedy. Often the star of the show is none other than Tom O’Boyle.

In the interest of full disclosure, Tom O’Boyle was a classmate of my mother’s at the Cathedral School, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And he played my parents’ wedding in fact. Somehow when my parents retired to Colorado Springs in the late eighties, they discovered that Tom O’Boyle had come here as well. So my mother and father got to revisit the memory of their wedding every weekend. Tom had made a name for himself in Colorado, mostly from his performances at the various grand pianos at the Broadmoor. He counts many celebrities among his fans and impromptu duet partners.

A few years back, the Broadmoor sought a change of their entertainment and Tom O’Boyle is no longer there. It’s a shame. He still has a weekly gig at the Castaways in Manitou, and no disrespect meant to that Tiki-Deco throwback which still has plenty of charm, but O’Boyle is much too refined a talent to be buried behind their keyboard. Come see him on Saturday night, ignore the family dining. He’ll play anything between cigarettes, he does pop standards and classical, all like it’s jazz blues, with none of the lounge act. Think Cole Porter meets… Tom O’Boyle.

Back at the noon hour organ fest, Tom’s fingers are too agile for the antique organ. The organ offers more of a one-man-band performance that’s fun just for the grandiosity of the sound. But when there’s a piano handy, Tom will alternately switch his seat there. At the upright he’ll play Grieg, Mendelssohn and everything distinctly blue. You don’t want to miss it, no matter what time of day. Next week is the last sack lunch of the season.

Private interests overlap with public

US SENIOR OPEN advertised on Colorado State Highway signTraveling down Highway 24 today I see parking directions for the US Senior Open which begins today at the Broadmoor. Look at this, a private event advertised with state highway equipment, in the public interest, of course, The U.S. SENIOR OPEN! I’m most interested in the private versus public distinction because DNC authorities are trying to emphasize the Pepsi Center being private property and thus in a position to say what speech should be free. I heard this argument in the Federal Courthouse yesterday. It’s the same rhetoric the Colorado Springs prosecutor has been asserting in the State Convention trespassing charges against our May 17 [attempted] demonstration there.

Both the state and national Democratic convention events are held on private property. But aren’t they somewhat public events? The political parties, the politics, the election, are all of vital public interest. In this free land of ours, it’s difficult to argue that the public doesn’t have an open invitation to participate in the election of its leaders, certainly to demonstrate its concerns. What’s decided at the convention certainly has public consequence.

I’m happy to say the judge yesterday was not yielding this issue to the lawyers for the Secret Service and the City of Denver. She reiterated that the DNC is a historic event of public interest. I’m hoping the Colorado Springs courthouse will see the state convention likewise. The grounds belonged to the World Arena, were leased that day by the Colorado Democratic Party to conduct business which would impact the Colorado public. We turned up with banners and are now facing trespassing charges because they we were standing in the wrong part of the area taped off for the public. We had only the CSPD officers’ word that the part we were standing on was for “boosters only,” and the further away part was for “protest.” Thus it was also only the officers’ subjective opinion to decide into what category our message fit. As it happens our banner that day was supporting of the Dems, but it didn’t feel like “free speech” anywhere outside the World Arena that day.

But to try to hide behind PRIVATE OWNERSHIP is highly unpatriotic. It invites scrutiny into all the private facilities receiving public funds to subsidize, wouldn’t you think? Park your Goddamn facility in your own authoritarian kingdom if you want to shred the Bill of Rights over it. This is America you Fascist warmongering war-profiteering facilitator enabler assholes!

I’m troubled by the greater privatization of public concerns. It’s been the trend to shift public works and private monies into private hands to glean the profits. Republicans are still after the public funds sitting in Social Security. Imagine if we’d let them invest that in private hands, in light of the housing/lending debacle/ripoff!

In some cases the incentive is also to restrict oversight. Private security firms are examples of moving authority-keeping tasks into the autonomous hands of corporate cronies. Private armies, private utilities, private water supplies, take control from the people, or the representatives of the people, and put it squarely into tools for aspiring totalitarians preoccupied only with taking it to the bank.

A sign for the golf tournament is no big deal. Certainly the City of Colorado Springs has a need to direct spectator traffic to the appropriate parking. But the example serves to show that private and public interests overlap when private wants.

Obama in our bastion of white bigotry

Camera folliesCOLORADO SPRINGS- News reports far and wide recounted Barack Obama’s visit yesterday to our “Bastion of the Religious Right.” He toured the Air Force Academy and Peterson AFB, and spoke with veterans at UCCS on the Christian North side. He finished off with the fundraiser at the Broadmoor, an atmosphere so genteel, Obama would have stood out against his Caucasian audience like a white man on the Broadmoor wait staff. Clearly our peace contingent had the less embarrassing task outside with our banners, where we were enthusiastically received, tourists stopped to pose for pictures with us.

For years the Broadmoor has been scamming the system by applying for work visas for temporary workers, claiming that the Colorado workforce is inadequate for their resort needs. Which might be true. While much of their low-wage earners are recruited from Eastern Europe, for the food service they’ve settled on Jamaicans. I can only conjecture that it’s because the Caribbean is closer, the labor pool is cheaper, the Jamaicans already speak English but can’t entangle themselves with the African American community several neighborhoods away, and they look good in all-white uniforms. I do hope Obama remarked on the jarring plantation racial divide last night at dinner.

As habitues of protesting the Broadmoor, we detected some interesting adjustments last night. For a start, the key security posts were being manned by Secret Service men who’d donned the maroon crested jackets. Not only did it make them look less conspicuous, they were in charge. Except they didn’t stand flat-footed, and deftly multi-tasked with PDAs. This left the usual security manager free to offer us his assistance! We think he was tickled that on this occasion we would be protesting his political opposites. But there was the suggestion of a racist fervor as the big southern guy and erstwhile asshole jumped into his SUV, and pulled beside us, beaconing us to hop in for a ride to the west entrance, the quicker to have banners in place before Mr. Obama’s arrival.

Otherwise, passersby and attendees were positively convivial. Salutations were warm and familiar. One couple visiting from Iowa hopped out of their car and asked to hold placards with us while we snapped their picture. Between reports into their headsets, the guards engaged us in friendly conversation.

News coverage of Obama’s earlier speech at UCCS showed that the audience of “veterans” in the gym was well seeded with dark faces, many of them recognizable to locals as active Democrats of color. KRDO Channel 13 went so far as to put a microphone on African American June Waller, to record her “yessirs” like amens at a gospel service. Which they played as chorus to Obama’s remarks.

June’s audio track began with her asking the person beside her for help with a camera “How do I get this going?” I know June as outgoing and self-deprecating, not the least bit incompetent. We can imagine the Dems were stage managing the event to project racial diversity. It the same wallpapering that Bush’s handlers do. But what was KRDO doing?

Shall we stand our ground with Obama?

The man who brought Democrats out of the closet, our presumptive Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Barack Obama, will be speaking in Colorado Springs Wednesday night at the Broadmoor. WHETHER OR NOT you hope he gets elected, do we remind Obama and the Democrats he rode in on, that the American and world peoples need real change? “Change” does NOT mean: endorsing FISA, funding more war, staying in Iraq, bullying Iran, or not promising universal health care. Can you name anything Barack Obama is going to do for you? He’ll withdraw the “combat troops” (10%) from Iraq? Come put your two cents before the eyes of these presumptive progressives. MEET US 6PM WED. AT THE BROADMOOR. There’s nothing wrong with Obama that the voice of the people can’t fix. You know there’s only one way to make sure he hears it!
Broadmoor West
UPDATE: The event will be held at BROADMOOR WEST, behind the lake. The best car and foot traffic will still pass our original spot.

Can you help us identify this “activist?”

incognitoIf you have any helpful information about the identity of this Neighbor Wilson, please contact us immediately. We are particularly interested in his whereabouts and identity before 2006. Your email replies will be kept in the strictest confidence.

These pictures were taken at the 2008 Broadmoor protest, which is distinguished from other actions because here activists come into face to face contact with defense industry people and the intelligence community. On this mild overcast morning, do you notice anyone else wearing sunglasses? Is he hoping not to run into an old colleague? Or a previous target?

The age of the internet means it’s a lot harder to plop an infiltrator into an activists group because suspicious folk can Google for provenance. You’d have to say you came out of a monastery to explain your lack of record of past activities. In Colorado Springs, it’s suspected that THE NAVIGATORS and YOUNG LIFE, among others, are used to launder US intelligence operatives into the population at large.

Here’s an opportunity to test the new waters which the internet presents for the Witness Protection Program and other government embedding techniques. Let’s pass around a picture far and wide and see what previous identities come to light.

Incognito participant

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin Mr. Bush

COLORADO SPRINGS- While a motorcade delivered President Bush to the Broadmoor Hotel, we were at the AFA airing our fresh age-old message.
Air Force Academy Commencement
It’s the proverbial proverbial Writing on the Wall. If you think Aramaic will be indecipherable to freeway drivers, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” was Greek to the original king for whom the fortune foretold his reign would be “numbered, weighed and divided.”

Who knew we’d find a protest message in the Old Testament?

DANIEL 5

1 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them.

2 While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them.

3 So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them.

4 As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.

5 Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote.

6 His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.

7 The king called out for the enchanters, astrologers and diviners to be brought and said to these wise men of Babylon, “Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.”

8 Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant.

9 So King Belshazzar became even more terrified and his face grew more pale. His nobles were baffled.

10 The queen, hearing the voices of the king and his nobles, came into the banquet hall. “O king, live forever!” she said. “Don’t be alarmed! Don’t look so pale!

11 There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods in him. In the time of your father he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods. King Nebuchadnezzar your father—your father the king, I say—appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners.

12 This man Daniel, whom the king called Belteshazzar, was found to have a keen mind and knowledge and understanding, and also the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve difficult problems. Call for Daniel, and he will tell you what the writing means.”

13 So Daniel was brought before the king, and the king said to him, “Are you Daniel, one of the exiles my father the king brought from Judah?

14 I have heard that the spirit of the gods is in you and that you have insight, intelligence and outstanding wisdom.

15 The wise men and enchanters were brought before me to read this writing and tell me what it means, but they could not explain it.

16 Now I have heard that you are able to give interpretations and to solve difficult problems. If you can read this writing and tell me what it means, you will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around your neck, and you will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.”

17 Then Daniel answered the king, “You may keep your gifts for yourself and give your rewards to someone else. Nevertheless, I will read the writing for the king and tell him what it means.

18 “O king, the Most High God gave your father Nebuchadnezzar sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor.

19 Because of the high position he gave him, all the peoples and nations and men of every language dreaded and feared him. Those the king wanted to put to death, he put to death; those he wanted to spare, he spared; those he wanted to promote, he promoted; and those he wanted to humble, he humbled.

20 But when his heart became arrogant and hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne and stripped of his glory.

21 He was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal; he lived with the wild donkeys and ate grass like cattle; and his body was drenched with the dew of heaven, until he acknowledged that the Most High God is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and sets over them anyone he wishes.

22 “But you his son, O Belshazzar, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this.

23 Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.

24 Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription.

25 “This is the inscription that was written:
Mene , Mene , Tekel , Parsin

26 “This is what these words mean:
Mene : God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

27 Tekel : You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

28 Peres : Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

29 Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom.

30 That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain,

31 and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

Defense Industry belligerance mindset

Mark’s amusing Space Symposium Billy Bad-Ass video is getting traction.
As the CPIS delegation is enroute to Omaha, KRDO Channel 13 talked to Mark and I about Tuesday morning (and Wednesday morning 2006).

The man who blind-sided our costumed Darth Vader would not have known who was under the robe. By the look of the rest of the protesters, it most likely would have been someone of advanced age, who could not have handled an unexpected thrust in the back. The little bully pushed so hard he threw himself off quilter (and out of the frame), and had to be assisted by Broadmoor security. While officers stood by.

At least in my case, two years ago, officers intervened as an enraged army commander in running shorts jogged right up to me and with his hands gripping my collar tried to knock me down.

Protest of Space Profiteer Arms Sellers

Banner at Broadmoor
THE BROADMOOR- Photos of Monday evening’s protest. As usual the next morning’s bannering (never formally on the schedule) was the most interactive and broadly attended. Later today PETE FIELD, and back to the Broadmoor tomorrow morning, when the school buses arrive to treat elementary school kids to the glories of space exploration-exploitation.

banners opposite cocktail hour

Social hour for activists too

Across the street

Czech visitor Jan

Our media recording their media

Still photos on film

ITT bus decorated just for Symposium
Our Darth Vader volunteer was peaceably offering fliers, quite unsuccessfully probably owing to being Lord Vader. The gentleman in the yellow shirt pictured below decided that instead of walking past him like everyone else, he’d push the “goddamn asshole” out of his way and walk through him. As the Vader mask affords no peripheral vision, our volunteer was displaced quite by surprise.

Arms merchant who physically assaulted and cursed our Vader pamphleteer.
The aggressive little shit dragged his wife/escort by the hand through the scuffle. He had to catch his own footing from the equal and opposite reaction of thrusting young Vader, muttering loudly “fucking asshole,” and almost tripping himself before [almost] disappearing into the cocktail crowd. Five policemen made no move to interfere. By chance Mark Lewis caught the whole sorry scene on video!

Attention drawn to fracas

Layla makes a face