Charges dropped against Phillip Garrido, Obama wants to look forward not back

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The latest of Phillip Garrido’s sex crimes occured in 1991, too far in the past to interest President Obama. Rehashing the injustices of 1990-91 would mean looking into American war crimes of the First Gulf War. To Obama’s reconciliatory way of thinking, this would open a can of worms which could only lead to redressing subsequent US bombings of civilians, including actions by the recently deposed administration, and now the ongoing state terror against a growing variety of Muslim populations.

Putting Doug Bruce petitions on the run

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Eric Verlo

WESTSIDE, COLORADO SPRINGS- A signature gatherer pushing Doug Bruce petitions was doing miserably well outside the Uintah King Soopers today, but I was able to interrupt for the quarter hour I could spare. Give him your 15-cents worth when you come for groceries. He’ll run, watch:

As you go in, and when you come out, take a few minutes to intervene as this guy collects signatures to lower municipal taxes. These kind of measures are why the bathrooms remain locked in our city parks, and why the city and county have had to cut back on services. But the signature collectors won’t tell you who’s behind their petitions. Nor have they any answers about the ramifications of their proposed legislation.

Unfortunately this guy is otherwise very good at drawing people in. In the photograph above, note that he has three clipboards distributed, and he’s trying for a fourth, notice two customers have pen in hand.

Ask him if Doug Bruce is behind these petitions. He told me he didn’t know. I knew, so I told him, and I occasioned to help him inform others as he approached westside residents. When the name “Doug Bruce” is mentioned, people smile and steer clear. This guy kept his distance sooner than entertain a discussion. You need only stand by the door to ward him off.

Obviously I couldn’t do that forever. He resumed as soon as I left. When I came back from the car with my camera, he saw me coming, gathered his clipboards and split. Now it was no surprise to me that he wouldn’t want to be documented doing what he was, but an impartial observer might wonder, what was his hurry? This guy took off on a dead run and reconsidered only when he realized I followed straight after and was overtaking him.

He ran from me so fast I wished I’d recorded the scene in video. Well, next time.

The Spirit of Revolt

Posted on August 5, 2009 by NMT

There are periods in the life of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life. These ideas are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice and traditions. The accepted ideas of the constitution of the state, of the laws of social equilibrium, of the political and economic interrelations of citizens, can hold out no longer against the implacable criticism which is daily undermining them?…?Political, economic and social institutions are crumbling. The social structure, having become uninhabitable, is hindering, even preventing, the development of seeds which are being propagated within its damaged walls and being brought forth around them.

The need for a new life becomes apparent. The code of established morality, that which governs the greater number of people in their daily life, no longer seems sufficient. What formerly seems just is now felt to be a crying injustice. The morality of yesterday is today recognized as revolting immorality. The conflict between new ideas and old traditions flames up in every class of society?…?the popular conscience rises up against the scandals which breed amidst the privileged and leisured, against the crimes committed in the name of “the law of the stronger,” or in order to maintain these privileges. Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian and regenerating ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted. They perceive the necessity of a revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts with its breath and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial and heroism, without which society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration.

In periods of frenzied haste toward wealth, of feverish speculation and of crisis, of the sudden downfall of great industries and the ephemeral expansion of other branches of production, of scandalous fortunes amassed in a few years and dissipated as quickly, it becomes evident that the economic institutions which control production and exchange are far from giving to society the prosperity which they are supposed to guarantee. They produce precisely the opposite result. Instead of order they bring forth chaos; instead of prosperity, poverty and insecurity; instead of reconciled interests, war – a perpetual war of the exploiter against the worker, of exploiters and of workers among themselves. Human society is seen to be splitting more and more into two hostile camps, and at the same time to be subdividing into thousands of small groups waging merciless war against each other. Weary of these wars, weary of the miseries which they cause, society rushes to seek a new organization. It clamors loudly for a complete remodeling of the system of property ownership, of production, of exchange all economic relations which spring from it.

The machinery of government, entrusted with the maintenance of the existing order, continues to function, but at every turn of its deteriorated gears, it slips and stops. Its working becomes more and more difficult, and the dissatisfaction caused by its defects grows continuously. Every day gives rise to a new demand. “Reform this,” “Reform that,” is heard from all sides. “War, finance, taxes, courts, police, everything would have to be remodeled, reorganized, established on a new basis,” say the reformers. And yet all know that it is impossible to make things over, to remodel anything at all because everything is interrelated; everything would have to be remade at once. And how can society be remodeled when it is divided into two openly hostile camps? To satisfy the discontented would be only to create new malcontents.

Incapable of undertaking reforms, since this would mean paving the way for revolution, and at the same time too impotent to be frankly reactionary, the governing bodies apply themselves to half-measures which can satisfy nobody, and only cause new dissatisfaction. The mediocrities who, in such transition periods, undertake to steer the ship of state, think of but one thing: to enrich themselves against the coming debacle. Attacked from all sides they defend themselves awkwardly, they evade, they commit blunder upon blunder and they soon succeed in cutting the last rope of salvation. They drown the prestige of the government in ridicule, caused by their own incapacity.

Such periods demand revolution. It becomes a social necessity; the situation itself is revolutionary.

When we study in the works of our greatest historians the genesis and development of vast revolutionary convulsions, we generally find under the heading “The Cause of the Revolution” a gripping picture of the situation on the eve of events. The misery of the people, the general insecurity, the vexatious measures of the government, the odious scandals laying bare the immense vices of society, the new ideas struggling to come to the surface and repulsed by the incapacity of the supporters of the former regime – nothing is omitted. Examining this picture, one arrives at the conviction that the revolution was indeed inevitable, and that there was no other way out than by the road of insurrection?…?But, between this pacific arguing and insurrection or revolt, there is a wide abyss – that abyss which, for the greatest part of humanity, lies between reasoning and action, thought and the will to act. How has this abyss been bridged??…?How was it that words, so often spoken and lost in the air like the empty chiming of bells, were changed in actions?

The answer is easy. Action. The continuous action, ceaselessly renewed, of minorities brings about this transformation. Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, are as contagious as cowardice, submission and panic.

What forms will this action take? All forms – indeed, the most varied forms, dictated by circumstances, temperament and the means at disposal. Sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, but always daring; sometimes collective, sometimes purely individual, this policy of action will neglect none of the means at hand, no event of public life, in order to keep the spirit alive, to propagate and find expression for dissatisfaction, to excite hatred against exploiters, to ridicule the government and expose its weakness and above all and always, by actual example, to awaken courage and fan the spirit of revolt.

When a revolutionary situation arises in a country, before the spirit of revolt is sufficiently awakened in the masses to express itself in violent demonstrations in the streets or by rebellions and uprisings, it is through action that minorities succeed in awakening that feeling of independence and that spirit of audacity without which no revolution can come to a head.

Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action – men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles, intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed – these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights?…?Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come.

Nevertheless the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage and they find imitators?…?Acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply.

Indifference from this point on is impossible?…?By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people’s minds and wins converts?…?Above all, it awakens the spirit of the revolt: it breeds daring?…?The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought; they begin dimly to perceive that a few energetic efforts will be sufficient to throw it down. Hope is born in their hearts, and let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope – the hope of victory – which makes revolutions.

The government resists; it is savage in its repressions. But, though formerly persecution killed the energy of the oppressed, now, in periods of excitement, it produces the opposite result. It provokes new acts of revolt, individual and collective. It drives the rebels to heroism, and in rapid succession these acts spread, become general, develop. The revolutionary party is strengthened by elements, which up to this time were hostile or indifferent to it. The general disintegration penetrates into the government, the ruling classes, the privileged. Some of them advocate resistance to the limit; others are in favor of concessions; others, again, go so far as to declare themselves ready to renounce their privileges for the moment, in order to appease the spirit of revolt, hoping to dominate again later on. The unity of the government and the privileged class is broken.

The ruling class may also try to find safety in savage reaction. But it is now too late; the battle only becomes more bitter, more terrible, and the revolution which is looming will only be more bloody. On the other hand, the smallest concession of the governing classes, since it comes too late, since it has been snatched in struggle, only awakes the revolutionary spirit still more. The common people, who formerly would have been satisfied with the smallest concession, observe now that the enemy is wavering. They foresee victory, they feel their courage growing, and the same men who were formerly crushed by misery and were content to sigh in secret, now lift their heads and march proudly to the conquest of a better future.

Finally, the revolution breaks out, the more terrible as the preceding struggles were bitter.

The Spirit of Revolt, Pyotr Kropotkin, 1880.

Is the Museum of Nature and Science gathering health data for insurers?

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- At the Denver Museum of Nature and Science the most popular exhibit this summer is called “Expedition Health” and features high-tech diagnostic kiosks where visitors can gauge the general state of their health. Judging by the long lines, you’d think these people haven’t visited a doctor lately. I suspect that unless the medical insurance underwriters of the exhibit can be trusted, many of the DMNS-goers won’t get to see a doctor again.

My hypothesis– that “Expedition Health” is surreptitiously collecting personal medical data on every visitor who comes through their doors, to add actionable factors to insurance customer files. If this is happening or not, it easily could. And the DMNS is not offering any assurance that it is not.

Basically, everybody who goes through the Expedition Health exhibit is surrendering personal health data, which in the hands of insurers could be critical in their decision about whether or not to offer them medical coverage. Museum staff insist that the personal information is purged every night, although with a simple internet link this explanation is disproved. Staff explain that attendee magnetic cards are erased, perhaps innocently ignorant of where the information actually accrues as the public circulate from one kiosk to the next.

At pharmacies you can measure your blood pressure without a personalized magnetic card. But at the DMNS health exhibit, sponsored by Met Life, Kaiser Permanente, et al, you have to tell the machines who you are before you can learn your heart rate, your vital statistics, results of a stress test, a measure of your “stride,” digital imagery of your body at rest and in motion, scans of your fingers and palm, and a 3-D imaging of your face.

A telling detail, to my mind, is that the DMNS offers no printed assurance that the health information of its attendees is not being harvested by data merchants. Is it? Do I have any proof? I will offer you the clues, and you can be the judge. I think there are enough signs of subterfuge to suspect that “Expedition Health” is not serving your health.

Here’s how it looks to the average exhibit visitor: the attendee is given a magnetic card to use at the electronic kiosks, at the culmination of which a “Peak Pass” card will be generated to reflect the user’s health results. In the process the attendee learns about positive and negative factors which govern human health. Attendee are free to initiate the card with whatever fictitious ID data they wish, depending on how helpfully relevant they want their results to be.

The impression of anonymity is bolstered by several insincerities. I will illuminate a few.

A. The ruse of an aliased identity

Part one, the ID. Before museum-goers can attend “Expedition Health,” they must obtain an admission ticket marked with the time they can be scheduled to enter. This is done ostensibly to ease congestion through the exhibit hall.

In purchasing their museum passes, or submitting their DMNS membership cards, the visitors are of course revealing their verifiable identities. If they are not already members in the museum’s database, their admission purchase via credit card or personal check and driver’s license confirms who they are. Under the pretense of museum security, driver’s IDs can be inspected all of their own. Who would begrudge the museum knowing who is visiting? And if you had the foresight to worry about your anonymity, what would it matter if the museum recorded too, when you would be presenting yourself at the start of the health exhibit?

Part two: the unclean slate. At the exhibit door attendees submit their tickets and are admitted entrance and given a blank magnetic card. The staffer who collects the tickets is not the same person who immediately hands out the magnetic cards, thus reinforcing the sensation of a severed paper trail. But in actuality, there is no discontinuity because the card-holder immediately queues for a kiosk to personalize the card.

Although the user can chose to conjure personal information entirel fictitious, the impression is given that the card’s data goes no further than the exhibit’s exit door. When I asked, a staff member earnestly assured me that all the cards are erased every night. Which could be true, but irrelevant. The cards serve like a patient wristband at the hospital. The wristband confirms the identity of the patient at the various checkup points, as the medial records accumulate in remote files.

Part three, a false sense of anonymity. The museum patients are free to initiate their magnetic cards with whatever manner of fictitious name and birthday. Especially if it does not matter to them that the final printout will bear false facts. My companion felt he had to turn around to explain to me that he always lies about his birthday, by one day, to shake off the data spooks,. He volunteered this in case I thought he didn’t remember his own birth date. My sense is that most people give their true identity, if only so the kiosks will address them by their given names, the exchanges being in full view of friends and relatives waiting in line.

If the attendee hopes to glean some helpful health advice from the “Expedition Health” experience, they are inclined not to falsify the three remaining details: sex, age, and which “buddy,” among a statistical sampling of lifestyle types, they might identify themselves with.

Tell me that the last three profile items are not enough to provide a match to the hard data from the museum entrance receipts or membership database. Remember, the samples to compare are linked by the window of time the museum alloted to your ticket.

The choice of your “buddy” is the clincher. It might appear to be the most innocuous of indiscretions, but your surrogate patient type relays reliable biographical data about you, and doesn’t add anything to the health exhibit narrative except to use as a third person example, when the patient-specific explanation would reveal the alarming degree to which the diagnostics had taken your measure.

Which, to be fair, would create a liability risk for the museum, to complicate matters with pseudo diagnoses, easily misinterpreted by laymen.

The DMNS “Expedition Health” curators thus know quite definitively who you are, as you pass through their kiosks, putting yourself through a fairly extensive check up, the results of which are explained only generally to you, but to a medical administrator say enough to narrow many odds about your health prospects.

B. Diversionary misapplication of magnetic cards

Several of the Kiosks at “Expedition Health” are not interactive, and do not require the magnetic card. Of course, to assure that your “Peak Pass Personal Profile” data card will be filled print out with your EKG, Resting Heart Rate, Target Heart Rate, whether you reached your heart rate; your Arm Span, Height, Energy Score, Stride Length and Speed, a silhouette of your walking profile and another of your outreached Leonardo DaVinci pose; you’d have to have scanned your magnetic card at those machines.

By the way, the data summarized on the personal profile card was far more rudimentary in comparison to the information shown on the screens, and doubtless neither reflect the sophistication of the diagnostic electronics employed. The optics, for example, are capable of far better than inch-high cameos of your body. The lengths of time for which you have to pose for the scans betray the resolution the graphics engines are really processing.

Here’s the information being gathered at the various stops:

Taking your measure
The station which measures your arm span and height requires you to stand, arms outstretched, shoes off, for a full body digital picture, which records an uncommonly revealing photographic record of the subject’s body fat ratio.

Another station measures your stride length and speed, from which an “energy” score is awarded. To do this, a full motion video records you as you take over a half dozen steps, perhaps pushing yourself purposefully to boost your “energy score.” This video must be invaluable in what it reveals about a person’s vitality or physical challenges.

While the cardio-vascular stress tests might appear to offer mere stationary bicycling experiences, a subject’s entire session can be recorded, offering telltale clues to heart condition and lung stamina. Probably we’d all be more comfortable studying these results with the peace of mind that we have health insurance, as opposed to considering that our results might be grounds used to deny us health insurance coverage.

Diet
Several kiosks would seem to have no need for a card. For example, one featured an interactive script about nutrition. Mostly children sit at this station, to pick among menus of food, the mission being to fortify a climber for an ascent of a peak. Their choice of nutrients determines how far the animated climber will get, before tumbling after from hunger. You plug in your card to begin, and as a result the climbing figure features a Tanqueray-head-type of your chosen buddy. If this kiosk is gleaning a sense of your diet preferences, it’s not revealed on the exhibition debriefing printout.

Identification Marks
Another kiosk teaches you about wind chill. You stick your hand into a plexiglass chamber where lasers measure the change in your skin temperature over the course of several minutes. Curiously, you have to insert the magnetic card at this stop. Why? And you cannot proffer your elbow, your fist, or the back of your hand. Is it possible that the lasers reading your hand are actually scanning the prints of your palm and fingers? I know too little about medicine to conjecture what use the medical industry might have for such information, but the data is certainly marketable to security firms.

Confessions
While on this tangent, there’s another kiosk, the most popular in fact, which DOES NOT REQUIRE A CARD. At this station you get to see your face as it’s projected to age over the course of your life. The line is the longest at this station, while subjects pose, their face held immobile, framed in a stainless steel ring, for an interminable several seconds. I witnessed one person complain that the light into which he had to stare hurt his eyes. Eventually the scan yields only an oddly primitive, cellphone-quality facsimile of the subject’s face, projected on an adjacent flat screen. Next, the subject is asked which among three factors might influence how he’s expected to age. Please check which apply: UV damage, Obesity, and/or Smoker.

By law, none of these behaviors would have to be confessed to a doctor, or an insurance agent, in particular if such was a vice already put well behind. But the aging machine draws out the truth. Because the interrogator machina does not ask for your ID, it creates the semblance that you are being asked anonymously. Who doesn’t fully comprehend by now that sun exposure, obesity and smoking are very tragic predictors of our future health problems?

The pseudo age-disfigured face is disappointing. The transformation is just a transparency of age spots, wrinkles and discoloration overlaid on an initial low-rez photograph. If you are not recording the age-progression with your own camera, the ephemeral image passes, with no trace of what the long facial scan had actually recorded. You’d think since the lines of visitors here are always so long, that the aging image is what visitors might like to take with them as a memento. Alas, there’s no slot on this kiosk into which to insert your magnetic card to “record” it. But the sovereignty of this station is illusory.

Biometrics
If a webcam, a PC, and a common internet connection can transmit video in real-time video, why would this DMNS workstation be laboring for so long over your face? Can I hazard a guess? A 3-dimensional study of your face, and something just short perhaps of a retinal scan? If medical administrators are not looking at symptoms deep in your eyes, or in the translucence of your skin, perhaps this kiosk is for the security interests tabulating your biometrics.

If nothing else, the biometric configuration of your face can be matched to a digital image of your whole body from a previous kiosk, thus confirming your identity, BECAUSE AT THIS KIOSK YOU ENJOYED ANONYMITY. But now your smoker/obesity concession can be deftly noted alongside the other red flags being added to your health profile.

C. The Parting Shot
The last kiosk, in my opinion, gives the game away. If you insert your magnetic card, you can record a video message, a propo anything at all. I saw many takers offering calm Youtube soliloquies, as if composing a greeting to send into space. And AHA –instead of pretending that your video would be encoded on your card, instructions beside the screen offered the internet URL at which you can go see it.

First, this directive gives truth to the lie, the DMNS staffers’ incurious conclusion, that individual records are purged everyday. Your profile lives on on the internet, see it for yourself. Give your six-digit pass-code to a friend and they can see it too. And of course, you’re not the only one with the pass-code.

Second, you might well ask yourself, what does a videogram have to do with apprising me about my health? Unless it’s a time-capsule snapshot of you before you lost your insurance coverage. Because the video has everything to do with breached personal privacy. There you are, in your unguarded candor, sitting not upright like you would for a job interview, nor slouched like you might for Social Security, and you’re providing a recording for voice pattern recognition, for further data triangulation.

Third, you’ll have noticed, if you tried the Peak Pass link to the DMNS website, you get no further with your personal code than an invitation to “extend your experience” by installing Microsoft Silverlight. I hadn’t mentioned that the Gates Foundation was another big sponsor of “Expedition Health.” Beside the security vulnerabilities of client-side code, managing what is supposed to be confidential information, what usual back doors is Microsoft leaving in its pseudo-Flash, offering untold windows into our personal medical records?

The DMNS
I do not believe the museum staff have any idea what becomes of the data, nor the extent of the data, logged as museum visitors recreate through “Expedition Health.” The multiple employees, including a manager to whom I spoke, believed all data was erased daily. I’m not sure why they were untroubled by the internet database that obviously refutes their understanding of the process.

However the IT programmers who wired up the displays, and information managers handling the data, would most certainly know the full extent of this nefarious harvest.

Judging from the recent performance of the CEOs of the top medical insurers before Congress, expressing no remorse about their disreputable practice of rescinding coverage for customers upon their being diagnosed with expensive health problems, I do not think it is alarmist in the least to suspect that projects like “Expedition Health” and other similar museum “exhibits” around the country, are being used to further screen the prospectively less-than healthy.

DNA
Readers who’ve already visited “Expedition Health” will note that I ‘ve omitted mention of a significant corner of the experience, the hands-on, let’s play pathologist portion where visitors don lab-coats and, with the assistance of similarly lab-coated docent/lab-technicians, draw and observe their own DNA samples.

Where I inquired, I saw no magnetic-stripped cards changing hands, so I cannot say, on the hot topic of DNA, that the sky is falling. This holds with my inclination to believe that the museum volunteers are not party to the privacy improprieties of the sponsors running the machines. But what hands-on scientific observations are being conducted on digital equipment, as distinguished from analog microscopes, might be kept in the records, and it would only require just one lab-coated coordinator to monitor which sample came from whom. And wouldn’t that be the whole ball of wax?

CRYING WOLF?
If all this seems implausible, consider what is happening at Buckley AFB, by coincidence only a few miles away in Denver. Although US security agencies refuse to comment, respected intelligence experts have determined that at Buckley reside the data storage units upon which are the recordings of every single cellphone conversation that’s been transmitted via satellite. Every last one, for the past several years. Current technology does not afford agents the capability to monitor all those calls, but the processors are quickly catching up. The spooks can project that the eventual capacity to parse the information is inevitable. So why not begin logging the information now? The public has learned about Buckley from former employees, this is not mere idle speculation. Meanwhile the telecom companies who’ve been complicit in the data collection, have been very adamant about receiving immunity from prosecution for what constitute gross violations of American law.

AND NOW?
The information tracking mechanisms are there, the DMNS staff do not presume to vouch for machines, only for the harmless cards. Meanwhile the DMNS has no written pledge that their visitors’ confidentiality is being respected. Harvesting test data is not illegal after all, and with the pretense of anonymity, it’s even laudable, in the name of Science and Nature. I am awaiting a written response from the “Expedition Health” curator, and I intend to solicit an informed and verifiable refutation of these charges. I’ll keep you posted.

The “Expedition Health” installation went up in April, but it’s not coming down. It’s the most recent PERMANENT EXHIBIT to be added to the DMNS offerings. Add the trajectory of time to the information the diagnostics will be able to assemble about you.

And so, what do you think of a museum of Nature and Science, adding a whole wing about FREE HEALTH TESTING? Is that the dominion of museums, usually public repositories of the archives of knowledge? Or can you imagine a more appropriate setting for equipment and staff to perform medical checkups?

Why do the Right Wing Lunatic Fringe hate a Fair Election?

Posted on July 12, 2009 by Brother Jonah

You know, like in Afghanistan and Iraq, having “free” elections where the people are handed a list of people who they’re forbidden to elect as their government representatives.

So we wind up with al Maliki and Hamid “I am NOT a Puppet Dictator” Hamid Karzhai of Iraq and Afghanistan respectively.

So now, the Summer Offensive in Afghanistan is just prior to the next Rigged Election… Surprise Surprise Surprise.

Let’s make that clear for the War Mongers, since they’re kind of simple and slow in their so-called “thought” processes…

If you tell the people who they AREN’T allowed to elect, it’s exactly the same as telling them who they MUST elect.

And you wind up with Terrorist Dictators (but not “puppets” oh no, just because they’re put in place by the American Corporate Military and kept in place by the American Corporate Military, that doesn’t mean they actually have to do what the American Corporate Military tells tho do, does it?) like al-Maliki and Karzhai.

Skipping the bullshit, Karzhai is every bit as much a Meat-Puppet as the Shah of Iran was from the time the CIA engineered a coup against a democratically elected “dictator” in 1953 up till his sorry bitch ass died in exile in 1980.

And for the same reason.

Afghanistan itself doesn’t have Oil.

India does. Iran does. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan do.Afghanistan just happens to be strategically located, perfect place for a Rapid Strike air base or several, for when those “Sovereign” nations act in their own national interests instead of the Oil Corporation Overlords, the Corporate Military have to put them back in their subservient place.

Mustn’t let those Dark Skinned Types think that Freedom and Sovereignty apply to them, no sir!

Reality check, the ACTUAL mission of the Green Berets isn’t “Freedom for those oppressed” it’s “Keep them thar towel-head Sand-niggers from gittin’ too uppity”.

Nice how the Corporatocracy managed to turn what’s supposedly “OUR” military into a more highly organized version of the Ku Klux Klan.

Does Florida celebrate the 4th of July?

Posted on July 3, 2009 by Eric Verlo

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA- I’m looking forward to observing how Floridians celebrate the Fourth of July. During our nation’s War of Independence, La Florida fought on the side of the Brits. The territories were traded from Spain to comprise the king’s 14th and 15th colonies, and they declared nothing in 1776, except to quarter British Forces.

Later of course Florida seceded with the South to keep from having to share slave labor profits with the Union.

I would not begrudge bygones if Florida in present times didn’t remain so famously conservative. The sunburned state is full of retirees hoarding their riches, Disney fascists, and former Batista Cubans who long to see the mob and feudal sugar cane plantations restored to Cuba. Which descendant of any of these presumes to wave the Stars and Stripes tomorrow in the name of what America says it’s about?

More Class War, and as usual, the guns are pointed away from the upper class

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Brother Jonah

The Colorado Springs Gestapo Department released an Internal Affairs investigation results Friday, and once again, the PIGS came up “innocent”. Surprise Surprise Surprise. Seems the only property rights (or any other rights) they enforce or give a shit about are those of people who have a couple million in the bank and own real estate. All others need not apply.

Are YOU really surprised that a group of cops who are given immunity from prosecution unless their fellow PIGS find them guilty first, got away with their Hate Crimes once again? No, really, is anybody actually surprised that the Internal Affairs did what they alway do and let their fellow PIGS off the hook once more?

I wonder how Mayor Rivera would feel if armed THUGS burst into his home and kicked him out the door, threw away all his belongings (unless something he has is worth stealing) and if he resists being dispossessed, they throw him into the El Paso County Torture Dungeon and taser him for “being uncooperative”.

All because the Rich Bitches who run this little corner of Outer Redneckistan don’t want their piglets to see that poor people actually exist, (Like Prince Siddharta’s parents) and ask ugly questions about the Family Fortune that keeps them clothed and overfed and overprivileged being made on the backs of the Dispossessed. They want their little bastard get to believe that Nobody is harmed in any way by their family accumulations of wealth.

Here’s a theory: you remember the fire on the incline a couple of years ago, started in a homeless camp? The Pig-Os never did find out who started it, but AssMunches like Heimlicher and Rivera were quick to blame the Homeless…

Instead of the Rich Kids who habitually raid the camps of the homeless PEOPLE (but only when the PEOPLE aren’t in the camps) raiding that particular camp and perhaps setting it on fire?

Heimlicher and Rivera and Sheriff Ima Pigg Maketa don’t care about that, encourage that sort of behavior with their constant Dehumanizing of their Victims… and if the “just kids having a little fun” gets out of hand and starts a fire, that can subsequently be blamed on the homeless PEOPLE, all the better for them.

Teach your little Piglets to despise anybody who, unlike them, wasn’t born to Wealth and Privilege.

Honor heroes not war criminals

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Eric Verlo

A special Memorial Day banner for those who would confuse supporting our troops for a blank check endorsement of militarism. Remember the dead and veterans of 1812. No subsequent war has been about protecting American freedoms, but rather to increase our imperial business interests overseas. Declare another holiday if you must for the blimp-necked brutes who supply the muscle for US belligerency.

Private Funding to close down the Concentration Camp?

Posted on May 23, 2009 by Brother Jonah

gitmo-new-rules-of-war This is a question for the Legal Eagles…

Since the only real issue left in getting rid of this huge albatross around our collective national neck… (the one that’s tied to the even larger Boat Anchor)… Is one of funding the venture…

What would block President Obama and his supporters such as us from attempting to secure private funding for dismantling Guantanamo Torture Center?

Solicit donations in small or large amounts, doesn’t matter much about the amounts because it’s Not Campaign Funding…

Nor would the funding have to come only from U.S. citizens nor only from people the State Department considers “friendly” which is a polite term for “compliant to the point of subservience”.

If the fund is maintained with a certain amount of glaznost (up to the point of “short of announcing names of individual donors”) by the International Red (religious symbol of choice here) People for the American Way and the ACLU…

I’m going to put this question to the local ACLU in an open letter on a local website and in the Colorado Springs Independent, also Same in the Ft Worth Independent and the Dallas Observer.

Since the opposition comes from so-called “fiscal conservatives”, that $80 million should be hanged around THEIR collective neck as a sign of Shame.

There’s a 4-mile stretch of road-to-nowhere proposed here in Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs which begins and ends at Public Bus Stops.

At a cost of $260,000,000 (TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY MILLION) USD.

Then there’s the much higher cost of keeping Guantanamo OPEN. A cost which is classified so we’ll never know the true amount.

But it’s in the range of more than a Billion per annum.

Let’s see, $80 Million to close out the account permanently, or 12x (TWELVE TIMES) the amount Annually to keep the sucker running.

Waiting for the Next Dictator in Chief to replace Democracy and President Obama with Bush Regime, Part II and re-start the whole cycle of state-sponsored Terrorism over again. (I constructed that sentence awkwardly deliberately and on purpose because triple repetition is more effective than mere redundancy.)

And the cost incurred by giving REAL Terrorists an(other) actual issue to use against not only the Socially Retarded Animated Sphincters but against EVERY American by association.

Note to the S.R.A.S.s: Shock and Awe has failed Miserably. so has the policy of “Let them hate as long as they fear … Oderint dum Metuant and here I’ll point out that was the motto of Gaius Julius Caesar II (Caligula)

The overwhelming evidence is that policy has given them a very legitimate reason to hate and obviously, they don’t actually Fear along with it.

In the case of “Shock and Awe” there’s two synonyms for “Fear” explicitly included, and using Fear as a weapon of war fits the classic definition of Terrorism.

High Country Earth First Denver Meeting

Posted on May 20, 2009 by NMT

High Country Earth First is hosting the EF! ROADSHOW, in DENVER, May 25-26: Monday 2pm in Cheesman Park, and Tuesday 6pm at the Gypsy House.

Four ongoing EF! projects in Colorado: DENVER: Stop I-70 Expansion through North Denver; SAN LUIS VALLEY: Halt gas drilling in Baca National Wildlife Refuge: and WESTERN SLOPE: Red Cliff mine campaign and Feral Futures (May 24 – June 7).

From “Rockslide,” High Country Earth First!

The need for resistance in solidarity with the wild has never been louder or clearer than it is today; the EF! roadshow is a great tool for growing that resistance. There are countless examples to draw from in the story of radical movements before us: militant labor organizing tours, anti-fascist resistance recruitment and international speaking tours to build cross-border solidarity. The origin of Earth First! itself is credited to a few roadshows that kicked it all off in the early 1980s. We are building on this tradition; akin to a fellowship crossing Middle Earth to amass insurgents to face Mordor head-on.

List-serves and websites aren’t enough
This Roadshow’s primary intention is to strengthen our radical grassroots ecological network. For almost 30 years, we have been an organized voice bridging conservation biology with grassroots community organizing, road blockading and eco-sabotage. In the past 5 years we have seen numbers and experience-level in the EF! movement decline drastically. Yet, our place has never been more urgent. New groups are popping up across the country, but they are detached from many of the groups, history, and skills that came before them. We can’t afford to stumble and make the same mistakes over again.

We are at the tail end of a decade where corporate globalization rooted itself in the US and spread across the planet like a plague. And now that the reality of climate change is finally sinking into the mainstream consciousness, the same superpowers that pushed so-called ‘free trade’ policies to exploit wild nature more efficiently are promoting carbon trading in attempt to make a profitable industry out of the disasters they’ve created. The spineless Big Green environmental NGOs are scrambling for crumbs and cutting deals with the industry for shallow public relations victories. Earth First! must rise and recognize that it’s presence is a strong component of making the broader environmental movement truly effective. We are its spine, or as an EF! co-founder, Howie Wolke, has put it, we are the lions of a movement ‘ecosystem’. Our niche is critical, and its presence (or absence) is felt deeply by our surroundings.

We need to reconnect the multi-generational aspect of Earth First! that has fallen by the wayside in recent years. We need to broaden our network’s base—from radical rural grandparents to revolutionary urban youth. We need re-establish lost relationships with scholars and scientists who resonate with us. We need to re-inspire musicians and artists to contribute their passion to our battles.

When it comes down to it, solid movements are based on strong personal relationships; and real relationships don’t go very far over the internet. We need face-to-face interaction to build trust with—and support for—each other.

From EF! Here is a glimpse of ongoing local and national campaigns and projects related to EF!. They could all use your support in a variety of ways—from fundraising to showing up in person. Please contact the organizing groups directly to find out what they need most:

Northern California Redwood Defense
Since the fall of Maxxam/Pacific Lumber, forest defenders in the Redwoods have been directing attention on another logging empire: Green Diamond Resource Company (formerly Simpson). In the last 10 years they have clear-cut 52,000 acres of Northern California forests. They are killing off endangered Spotted Owls and have aspirations to sell off thousands of acres in Humboldt County for Salmon killing suburban development. We have set up multiple treesit villages to oppose the destruction, and we need your help TODAY.
www.efhumboldt.org

Appalachian Anti-Mountain Top Removal
The presence of coal plants are threats to the lives within both the human community and the mountain ecosystem. One of the most biologically flourishing areas of the world is being environmentally and socially impoverished by companies practicing mountain top removal. Mountain top removal clogs streams, destroys forests, threatens biodiversity and forces coalfield residents into the unjust choice between income and well-being.
www.blueridgeef.com

Stop I-69 in Indiana
I-69 is a NAFTA superhighway, already constructed from Canada to Indianapolis and projected to extend down into Mexico. This highway is intended for the mass transportation of goods and resources, to further exploit workers and the land, and to lessen companies’ accountability in terms of human and environmental rights. In 2008, they began construction of this road through southwestern Indiana, which will evict hundreds of rural families, destroy hundreds of acres of land, and devastate the habitats of countless species of animals, including the endangered Indiana Bat. www.stopi69.wordpress.com

Fight Development in the North Woods of Maine
The largest piece of undeveloped land east of the Mississippi is under attack. Plum Creek, the nation’s largest corporate landowner, is in the process of rezoning 20,000 acres of the Moosehead Lake region in Maine for luxury house and resorts, while trying to balance it off with a fraudulent conservation easement plan. This plan would still allow timber harvesting, commercial water extraction and the building of new infrastructure, among many other ecologically devastating practices. www.maineearthfirst.wordpress.com

Defend the Last Free-Roaming Wild Buffalo in Montana
The Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC) is the only group working in the field, everyday, to stop the slaughter and harassment of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo. Volunteers from around the world defend buffalo on their traditional winter habitat and advocate for their protection. Our daily patrols stand with the buffalo on the ground they choose to be on, and document every move made against them. Tactics range from video documentation to nonviolent civil disobedience. www.buffalofieldcampaign.org

Fight new Copper Mines and Roads in the Deserts of Arizona
Chuk’shon Earth First! is fighting the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains, which is greenwashing itself by claiming a need for increased copper extraction for the solar panel industry. The group is also opposing the expansion of I-10, part of the Department of Transportation’s “Corridors of the Future” program to increase capacity of global industrial commerce. The proposed I-10 Bypass would bisect wild/rural lands and facilitate more sprawl between Tucson and Phoenix. www.chukshonef.wordpress.com

Blue Mountain Biodiversity Project in eastern Oregon
Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project (BMBP) formed in 1991 to increase regional and national awareness of the Blue Mountains ecosystems, to ensure the protection for and reintroduction of diverse native wildlife species, to promote ecologically sound restoration and address the root causes of ecological and community instability. They have trained countless EF!ers is forest monitoring. They are one of the country’s premier grassroots ‘paper-wrenchers’, filing legal challenges that help make our blockades successful. They can be reached at 541-385-9167

Stop Florida Power & Light from trashing the Everglades
Everglades Earth First! (EEF!) have been battling FPL’s plans to build the country’s largest fossil fuel power plant in the Loxahatchee Basin; a headwaters to the remaining Everglades ecosystem. EEF! Is also challenging over 500 miles of new gas pipelines and 2 new Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) facilities. Get more details: www.evergladesearthfirst.org

Stop Gas Drilling in Western New York
There is a proposal on the table to begin one of the largest fossil fuel exploration projects in the country. This project would result hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 emissions, along with the impacts of pipelines, power plants, and new LNG storage facilities. Get in touch with Shale Shock: www.shaleshock.org

Bank of America, Stop Funding Coal!
A national campaign is well underway to stop Bank of America (BoA), who is the largest investor to Mountain Top Removal coal mining. The company recently offered lip-service to address their support for the coal industry, but have made no real steps towards cutting ties with King Coal. With BoA locations in cities across the U.S., this campaign can easily be supported in a decentralized fashion. Give ‘em hell! For more info: www.ran.org

No 2010 Olympics
The Native Youth Movement and other First Nations groups in occupied Canada have called for full-scale resistance to the Winter Olympics proposed in British Colombia. The Olympics proposal includes a mess of development, ski-resorts and infrastructure on indigenous land. Learn more at: www.no2010.com

Root Force
This project is a research database and strategic think tank for direct action intended to target corporate/colonial infrastructure, such as: roads, dams, power plants, and mines. Their website offers background information on transnational companies, government agencies and their local affiliations across the United States. www.rootforce.org

Sean Hannity & the Global War OF Terror

Posted on May 9, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The quicker we get Sean Hannity waterboarded the better. But we can hope for better than merely shutting him up about whether or not waterboarding is torture. Let’s figure out WHAT we can waterboard him for!

Is there a secret we want to extract from Sean Hannity? Or is there just something he’s done for which America could feel comfort in exacting redress? Wouldn’t that be the real point of torture? And actually, not to draw Hannity’s blood, but to extrude the shit from his colleagues looking on, who might fancy themselves next, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, et al.

I understand Hannity already has a volunteer to administer the procedure, what we really need is the person to direct it. To issue the thumbs up or thumbs down, irrationally, to heighten the torment.

Hannity has volunteered to subject himself to what he considers no more than fraternity hazing. Olberman has offered $1,000 for ever second Hannity lasts. Which I predict will be calculated in fragments of the first second. A subject of waterboarding can hold his breath, but the torturers will start the clock by forcefully expelling that reserve. Waterboarding begins when the victim gasps for air, and inhales water instead.

The media debate around waterboarding asks two questions. Is waterboarding torture? And does torture work? Both questions are flawed. The first is simply an insult, the second is misdirected.

Perhaps the average American is disconnect enough from reality to question whether the unimaginable can be. If you’ve never stepped into the sea, you can speculate that water is not really wet. Fast-food eating television viewers can wonder, does the stove burn?

Does torture work? Of course it does. To wonder if torture is an effective method of interrogation is to get the question entirely wrong.

In one debate about the efficacy of torture, the FBI claims the with one terror suspect they were making gains with psychological methods until the CIA seized custody in order to give the waterboard a try. Apparently with no success, after which the FBI had another promising run interrupted by another CIA inter-department rendition. Sound like the ol’ good agency, bad agency interrogation ploy to you?

Ignored in the torture efficacy assessment is the absence of a control sample. Did the subject have anything to reveal? How unfair to judge an interrogator if his subject doen’t have a secret to crack. And even that misses the point. What is the purpose of torture? Is it to extract information, such as learning of ticking time-bombs to save innocent lives, or is it about preemptive subjugation of people?

To torture someone is to terrorize them with their own helplessness under the thumb of brutal inhumanity. Torture is directed less against the terrorized subject themselves, than the public looking on. Torture is terror. It get the predicate reversed in the phrase “Global War On Terror.” Terror is the subject not the object; actually the objective. It’s the Global War OF Terror. In our GWOT, torture is an important weapon in the US arsonal, and of course it works. Against brave people, it “works” solely to provoke them.

Next to the White House

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Eric Verlo

While visiting Washington DC in March, I found it interesting to note the edifices closest to the White House.

EAST, WEST
The neighbor to the immediate East of the Obama’s White House is the Department of the Treasury. Is that any surprise? Of course not, but how bourgeois! I could imagine Scrooge McDuck sneaking across the White House garden twice a day to check his reserves. To the West is what we now call the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It’s the site of the suspicious office fires which may or may not have masked a recent vice-president’s misdeeds. The edifice looks straight out of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and check out the plaque which commemorates what the building used to be called:

Probably that should be no surprise as well: the White house sandwiched between Treasury and War. “State, War and Navy.” How so much less duplicitous than the “Department of Defense.”

SOUTHWEST
Behind the former War offices, to the Southwest of the White House, lies the war memorial to end all war memorials. It’s the WWI Memorial, of considerably diminutive size compared to those commemorations of subsequent wars which have spilled unto the Mall, but its form followed the convention of the typical Great War monuments erected throughout Europe among the nations who had participated.

Except the American version is dedicated to the “Expeditionary Forces” which I just love. That’s what WWI was about for the US. The trenches of Europe were no place Americans needed to defend their freedom. The troops we sent, to relieve France and England, represented a foreign expedition, exactly that. More precisely, our troops were an R&D expedition for our blustering capitalists.

(This may be no time or place to note that history books do not link America’s WWI experience with the Influenza outbreak of 1917-18, which began in the barracks of US soldiers being mobilized for war. American soldiers took their flu to Europe and ultimately killed 50 million people. Those were not the days before we knew better to stay home to prevent infecting others.)

The US entry into WWI was bitterly opposed by a peace movement which the war-opportunist-profiteers maligned as isolationist. Selfish globalization-denying isolationism has been the slander ever since, used against anyone who tries to block military interventions in all their guises.

Ultimately WWI was no affair of ours, had the Huns emerged victorious, American foreign affairs would hardly have changed. Our foreign trading partners would have numbered more Germans, that’s all. But it’s useless to compare alternative outcomes of WWI, all things staying constant, because America participated and profited wildly.

If American investors had not jumped in Over There, the greatest business opportunities of blossoming industrialism would have been missed. The opportunities offered by the Europeans fighting amongst themselves, proved to have been momentous.

And here was the monument to those lost American lives, sacrificed so that American industrial might, in particular the new banking monopolists, could seize the European spheres of influence throughout the world. Of course the lost lives of the American Expeditionary Force were remembered thus:

“…WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE WORLD WAR THAT LIBERTY AND THE IDEALS OF OUR COUNTRY MIGHT ENDURE”

It would take another World War for the US to appropriate the colonies and oil fields by means of contracts and loans, with the leverage of coming to their aid again, this time armed with lend-lease bills.

SOUTHEAST
To the Southeast of the White House, across the back lawn, lies the monument antecedent to the Great War. It’s the Civil War Memorial, atop which rides the triumphant General William Tecumseh Sherman. (Who, to be fair, presided over the War Department for a long stretch after the Civil War, actually this nation’s longest peacetime period.)

Curious that I chose to crop his personage from my pictures, but my eyes were drawn to the lesser figures around the base of the monument, in particular, a half naked woman.

The memorial seemed to include various uniformed Civil War participants. How egalitarian to include a woman. But this woman was no French Revolutionary with breast bared oblivious as she rallied her comrades to victory. This delicate woman was unarmed and stripped to the waist, her children in tattered rags at her feet.

Could this statue be offering another conceit to the reality of war, to Sherman’s March to the sea, to the burning of Atlanta, to the shameful destruction he visited on the secessionist South? Was this a nod to the real role given to Women in war, their sons and husbands taken from them, a non-combatant left helpless to defend her children or herself. Did the shirt torn from her body confess to the woman’s rape?

More probably the feminine likeness personified man’s attraction to war, a soldier’s predilection for her beauty. How many war monuments memorialize as they also beacon?

Much of the terrain around the White House grounds is blocked off by secondary and tertiary security perimeters. But for the arrival of bus unloadng its visitors to see it, the Civil War Monument is normally cordoned off. When I had passed it earlier, a balaclava-clad guard was blocking the only entrance.

SOUTH
The grassy expanse immediately South of the White House, permitting the First Family an uninterrupted view of the National Mall, has actually been given over to parking permits. The loop of asphalt across the lawn, with cars strewn diagonally along the edges, gives the unfortunate impression of overflow event parking. In any other neighborhood, the crowd of cars would be a dead giveaway that someone on the block was having a party.

American barbeque and Fox assholes like Scissor Bills’ O’Reilly

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Tony Logan

FOX News
Ex-soldier bragged about Iraqi rape, deaths then celebrated at a barbeque from Reuters. “Iraqis were horrified by the crime, one of a series of incidents involving U.S. soldiers that strained relations with the Iraqi government. But the onset of Green’s trial three years later is not resonating with most Iraqis, observers there say. The incident was portrayed in the 2007 movie “Redacted” by director Brian De Palma, who complained the film was censored by the studio. Its graphic images shocked many viewers.”

From wikipedia we read that…

‘Commentator Bill O’Reilly has called for protests of Redacted and against Mark Cuban. O’Reilly claims that the film demeans American soldiers and may incite violence against them, and he has called on ticketholders to bring signs to Dallas Mavericks games and all theaters showing the movie, stating ‘Support the Troops’.[18] Mark Cuban has responded, saying “The movie is fully pro-troops. The hero of the movie is a soldier who stands up for what is right in the face of adversity… I think that the concept that the enemy will see these films and use it as motivation is total nonsense. We have no plans of translating these movies to Arabic or other middle eastern languages…It’s really easy to hate, its really hard to think issues through on their own merits. Anything that makes people think about issues is a good thing.”‘

You can see the film Redacted online for free and it is well worth it. Don’t let these right Wing creeps like Bill O’Reilly get away with what you can see or not see. It never got a chance at your local cinema but most good films never do either. There are just far too many American idiots like O’Reilly out there and unfortunately, many of them get their marching orders from Fox and Murdoch, if not their actual salaries like Master Scissor Bill himself does.

The Full Text of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s speech

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Tony Logan

At last we have a copy of the full text of the Iranian President’s speech at the Durban Review Conference on racism and now we can examine just how it has been misrepresented as vile, ugly, and racist by vile ugly racists. The fact is that the main point of the speech actually has next to nothing to do directly with Israel or Jewish people at all, but rather is an attack on the war-like and imperialist United Nation Security Council and the undemocratic nature of this US controlled organization.

He essentially calls for its abolishment in the summary of his remarks and it is this Call that actually is the cause of the Made-In-US boycott and subsequent walkout from the anti-racism conference, and not anything else Ahmadinejad said.

President Ahmadinejad….

‘Secondly, mindful of the inefficiency of the current international political, economic and security systems, it is necessary to focus on divine and humanitarian values by referring to the true definition of human beings based upon justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the world and by acknowledging the past wrong doings in the past dominant management of the world, and to undertake collective measures to reform the existing structures.

In this respect, it is crucially important to rapidly reform the structure of the Security Council, including the elimination of the discriminatory veto right and to change the current world financial and monetary systems.

It is evident that lack of understanding of the urgency for change is equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay.’

There is absolutely nothing anti-Jewish in any of his remarks, and the world has had enough of the United Nation Security Council and its constant war making. Many will also champion Ahmadinejad’s call for its abolishment.

FULL TEXT:

(Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the Durban Review Conference on racism in Geneva on April 20, 2009.)

Mr. Chairman, honorable secretary general of the United Nations, honorable United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Ladies and gentleman:

We have gathered in the follow-up to the Durban conference against racism and racial discrimination to work out practical mechanisms for our holy and humanitarian campaigns.

Over the last centuries, humanity has gone through great sufferings and pains. In the Medieval Ages, thinkers and scientists were sentenced to death. It was then followed by a period of slavery and slave trade. Innocent people were taken captive in their millions and separated from their families and loved ones to be taken to Europe and America under the worst conditions. A dark period that also experienced occupation, lootings and massacres of innocent people.

Many years passed by before nations rose up and fought for their liberty and freedom and they paid a high price for it. They lost millions of lives to expel the occupiers and establish independent and national governments. However, it did not take long before power grabbers imposed two wars in Europe which also plagued a part of Asia and Africa. Those horrific wars claimed about a hundred million lives and left behind massive devastation. Had lessons been learnt from the occupations, horrors and crimes of those wars, there would have been a ray of hope for the future.

The victorious powers called themselves the conquerors of the world while ignoring or down treading upon rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us take a look at the UN Security Council which is one of the legacies of World War I and World War II. What was the logic behind their granting themselves the veto right? How can such logic comply with humanitarian or spiritual values? Would it not be inconformity with the recognized principles of justice, equality before the law, love and human dignity? Would it not be discrimination, injustice, violations of human rights or humiliation of the majority of nations and countries?

The council is the highest decision-making world body for safeguarding international peace and security. How can we expect the realization of justice and peace when discrimination is legalized and the origin of the law is dominated by coercion and force rather than by justice and the rights?

Coercion and arrogance is the origin of oppression and wars. Although today many proponents of racism condemn racial discrimination in their words and their slogans, a number of powerful countries have been authorized to decide for other nations based on their own interests and at their own discretion and they can easily violate all laws and humanitarian values as they have done so.

Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine. And, in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.

The Security Council helped stabilize the occupying regime and supported it in the past 60 years giving them a free hand to commit all sorts of atrocities. It is all the more regrettable that a number of Western governments and the United States have committed themselves to defending those racist perpetrators of genocide while the awakened-conscience and free-minded people of the world condemn aggression, brutalities and the bombardment of civilians in Gaza. The supporters of Israel have always been either supportive or silent against the crimes.

Dear friends, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. What are the root causes of the US attacks against Iraq or the invasion of Afghanistan?

Was the motive behind the invasion of Iraq anything other than the arrogance of the then US administration and the mounting pressures on the part of the possessors of wealth and power to expand their sphere of influence seeking the interests of giant arms manufacturing companies affecting a noble culture with thousands of years of historical background, eliminating the potential and practical threats of Muslim countries against the Zionist regime or to control and plunder the energy resources of the Iraqi people?

Why, indeed, almost a million people were killed and injured and a few more millions were displaced? Why, indeed, the Iraqi people have suffered enormous losses amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars? And why was billions of dollars imposed on the American people as the result of these military actions? Was not the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then US administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing countries and the possessors of wealth? Did the invasion of Afghanistan restore peace, security and economic wellbeing in the country?

The United States and its allies not only have failed to contain the production of drugs in Afghanistan, but the cultivation of narcotics has multiplied in the course of their presence. The basic question is that what was the responsibility and the job of the then US administration and its allies?

Did they represent the countries of the world? Have they been mandated by them? Have they been authorized by the people of the world to interfere in all parts of the globe, of course mostly in our region? Are not these measures a clear example of egocentrism, racism, discrimination or infringement upon the dignity and independence of nations?

Ladies and gentlemen, who is responsible for the current global economic crisis? Where did the crisis start from? From Africa, Asia or from the United States in the first place then spreading across Europe and their allies?

For a long time, they imposed inequitable economic regulations by their political power on the international economy. They imposed a financial and monetary system without a proper international oversight mechanism on nations and governments that played no role in repressive trends or policies. They have not even allowed their people to oversea or monitor their financial policies. They introduced all laws and regulations in defiance of all moral values only to protect the interests of the possessors of wealth and power.

They further presented a definition for market economy and competition that denied many of the economic opportunities that could be available to other countries of the world. They even transferred their problems to others while the waves of crisis lashed back plaguing their economies with thousands of billions of dollars in budget deficit. And today, they are injecting hundreds of billions of dollars of cash from the pockets of their own people and other nations into the failing banks, companies and financial institutions making the situation more and more complicated for their economy and their people. They are simply thinking about maintaining power and wealth. They could not care any less about the people of the world and even their own people.

Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen, Racism is rooted in the lack of knowledge concerning the root of human existence as the selected creature of God. It is also the product of his deviation from the true path of human life and the obligations of mankind in the world of creation, failing to consciously worship God, not being able to think about the philosophy of life or the path to perfection that are the main ingredients of divine and humanitarian values which have restricted the horizon of human outlook making transient and limited interests, the yardstick for his action. That is why evil’s power took shape and expanded its realm of power while depriving others from enjoying equitable and just opportunities of development.

The result has been the making of an unbridled racism that is posing the most serious threats against international peace and has hindered the way for building peaceful coexistence in the entire world. Undoubtedly, racism is the symbol of ignorance which has deep roots in history and it is, indeed, the sign of frustration in the development of human society.

It is, therefore, crucially important to trace the manifestations of racism in situations or in societies where ignorance or lack of knowledge prevails. This increasing general awareness and understanding towards the philosophy of human existence is the principle struggle against such manifestations, and reveals the truth that human kind centers on the creation of the universe and the key to solving the problem of racism is a return to spiritual and moral values and finally the inclination to worship God Almighty.

The international community must initiate collective moves to raise awareness in afflicted societies where ignorance of racism still prevails so as to bring to a halt the spread of these malicious manifestations.

Dear Friends, today, the human community is facing a kind of racism which has tarnished the image of humanity in the beginning of the third millennium.

World Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religions and abuses religious sentiments to hide its hatred and ugly face. However, it is of great importance to bring into focus the political goals of some of the world powers and those who control huge economic resources and interests in the world. They mobilize all the resources including their economic and political influence and world media to render support in vain to the Zionist regime and to maliciously diminish the indignity and disgrace of this regime.

This is not simply a question of ignorance and one cannot conclude these ugly phenomena through consular campaigns. Efforts must be made to put an end to the abuse by Zionists and their political and international supporters and in respect with the will and aspirations of nations. Governments must be encouraged and supported in their fights aimed at eradicating this barbaric racism and to move towards reform in current international mechanisms.

There is no doubt that you are all aware of the conspiracies of some powers and Zionist circles against the goals and objectives of this conference. Unfortunately, there have been literatures and statements in support of Zionists and their crimes. And it is the responsibility of honorable representatives of nations to disclose these campaigns which run counter to humanitarian values and principles.

It should be recognized that boycotting such a session as an outstanding international capacity is a true indication of supporting the blatant example of racism. In defending human rights, it is primarily important to defend the rights of all nations to participate equally in all important international decision making processes without the influence of certain world powers.

And secondly, it is necessary to restructure the existing international organizations and their respective arrangements. Therefore this conference is a testing ground and the world public opinion today and tomorrow will judge our decisions and our actions.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, the world is going through rapid fundamental changes. Power relations have become weak and fragile. The sound of cracks in the pillars of world systems can now be heard. Major political and economic structures are on the brink of collapse. Political and security crises are on the rise. The worsening crisis in the world economy for which there can be seen no bright prospect, demonstrates the rising tide of far-reaching global changes. I have repeatedly emphasized the need to change the wrong direction through which the world is being managed today and I have also warned of the dire consequences of any delay in this crucial responsibility.

Now in this valuable event, I would like to announce to all leaders, thinkers and to all nations of the world present in this meeting and those who have a hunger for peace and economic well-being that the unjust economic management of the world is now at the end of the road. This deadlock was inevitable since the logic of this imposed management was oppressive.

The logic of collective management of world affairs is based on noble aspirations which centers on human beings and the supremacy of the almighty God. Therefore it defies any policy or plan which goes against the influence of nations. The victory of right over wrong and the establishment of a just world system has been promised by the Almighty God and his messengers and it has been a shared goal of all human beings from different societies and generations in the course of history. Realization of such a future depends on the knowledge of creation and the belief of the faithful.

The making of a global society is in fact the accomplishment of a noble goal held in the establishment of a common global system that will be run with the participation of all nations of the world in all major decision making processes and the definite root to this sublime goal.

Scientific and technical capacities as well as communication technology have created a common and widespread understanding of the world society and has provided the necessary ground for a common system. Now it is upon all intellectuals, thinkers and policy makers in the world to carry out their historical responsibility with a firm belief in this definite root.

I also want to lay emphasis on the fact that Western liberalism and capitalism has reached its end since it has failed to perceive the truth of the world and humans as they are.

It has imposed its own goals and directions on human beings. There is no regard for human and divine values, justice, freedom, love and brotherhood and it has based living on intense competition, securing individual and cooperative material interest.

Now we must learn from the past by initiating collective efforts in dealing with present challenges and in this connection, and as a closing remark, I wish to draw your kind attention to two important issues:

Firstly, it is absolutely possible to improve the existing situation in the world. However it must be noted that this could be only achieved through the cooperation of all countries in order to get the best out of the existing capacities and resources in the world. My participation in this conference is because of my conviction to these important issues as well as to our common responsibility of defending the rights of nations vis-à-vis the sinister phenomena of racism and being with you, the thinkers of the world.

Secondly, mindful of the inefficiency of the current international political, economic and security systems, it is necessary to focus on divine and humanitarian values by referring to the true definition of human beings based upon justice and respect for the rights of all people in all parts of the world and by acknowledging the past wrong doings in the past dominant management of the world, and to undertake collective measures to reform the existing structures.

In this respect, it is crucially important to rapidly reform the structure of the Security Council, including the elimination of the discriminatory veto right and to change the current world financial and monetary systems.

It is evident that lack of understanding of the urgency for change is equivalent to the much heavier costs of delay.

Dear Friends, beware that to move in the direction of justice and human dignity is like a rapid flow in the current of a river. Let us not forget the essence of love and affection. The promised future of human beings is a great asset that may serve our purposes in keeping together to build a new world.

In order to make the world a better place full of love and blessings, a world devoid of poverty and hatred, merging the increasing blessings of God Almighty and the righteous managing of the perfect human being, let us all join hands in friendship in the fulfillment of such a new world.

I thank you Mr. President, Secretary General and all distinguished participants for having the patience to listen to me. Thank you very much.

Boy in the Striped Propaganda-jamas

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Eric Verlo

What’s wrong with imagining that a German youngster could traverse a maximum security perimeter to charm readers with his innocent observations, for example, mistaking dirty excrement- encrusted forced-laborer uniforms for striped pajamas? And more, sneak under the wire, to suffer and thereby confirm, the inmates’ inhuman fate?

This year’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 20, arrived with a new tale to beguile the kiddies: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

The photograph above depicts a concentration camp inmate killed between rows of barbed wire. At the Dachau Memorial its caption pronounces: “Suicide,” conjecturing that this inmate chose to rush the fence and be shot by guards sooner than endure any further brutalities. While the scene amplifies the savagery of the camps, it also puts to the lie the poetic liberties which imagine that camp inmates could linger in the no-man’s land between fences, or that likewise nearby locals could approach to within even hailing distance of the prisoners.

Angel at the Fence, Herman Rosenblat’s purported camp memoir, was debunked because the author asserted that he met his wife during the war, across the fence of a concentration camp, and that she saved his life pre-maritally, by throwing pieces of bread to him. Oprah called it the single greatest love story ever, but under scrutiny Rosenblat confessed his fabrication. Now he’s determined it should be redistributed as fiction, because it’s a magical tale that people still want to hear.

Striped author John Boyne paints a similar scenario for younger readers, where two pre-adolescent boys meet on opposite sides of the fence of no less than Auschwitz. The German boy is fascinated by the other’s pajamas. Cute? Like a boy in another hemisphere being intrigued at a slave laborer’s dark black tan, or dirt under his fingernails? Eventually Boyne’s young protagonist crawls under the wire to join his new Jewish friend, and they die together in the darkness of a gas chamber.

Will this prove to be the ultimate aim of Holocaust Rememberers? To drag us all across an impassible divide, over a bridge that stretches credulity, by means of so false a memory that we suffer the Holocaust ourselves through a regression therapy assault on our psyche?

Barack Obama: Next Year in Jerusalem

Posted on April 14, 2009 by Eric Verlo

President Obama and family marked the start of the Jewish Passover by hosting a traditional Seder ceremony at the White House, apparently in fulfillment of a campaign promise. Last year Obama participated in a similar dinner with Jewish campaign workers, and when reciting the Haggadah which ends with the wish “Next Year in Jerusalem,” Obama tacked on “Next Year in the White House.” If we assume he didn’t need to add that wish this time, did the White House prayer end: Next Year in Jerusalem?

I find the official photograph released by the White House disturbing all in itself. The higher resolution image reveals that the Obamas and friends are reading from Haggadah pamphlets published by Maxwell House Coffee, a free hand-out at supermarkets. Wouldn’t you imagine the White House has its own printing wing for such occasions? Aren’t most presidential guests expecting to come away with something more than a promotional brochure for a White House dinner keepsake?

And there’s something a-kilter with the dining furniture. The observation has been confirmed in the blogosphere that everyone’s sitting on plastic catering chairs. The chairs are uncomfortable obviously, because everyone’s using cushions behind their backs. These plastic chairs are presumably what you’d use when you have to set extra places. In this case, an entire extra table. Nothing odd about an extra table, but not where you’d expect to have to bump the First Family. Which family is seated at the main table?

Was it deemed imprudent to depict the first Presidential Seder at the formal table, with all the dignified trappings of a White House occasion?

Assuming there’s an art director behind every detail, including the mixed-bag assortment of pillows used to cushion the chairs, the Obamas appear to be cast into a less-than-affluent kitchen table scene, perhaps out of sensitivity for our nation’s recent hard times. It’s a look that might mimic a Depression Era dinnertime, but I cannot conjure when austerity ever reflected a modern White House. Was even down-home Jimmy Carter ever directed to pretend he was more Good Times and less like the Huxtables?

Israel and the surplus Passover bread

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Eric Verlo

I thought the NPR human interest story about Passover was going to be a PR piece: What do Israeli Jews do with their leavened bread during Passover, when religious observance forbids not just the consumption of bread, but the possession of it? What do Jewish bakeries, grocers, eateries, distributors and warehouses do with their un-unleavened inventories? I’ll bet you were going to guess that they give it away!

Not to other observers of Passover obviously, but to non-Jewish needy maybe, who can eat it.

No doubt Israeli Jewish bread purveyors schedule inventory reductions to coincide with Passover. But according to the news segment, the mass of raised dough, for the brief Passover hours untouchable to Jewish adherents, regularly amounts to $150 million, every year. So what do they do with it?

Well according to NPR, here’s the deal.

On paper, the bread is entrusted to the governing rabbis, who make a collective deal with a single cooperative non-Jew. This Israeli Arab agrees to purchase the lot, by making a down-payment, with the proviso that he cannot take delivery until the balance is paid, and a further understanding that he will intentionally default on the transaction. He joked with the reporter that every year he falls short of the sum required. When the Passover restriction lifts, possession of the bread reverts to its Jewish owners, whose premises it never left, physically. The stock goes back on the books, and everyone is back in business.

No details about whether this is how Jewish communities have always overcome the Passover prohibition. Which we might assume has been a pressing challenge for centuries. And to be fair, the restriction was never about divesting of the bread, or being charitable, but more about commemoration through sacrifice, the flight from Egypt when Jews were compelled to take with them only unleavened bread.

So this news segment was not a heavy handed PR message about the piety of Israeli Jews, but a subtle glimpse into the pragmatic world of Judaism. Either message serves to familiarize the 98% of Americans who are not Jewish, with the daily life of Israelis. Though Israel may be a foreign nation, with the foreign concept of a state religion, the people of Israel are otherwise close kin of the white European Americans, as their blood-surrogate claimants to the Holy Land.

If you’re still wondering about the Arab Israelis who could have been in line for day old largess, don’t worry, this segment had that loose end tied up.

By the oddest of twists, the Israeli Arabs interviewed for this story declared their own preference for unleavened bread, for the Passover. This drew incredulous prompts from nearby Israeli Jews. Why would Arabs chose Matzo, the poor man’s bread, without being obligated?

But so says NPR. There it is. So no one’s missing the uneaten bread.

The lingering motif being, that while religious differences may remain, in terms of baked-goods gastronomy, Arab Israelis are wannabe Jewish Israelis.

God’s Chosen People, America’s chosen cousins, are even their captives’ chosen masters.

AFA Colonel “cleared” of proselytizing

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Brother Jonah

OFFICIALLY, the Pentagon forbids pushing one’s religion off on others.

Unofficially, they push Their Religion, Militarism, off on adherents of every other religion.

Like the Beast described in the Revelation, abandoning the gods of his fathers and instead worshipping the god of Forces.
Doesn’t matter what faith, or no faith, Atheist or Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or Pagan or Heathen or Wiccan or Servants of Mumbo Jumbo the Crocodile King of the Upper Nile, all the people under their command have to worship the god of Forces.

The “Christianity” being foisted onto the airmen beneath the Colonel is merely Militarism with the name of Christ attached.

Basically the same “God commands you to go forth and KILL in His Name”.

I say that’s blasphemy of a high order.

Problem with it is, for those unfortunate enough to serve under these Creeps, what the Colonel says even a suggestion, is considered an order.

They’re not allowed to question it or to call it blasphemy.

The airmen who brought the charges against the Colonel are going to be punished for daring to defy the god of Forces.

It goes directly to the heart of the Anachronistic Feudalism that embodies the Military Rank system, “officers” are equivalent to “nobles” or “Lords”, and they still own the soldiers and marines and sailors and airmen under their command.

It started with the Knights actually owning everything about not only the soldiers under their command but the soldiers’ families, the lands they worked, the animals they tended, the wild animals in the Fiefdom….

And there’s the notion that when the Lord of the Realm, be it a King or Emperor or Baron or lowly Knight, converted to a new faith or a new version of the Old faith, every one of “his” Peasants had to convert right along with him.

That was Henry VIII’s gig, also Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain forcing the Native Americans to convert to their church, because they claimed their lands and therefore claimed the people on those lands as belonging exclusively to them.

It’s why the English and subsequently the Conquered Vassal states such as Ireland, Scotland, Wales and what’s now Canada and the United States were saddled with the Hanover mini-dynasty.

George the First was probably not the father of George the Second, (he was openly and promiscuously gay) and didn’t even bother to learn English, which he considered an inferior tongue and an inferior people.

He was appointed to rule over England and its Captured Lands and conquered peoples because he was the closest person in the line of Succession who wasn’t Catholic.

But “God Anointed his Majesty to be King”… according to the propaganda.

And, that’s what Colonel Crud is doing. Forcing her Subjects to accept her Religion or else.

Somalia seizes Pentagon pirate ship

Posted on April 8, 2009 by Tony Logan

Maerk More is coming in about the pirate ship just seized by Somalia off their shores. See Pirate Maersk Inc.

The ocean surveillance ships (of Pirate Maersk Inc) – USNS Effective, USNS Impeccable, USNS Loyal and USNS Victorious – work directly with the Navy fleets to listen for undersea threats. The range instrumentation ships – USNS Invincible and USNS Observation Island – support the U.S. Air Force by serving as seaborne platforms for radar systems. As part of MSC’s Special Mission Program, the noncombatant, government-owned ships will be crewed by U.S. commercial mariners.

Special mission ships provide operating platforms and services for unique U.S. military and federal government missions. These specialized services include oceanographic and hydrographic surveys, underwater surveillance, missile flight data collection and tracking, acoustic survey and submarine support.

In addition to performing special missions, MSC operates more than 110 noncombatant, civilian-crewed ships that replenish U.S. Navy ships, strategically preposition combat cargo at sea around the world and move 95 percent of military equipment and supplies used by deployed U.S. forces.

from Seafarers International Union, aiding Pentagon Pirates everywhere!

Churchill better historian than Shakespeare….

Posted on April 4, 2009 by Brother Jonah

Because Shakespeare did something Dr Churchill refused to do. In his Toady Subservience to King James I, he re-wrote the history of Scotland.

Macbeth is a Morality Play cleverly disguised as propaganda, or perhaps the other way round.

Now, I’m one of the un-fans of the Really Stupid Notion of “the Divine Right of Kings” the bullshit about how God appoints our Leaders and if we don’t Obey them we’re in some way rebelling against God Himself.

Usually it’s Despots like George Bush and Richard Nixon and Hitler who push that bullshit.

Tyrant Lizard King One other really vicious Despot who did that:

James the First of England.

This Freak.

In the dedication pages of the Bible which bears his UnHoly name he’s described as “James,

by the grace of God King of England

Apparently Shakespeare had done something dreadfully naughty that pissed off this Holy Terror.

Because he wasn’t LEGALLY required to write the play Macbeth.

Now, judging by the “Divine Right of Kings” doctrine, the Noble Ancestor of James, one “king” Duncan, was a poseur.

The Pretender to the throne.

They all were, actually, but Duncan compounded his claim by having Macbeth murdered.

Much the same way James I clawed his way to the top of the Succession.

Shakespeare wrote the play to please or perhaps, (giving James’ reputation for being a cold blooded KILLER all the leeway he possibly could) APPEASE the king.

and took the story from Holished’s Chronicles of The Kings of Scotland.

Big Problem, though… Duncan was James’ grandpappy.

Macbeth had to be made the villain, witchcraft and murder charges inserted therein… to make it palatable for the Murder Master.

Otherwise Shakespeare would have been hanged.

Much the same way the “historical” societies here in Colorado Springs expressed the desire to do to Dr Churchill…

Of course I don’t think they have the stomach (guts) for physical violence… if they have to participate and thus risk having their own guts spilled.

They did railroad him out of his career and even still some of the coward punks, like Bill O’Reilly and Local Mouthpieces like “Gunny” Bob, want to see him charged with Treason.

Treason is a Capital Offense.

Here in a town where we have monuments and streets and parks dedicated to Murderers like Stanton, Mills, Custer, Chivington, Palmer…

Racists all, and dedicated to the notion that the English Race is actually the “Chosen People of God”.

Hate-Freak Bitch Sarah Palin teaches that at her blasphemous “church” and her local representatives like Michelle Malkin believe and work toward the same goal.

They also worship King James First of England, Sixth of Scotland, as though he was actually a Saint.

Space Symposium grand finale not a dud

Posted on April 2, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO 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?

Lynne Stewart visits Churchill Trial

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Eric Verlo

DENVER- For local media wonks who may have lost sight of the national significance of the Churchill v CU trial, the Denver courtroom was visited last week by radical luminary Lynne Stewart, who traveled from New York in a show of solidarity with Churchill’s fight against a systemic quashing of dissent now reaching into US academia.

Lynne and her husband Ralph Poynter scheduled their Denver visit to coincide with Professor Churchill’s testimony and the anticipated end of the 3-week trial. But arriving Wednesday and leaving Friday, they missed both. We met the couple on Thursday, the day’s session which was cut short by the closings due to severe weather.

As the lawyer to accused terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, Stewart was convicted in 2005 of conspiracy and giving material aid to a terrorist. She was sentenced to 28 months in prison, but is free on bail while awaiting the outcome of an appeal.

Denver reporters missed Stewart’s visit in their seemingly predisposition to ignore the trial’s greater ramifications, except for the lip service they pay to the Right Winged media’s national obsession with Ward Churchill and their idea of blasphemy.

No matter how inflammatory Professor Churchill’s essay, the actions taken by CU to appease Colorado politicians, represent nothing less than the gagging of dissent. And in a university, where you’d hope all the voices would be dissenting. What good are fascist professors outside of PE and Machine shop? Is school any place for a humanities faculty member who is bigoted or conservative?

Personally, I resent idiocy over the airwaves, but in the schools it is just unforgivable.

The case has generated headlines across the country and spurred fiery debates about academic freedom versus academic integrity.

This is how the Boulder Daily Camera summarizes the Churchill case. While they admit to the trial’s notoriety, they frame the argument just as Churchill’s censors would approve. A false choice between freedom and integrity.

It’s not freedom versus integrity. It’s freedom and integrity versus the subjugation of both. While Professor Churchill and allies stand for freedom of speech, and integrity of character, the college is being shown, in league with the media, to represent neither.

The Red-listed fishy

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Greenpeace is urging consumers to check whether their grocery stores are carrying red-listed seafood. These are species from fisheries endangered by depletion and susceptible to pirate fishing. Greenpeace’s idea? Report your grocer for stocking contraband.

Try as you might to peruse their red list, you have to sign in with Greenpeace to download their survey toolkit. We’ve posted their list here.

RED-List Seafood Species

Alaska Pollock
Atlanta Cod or Scrod
Atlantic Halibut (US & Canadian)
Atlantic Salmon (wild and farmed)
Atlantic Sea Scallop
Bluefin Tuna
Bigeye Tuna
Chilean Sea Bass (aka Patagonian Toothfish)
Greenland Halibut (aka black halibut, Atlantic turbot or Arrowhead flounder)
Grouper (imported to the US)
Hoki (aka grenadier)
Monkfish
Ocean Quahog
Orange Roughy
Red Snapper
Redfish (aka Ocean Perch)
Sharks
Skates and Rays
South Atlantic Albacore Tuna
Swordfish
Tropical Shrimp (wild and farmed)
Yellowfin Tuna

Are there any fish which are not red-listed?! Is a fish absent from this list because it is still plentiful and a sustainable commodity, like Pacific Salmon perhaps, or because it is not commercially available anyway? I can think of Haddock, for example, or Hake.

St Patricks Day Parade photos

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS- Peace contingent in St Patrick’s Day parade.

(Click on images to see larger crop.)

Devon decorates last minute stand-in for the Bookmobile.

Assembling at staging area, last position.

Dancers, as MaryLynn and Dave look on.

Layla and Andy

Kat, Debbie and Lily

Sarah, Dave and Jake on Kazoo.

Friend of Ryan and Ryan.

Amanda.

Distributing the flags

Mike looks back as we take off.

With motorcycle escort.

Eric and Devon.

Video grab from Mike Coletta.

Lead banner. All subsequent photos by Devon.

Dancers

Tony leads drumming

Drummers

Pattie (three screen grabs from Loring’s video)

Layla and Andy

Looking down parade route

Amanda

Cheers

Eric waves Iraq flag

Amanda rides ahead

Behind Amanda, are Jonathan, Rita, Loring and Marie.

More peace contingent two blocks back.

Jonathan, tricked out bike, and Don’t Tread On Me.

Flags of occupied lands.

Reflection in Plaza of the Rockies.

At disbanding point, this police officer suddenly begins shouting MOVE MOVE MOVE!

Patty triumphant.

International Women’s Day

Posted on March 8, 2009 by NMT

International Woman Day [Andy writes:] “TODAY is International Women’s Day (IWD). it is marked on March 8 every year. It is a major day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women. See anything in your local newspaper??” –Even in the international press, the coverage is chiefly from the Third World: New Delhi, Xinhua, al-Jazeera, AngolaPress, Jamaican Observer…

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