Tag Archives: Christ

Harry Potter meets Laura Bush

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time to reform sex offender laws

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The National Security Police State needs many different demons to be seen struggling against. Their holy trilogy of Satanic opponents is Drug Users, Terrorists, and Pedophiles.

In all three cases, all due process and logic just gets totally thrown to the wind when police lodge accusations of this type against oftentimes quite common people. Right Wing Christian retribution becomes the only law of the land then, as political McCarthyism becomes criminal McCarthyism. See Call to Reform Sex Offender Laws Now and note that America’s greatest living historian, Howard Zinn, is one of the signatories.

US helicopter gunships threaten Pakistan mosque in siege

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The embattled US military puppet regime of Musharraf is using US made helicopter gunships to threaten continued attack on an Islamabad mosque where young students are holed up inside. What an image for the entire Muslim world to see.

This dictator Musharraf is setting himself for an exit in the same style as the Shah of Iran. This US backed attack on this major Pakistani mosque comes along with the mass US murders of Afghanistan civilians, the Pentagon’s use of collective punishment across Iraq, attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the pardoning of the criminal, Scooter Libby, and in the days to come, the crumbling of Pakistan’s dictatorship. What next for the Bush Administration? Probably a joint US-Israeli bombing of Iran in the days ahead.

And which countries are truly into Jihad? It appears that it is the Christian and Jewish ones. Payback for the Iranian hostage crisis, too, and for Iran’s government having successfully defended their country against the US backed Saddam Hussein. This is an unholy alliance that wants to run the affairs of the entire Muslim world, and most especially that portion of it stretching from Iraq to Iran to Pakistan.

And what was the supposed main crime of this mosque not reported in the AFP article? It was leading a campaign against the abuse and torture of Musharraf’s political prisoners. It was for their campaign against Musharraf’s prostitution of Pakistan to the Bush Administration. For that, the mosque had to be taken out. But the net result, is that the US and its puppet are destabilizing the entire country of Pakistan, and YES, the entire region, too. The Muslim countries will eventually unite against the Bush led thugs when pushed too far. They don’t like US government terrorism. And neither should the American population.

Mohammed Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini’s legacy

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Yasser Arafat’s legacy is death. Fatah is now completely connected with total betrayal in the eyes of the Palestinians. How could it be otherwise now that the US and Israel are all that props up this monstrous remnant of the Palestinian cause called Fatah?

Arafat looked for complete personal power and becoming the ‘president’ of an ethnic Palestinian enclave, and he got that. It was a crumb, and for that crumb he betrayed the idea of struggling for a multi-ethnic Israel-Palestine, where 2 peoples could live together without Apartheid or other forms of ethnic discrimination.

Now we have nothing more than a slow moving Christian Jewish Crusade against the Muslim World, with elements of multiple genocides popping up everywhere. The Evil Empire from Washington DC marches its legions forward still.

Let me show you Bad Writing

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New Life self awarenessPoor Richard writes that his bookstore will neither carry the Ted Haggard expose nor host a book signing by its author Mike Jones, sex worker to reluctant habitue, Ted Haggard. Skorman can do what he wishes, but to say the reason is because the book is badly written is a cop out. Any bookseller in this city has to admit they carry a not inconsiderable mass of atrocious dreck. Bad books sell, and alas Richard’s stand for a higher literary standard is the first to my knowledge.

I think Jones’ choice of an incompetent writer to ghost his Haggard Days memoir is likely spot-on for a Colorado Springs audience. What’s the best selling book here? The home-grown LEFT BEHIND series! I guarantee you a fourth grader has not encountered less inspired writing.

Not that our city is atypical, even today’s NYT bestsellers play to a descending literary IQ. From Dan Brown to whoever is your cheesy favorite I’ve no doubt. This phenomena was clocked most distinctly when Stephen King was given the 2003 National Book Award for his contribution to [the sales of] American Letters. What a banner year it was, 2003.

So why pick on poor male escort Mike Jones? I think it’s pure political cowardice. The New Life Crew and their fallen gay-bashing leader have done irreparable harm to the progress of acceptance of homosexuals. Here’s a chance to teach them something about from where comes their misplaced hatred, and Mike Jones stands without allies to do it. Jones is not an opportunist, he’s a hero doing a dirty job. Maybe the right man for the dirty job, to crack a cheap joke, but if Jones was truly out for himself, he’d have taken a mega-fortune from a conglomeration of fundie gay-hating institutions interested in keeping Haggard in the pulpit. Remember Bill O’Reilly’s non-consensual phone-sex while penetrating himself with a lifelike vibrating phallus? He and Fox paid an undisclosed fraction of a BILLION to make that story go away.

If I knew THE BOOKMAN could handle the heat of accusations that we were only doing it for the attention –we’ve exceeded our limit, thank you KVOR creeps particularly– my bookstore would of course host this reading and book signing. And I commend Jones for tastefully steering past whatever might have been the unwelcome lascivious play by play.

I believe the Ted Haggard comeuppance is of capital importance for Colorado Springs, not to gloat about Haggard’s suffering or about the humiliation of his flock, but to lift the veil from their self-hatred of homosexuals. Haggard is unrepentant about this by the way, and if I might offer a simplified analysis, he hates gays because he hates himself. What reason has he the temerity to suggest that we should hate them?

Let’s welcome Mike Jones to our town. Jones unmasked the Haggard hate monster, let him claim the lair. Jones can satiate our curiosity, feed the spectacle, accept our thanks for showing personal integrity, and move this story along. I most certainly think it took a lot of bravery for Mike Jones to do what he did. He showed the kind of courage we can’t even summon, as we deliberate about whether to extend him our hand.

Perhaps as a community of independent booksellers we can do it. Why ever are we afraid of the religious right? They don’t buy our books. When Christians do buy a book they buy it new from an Inspirational Bookstore, because it feels like a more deliberate investment in their faith, I’ve heard it explained, sort of like paying down on a tithe or Indulgence.

Do I fear the Fundamentalist wrath? If they’re under-educated, under-literate, bigoted ditto-heads, of course I do. I fear them like I would Brown Shirts or union busters. Fundamentalist have a terrible tradition for that kind of immorality. Ask anyone in retail, if a customer declares themselves to be a Christian, you actually have to watch them closely because experience has shown they are more likely to try to steal or cheat. Probably because that’s the sort of conflicted person who is drawn to simplistic religious dogma in the first place.

Of course I fear them. But Ted Haggard’s fall must not go without every spotlight we can summon. He’s still behaving like a bastard and we really should shout him down. Jones has given us Haggard’s Achilles Heinie/ [Meth]Habit, let’s use it! If no one is really going to step up to ask Mike Jones to town, I most certainly will. I’m sorry I came late to this discussion but good grief!

Birth Mothers Exploited by Adoption

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You’ve seen those horrid little shop fronts run by the Religious Right. You know, the ones that offer ‘counselling’ to pregnant women. They say that they are there to help save women from the trauma they would undergo if they were to terminate their pregnancy by having an abortion.

It’s all pure bullshit though! The real trauma for a young woman is not so much from having an abortion, as these zealous creeps suggest, but rather is the trauma that would occur if the pregnant woman was to go on with her pregnancy and then give it up for adoption. It is about the worst trauma that a woman can undergo in her life, and yet the Religious Right ‘counsellors’ will pretend that giving their baby away will actually be less traumatic to the young woman than having an abortion would be. They are liars.

Yes, the Religious Right are like snakes in the grass of the Garden of Eden offering up a sweet apple to the innocent and inexperienced younger women of America. I personally despise these people with all my heart, and can only hope that their syrupy lies will never effect the lives of any young women that live around me as friends, family, and neighbors. Unfortunately, I know that many young women in our society will be bullied by the obnoxious and inconsiderate religious rhetoric of the Christian Right. The Christian Right thrives on child abuse, and their favorite targets are young child/ women in their early teens. Especially those that have gotten pregnant due to being denied access to appropriate birth control and appropriate education about their own bodies and their own psyches.

There are several national organizations that help battle the propaganda of the Religious Right about adoption supposedly being the best way to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Birth Mothers Exploited by Adoption is one of those. They struggle to help themselves, to help also to tell the truth to young pregnant women and their friends, and to also help those adopted children that want to find their birth parents, since the laws often make it next to impossible for adopted children to do this, even when they become adults!

Here are some of the tales of tragedy and trauma coming to those women that were coerced into giving away their children. This is where the real trauma is, and it is not from having an abortion. Birth Mothers Exploited by Adoption could just as well named themselves ‘Young Women Bullied, Brutalized, and Exploited by Right Wing Religion’. That would be even more to the point.

Another gay battlefield

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One million hate filled Fundamentalist Christians marching in a demonstration against Satan inspired homosexuals? A projected festival of 3 million Gays and friends and family of this segment of society to follow? Moo… Yes, Dorothy, we are not in Kansas any more. Gays have our support in their battle against the Religious Nuts who want to crucify them, whether it be in the US, Nigeria, Moscow, or Brazil.

Sun sets on Judeo-Christian legacy

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All roads lead to Rome. The sun never sets on the British Empire. What’s it going to be for the US empire? I’m guessing something from PT Barnum.

The sun has yet to set on a bigger bunch of uneducated self-obsessed blunderers. What’s the age most people acquire empathy? You know, when we learn the world doesn’t revolve simply to serve us? America, pre-adolescents gone wild. Id-less egos unbridled.

But let’s not flatter ourselves, we most certainly are bridled. We are the US-Israeli empire. Israel being not merely another state, nor a territory or protectorate, but a fully bloomed brain transplant. Between us, who calls the shots?

And while we’re talking empire, should we quibble about the relevance of nationalities? Over the course of the last century the world became America’s de-facto empire. American capitalism overcame international sovereignties the same way it conquered The West, rushing in to squat with commerce. Today national boundaries serve simply to thwart the uniting of their people’s common interests. Fiefdoms divide the working population into manageable groups. But Capitalists own the world, and entities like China and Russia are rogue upstarts to be kept in line, presiding over markets still considered negligible.

Every past empire extended to the reaches of its known worlds. There were always lands known to lie beyond, but they were not part of the world that mattered. Islam, as always, lords over populations almost too poor to matter, until they fight back, hence the renewed effort to keep them underfoot.

But there is more to life than money.

As to the hierarchy of the American Empire, we are Israel’s veto on the Security Council. We are the enforcers to “Israel’s right to exist” in place of the Palestinians. We are the siblings who run the family business while the oldest brother studies the Talmud. We keep the money flowing to the temple, er, Promised Land, though we ourselves are not invited. Israel, beacon of democracy in the Middle East, is a democracy in the Roman sense, only for its citizens. It is not for non-Jews.

There’s a Jewish Anti Defamation League to keep anyone from complaining about that.

An axiom for America? Let us know our place. A self-Chosen People employ a narcissist brute to do the heavy lifting. American Empire handles the task like a pit bull, dumb and disposable. Raised with a short attention span and brutal temperament, Americans rule the junkyard. I think I’m most upset at Israel’s arrogance that their bastard Goy offspring could never bite them in the ass.

News from the Pope… again…

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I wonder if Bishop “vote republican or rot in hell” Sheridan is going to jump on this bandwagon, but the Pope has said that allowing Native Americans their own culture and religion would be a step backward, and made the preposterous claim that they were just “silently waiting and hoping for Christianity” to push them into the lowest levels of Latin American societies ooops I mean “liberate them from the slavery of having their own national identity” ooops again, I mean “from the slavery of their ignorance”

There hasn’t been much outcry from our Diocese about the fact that the Uber Rich buying up all the land bordering the National Forest and building an almost impenetrable fence of “No Trespassing-Private Property” to limit the Medicine People, including and especially Native Americans, from access to the Medicine Lands that were “given” to us by the Laramie Treaty and later reinforced by the Native American Religious Freedom Act of 1973.

Pretty fucking bad when we had to have an Act of Congress to affirm that the First Amendment provisions about Freedom of Religion actually applied to ALL citizens, even Native Americans.

But for the past few years the Army, at the behest of the Gated Community Rich Bitches like the ones at Cedar Heights (which is technically on Garden of the Gods treaty land) has been enforcing arbitrary rules which keep the people off the people’s land.

The rich folks have had the National Forest set aside as a publicly subsidized private playground for them and their snot-nosed brats.

The Reagan Counter-Revolution finally makes it to France

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Let’s face it, America, the ability of George W. Bush to foul up the world was done with the complicity of the European middle class, that always thumbs its nose at our country’s supposed backwardness compared to themselves. But Rightist Europeans have been to the rest of the world, and still are, every bit as much of a problem as our own homegrown nutty Christian/military-police/redneck/ businessman alliance is.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in France is a true setback to the rest of the world, and to France, too. France can look forward to attacks on immigrants, destruction of its social net, and a decreased standard of living for its population in the days ahead. Reaganism is at last arriving in France, and that country will have to learn the hard way how destructive that will be to their own sense of national worth.

Jesus take the wheel

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I was late coming to this country anthem. The chorus hit me today as I heard a succession of barefooted kids sing Jesus Take the Wheel solos at an elementary school talent show. Believe me the nuance was courtesy of cute soft voices timidly waivering off key. Last year it was Proud to be an American.

JTTW must be the current theme of our Christian nation, and could it be more horrifying? A bunch of Christians, driving too fast, in trouble, about to kill themselves and their babies and what do they want to do, shut their eyes, throw their hands up in the air and ask Jesus to step in. A touching show of faith to be sure, but as regards our nation’s deep trouble, the rest of us are in the bathwater. It was hands in the air that got us here; do you want to trust their crusader god to get us out?

Taking your hands off the wheel would be just fine if it meant scooting over and having a qualified driver take the wheel. Otherwise it simply means abrogating responsibility for dooming everyone because of your inattentive judgment, including a tragic misreading of spiritual guidance. It means burying your Master’s Talents instead of making something of them.

Jesus take the wheel from these dumbfos and take their licenses too. And their voter registrations.

America’s War for Terrorism

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One of the most bizarre aspects of the age we live in, is that the world’s major terrorist promoting country is now waging what its marketeers have the incredible gall to call, ‘The War on Terror’! Just this week in the CS Justice and Peace Center, our resident Right Wing nut who attends certain events for some reason or other (maybe monitoring), was telling our book club about the delights of cluster bombs and napalm. What a world class creep, right?

He is a retired lifer in the US military who wanted us peaceniks to understand the lighter side of weaponry, no less. The side he sees, but peaceniks can’t simply because they are so blinded by goodness instead of the ‘logic’ welded by our lifer. This creep is also big on supporting the current so-called ‘War on Terrorism’. He says that with some savages you just cannot negotiate with. And of course, he represents the side of civilization… lol. Colonel Klink to Colonel Napalm attending a book club in his senior years… We live in strange world.

So what we have is people in love with nuclear weapons, napalm, and cluster bombs, all pretending to be mobilizing to stop terrorism, and all the while our press reports all their ‘thoughts’ with straight face! Now we have the master of US ’80s Central American pushed terrorism, John Negroponte, in Africa trying to stop ‘genocide’ in order to help Black people, no less! Oh thank you, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms! Thank you, Bush.

And it’s like we are all supposed to forget that Osama bin Laden was Made in US, too? War on terrorism, stop genocide, stop Osama…stop Saddam… oh stop it now, Fine Fellers you are indeed! Sure it’s a war on terrorism. Sure it is. We believe you for sure. (They play us for total fools it seems.)

But my favorite group of terrorist monsters backed by the US masters of the ‘War on Terrorism’ is the Colombian death squad government. Our group of anti-terrorists down at the White House love these chain saw welding creeps. They consider Colombia an American success story even.

They would boast about it more, the neocons, except Clinton’s gang are the ones that got these lovelies really sawing their way into action. That’s when the DC- DP crowd weren’t bombing The Danube and Sudan’s pharmaceutical factory back then. Oh, and plus murdering down kids in Waco in all their huff and rush.

Let’s not forget, too, all the good deeds of America’s anti-terrorist league for sure. Everybody’s on board this ‘War Against Terror’ though, from Hillary to Condi to the neighbor next door! From ‘Drug War’ to ‘War on Terrorism’, nothing plays too absurd in Orwellian America that can’t be launched into orbits of nonsensical hyperbole. Long Live the War on Satan! Stop the Eastern pedophile evil! So let’s generally Pace ourselves a step at a time, Civilized Christian Crusaders. Long shall live the CCC vs terrorism!

And so what about any collateral damage taking place outside of their dream world? Today at the vigil the sign PEACE got a rather somber response from motorist USA. People seemed to be thinking more than usual. Wonder what might have provoked that change? Wonder if there really is any change that will last more than a week or two?

Kurt Vonnegut goes

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Kurt Vonnegut lectures at HarvardM and I just read Harrison Bergeron together two nights ago. I remembered the story from high school, where we also read Slaughterhouse Five to my father’s consternation. I like to think it was just the language he objected to.
 
My favorite essay of KV’s at In These Times was about governance guesswork.
 
Kurt Vonnegut could say it all and I don’t think he was through.

I just came across an excerpt someone posted from Jailbird:

“What could be so repulsive after all, during the Great Depression, especially, and with yet another war for natural wealth and markets coming, in a young man’s belief that each person could work as well as he or she was able, and should be rewarded, sick or well, young or old, brave or frightened, talented or imbecilic, according to his or her simple needs? How could anyone treat me as a person with a diseased mind if I thought that war need never come again–if only common people everywhere would take control of the planet’s wealth, disband their national armies and forget their national boundaries; if only they would think of themselves ever after as brothers and sisters, yes, and as mothers and fathers, too, and children of all other common people–everywhere. The only person who would be excluded from such friendly and merciful society would be one who took more wealth than he or she needed at any time.”

And this from an interview with Joel Bleifuss in 2003:

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is “The Mask of Sanity ” by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

Clarifying a few terms…

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Because some have expressed disdain at the mere thought of being considered right wing apologists… aka people who wish to accommodate and justify right wing philosophy, here are a few things to remember: Catchwords and phrases, talking points, something you might see on a bumper sticker; using these will probably get you tagged as a right wing loon. And in at least some cases the tag would fit perfectly.

examples: Love it or leave it (one recently) The Police are always right, If you have done nothing wrong why would you fear the police?, Support Our Troops, These Colors Never Run.

Recycling myths like: left wing liberals were the reason we lost in Nam… FALSE. Right Wing planners like Westmoreland, Johnson, Nixon, Al Hague, and the “Super Patriots” who supported them, were much more of a coherent and consistent reason for the loss of the VietNam War by the United States. The new crop of such losers is causing America to be drawn into yet another defeat.

Also contributing much to the American loss in VietNam was the courage and resourcefulness of the VietMinh, that’s Charley to some…

For those who don’t remember anything about it, these guys used a mix of primitive and modern technologies, small arms, improvised explosives and equipment taken from American, Australian, French and South Vietnamese soldiers, tactics which were also a mix of ancient and modern, to defeat the above named governments, even against a Shock and Awe campaign of greater magnitude than the one currently being played in Iraq.

Also like Iraq, there was never a war declared between the United States and The Democratic Republic (Hanoi).

Much as it pisses off those who see the POWs as uncompromising heroes, (some were) and the Hanoi Hilton as a hellhole, (it was) it should also be remembered that the Hanoi Hilton is about a standard in third world jails. And since the North Vietnamese didn’t do a “show trial” followed by an execution every time they captured an American airman, the treatment they accorded the Americans was one hell of a lot better than that accorded to the VietCong prisoners by the Saigon government.

a lot of Americans will scream loudly that American soldiers didn’t torture captured Charleys. Given the readiness these same people have shown to rationalize torture at Gitmo and worse places, i tend to doubt that. Probably not widespread but not nonexistent either.

But on the other hand, the Saigon government DID torture and summarily execute captured “terrorists” “rebels” “insurgents”.

Leave us remind everybody that the Americans captured in North VietNam and Cambodia and Laos had exactly the same legal status as the captured Charleys had in the South. No more, no less.

It was a combination of supporting an openly repressive government and the determination and resourcefulness of the “enemy” that dashed the American intervention in SE Asia.

The same things that are now dragging down America in South WEST Asia.

Empires are destined to fall, usually very soon after they are declared to be Empires. Such as the one declared by George Bush Senior when he proclaimed a New World Order, which is being dishonorably carried on by his son, King George the Incredibly Stupid.

Another talking point is that VietNam and Iraq were fought for American freedom.

They were not, nor has any war in which America has been engaged since 1814. To say otherwise is to propagate a myth, if you believe that myth, if you know it is false but say it anyway it is ramped up all the way to a Deliberate Lie.

The military did not fight for our freedom, they did not give us our freedom, or our rights, we do NOT OWE them our obedience, or the willing surrender of our rights.

Especially annoying (not to mention stupid) is the repeated attempt to make us believe that Freedom means we are free to do as we are told, to say only what we are allowed to say, and that we have some moral obligation to support the wars started by people who have anointed themselves our “Leaders”.

Some of my fellow Christians are of the strong delusion that God has commanded us to obey George Bush because he is supposedly “OUR” King.
This particular myth was also used by the Tories to denounce the Continental Congress and the rebels in the army during the Revolution.

It was shouted from pulpits across the Colonies by pastors, who, like Ted Haggard and Benny Hinn and Franklin Graham and Dobson… had sold their priesthood and their souls to a tyrant.

Here’s a quick formula to remember Shock and Awe = the use of fear as a weapon = Terrorism.

The proponents of Shock and Awe, like George and his supporters, are therefore Terrorists.

You don’t like that, try beating it out of me, and all the while try to forget that that too, is Terrorism.

Miscalculating non-violent for non-litigious

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Not wanting to tell us his name
(Clarification: Esther has just been thrown to the ground. Eric is not on the ground by choice, and Elizabeth is about to be pulled away.)

In the aftermath of our dashed efforts at the St Patrick’s Day parade and the abrupt violence which shocked everyone, the seven arrestees took a conciliatory tact to reflect on the actions and reactions of that day before leveling recriminations. The issue after all was about promoting peace, not fighting back. Where did being gracious get us?

The police seized the opportunity to announce they’ve received no complaints about their manner, going so far even to solicit bystander videos as if to suggest that the documentation will support their conduct.

Though we’d given plenty of interviews, our quiet tone gave the local newspapers leeway to print untruths about what happened that day. The Gazette has now suggested the marchers acted to disrupt the festivities, to obstruct the parade, in a fashion intended to provoke arrests.

The Independent has been able to hide behind offering only the Police Department’s account, that the peace marchers were attempting to participate “without a permit,” and that to an “untrained eye” what might appear to have been a “chokehold” was actually a “pressure-compliant hold.”

Even the local internet jackasses have jumped in on the action to chide us for duplicity in obtaining our permit, giving an uncritical platform for parade organizer John O’Donnell to cry foul.

Well GOD-DAMNIT are you fascists in for a surprise! This treatment is more of exactly what we received on the parade route. And just like the policemen who thought they could set an example and brutalize us unto a side street, this disrespect is not going to stand.

Here’s where it’s going to get you.

Mr. O’Donnell and his partners in City Hall are going to face a civil lawsuit for violating the 1st Amendment rights of 46 marchers. They will face another lawsuit for conducting a public event which discriminated among the participants. You want to throw an all-white, good ol’ boy, pro-war parade these days, you better say so. You can’t of course, and O’Donnell and COS will never put green lipstick on one of these again.

I’m not saying the St Patrick’s Day Parade shouldn’t feature a Marine recruiter’s blow-up doll, or crew-cutted uniformed Pee-wee Killers for Christ, or Hooters sex-workers for gracious sakes. I’m just saying that you’ve got to allow room for another community aesthetic as well.

The Colorado Springs Police Department will face charges for violating the 4th Amendment rights of the seven arrestees, and of three more who were brutalized, with a measure of the 9th Amendment thrown in for the indignity. In the meantime we’ll explore what degree of police brutality is actually sanctioned by the city. I don’t care how much you may hate criminals, all persons have a right to be protected from physical abuse.

We may lobby for special rehab for certain of the policemen. I’d like to see that Officer Erwin “Jimmy” Paladino is not given the authority to remove a kitten from a tree before he’s had counseling.

The Gazette will be charged with slander, plain and simple. You don’t call a 65-year-old woman’s injuries “rugburn” and think you’re going to chuckle your way to market. Ms. Fineron and myself will have our day in court, we’ll demonstrate our actions were not premeditated and for discrediting our integrity we’re going after Hillbilly Gazette editor Sean Paige. Slam-dunk what an asshole.

The Independent’s slander is embarrassing. Michael de Yoanna needs to cover both sides of a story. Our permit was on the books, thank you very much. Quoting a police blotter to say we had no permit, without noting the error, is deliberately misleading. And let me say something about that “chokehold.” Two of our marchers, the very two in fact who were choked, were both corrections department veterans. Both knew precisely the illegality of how they were being handled, and calmly told their respective assailants as much.

The videotapes and pictures will bear out these facts. Perhaps this is the reason that the television media coverage was fairly balanced from the start.

Wanted for questioningSpecial note
The police will need the identity of this man that he can be charged with assault upon Elizabeth Fineron, leading to her fall and subsequent dragging across the pavement. As the Gazette put it, What a drag.

Complaints
Let’s say a word about complaints to the police. If you want to complain about the police conduct, you’ll find they don’t have forms for that purpose. They walk you straight in to see an internal affairs officer and he’ll sit and interrogate you without the aid of a lawyer, or a tape recording that you can keep. Best to write a letter describing your complaint and send it in.

Matt Sanchez, new star of the pornball Right

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Liberalism is not the great refuge of the American homosexual, but rather it is the Far Right that is! All one has to do is get too old to sustain a Gay porn career, anounce that you regret your ‘liberal’ hedonistic past, and then it’s welcome open arms a head into a new life style with the nutster Christian Right, as a newly reformed ‘faggot’. God be praised!

Instead of sex with another man, you are now having sex with Ann Coulter and Condi Rice! Still a career whore at least… Check out Salon’s article on Matt Sanchez, new star of the pornball Right.

Now, to be a gay Christian you don’t need to even stay in the closet. In fact, it’s quite welcomed if you parade around town your sinful, and supposedly previous ‘liberalism’, in flamboyant drag. The drag show has never been more popular than it is now with conservatives. In fact, it seems to be the favorite act inside their Big Tent of sinners.

Out Whenever?

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I got to hand it to liberal Democrats, they are totally behind the idea of ‘Out of Iraq Now!’ That is when Out Now actually means December 31, 2007, almost 10 months away!

It reminds me of the debate about the meaning of the word ‘is’ and if Slick’s Monica blowjob constituted sex, or not. Now, we have the word ‘now’ meaning much later than it is usually meant, it seems? ‘Now’ is now to actually mean …then in 9 and 2/3 months away from today!

Maxine Waters has gotten ‘tough’ with Bush, and says she will not supplement Iraqi War funding (add to it), unless US troops are pulled Out Now (out in 9 2/3 months), that would surely only apply if there is no ’emergency’ with Iran to come along. Oh how very reasonable, Maxine. Certainly there will be no ’emergency’ with Bush and Dick in charge…. lol.

As to our very own Democratic Party Colorado Senator, Kenneth Salazar? He probably is worried still that Iraqi people might get hurt if we leave without removing their oil first? That’s the type of people many of these liberal Demnocrats truly are. Caring and responsible folk. And of course I’m being sarcastic now.

As the Democrats play their word games, the Iraqi and Afghan people continue to have to put up with foreign military occupation of their countries. Shame on these politicians for their continual bullshit. The word now should mean now, not some date in the future contingent on whatever taking place.

Out Whenever! What a catchy slogan NOT.

OUT NOW! and only when NOW! is truly now, not after Christmas.. whenever and whatever.

US troops in African fender benders

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Two US troops died in Ethiopia this week. Bush’s soldiers are adrft from their stations in Djibouti a lot these days and we can look for more f’ender benders’ ahead. What with the US Pentagon directing deployment of Ethiopian troops into Somalia and Ugandan troops into Somalia, these traffic accidents will happen.

That last is an interesting item. Ugandan troops are being sent to Somalia as ‘peacekeepers’! Wow, I’m surprised they can find time from fighting the 20 year war taking place n the Northern part of Uganda next to Southern Sudan, all to come across and ‘peacekeep’ for Dubya in Somalia.

Holy Warriors and African Crusades! That’s all Africa needs now, a ‘clash of civilizations’, Christians vs Muslims. Meanwhile, uranium kleeps coming up missing from the Congo (1oo bars or so). Oh well, it’s not really all that radioactive, is it?

Same bait, same switch

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Troops needed to watch the Mexico borderWell looky who’s used the protect the border bait and switch before! Ninety years ago, same illegal immigration scare, same perp.
 
I happened across some posters used to recruit soldiers during WWI. Here they raise the Mexico bugaboo to ease worries that enlistment into the military would automatically mean duty in the trenches. “No More Men Are Needed” at the western front. Oh really?! It reminds me of something Air Force recruiters were telling Colorado College students on Thanksgiving 2005. US troops would be out of Iraq by Christmas. Potential enlistees need not fear being sent to Iraq because America was already pulling out. Public opinion had already forced their hand, they said, and we were pulling out.

America government offers up capitalist corruption to replace Islam

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As most all of America sits passively waiting for the ‘surge’ to be officially declared as a new war, this time against Iran and Syria, it is a nice time to reflect on what DC is offering all these countries it ‘surges’ into? Why not look at other countries that the US has ‘surged’ against already? How about Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Somalia for example? All ‘threatened’ by Islamic extremists as US imperialist propaganda has continually sung? All needing ‘liberation’ by Christian capitalists coming from abroad, solely to rescue Muslims from Islamic thugs? Isn’t that the diet of nonsense that our idiotic media feeds us night and day?

So what do we have to offer in exchange? Real simple. Crony capitalism, where some tiny grupito of national elite is given billions to cooperate with our US/ European based international monopoly corporations. Then the paper money is thrown out into the wind, where it then trickles down into countrywide heroin production (Afghanistan), European vacations for a cabal of fascist minded Christian Lebanese political thugs, and in Somalia, trips to educations in the US, where warlords’ sons can join the Marine Corp, and then go back as possible US backed heads of state! See Son of Aideed That’s where the money is!

Can you imagine if some foreign power was to invade the US and destroy all the Christian churches here replaceing it only with crony capitalism allied with the occupying powers? We would be home growing a whole plethora of home grown Osama bin Washingtons and Osama bin Jeffersons, all crazy as hell Christian fanatics! Oily Dick and Dumb Dubya would be the far secular Left at that time. Religion will trump total ‘free market’ corruption tied to imperialism any day. It’s like the Pentagon is handing out grow your own Muslim fanatics chia kits everywhere they are being sent! All at the bargain basement price of trillions to American citizens. What a deal we’re getting!

Questions to St Peter

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Sometime in October search engines found Ask Saint Peter .com. This was an experimental A. I. project scheduled to address what people were doing with their lives. It’s online but yet inoperable. The splash page features the picture of a young Iraqi child recovering in a US field hospital emergency room. He looks hauntingly at the camera. Text hidden below the picture quotes the Gospel about a camel having an easier time squeezing through the eye of a needle than a rich man getting into heaven. Clicking anywhere on the page addresses an email to St. Peter and an increasing number of people have begun to write.

Somehow these web surfers expect 1) that St. Peter is all knowing, and 2) that he can divine the future. Their questions range from trying to test him, to asking things they do not know, to asking about their fate, to making confessions. Here are some of their emails: (all last names have been abbreviated).

pweezy: so am i going to hell
andres: hey soy andres kiero saver k camisa tengo
shereen: What types of questions can I ask here?
Alle: What is josh c. doing right now?
dudy: how old am i?
Elizabeth: What color of shirt I’m I wearing today?
kyle: am i going to loose my job
kyle: how many girls have i had sex with?
rhonda m: i want to know if my marriage is going to end?
Katherine: Saint Peter, AM I going to go out with christian?
Vic: I’m not sure what to ask because I have so many questions? Will we my partener and i have a sucessful life? Will I be a good mother and wife? Why do i feel so hopeless? What about financial stability? Why do people lie?
Stacie: whos this
alicia: how many people are in my apartment? will me and my girlfriend be together for much longer? how much longer will we be together?
steve A: will I make it to the league?
jocelyn: if youre not ready to be a christian because your having too much fun being a lose christian, does god pretty much hate you ?
whitney c: Father peter am i going to hell
kyle: what color sweater is jordan wearing?
sydney: I have a question to ask, can u help me?
Andrew: will i go to hill?
lily m: is jose going to hell????
mike: whats this
danny: am i going to hell or heaven
jordon m: am i going to hell if so please email me
jamie: Who is with me? Peter will you answer my questions?: who is with me? please answer. Peter will you answer my question: where am I right now? when will i die? tell me now please
Justin: Why is your picture so scary?
brandon u: am i goin to hell
briana: who am i on the phone with right now?
caroline g: Do what?
tony: what am i doing
Ana: am i going to hell?
ed: Will I go to hell?
(lucas as) jonny: wats my name
jessica: Am i going to hell
brenda: HOW DOES THIS WORK?
chrissy: what is my best friends name?
curtis: what am i doing tommorrow?
julia M: What is my best friends name?
(julia as) giovanni: what’s my friends name?
julia M: Hi i want to know if you know things about me. I want to ask you questions that only i would know. Who is my best friend? Who is next to me? Which neighbor am i with write now? What neighbor is at my house right now? Where do I live?
junior mafia: is this real?
Jordan: Is my fiancee going to move back to Florida?
Alba: im i going to hell?
(blank): Who am i talkinh to and what is their number
Julia (again): Who am i next to? When am i going to die?
roshawna: what color shirt am u wearing?
mb: are you there?
Michael: are you there?
Ruby: Am I going to go to hell? I am a practicing lesbian. I also, however, attend my local church every Sunday. I have talked to my fellow Christian about this and they suggested trying to settle down with a nice man. I tried but couldn’t seem to bring myself to even kiss him.
Another confession of mine is that I’ve dabbled in Astratu. It is a new revivement of norse paganism. I find it deeply interesting.
Sometimes I aim for rabbits on the road if I see them. My vision goes red within this time. I find it highly disturbing.
Finally… My darkest truth is that I once ran over a man at 90 mph and was too scared to stop and help him. I have never shared this horror with anyone.
Please give me guidance as to my destiny after death. Will Satan be in control of my soul? Will I suffer eternal torture as the Holy Bible says?

I need a joint

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I need a joint, but religious people won’t let me have one. I need a joint at times because I suffer from the itch (pruritus, caused by mild pedal edema and skin allergies). No seriously, I do, really and it can be quite uncomfortable.

Marijuana relieves this condition but I won’t smoke it as long as it is illegal and my smoking it could put me in jail, wreck my ability to hold a license to work in my profession, etc. There is another medicine available fo this condition, but it is not over the counter for the same reason that marijuana isn’t over the counter legally. Religion makes for bad medicine, that’s why.

Religion has a long tradition of practicing medicine without a license. Look at all thee food laws in the Torah, Bible, etc. Think of what Hindus are not allowed to eat? Muslims prohibit pork amongst the meats because infested pork causes disease. If you are a Muslim, any medicine such as a ham sandwich is prohibited. Not even with a doctor’s prescription may you have one. Similarly, alcoholism is prevented theoretically for Muslims, by being flat out banned. Uh, for good health reasons I am sure. Hindus are not even allowed good chicken soup! Food is medicine and all religions practice medicine, often quite bad medicine, with their food fetishes. But they practice medicine in other ways too.

Christianity is just as bizarre as the other faiths are in regards to their ideas of what is good medicine. But at least with God’s food laws Christians don’t seem to obey them much anymore. But Christians do yank coca out of coke, the codeine out of cough syrup (despite it truly being the best drug for the condition of having a cough), and marijuana out of personal use and paper making, and make Atarax (a great med for itch of throat and skin) prohibited without an expensive visit to a doctor’s office.

Strangely enough, almost anything that reduces affliction in an effective manner is viewed with paranoia by Christians! Notice how ‘drug stores’ no longer are called that? That’s because drugs DO work, so our new word for drug distribution centers is now the word ‘pharmacy’. That’s because prescriptions most often don’t work, so they are considered superior to what does actually work within our overly religious society! That would be drugs chosen through one’s own efforts, rather than the efforts of the priestly docs.

Have you ever noticed how the major industrialized country with the most religious Christian nuttyness, the USA, has the nuttiest, most preposterous medical system in the entire industrialized world? It is not a mere coincidence. Lots of medicine here is considered good only because it hurts like Hell, delivers you to a Hellish-like state, are delivers you directly to Hell. Not a mere coincidence. Christians like Hell more than they like good medicine. That was a fact way before the Prohibition Era.

Well, since I don’t have the money to get a $5 drug (Atarax) with a $150 visit to the doctor’s office, nor have the illegal mota at hand, tonite I will just whip my feet with thorned branches in the manner of some wild extreme Christian penitent once again, as the itch comes across me after the swelling of my feet and the itch begins, shortly after the socks come off (pedal edema). And if I have a hard cough from a cold then I’ll do without the codeine, all because my Christian neighbors are all so damn nutty as Hell. They’ll let you rot ’till half dead, then spend a million dollars keeping you half alive. I need a joint. It’s too depressing thinking about it.

Success and the street action

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Rise upI find there’s some confusion as to what it means to take to the streets. It’s not just protest, it’s not just calling attention to oneself. The efficacy of street protest is not to be judged by how it influences lawmakers, or how well it mobilizes support. Taking to the streets is about establishing a beach head.
 
On the flip side of the military analogy, have you wondered in this age of high tech weapons, aircraft carriers and unmanned drones, why a military force would still need foot soldiers at all? At the same time, how is it that the Vietcong, and now the Iraqis insurgents, could resist our mighty aerial bombardments with nothing but relatively unarmed men?

These are leading questions of course because neither bombs, nor laws, nor ideology, can hold ground. Until you can run the infantry in to plant a flag, the land is not yours. And if you don’t send enough manpower, you can’t keep it.

This government isn’t going to cede its despotism if even 100% of us are making knowing remarks from the sidelines. We can laugh Bush out of the blogosphere but he and his cronies will hold the reins in Washington and Wallstreet until you and I are outside with pitchforks.

That’s what we are doing in the streets. It may be early, there may not be much of a following, but someone’s got to set the example. And one person out on the street today unafraid of the police state, is success enough. Onward Christian soldiers!

Nigerian Episcopalian hatred leads to draconian homophobic legislation

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How many times have we heard the sorry and hateful Right Wing Christian refrain, that ‘We hate the sin but love the sinner’? Much more honest would be a retort to these people, that ‘we hate the lie, and don’t particularly respect you liars’.

When the British Anglican Church appointed an openly homosexual man to be a bishop, the Nigerian Archbishop Akinola, leader of 18.5 million church sheep, decided to split the entire world Anglican Church last year. Many Episcopalians in the US used their own homophobia to follow along. So just what were they supporting?

Well it turns out, the Nigerian Archbishop was supporting new legislation in Nigeria that would throw people in prison for five years if they openly showed in any way that they were gay! What a loving example of Christianity the archbishop is, NOT.

How absolutely shameful and backward can Right Wing Christianity get? Ask Adolf and Pope Ratzinger, I guess? Though not Episcopalians, they might shed some light on where following Holy Scripture their way might ultimately lead? Not much has really changed it seems. Christian religious hatred is making a big comeback worldwide and this is sad news.

Paying reparations will make US as poor as Chad

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Noam Chomsky has just written that the US should pay reparations for the damages done to Iraq’s infrastructure by the US invasion and occupation. While I can’t disagree with the justice of this, doing it would make America as poor as the country of Chad.

And why stop with reparations for US damages done to iraq? How about paying damages done to Colombia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Nicaragua, El Salvador, God can we stop now, though the list is still quite incomplete?

One of the most galling things about US war supporters is there constant refrain that they are supporting the constant war only to help Iraqis out! Just the other day on this blog a poster was spouting this line of crap, too. Plus, usually in the same breath they are condemning the Islamic community as being full of barbarians, all the while praying to their Christian God of War. Yes, they are on a great Crusade to help the heathen out!

So why don’t these people dig out THEIR pocketbooks, and make those reparations then, instead of playing stupid and pretending that they are bringing heaven to earth for Arabs? US war supporters have to be about the most shameless human beings imaginable. If there is a Christian Hell for hypocrites?, then they definitely got the ticket. And if we as a nation get forced to actually make reparations, then we’ll all be in Hell alongside them.