Colorado Springs future looking brighter

Posted on October 7, 2007 by Eric Verlo

Colorado Springs has several attributes which make it a pleasant place to live. Our dry sunny climate of course, and Garden of the Gods, Manitou, The Broadmoor, Colorado College, the Smokebrush Foundation, to leave out quite a bit. Pikes Peak, the Olympic Training Center and NORAD separate us from other provincial backwaters only by giving us a sense that we are on the map.

Since Amendment 2 Colorado Springs has been on the map for our unpleasant demographic. The sagging mental acuity of the Pikes Peak area is something of legend, and lo, increasingly deserved. We owe this to the abundance of military employers, to the continuing influx of fundy revivalists and of course the standard American low expectations for education. But no entity has played a more detrimental role in shaping our pinheads than our city newspaper, the “libertarian” Freedom Communications Gazette. Since the demise/absorption of its competitor the COS Sun, the Gazette Telegraph has warped our city news with impunity.

And none have done it with more mean-spirit and Rush Limbaugh alacrity than Gazette Editorialist Sean Paige. Our own top-tier asshole.

And he’s leaving! Hurray! I wish it had been with tar and feathers. And it’s a rather selfish joy, because doubtless he’s moving somewhere. Wouldn’t it be more noble to know to where, so that instead of passing him off, we could give them a shout and prevent Paige from wreaking his cynical damage in their unsuspecting community?

The Woolseys- a Mom and Pop War Profiteering Team

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Tony Logan

Suzanne Woolsey is vice chair of the Colorado College Board of Directors. Her husband will be speaking this Thursday at the school, and all three of their kids graduated from there. The following opinion piece by Evelyn Pringle is reprinted in whole below.

January 17, 2005
Mom & Pop War Profiteering Team – Woolseys
By Evelyn Pringle
Miamisburg, Ohio

The Defense Policy Board (DPB) is a hand-picked group of 30 people that advises Bush administration officials on matters such as whether and when to go to war, or not. The current group was selected by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, and approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Everyone who is anyone in the arms and defense industry knows that palling up to DPB members is the ticket to getting a Pentagon contract.

Shortly after the war in Iraq began, the April 10, 2003 New York Times pointed out that several board members stood to benefit financially from the war. It reported that the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) documented that 9 of the members were “linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.”

Promote War & Garner Positions For Profits

One of the members mentioned who stood to profit was R. James Woolsey. In addition to being a member of the DPB, Woolsey also sits on Navy and CIA advisory boards; and he is also a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a private group that was specifically set up by Bush in 2002, to find ways to increase public support for a war against Iraq.

Let me say right here and now that I think bold lines are crossed when people like Woolsey, who promote a specific war, financially benefit from their successful promotion. There should be a law that requires a standard recusal from all war profits by any policy advisor who advocates sending our young men and women off to die in that same war.

And I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve never heard of our government forming a group of promoters to rally support for a war before. I dare anyone to try and convince me that this war profiteering scheme wasn’t well planned and managed from the get-go.

Mom & Pop Team Of War Profiteers

I would rate the husband and wife team of James and Suzanne Woolsey up there as one of the most blatant examples of war profiting that I‘ve ever seen. They both remain policy advisors on Iraq, even though they both work for private firms that do business there. James has long wanted to use US military might to transform the Middle East. “And he has pushed for war with Iraq as hard as anyone, even before the terrorist attacks of Sep 11, 2001,” according to the April 8, 2003 Global Policy Forum.

That’s right – long before 9/11. In January 1998, James signed the now infamous letter to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) calling for regime change in Iraq (which Clinton trashed). In 1998, he also successfully lobbied to pass the Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), which allocated nearly $100 million for the Iraqi opposition, mainly the Iraq National Congress (INC), headed by none other than Ahmed Chalabi.

9/11 – Gift To Profiteering Team

The lobby for the war in Iraq immediately moved into high gear after 9/11. Within days, the DPB convened to discuss how they could use 9/11 to justify a war in Iraq. James was sent overseas to try to find a link between Saddam and bin Laden. He returned with the tale that an unnamed source had told the Czech intelligence that in April, 2001, he had observed a meeting between the lead 9/11 skyjacker and an Iraqi agent in Prague.

Even though the tale was deemed not credible by US, British, Israeli, and French, intelligence agencies, it became the basis of a major neo-con disinformation campaign against Saddam on cable news shows and editorial pages in major US newspapers.

James himself wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that said a foreign state had aided Al Qaeda in preparing the 9/11 attacks and pointed to Iraq as the prime suspect. In fact, James even went so far to allege that Saddam was behind the 1993 WTC bombing and the anthrax letters sent out after 9/11. In large part, the propaganda campaign was successful. A poll conducted in late 2002, showed that over half of those polled believed that Saddam was somehow linked to 9/11.

Woolsey & Chalabi – Secret Long-Time Buddies

Just when I think I have seen every dirty filthy angle by which money can be made in the war profiteering trade, something else turns up. I recently discovered a little tid-bit that I was unaware of. In addition to getting $100 million tax dollars allocated for the INC and Ahmed Chalabi in 1998, James also became lawyer and adviser to Iraq’s “President in Waiting” in the same year.

With the help of the media, James must have forgot to mention this obvious conflict of interest while he was alleging collusion in 9/11 between Chalabi’s enemy Saddam and bin Laden. This relationship definitely should have been made public before the war began because of its relevance to the truth or falsity of the justification given for waging war in Iraq to begin with.

Back in 1998, Chalabi sought legal help from Woolsey to secure the release of 6 of his INC associates from the detention center in Guam, even though the CIA said they were threats to US interests. James successfully freed Chalabi’s minions and mowed a path for the so-called Iraqi defectors to feed bogus information to US intelligence teams.

The false information about WMDs and collusion between Saddam and bin Laden, that originated from the relationship of Chalabi and Woolsey, along with the resulting diversion of financial and military resources to Iraq, and away from the real terrorist bin Laden, has left the US with a limited ability to project military power anywhere else in the world. Any unexpected conflict would be a disaster with the military so overstretched in Iraq, and it looks like in large part, we can thank Woolsey and Chalabi for this predicament.

And as it turns out the CIA was right. One of men Woolsey freed, Aras Habib Karim, went on to become Chalabi’s Chief of Intelligence, and has since leaked classified information to Iran, and is currently under investigation by the FBI. I wonder if James is representing the guy now?

James & Booz Allen Hamilton

At the same time that they were advocating for war in Iraq, its more than obvious that James and Suzanne Woolsey were positioning themselves for a future in defense-related firms, with an eye on the anticipated war profits.

James is a shining example of how the revolving door policy works in Washington. Although he left his position as director of the CIA in 1995, he remained a senior advisor on intelligence and national security policies.

And he also now works for several private firms that do business in Iraq. According to Citizens for Public Integrity, in July, 2002, James joined Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that “had contracts worth more than $680 million” that year.

In May, 2003, in his capacity as a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, James was a featured speaker at a seminar entitled “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” He spoke of the potential business opportunities in the reconstruction of Iraq and how Bush planned to steer the contracts to US companies. Approximately 80 corporate executives paid $1100 to listen to what he had to say.

May, 2003 was only 2 months after the war began. If not for his advisory positions in the Bush administration, how would James possibly be able to put together a investor seminar with information on how to make money in Iraq?

In addition, “Booz Allen is a subcontractor for a $75-million telecommunications project in Iraq. The company does extensive work for the Defense Department as well. Recently, the Navy awarded it $14 million in contracts,” according to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times. In true Dick Cheney style, James said in an interview that “he had not been involved in Booz Allen’s Iraq contracts,” the Times reports. But then it really doesn’t matter whether he was involved in a particular contract or not, because as a Vice President of the firm, he benefits from profits resulting from all contracts.

Besides his recent statement to the Times belies the title of his own May, 2003 seminar which was: “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” What is he trying to say? That he never got paid for speaking at that seminar? That none of the 80 executives that attended ever contacted Booz work in Iraq? Yea right. James & Paladin Capital Group

James positioned himself all over the map. He is now a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, another defense-related firm. In part, here is how the firm describes itself on its web site, Paladin Homeland Security Fund, L.P. Investment Strategy

As widely reported in public media, billions of dollars are being appropriated by the United States and foreign governments for replenishment of military stockpiles, deployment of new means to create more secure societies and creation of new standards, equipment, technologies and policies for coping with and recovering from the myriad forms of terrorism and attack. … the General Partner believes that the Federal and State governments … and indeed governments throughout the world, will look to … private enterprise to address these issues. The General Partner believes that the private sector thus will look to expend billions of dollars to execute defense and security plans for security in the public sector and to deploy growth equity to produce the products and services that non-governmental organizations will require.

Fund Management

Operation of the Fund starts with an experienced management team. … additional individuals who have prominent and distinguished records in relevant fields, including security, defense and information and technology sciences, have associated with Paladin Capital in connection with the Fund. These additional principals of the Fund include R. James Woolsey, …

The Fund’s Principals have extensive domestic and international experience in fund investments and in originating, underwriting, closing, monitoring and exiting investments similar to those that are proposed for the Fund. The additional Principals, including Mr. Woolsey, … have extensive and distinguished track records in service within the security, defense and related fields.

Investment Guidelines Characteristics

Small to medium-sized, worker-friendly companies with the following characteristics: Must relate to defense, prevention, coping or recovery from disaster. Dual use: commercial and government applicability for products and services.

Surely no one could ever allege a possible conflict of interest between James serving on 3 defense-related boards (Navy, DPB, & CIA) with the US government and his involvement with this firm.

Global Options – James & DPB Member Livingstone

James is also plugged into Global Options, which is headed by his fellow DPB member Neil Livingstone. In addition to sitting on the DPB, Livingstone has served as a Pentagon and State Department advisor and has long called for overthrowing Saddam.

Livingstone was already promoting war against Iraq back in 1993, when he wrote an editorial for Newsday that said the US “should launch a massive covert program designed to remove Hussein.” Well 11 years later, it looks like he finally got his wish, and just like his pal James, Livingstone is a regular speaker at investment seminars on Iraq.

Global Options provides contacts and consulting services to firms doing business in Iraq and “offers a wide range of security and risk management services,” according to its website. Although James admits that he is a paid advisor at Global Options, he again says the work he does at the firm does not involve Iraq. And of course I believe him (not).

Suzanne – Better Half Of Profiteering Team

From 1993 – 2003, Suzanne was an executive with the National Academies, an institution that advises the government on science, engineering, and medicine. There’s probably no big money to be made in that position and that’s probably what motivated Suzanne seek a more potentially profitable government position.

And she sure found one. According to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times, Suzanne is a trustee of a little-known arms consulting group that had access to senior Pentagon leaders directing the Iraq war.

Although she had zero experience with military or national security matters, in 2000 she became a trustee at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a nonprofit corporation paid to do research for the Pentagon. During the attack against Iraq, the IDA provided senior Pentagon officials with assessments of the operation.

Through this position, Suzanne had unlimited insider access to valuable information. For instance, the Times reported that in a June 3, 2003, briefing, Brigadier General Robert Cone of the Army, described the group‘s operation. ”This team did business” within the Army Central Command ”on a daily basis, by observing meeting and planning sessions, attending command updates, watching key decisions being made, watching problems being solved, and generally being provided unrestricted access to the business of the conduct of this war,” Cone said, according to a transcript of the session.

The question is did Suzanne use the info to benefit the family business? I’ll let the reader be the judge. She was appointed to “Fluor’s board in January 2004, while Fluor and a partner, AMEC, were competing for two federal contracts to do reconstruction work in Iraq. A little more than a month after she was named, Fluor and AMEC got both contracts, with a combined value of $1.6 billion,” according to the LA Times.

Although a Fluor official refused to discuss why Suzanne was chosen for the job, the official confirmed SEC filings that show, “Fluor pays outside directors (like Suzanne) $40,000 a year, plus stock options and additional fees for attending meetings,” the Times reports.

As for the financial worth of her stock in the company, its looking good. Fluor’s stock has risen steadily since the war in Iraq began. The Times reports that in August, 2004, it was $45 a share, up from a little more than $30 a share in March 2003. Reports filed with the SEC show Suzanne owns 1,500 shares of Fluor stock.

With Fluor making a bundle, it only stands to reason that all the more money can be funneled back into the Woolsey piggy bank. SEC filings show that Fluor reported that its revenue for the first quarter of the current fiscal year from work in Iraq totaled ”approximately $190 million. There was no work in Iraq in the comparable period in 2003,” reports the Times.

I would be willing to bet that any defense related firm would have given an arm and a leg to find out what was being said during those IDA meetings and war planning sessions. Oh of course I’m not suggesting that Suzanne was feeding Fluor information before she came on board and that‘s why she was hired. But at the same time, its sure difficult to think of any other reason why she would be hired.

Here’s another profiteering trick that I would never have thought of. Suzanne even managed to get paid while she gathered the insider information. Tax records show that in 2003, she was paid $11,500 for serving on the IDA. Who wouldn’t want this gal on their team?

The overlapping public and private associations of the Woolsey’s are merely 2 examples of the all too familiar pattern in the Bush administration, in which people who play key roles in advising officials on policies, are involving themselves financially with firms in related fields. And it should be noted that the profiteering is certainly not limited to war policies. Its rampant in every area of policy within the Bush administration.

Long-Term War – Thriving Family Business

Hands down, James should be awarded a plaque for being the #1 Iraq War Monger, and it should say: “What could be more sickening than a war-hungry non-combatant? A war-hungry non-combatant reaping profit from the blood of slaughtered women, children and men of Iraq,” (Bill Berkowitz).

War-hungry James is still hard at it; promoting war for as far as the eye can see. On August 15, 2004, the LA Times reported that, “Last month, Woolsey appeared at a … news conference to announce the creation of a group called the Committee of the Present Danger, which he said would attempt to focus public attention on the threat ”to the US and the civilized world from Islamic terrorism.”

On September 29, 2004 he participated in a forum entitled: “World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight,” sponsored by the Committee on Present Danger and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. I wonder how many people who went to the polls on Nov 2, 2004, realized that a vote for Bush meant rubber-stamping more of World War IV?

Plan To Destroy and Conquer Iraq

The Iraqi citizens had no say-so in the Bush administration’s decision to bomb the hell out of their country and the Iraqi people, now suffering the most as a result of the war, are not allowed to be involved in making decisions about the reconstruction of Iraq.

In comments that could have been made yesterday, Naomi Klein described what would happen to the Iraqis under Bush’s war plan in the April 14, 2003 issue of the Guardian, “A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country had been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their new-found “freedom” – for which so many of their loved ones perished – comes pre-shackled by irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy. ”

Every one of her predictions has come true and Iraqis may be worse off than we realize. Klein reports that on October 13, 2004, Iraq’s “health ministry issued a harrowing report on its post-invasion health crisis, including outbreaks of typhoid and tuberculosis and soaring child and mother mortality rates,” while at the same time the “State Department announced that $3.5 billion for water, sanitation and electricity projects was being shifted to security.”

How can anybody in their right mind expect the Iraqi people to be grateful to America for all this good fortune?

Stop The War Profiteering

It seems to me that we’ve taken our eye off the ball here. Granted, the web of corruption is bad enough in itself, but too little consideration is being given to the Iraqi lives at stake. Every profiteering dollar bilked or wasted is a dollar that could be spent on improving Iraq’s basic living conditions like getting water, sanitation and electricity up and running again, or training Iraqi police and military forces, or developing jobs for Iraqis.

Instead our tax dollars are being funneled back to profiteers like the Woolseys, over the backs of not only our dead soldiers; but over 100,000 dead Iraqis as well. The administration had the chance to rebuild Iraq, and at the same time earn the trust of the Iraqi people, but instead it chose to rape and torture innocent Iraqi prisoners, raid the reconstruction fund, and deprive the Iraqis of everything essential to normal human life. The blatant acts of corruption by the occupational authority and US contractors have given the Iraqis every reason under the sun to mistrust the motives of Americans who say they want to help rebuild their country. And how can we expect their opinions to change as long as the obvious corruption continues?

If we ever expect to regain the trust of Iraqis, we have to stop the Woolseys, and others like them, who engage in this filthy, disgusting trade. For starters, I say all Bush war profiteers should be given 2 options: they can either recuse themselves from advising government officials on any matter of national security period, or they can donate all profits made through affiliations with defense-related companies to soldiers wounded in the war and families of soldiers killed in the war.

While this would definitely be a good first step, I won’t hold my breath while waiting to see which option the greedy war-mongers choose.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0501/S00107.htm

Stop Them From Beginning a Terrorist War Against Iran!

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Tony Logan

This Thursday at Shove Memorial Chapel, a terrorist will be addressing Colorado College students, for that’s what R. James Woolsey is.

This ex-director of the CIA and now current Chair of The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) is one of the leading architects of the Iraq War and Occupation, and is perhaps the most prominent advocate for spreading this American-made disaster into Syria and Iran. In short, he advocates, and has advocated for the longest time, a continual regional war to help better loot Middle East oil for American corporations.

The Committee on the Present Danger is a Right Wing neo-con advocacy group made up from major business and political players in the military-industrial complex. Other infamous co-Chairs of the CPD are George Schultz and Joe Lieberman. It has a long record of supporting continuous warfare based supposedly on ideology, but more so on corrupt commercial and political self interest.

There is a lot of money to be made from The War, and the CPD has backed continual warfare since even when the Cold War was first begun 6 decades ago. Today, it wants us to engage in a ‘Holy War’ with the Muslim World to hide away their own military-industrial machine profit making.

Students, your Colorado College by inviting James Woolsey to address you, is encouraging you to accept the Iraq War, a new war with Iran, and the idea that a nuclear war is winnable under the leadership of the American corporate bloc. They are encouraging you to think that the advocacy of torture and terrorism is perfectly acceptable as real guidelines for American foreign policy.

We urge you to reject these ideas and to demonstrate with us against the presence of this war monger on your campus. We urge you to reject a regional extension of the Iraqi War into neighboring countries.

US out of Iraq and Afghanistan!
No War Against Iran!
Stop spreading US terrorism through a phony ‘war on terrorism!
Bring the Troops Home Now!
R. James Woolsey, Get Off This Campus!

James Woolsey is CIA, not a Green

Posted on September 30, 2007 by Tony Logan

James Woolsey, ex CIA director under Clinton, is the managing director of Paladin Capital Group, which has multi Pentagon contracts supplying surveillance and military equipment.

They push themselves off as being eco friendly via company investment in the production of ethanol. See Go Ethanol.

You can get an idea of the type of pap that Woolsey will be spouting this week at Colorado College from this article, An interview with geo-green James Woolsey, former head of CIA. Woolsey and Paladin Capital Group is just the latest of the corporate fad where really odious corporations try to pass themselves off as being eco-friendly when they are the complete opposite. Continue reading →

Protest James CIA Woolsey visit next Thursday at Colorado College

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Tony Logan

The ex CIA director, continually fighting WW4 advocate, and prime time war profiteer, R. James Woolsey Jr. is coming to town next week. Why?

He’s advocating turning away from fossil fuel dependence as national strategy. So what? He’s no ecologist at all, but just is a war monger who is admitting the already obvious reality that world fossil fuel supplies are beginning to run dry and that the US has to move to find other sources of energy. Any advocate of fighting continuous wars is no alternative Green advocate at all, since the US military is already the world’s most prolific polluter.

The Ravings of James Woolsey examines this thug in brief detail. For yet more information about this scoundrel, try Wikipedia for info

Let’s see now? Can anybody see any good reason to do anything other than protest this event at Colorado College? It will be held at Shove Memorial Chapel, 1010 Nevada Ave. at 7:30 pm. Entrance is free.

When I think chapels, I think peace. When I think CIA, I think torture. When I think James Woolsey, I think World War 4 advocate. What on earth are Colorado College’s adminstrators doing in using a chapel for having such a monster to visit?

Help organize the protest for this event. Please participate. James Woolsey is one of America’s proponent advocates of attacking and going to war with Iran.

Tucker Carlson sitting in a tree

Posted on August 30, 2007 by Eric Verlo

Do you care whether Tucker Carlson head-bashed a gay man in a bathroom stall, or was on the receiving end, or wants to pretend he could have done it, or that it didn’t happen at all? The point is, Carlson described it with a gay-bashing swagger, and his TV colleagues laughed about it like they would have loved to have been there. Gay bashing and laughing about it, is not only not PC, it’s not acceptable. Tucker Carlson is a little creep for many reasons, and now for hate speech. Profuse apologies and commitment to sensitivity training or bye-bye.

UPDATE:
Oh my goodness. For some reason I thought Tucker Carlson and his bow tie were discovered on the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions. It turns out he’s not even a graduate of Trinity College, he’s connected. His father was a broadcaster, ambassador, head of the CPB, and they’re related to the Swansons frozen food fortune.

NATO sails to South Africa

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Tony Logan

Six NATO ships sailed into South African waters yesterday to play war games with the South African government. This is certainly far away from the North Atlantic, is it not? This is certainly far away, too, from being a defense alliance.

If the local peace troop can tear itself away from demanding intervention into Sudan, is there any chance they could protest these new waters newly found for NATO ‘sailboats’? I rather doubt it though, since it’s not on the TV news and our liberal coed friends over at Colorado College can’t pose much for such a news unworthy cause as to fight to contain NATO’s feverish militarism.

US Out of Africa! Hasn’t that continent been fucked over enough by imperialism already? See NATO in South Africa news item

Department of Defense and History

Posted on August 25, 2007 by Eric Verlo

Bush is invoking the lessons of Vietnam as a reason to persevere in Iraq, highlighting opinions of historians apparently. The media describes them as heroic revisionist historians who are opposed by anti-war historians. Has academia betrayed history?

Who is historian Mark Moyar, author of Triumph Forsaken (how we could have won in Vietnam etc)? Associate professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University.

Who is historian Lewis Sorley, author of A Better War, Honorable Warrior (and other favorable accounts of Vietnam)? Civilian official of the Central Intelligence Agency, then Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Army Historical Foundation and Executive Director of the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States.

Who are the anti-war historians? Everybody else.

The g-factor

Posted on August 22, 2007 by Marie Walden

My courtship with Dave went something like this. “Hi.” “Hi.” “What did you get on the SAT?” “XXX on math. XXX on verbal. You?” “800 on both.” “Combined?” “Ha.”

That conversation, which occurred at Bennigan’s on North Academy in 1984, as I sat at a table holding hands with my cute-but-inferior tennis pro boyfriend, sealed our fate. Dave and I were less than crazy about each other. Our DNA, on the other hand, fell fast and hard. Over the moon in fact. Our double-stranded helices batted amino acids at each other, wanting to intertwine forever in a heart-shaped petri dish. Messenger RNA played Yenta. We were both far more concerned about the g-factor, inherent ability to learn, IQ for you old schoolers, than the g-spot, which I still don’t understand that well or care about that much. Really.

Our top colleges had traditionally drawn from the spawn of the affluent. Students from northeastern prep schools such as Exeter and Andover were the incoming freshman class. Higher education was not for the many, but for the privileged few. Thank goodness that a rebel Rockefeller or Carnegie daughter defied her parents and married a cowboy from Wyoming. The rich began to question the system. “How can I get my dung-covered grandson into Princeton? I know he is far more brilliant than some of these Vermont yahoos. I know! Let’s create a test that shows off the Mayflower genome. Diamonds in the American rough.” Thus the SAT was born.

For many years the SAT served a noble purpose. Intelligent hardworking children from mediocre schools, from up-and-coming western states, from blue collar families, could distinguish themselves as better than their circumstances would normally allow. Stanford, the “Harvard of the West,” helped America meet her Manifest Destiny.

But the rich are not comfortable with a level playing field. Perhaps they fear that too many trophy wives have diluted their genetic purity. I don’t know. But, predictably, they began to climb back up Mount Superior. What was designed to be a test taken after a good night’s sleep, by anyone, became a game to be won. Expensive review courses and other manipulations once again favored the privileged few. Not about to give up flagship universities to the underclass, they changed the rules of engagement.

Educators say that the SAT tells us nothing much. Yes, a certain segment of society has an inherent superior ability to learn, to achieve what they’ve been asked to achieve. No surprise there. But it is a limited quest. A limited vision. And a poor indicator of future success. Superiority for its own sake is a dead end. Our kids can walk around now with pride but not purpose. They can achieve but not accomplish. The SAT has become the measure of a person. Works aside. That’s sad. I feel for my children, being raised in this environment. They want to do well, and achievement is what it takes. I rue the pressure they feel, but I am unable to remove them from the competition.

Abolish the SAT. Abolish the ACT. Abolish the CSAP. Let the measure of a person be what they DO. If they work hard to attain good grades, let us honor that. I think it was Jesus who said, “Pretty is as pretty does.” Or maybe he said, “If they won’t work, let them also not eat.” I made a mistake when I thought that good genes were the loftiest goal. Not so.

End of your empire

Posted on August 12, 2007 by Eric Verlo

This is not the end of the American Empire by a long shot. It’s the end of YOUR share in it.

Bush & Co, the Carlyle Group for example, and fellow owners of private capital, our oligarchs if you will, are pulling away from the station. They don’t need you or I anymore. The apparatus is in their hands, the control of money and the control of the weapons. The most powerful arsenal in the world is now protecting them. The rest of us, once stakeholders, join the downwardly mobile working class.

It’s hard to feel sorry for the American middle class, ejected at the eleventh hour from the gravy train. What was necessarily our right to claim the world’s bounty, gleaned from the health and happiness and lives of the poor, its rightful and needful inheritors? It’s not like we had been doing our best to invite everyone on board to share in earth’s resources equitably. Now at least we’ll get the share we deserve, the leftovers we thought good enough for everybody else. Exploitive capitalism lives on. For want of capital to invest ourselves, we are no longer members. We join the same side of the wall as the Mexicans and the Palestinians, the globalized masses.

Capitalism’s intellectual apparatchiks surround us from the TVs, newspapers, think tanks and college campuses. Are they your peers, in income level and security, as they maintain the fiction of your continued prosperity? When you finally face the impenetrable wall where you used to believe you had access to your ruler, the government that used to administrate communal affairs at your behest, you’ll see their smiling faces atop that wall, perfectly satisfied to keep you out.

Now the trouble is, where do we look for a break in that wall? We won’t get very far shouting HEY, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SHARE THAT LOOT WITH US!

There’s still a belief that truth and a sense of propriety could overcome the courtiers and Praetorian guard. But truth about what? WMD? Black-box voting? Nothing yet has seemed egregious enough. The folks behind the 9-11 Truth movement, seemed to know that all along. A few very brave people are still hoping their truth will win out.

Columbia Savings revisited

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Marie Walden

Two memorable things in my life were tied to Columbia Savings. The first was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. I was a recent college graduate working for a large international accounting firm, KPMG Peat Marwick. I remember sitting in a conference room, clad in a conservative business suit, already on hour 5 of an 18-hour workday. These were the days before the Internet; we still relied on the Big 3 to provide us with news. One of the higher ups came into the room, solemn look on his face, and turned on the television. The ten of us sat there and watched hope gone awry….seven lives gone due to an improperly sealed O-ring.

A few years later, the “Feds” came in and took the CEO, the CFO, and several others out of the building in handcuffs. It was a scary sight. These were our friends…our role models. What the hell? What was going on?

The S&L crisis changed the American way of life. Without an extensive legal or financial background, you may not understand how. But, trust me, rules were changed. I worked for the next several years with the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), the branch of the government created to ensure that we would all enjoy a safe financial future. They were a bunch of dumbshits who had absolutely no chance of being hired by Peat Marwick, or any other reputable company. Like so many, the government is a safe haven for idiots who crave authority.

Moving on. Despite the noble efforts of the RTC, the country is facing another financial crisis. As interest rates have gone down over the past several years, a new brand of leech has been unleashed on the unsuspecting public. The mortgage broker. We are in a housing crisis due to the prevalence of SUBPRIME loans. Let me explain. In the past, a family had to meet certain requirements in order to obtain a mortgage. They had to earn enough income, own assets, show that they would be able to meet ongoing financial obligations. Banks and S&Ls had strict underwriting requirements. They extended credit and collected interest in return. Borrowers had to be a PRIME candidates to qualify for a mortgage loan.

Today, the mortgage industry has gone wild. There are zillions of mortgage brokers who can find ANYONE a loan. They shop around for a third tier underwriter who is willing to lend the money. The broker receives a large commission. The underwriter receives an origination fee and various other payments. Neither care if you are in over your head. They will offer you an initial rate of 2 or 3% with adjustable rate mortgage (ARM), and convince you that rates won’t go up much. You can afford it. Buy that bigger house. Once the deal is inked, the lender simply takes the cruddy mortgage portfolio and sells it to the next prick in line, greedy for the soon-to-be usurious interest payments.

For the past two years, mortgage rates have increased. Over a trillion dollars of ARM loans are due to reset in the next 18 months. Homeowners’ adjustable payments have gone from $400/month to $600 to $1500. With no end in sight. Foreclosures are at an all time high. Too bad for the idiots, you say? Well, I would normally agree with you. But let’s hope that you don’t have a house to sell. As the banks divest themselves of the properties they’ve foreclosed on, real estate prices will be driven into the ground. The lenders will have to write off trillions of dollars of bad loans, likely rendering many of them insolvent. Huge investment funds tied to subprime loans will become worthless. Many Americans will lose their homes, their market investments, and their ability to obtain future credit. I’m predicting another bail out that will cost the taxpayers billions.

Meanwhile, my best friend saw the potential in the industry, despite the fact that she knew nothing about mortgage banking, and earned $18,000. Last month.

Landmarks in memoriam

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Eric Verlo

Mount Rushmore public cafeteria
A past love of mine spent a couple summers working at Mt Rushmore at the visitor’s center. She longed for me to see it and eventually she took me there. I had already formed a vivid image of her youthful days there, serving food to plaid-clad tourists, taking her breaks sunning on the rocks between the ponderosa, chasing boys with her friends, away from home at this summer camp for Dakota high-schoolers off soon to college and new autonomous lives.

Her farm country heritage was a mystery to me, but her descriptions of the Black Hills and Mt Rushmore I could see clearly. When we finally made it there, the atmosphere was as charming as I had envisioned, aided too by preconceptions of the familiar dark wood trimmings of a US National Park with Yogi Bear. The restaurant really was a cafeteria, the workers dressed in white like nurses and the food was like they served in school. Except that visitors would carry their fiberglass trays to tables beneath huge plate glass windows with a view of the granite presidential face of Mt Rushmore.

Years later I would recognize the unchanged lunch room and viewing deck as filmed in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Nothwest. I could watch that scene and recollect our visit, especially the tour Kim gave me through the staff-only area, climbing paths around the workers’ dormitories which led us to the swimming hole. We watched squirrels and bears -I mean birds- and recalled her earlier days. She might have been thinking of earlier beaus, what would it have mattered? Now my recollections are of recollections.

Now many years later, another love asks me if revisiting the site of a cherished memory would diminish it. I said no, and I still believe it, but I have to add one caveat. It’s not that you erase one memory with another, you jeopardize the memory tape itself.

I thus revisited Mt Rushmore, without of course my making any todo about a past significance, and I came away changed and less happy because the visitors center is gone.

Well, it’s changed, the wooden building is replaced by a bigger, improved center of granite, very attractive and swarming with more people, the grounds are now entirely covered in cement, comprising amphitheater, museum, Grecian monument and vast parking structures. No amount of smooching with a new love would have effaced my earlier nostalgia, but the physical anchor of my memory is broken away. It’s like the difference of a grandparent passed on, being cremated versus interred. You can visit your loved one in a cemetery, even if only in your mind, because you know where you can find them, still there.

My Mt Rushmore in not “there” anymore. I retain my memories, themselves of memories, but they have become intangible.

The same was done to our Garden of the Gods. We used to be able to goof off on its roads and paths, now they are paved and redirected into an uncompromising giant roundabout. And there’s now the giant visitors center, with its big window and stepped-back view, replacing the Hidden Inn which used to nestle right against the rocks.

In fact, I took a favorite photograph of a girl I liked very much on the weathered railing of the Hidden Inn looking out on the upended rock formation extending along the Front Range. But the historic inn is no more, just a few cuts into the red stone, now just a point-of-interest on a marker. At least the original foundation was meticulously removed, not buried under concrete. I lament never having kissed that girl, and I guess now the opportunity seems all the more gone.

Americans and the Iraq War

Posted on July 30, 2007 by Tony Logan

The impact the Antiwar Movement has made on Americans is skin deep so far. While at least 2/3 of Americans now dislike the Bush Administration, much of that rejection is because many feel that the current government has poorly managed a war they fully supported. See poll data

Despite the US government’s warfare against the Iraqi people that has gone on since 1991 and produced a total tragedy, only 1/3 of Americans feel that it was wrong to have been attacking that country in the first place.

Why has the American antiwar movement been so lackluster? I think that the main reason has been the demobilization of the US working class. In fact, much of the US working class has been largely co opted by the military and finds its employment somehow connected with continued support of the US war machine. You don’t see working class people attending protests much at all.

Another reason though has been the failure of leadership of the Peace Movement. It is dominated by store keepers, ex-monks, pastors, and nuns and ex-nuns, Mennonites and Quakers. There are also 2 other sectors of this movement whose presence is barely discernible by and large. The largest of the 2 are the college educated liberal types who think that voting for liberal Democratic Party politicians is the outer limit of what they will involve themselves in doing.

Last of the 3 main sectors of the essentially inert Peace camp is the anticapitalist Left, made up of Left Libertarians (Noam Chomsky, Znet, and crowd) and Marxists. The Left Libertairans have great analysis but no organizing ability, and are fairmly embedded in academia as professors, but are largely absent in the working population made up of ordinary citizens. And the Marxist Left, outside of the Workers World Party and its split off sister Party of Liberation and Socialism, has been mainly busy comtemplating their navels. But despite organizing many big demonstrations,the WWP is so sectarian that its national membership remains at several dozens.

Until there is a secular Left that resurects itself from the grave, the religious folks and DP addicts of voting only will continue to demobilize the American people. They will pray and they will vote, but they will not construct an activist movement that builds something different than church based organizations and the corporate Frankenstein called the Democratic Party. They will lobby and pray in fields where missile silos are located. They will pray in churches and vote for Democrats come election day along with attending an occasional forum and attending a military gate or other.

There is no easy solution to finding a way to resurrect the dormant American secular Left. Like the dormant Nazi Era German Left, we now largely are dependent on outside help. The problem is the American people themselves, ‘liberals’ and’ conservatives’ both. Both camps are totally immersed in LaLa Land.

J.K. Rowling and the Dead Zone

Posted on July 18, 2007 by Eric Verlo

With author J.K. Rowling declaring she’s written the last of the Harry Potter titles, there’s a panic coming from the publishing world that there will be nothing to take Harry’s place. I suppose this fear anticipates the readership’s sadness, it certainly expresses the commercial concern, but it cloaks itself in a [Scholastic] librarian’s voice: whatever now will the children find interest in reading?

Harry Potter has been around for ten years. Educators like to credit him for pulling children from the terminus of their gaming consoles. If Potter has created an upsurge in reading, I ask you, to where has it led? Ten years is enough to have nourished the new generation. Over 325 million Rowling books have been sold. The first Harry Potter readers are already graduated from college. What are they doing?

It’s a leading question, because I haven’t an answer. It’s not discernible. Blogs, Myspace, trivia-tourism, what? I’ll confer with college professors and get back to you, but it certainly isn’t the Peace Corps.

I would purport that the Scholastic [1] worship of Harry betrays a lack of faith in what it means to read. Do children need to be rewarded for reading? Is not escaping into the abstract a pleasure unto itself? I thought it was a fundamental need that even distinguishes us as human beings. Do we have to offer candy bars to induce people to eat? I’m sure humans can run themselves out of gas out of sheer distraction, but I know appetite is inherent.

A key is to educate children that there’s a world beyond theirs, an abstraction beyond their horizon, which can be explored through reading. Much of it, history, thought, imagination, lies only in books. Travel and science can lie beyond if they wish. Those subjects are taught in school, via reading. Teachers who suspect their students haven’t bought into reading are obviously not grading to challenging standards.

Through books lies an existence of infinite proportion, as n approaches the finite lifetime. Are the Potters hypothesizing that children must be coaxed into this world, without regard that it might be form over substance? Do children whose thumbs twitch for video games need to be lured by books that feel like video games which lead, like arcades and the pool halls before them, nowhere? With Harry Potter, are we creating readers or are we killing them off? Form has become the new substance, which to some sounds clever and new, but really means empty is the new full.

Dead Zone
There’s something happening outside the Mississippi Delta where man’s agricultural runoff, waste and industrial pollutants meet the sea. It’s being called a Dead Zone, which describes it literally, and it’s growing. The phenomena is a total collapse of the ecosystem leaving Hypoxia, the absence of oxygen in the water. It starts with the algae, then never mind every next link in the food chain [2]. We’ve measured it only since 20 years ago. Doubtless it started earlier. Doubtless too it’s happening exponentially in every estuary downstream of overpopulation. I read about Hypoxia overtaking Lake Victoria in Africa, rendering it a sinkhole, the social repercussions of which match Dante.

I cannot but wonder if such a consequence of pollution cannot manifest itself on the human population. Could not our minds become sink holes? Could not a culture or generation be faced with a Dead Zone?

Debilitating, not irreversible in the grand scheme, but certainly final, like stunted growth. Generations of minds shrunk below capacity, below what we might have wished for them, like fingers crippled by the early industrial age. A dead zone of thought, of initiative or motivation, of energy needed to get out of the dead zone. Why it’s called a dead zone, not merely an empty one.

Booksellers seem happy as snakes to see our children want sugar instead of oxygen.

Footnotes
1. The publishers of Harry Potter, Scholastic Press, is a commercial enterprise, not an educational concern as the name implies. It’s like the pseudo-junk food company Subway, owned their ads say, by Doctors Associates, Inc.
2. Overuse of synthetic fertilizers has been causing rising hypoxia on every coast. The excess nitrates lead to blooms of algae which pull all the oxygen from the water, knocking the breath from all other living things. So my analogy is closer than I intended.

Stealing daddy’s spotlight…and mommy’s pills

Posted on July 9, 2007 by Marie Walden

Ready to be happy?
This morning, catching up on the goings-on after a week in blazing hot and muggy Mexico, I read on CNN.com that Al Gore III was arrested recently on charges of possessing — in addition to marijuana — Vicodin, Xanax, Valium and Adderall. Oh my! The article pointed out that prescription drug use is becoming more prevalent among the young than even good ol’ pot.

Prescription drug abuse is particularly common among upper middle class students, according to Lisa Jack, a clinical psychologist at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “It just goes to show that where you’re from doesn’t matter,” Jack said. (I hope she isn’t speaking geographically).

The article goes on to admonish parents to lock our medicine chests so that vulnerable offspring will be adequately protected from evil.

Okay, done. But it seems to me that a better question would be, “Why are upper middle class bathrooms filled with an array of pretty-colored mood-altering pills in the first place?”

Welcome to the world of the upper middle class housewife. We take Adderall (basically speed) to get through the morning rush and the long list of daily chores. Valium (a tranquilizer) around 3 p.m. to take off the remaining Adderall edge and get through the afternoon kid activities with a smile. Xanax before stressed-out husband walks through the door assessing performance and demanding moral support and a lovely dinner.

After the kids are safely tucked in, Vicodin (an opioid) gives the same buzz as the 2 or 3 glasses of wine that we used to be able to handle easily, but which now lead to belly fat which, face it, is not only unsightly but downright unhealthy.

What the young ones apparently haven’t discovered yet is that Ambien at bedtime puts one into a nice dreamless coma that lasts until the alarm bell goes off and the cycle begins again.

I bet that you wish you could be-e-e half as lucky as me-e-e.

Posted by Marie Walden on July 08, 2007 at 01:44 PM

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

Posted on June 16, 2007 by Tony Logan

Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!

Otpor and the US made coup attempts against Chavez in Venezuela

Posted on April 30, 2007 by Tony Logan

As a leader of Otpor (now called Canvas) meets with people in Colorado Springs and at Colorado College, it might be of interest to follow the trail of Otpor to Venezuela, and efforts of the US to overthrow Hugo Chavez there.

Contrary to how Otpor represents itself, it is not just a group of nice Serbian student leaders from Belgrade, that through Gandhi inspired tactics non-violently overthrew Milosevic in the wake of a very violent US war on Yugoslavia. The story is quite a bit more complex than that, so we follow their trail to Venezuela.

To understand the following Reuters report dated back in 2003, though, one must first realize that Otpor is connected with ‘The Albert Einstein Institute’ of which Colonel Robert Helvey is an integral part of. This is a US government run operation designed to link Gandhian methods of nonviolent protest to Pentagon and US State Department efforts to overthrow foreign governments. Hence, we move from Belgrade to Caracas as the US government goes after Hugo Chavez. It’s Gandhi in the service of the Pentagon to help make a coup!
—————————–
US democracy expert teaches Venezuelan opposition
By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 30, 2003 (Reuters) – Retired U.S. army colonel Robert Helvey has trained pro-democracy activists in several parts of the world so he knows something about taking on military regimes and political strongmen.

Now he is imparting his skills in Venezuela, invited by opponents of President Hugo Chavez who accuse the leftist leader of ruling like a dictator in the world’s No. 5 oil exporter.

Helvey, who has taught young activists in Myanmar and Serbian students who helped topple the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, is giving courses on non-violent opposition tactics this week at an east Caracas university.

Secrecy surrounds the classes. A sign outside the door, apparently there to deflect the curious, reads: “Seminar on strategic marketing.”

But the strategies Helvey is sharing with some of Chavez’s foes focuses not on balance sheets but on how to resist, oppose and change a government without the use of bombs and bullets.

After initially declining to answer questions, Helvey, a former U.S. military attache in Burma and now a consultant with the private U.S. Albert Einstein Institution that promotes non-violent action in conflicts, told Reuters non-violence was the key to the tactics he taught.

“In every political conflict, there is a potential for violence, and it is incumbent on leaders to make sure they don’t cross the threshold of violence,” he said.

Organizers of the seminar did not welcome journalists. “This is a private meeting of friends,” one said.

The attendees included representatives of Venezuela’s broad-based but fragmented opposition, who are struggling to regroup after failing to force Chavez from office in an anti-government strike in December and January.

Chavez, a fiery populist first elected in 1998, survived a brief coup last year by dissident military officers who now form part of the opposition movement, which also includes labor and business chiefs, politicians and anti-Chavez civic groups.

CHAVEZ, DEMOCRAT OR DICTATOR?

Opposition sources said Helvey was invited to Caracas by a group of businessmen and professionals. They in turn organized the course involving a broad cross-section of the opposition.

Helvey’s presence comes at a time when a debate is raging inside and outside Venezuela about whether Chavez is a democrat or a power-hungry autocrat. That debate is important for the United States, which is a major buyer of Venezuelan oil.

Chavez’s critics portray him as a dangerous, anti-U.S. maverick who has extended his personal political control of the country’s political institutions, judiciary and armed forces.

They say he has strengthened his country’s ties with anti-U.S. states like communist Cuba, Iran, Libya and — until the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein — Iraq.

Since the April 2002 coup that briefly overthrew him, Chavez’s relations with the United States have remained edgy. The U.S. government has fiercely denied accusations from some Venezuelan officials that it encouraged or supported the coup.

Chavez fiercely condemned the invasion of Iraq. But Venezuelan oil shipments to the U.S. have kept on flowing.

The Venezuelan leader, who was elected to office six years after failing to seize power in a botched coup, denies he is a communist, says his government is democratic and regularly pillories his opponents as “terrorists” and “coup-mongers.”

His foes have staged huge, anti-Chavez street protests over the last 18 months. He portrays them as a wealthy, resentful elite opposed to his self-styled “revolution” which he says aims to benefit the oil-rich nation’s poor majority.

Neither Helvey nor the organizers of the Caracas seminar would give details of exactly what opposition tactics were being taught. But in his work in Serbia before Milosevic’s fall, Helvey briefed students on ways to organize a strike and on how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime.

In the mid 1990s, he traveled to the Thailand/Myanmar border to give classes in non-violent resistance to exiled Burmese students opposing the military junta in their country.

His former students remember him as “Bob.”

“He used his military skills in strategic planning for non-violent protest methods … Everybody was fascinated by Bob, because he was a military man and was applying that to non-violence,” Aung Naing Oo, former foreign secretary for the All Burma Students Democratic Front, told Reuters.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Caracas told Reuters the embassy knew nothing about Helvey’s visit and had nothing to do with the secretive seminar.
———————————————-

Oh, yes, for sure. lol… This article, interestingly enough, is from ‘Burma Related News’. It’s a small world it does appear.

http://www.burmalibrary.org/TinKyi/archives/2003-05/msg00000.html

What does ‘Otpor’ have to do with Colorado Springs?

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Tony Logan

You probably missed the notice, but Otpor will be at Colorado College this week and next, ‘organizing non-violence’ oriented people. Otpor claims credit for itself for supposedly non-violently bringing down Milosevic in Yugoslavia, though the real credit for this feat had more to do with the violence of an illegal war against Yugoslavia organized by the US and its European allies than any local student movement in Belgrade.

And it had more to do with the funds the US government channelled into Yugoslavia to illegally influence the national elections there. Many of these funds went to Otpor.

These days, Otpor ideology acts in many other countries where the US channels funds to subvert local autonomy. It has changed its name to ‘Canvas’ and receives much aid not only directly from the US government, but also from many a rich American think tank. Essentially, it is a Right Wing imperialist US government pushed campaign masquerading as a form of international Leftism. It’s symbols are a clenched fist, even as it plays on the image of being Gandhi-ist and nonviolent, which has become a semi mystical religious cult amongst many US campuses harboring hordes of American middle class student types. Very attractive cover to keep help hide its hidden agenda of backing US government propaganda campaigns and interventions in nations around the world. Imperialists posing as non-violent pacifists recruiting relatively naive and innocent students who often believe in the sugar coated rhetoric being spread. What results is a ‘non-violence’ working side by side with US military and economic subversion of other countries.

The US government in the ’70s and ”80s at one time pushed another camouflaged Right Wing group inside the US disguised as Leftism. The leader of that cult effort was a man named Lyndon LaRouche, who still plies his wares from time to time. To the utter discredit of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, this group a few months ago accepted for its newspaper a full page advertisement from this fascist who has many connections with US government and military high officials. A split off of this group operates in Mexico where it postures as being Far Left in a similar manner to how it has operated in the US. OTPOR in a way, is an extension of this type of covert government operation in private politics that Lyndon LaRouche got quite well known for at one time.

Wikipedia has done an excellent job in its coverage of Otpor, whose connections to US funding remain shadowy and hidden though it operates across the planet. Since they will have 2 of their operatives as Colorado College doing their thing, hopefully some of us will be there to challenge them on their real record this week.

Shallowest Ecology

Posted on March 7, 2007 by Tony Logan

We live in wonderland times. Many might have heard about deep ecology and might even be supporters of it. But what about shallow ecology? Well it turns out that both terms were founded by the same man, Arne Naess, and despite the greater familiarity with the term ‘deep ecology’, there are many more advocates of ‘environmentalism’ that are into shallow ecology, than deep.

And to be even more comprehensive, we are also into having a plethora of what should be called shallowest ecology advocates. These are kind of like the plethora of anti Iraq War peace folk we have, who are noteven really shallow peace in their views, but shallowest peace. People like Hillary and Wesley (Clark) for examples. But who are the shallowest ecology advocates amongst us? In Colorado Springs, we might say that Richard Skorman is, the former vice mayor of the city.

I did not attend, but word has it that Poor Richard’s owned by Skorman, actually last week invited a Dupont exec up to us as ‘green’ and envormental friendly! To attend, one would have had to plump down some $10 I believe? to hear such nonsense espoused. Did anybody actually go? Please write if you did. As Steve Martin once said, ‘comedy is never pretty’ and this event must of been truly ugly. Wish I had made it for the laughs, if nothing else.

I did attend another shallowest ecology event, though, that was the free talk last night at Colorado College by Matthew Simmons, who I discovered afterward, was energy advisor to Bush at one time. Heck, ignorant me. I thought of him as just being an author who wrote some about Peak Oil Theory, not as exec and Bushie. And that’s why I attended the talk.

Simnmons gave a pretty good brief overview of Peak Oil theory to an audience of quite a few doubters. A radicalizing topic when the subject is actually understood, but that was what wierd about the meeting; there was no sense of energy, no sense of rage, no sense of realization that the world is facing a catastrophe in the near future. It was a shallow ecologist preaching to an audience full of more than a few far shallowest ecology people.

Peak Oil theory posits that cheap and available world oil is peaking at this point, and the world is going to face an increasingly tight cut off of energy resource flow in the years ahead. This will happen while we are all currently having our needs poorly met, through a capitalist production and distribution economy based on high energy resource waste and continual anarchist expansion. In other words, we are coming upon tight times ahead, while our world economy is a waste,toss, and run one. We’re running towards a brick wall.

My announcement to the audience about the March 17-18 antiwar activities ahead in our city, was followed by a further brief comment about how the US military was a major waster of energy and was acting as pirates around the globe looking to loot remaining energy supplies. Matthew Simmons then instead of addressing what I had just said, only commented that the military leaders were now beginning to show interest in the Peak Oil ‘question’, and that he was happy by that. Well, la-de-la-da! It was Peak Oil turned into shallowest ecology like gold turned to lead in front of my very own eyes. Peak Oil in a puff.

So I now have an energy formula to produce new critical masses of Shallowest Ecology? Just put Colorado Springs local Richard Skorman, any Dupont exec (preferably racial minoprity or woman), Matthew Simmons in his Twilight (partial name of his book, Twilight in the Desert), Dick Cheney, and Al Gore all together into a giant green bag. And then shake hard! Then listen to whatever pops out of their mouths. That is Shallowest Ecology in its purest essence. We’re in big trouble.

Same bait, same switch

Posted on March 6, 2007 by Eric Verlo

Troops needed to watch the Mexico border Well 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.

Rebecca Tinsley and Darfur- when ‘Waging Peace’ is calling for imperialist military action

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Tony Logan

Rebecca Tinsley, head of a British group called ‘Waging Peace’, spoke this past Tuesday at Colorado College. Her topic was Darfur and stopping a supposed genocide going on there. The report of the meeting in the Colorado College student newspaper neglected to mention that she was also director of this group, ‘Waging Peace’, nor that Tinsley is also a hotshot within the Carter Center.

And who else is hot within the Carter Center right now? Why it happens to be Madelyn Albright, who once told a CBC reporter that the deaths of half a million Iraqis per Clinton’s sanctions ‘were worth it’. Albright was also a featured speaker last year at an American rally calling for ‘action’ against Sudan. ‘Waging Peace’ it seems, is in reality making propaganda in favor of imperialist intervention rather than against it, though they might try to deny it.

I was unable to get to the Colorado College forum on time, but a quick google on Tinsley and ‘Waging Peace’ is quite educational in itself. Here is Tinsley calling for European imperialist intervention into the African country of Sudan from the website of that group she directs. See their Feb. 15, 2007 press release.

Rebecca Tinsley spends much of her time lobbying Tony Balir and George W. Bush to ‘intervene’ in Africa where she is fond of shouting GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE, GENOCIDE in every direction. It seems that she is not that interested in the genocides underway against the peoples of Iraq, Palestine, or Afghanistan, though. She specializes in calling for imperialist action, not for calling to stop imperialist action. She calls this ‘Waging Peace’!

Progressives need to educate themselves more about these NGO types that do as Rebecca Tinsley and the Carter Center associated liberal hawks like Madelyn Albright are doing with Darfur. Edward Herman has an interesting commentary today on Znet about Human Rights Watch, another NGO that is prone to shrill for starting off imperialist ‘actions’ by crying GENOCIDE, while staying rather mum on ongoing genocides by imperialist countries. See HRW in Service to the War Party

Of note: Rebecca Tinsley is also a member of the London Human Rights Watch committee.

Democracy Now on KRCC

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Eric Verlo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to host the war crimes trials

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Brent Green

War Crimes Trial in private NotMyTribe is soliciting proposals for where to hold the impending War Crimes Trial. Brent Green replies:

In my van downtown.

This is kind of how I see it going: I’ll drive my van downtown- there’s a huge parking lot right on the bank of the river behind the UPS packing center. It’s unmarked, which I see as my biggest asset here, the secrecy of an unmarked van will keep these officials on familiar ground. I’ll hold out my dictionary (the only title the used bookstore wouldn’t purchase from me) and say “Place your right hand on this Science Bible, and promise that you’ll try hard not to fuck up.” W says “I swear.” I don’t believe him, he seems insincere, but I didn’t really give myself a backup option, so we move on.

I guess Bush will take the stand- a comfortable cloth spinning captain’s chair (one of Bush’s demands I’ll have to meet in order for him to submit to trial). I’ll grill him mercilessly.

“True or False: you are _______.” The correct answer is that tricky T/F hybrid that everyone mastered in elementary school quizzes, but that’s a very hard letter to say, so he’ll probably get this one wrong.

Whereupon I’ll make a powerful and moving objection “HEADS WILL ROLL!!!” I’ll shout, the wind shaking my ride.

We’ll turn on the radio for intermission. Some Mexican college rock station. Yo la tengo espanol.

And if you want experience and variety, this is your location. It’s seen it all. I got it from my Uncle Oscar who met Jack Kerouac once (not in the van)- it’s seen all there is: Illinois, DUI, DOA, FBI, Florida and a charging wild elk. Before Oscar raced dogs he used the van as an ambulance.

I pretended I was a lawyer once, to get my girlfriend a paycheck her boss was trying to keep for hisself.

Back when Great Uncle Oscar had the van it was always kept in tip-top shape. Uncle Oscar was rich. He was always saying “Get in the fucking van!!”

Uncle Oscar got more money than the government racing dogs between the cars on Wall Street.

Uncle Oscar lost his mind when his mistress died, and grew a cancerous hole the size some governments between his throat and his lungs. Wheezing like an elephant chasing dogs no one else could see up and down the cellar stairs. (Later, up, down and back up the street.)

Uncle Oscar’s legs went numb on Christmas Eve, a cart pulled by his dogs brought him to our front door (he was sitting on the hood, hollering whiskey fumes above the engine’s roar). With two strong hands and a trunk full of stuff he invited us “Come on In!” tramping snow through shoveled flowerbeds. He wasn’t yet, but he already looked dead.

After a long hard chase, Oscar liked to climb in his van and “help people.” He’d go ambulancing with a stethoscope and pliers and a bottle of Mescal. Mescal is terrible. Just everyone thinks so. Hitler didn’t like it ’cause it made him mean. But apparently it cures everything. Even road rash. Just say you’re halfway between the cab and the sidewalk and an ambulance turns you into a chalkline- Oscar’s there before you wake up. He cleans the blood off the hood with your shirt and puts you in the back. He opens the bottle, wraps your lips around the funnel, and moves the muscles in thee jaw (with his right hand- the left tipping back the bottle) ’till your teeth and your tongue eat the worm. Ambulancing was fun- even though I guess it directly led to my disbarrement (it was the only cause). I always told him it wasn’t his fault- but it was. Entirely.

Anyway, I guess Oscar should be the judge. He’s the oldest person I know, and he always says he’s done his share of courting.

Old Uncle Oscar, all hopped up on Viagara, screaming at Conde Rice “I hear my zipper shaking!”

I need these war crimes trials.

Texas football

Posted on January 16, 2007 by Brother Jonah

The Park Cities, University Park and Highland Park, get Dallas city services, water supply, at no city tax cost to the residents. Super rich neighborhood, one of the richest in America. To add insult to injury, the Dallas Police department routinely patrols the “border” of these neighborhoods, to keep out the riffraff from the surrounding townships of Dallas, Oak Cliff, DeSoto and South Oak Cliff. Some of the most dirt poor areas of Dallas County. But the people and businesses in these townships, even though they also have the distinction of being separate municipalities, DO pay Dallas municipal taxes.

In Texas, Football is worshipped. It is their lower case g god. They sold the design to the State Legislature, which has to approve taxpayer subsidized business deals such as the New Improved cowboys stadium in Arlington, with a sliding roof over the hole , so God could still look down and watch His team play. One democratic legislator said quote “Well, if God approves of it, who are we to say different?” and voted yes to the proposition.

So now the Cowboys are no longer not in Dallas, they aren’t even in Dallas County, they are across the county line in Arlington, Tarrant Co. Texas. Just south of the Ballpark which his royal dumbness forced the City of Arlington to buy. For his team.

And the College football teams, and the high school teams, and even the Middle School teams, are considered a farm where the NFL gets to hand raise its candidates for the pro teams. Where one high school team star in a thousand gets a chance to even try out for a professional slot.

They worship the oblong ball. There was one Governor, Mark White. He was Attorney General under Republican Bill Clements, until Bush the most active death penalty freak governor in Texas, (mark white helped him along) then lost the next election to Bill Clements. One of the few powers the Governor of Texas actually has is in deciding the school curriculum. What lost Mark White the Job wasn’t his Zero Tolerance, wiretapping, warrantless searches, death death kill them all bwaaahaaahaaahaaa attitude, and laws, no sir. It was football. Specifically the No Pass, No Play law. Which is as simple as it sounds, failing grades, no extracurricular activities.

Whut do you-all mean Bubba cain’t play no more football jes cause he’s dumb as a sack of dirt? That’s downright on-American!

One thing they used to protest the law was suspending the star player of the Chess Club for failing PE at one middle school. That’ll larn them sissy-boy eggheads not to fuck with our football.

But there is one and only one good thing about the way the laws are set up.

You know the difference between an Air Force recruiter and a NCAA recruiter? The NCAA recruiter isn’t allowed on high school campuses.

The good thing is I get to use that as an example for arguing with people like our good friend Ray. Whoever he is.

Thank you, President Bush

Posted on January 15, 2007 by Tony Logan

The Dallas, Texas business community, my mother, and President Bush have teamed up to help me out financially. For years my liberal mother has threatened her sons with the possibility that she would donate a sizable sum of money to Dallas’s Southern Methodist University in her will. SMU She went to school there and it was the best time of her life. But, she says, the university has changed, and instead of being a center of learning as it once was for her, in short it has become a creature captured by the Dallas super-rich.

Corruption seems to swirl around this university. Edwiin L. Cox Jr., son of the man whose name is attached to SMU’s now acclaimed Cox School of Business, had to be pardoned by George Bush Sr. for financial crimes he was convicted of. In return, Cox Sr. donated a hefty sum of money to that president’s Texas A&M’s presidential library shortly thereafter. But that is not what SMU is most noted for in the field of corporate corruption.

The most notable example of it, was when the Dallas business rich increasingly began to buy football players for the team. This went on despite repeated warnings and sanctions from the NCAA through the years, but the business community, alumni, and SMU coaches kept at it. Eventually, the shit hit the fan when the NCAA made SMU the first ever university to receive its ‘death penalty’. The varsity football program was closed down entirely for several years, and a program with a rich history has now become a minor player in college ranks.

But the latest scandal there is the decision by the big Whigs to make SMU the site of the George Dubya Bush presidential library. This is the type of thing that Dallas’s already most sorry political reputation certainly doesn’t need. Even some of the university’s conservative Theological Department are quite aghast and have protested this decision. The local daily paper has tried to play down the public reaction to the recent announcement that this ‘honor’ had been granted the city and Soutern Methodist, but the site of the library will be quite appropriate IMO. Southern Methodist sits inside a rich, White segreGated, suburban enclave, entirely surrounded by multicultural Dallas. Isn’t this the purest essence of Bush though? So what’s to protest? lol

Still, my mother sees this insult as the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She has written the university and told them that she has now taken them out of her will. Thanks, Mom! And thank you, George W. Bush Mom, you’re doing the right thing!

See, there is some justice still in the world. And maybe also some day, both Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush (both Texas Oilys) will be publicly hung for their crimes on the steps of the George W. Bush presidential library, of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas? We can only hope that their heads will soon roll, and in what better place than within the segreGated Park Cities enclave of Dallas, Texas, at Southern Methodist University? It would be presidential! Go Mustangs!

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