Tag Archives: Colorado Springs Independent

Private Funding to close down the Concentration Camp?

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gitmo-new-rules-of-warThis is a question for the Legal Eagles…
 
Since the only real issue left in getting rid of this huge albatross around our collective national neck… (the one that’s tied to the even larger Boat Anchor)… Is one of funding the venture…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valentines Day is coming soon! Think ahead!

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valentinesYou might want to take that Special Other on a Valentines Day cruise this coming February? I don’t have the money for it, but maybe John Weiss who is owner of the Colorado Springs Independent does? He could take his new wife and report back to the dedicated readers of his publication about that 2009 romantic Republican cruise! It would be of great service to the community if he would? Surprise your Sweetheart, John, and thanks ahead of time for the report back. You two will have a blast!

To book your reservation, go to Young American’s Foundation and step on board with the cruise missile leadership team under the navigation of Captain Ed Moose!

Lack of democracy in the PPJPC should not hide behind religiosity

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Two PPJPC board members, Genie Durland and Dorothy Schlaeger, wrote to The Colorado Springs Independent trying to explain why the group’s officers locked some of its membership out of the PPJPC building where we had tried to hold a meeting.

To compound the insult of locking us out of the building, the new Board Director, Jo Ann Neiman, then called the police when she saw us still attending our meeting on the sidewalk in front of the PPJPC building! She explained to the police that she wanted us to be told that we were all trespassing!

So what did Genie and Dorothy have to say about all of this?

In short, they implied that we, the members of the PPJPC who wanted to meet inside the PPJPC rented building, were violence-prone, and they used a bunch of excessive religiosity about Gandhi to do so! They mixed their own liberal religious beliefs together with what they see as the teachings of the Hindu religious leader, Gandhi. Here is how they justified the current board director calling the police on us,

‘Many who consider themselves “peace activists” across the globe engage in tactics, which fail to engender peace. PPJPC is deeply committed to nonviolence and will neither engage nor support activism employing tactics inconsistent with Ghandian nonviolence.’

Genie and Dorothy, I might ask you both, what is ‘Gandhian’ nonviolent about suggesting we are violence-prone when we are not that in the least? You do the rather violence-prone Colorado Springs municipal police a big favor in labeling others amongst the PPJPC and general public in such a manner. You are actually encouraging police violence against us with this sort of rhetoric against us, who are all people that have in fact never engaged in any violent acts at all. In short, you are playing a game of Holier-Than-Thou and The Independent was absolutely correct in labeling and titling that as being ‘Malice in the Movement’.

What also is Gandhi-like in calling the police on us to tell us that we were supposedly trespassing by holding a nonviolent meeting, of all things? What is nonviolent in locking us out from the meeting we wanted to do inside of the PPJPC building, not out on the sidewalk? And most of all, what is nonviolent in a PPJPC organized to have a single membership meeting per year? That is undemocratic community organization, not nonviolence.

This is the real issue of concern, not whether to be tactically violent, as you falsely imply that it is. We tried to hold our meeting because we want some internal democracy within the PPJPC where now there isn’t any.

We want a group not controlled by paid office staff eating up tens of thousands of donated dollars in their salaries each year, just to run the group autocratically as they determine activities of their own making for non paid volunteers to carry out. This is non-sustainable situation in the long run, and it would be much better to help work out something, instead of locking members out of the PPJPC offices. Currently the group is headed towards a financial shipwreck and that is the Big Issue. The PPJPC has no real membership accountability at this time to check their deficit spending.

We also want a board picked by the activist , than have board members pick their own replacements beforehand and then present it as pre-determined fate to the rest of us who have no current voice in PPJPC policies. Most of all, we want a PPJPC that is not crippled by police interference into our own internal affairs. This has led to those who now hobnob at the police station with the cops in secret meetings then arranging affairs of the PPJPC where the cops are called out on other PPJPC members less religiously inclined than yourselves.

Most of all, this is about trying to make the PPJPC into something other than a religious-run clique, but into a true body of diverse people that for many different reasons are against the US government’s global militarism. You two are opposed to doing so, and hide behind the figure of Gandhi to oppose those who are. The religious and those not religious must be united in a Peace movement, not separated as you would have done.

Disagree with us if you will, but do not falsely label those who differ with you as being less non-nonviolent than yourselves. You are doing the work of the violence-eager police force and local government bodies when you do so. We respect your religious beliefs in nonviolence, but we ask you to not try to force these relgious beliefs that you have off on all others as you have currently justified doing so with your current letter to The Colorado Springs Independent.

We look forward to working with you together in the future as in the past inside the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission.

Cuba is a gayer place today than it was yesterday

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Such a repressive place, Cuba! Hateful and nasty communists run the island. They are hateful and nasty that is, unless you happen to be Gay! That’s right, Cuba is a gayer place today than it was yesterday.

And I’m hoping that John Weiss, publisher of The Colorado Springs Independent, will run a piece about how Gay Havana can be! What about it, John? The Castros are gayer than the Teletubbies are even! Gayer than the teachers of Harry Potter! Gayer than Ted Haggard! Yes ! Castro champions gay rights in Cuba Got to love it!

Objectivity on local radio

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Dec 5 procession
This week some colleagues and I marched on our knees to the Colorado College president’s office to present signed petitions which asked that the college radio station carry a news program called DEMOCRACY NOW! (Exclamation theirs.) We’ve yet to receive a reply, but I wanted to explain our actions.

First of all, what is DEMOCRACY NOW? DN is a daily radio and television news show out of New York City that stands nearly alone in covering the stories which are being kept out of the corporate owned media. For example, every year the Colorado Springs Independent covers the year’s ten most censored stories. DN reports those and more, usually as they happen.

Do you know the story of Khaled al-Masri, the German Muslim who is currently being represented by the ACLU in a lawsuit against the CIA, for unlawful abduction, rendition, incarceration and torture? DN reported his story a year ago, after al-Masri found himself freshly drugged and dropped into a field in Macedonia. His story sounded so strange but had the ring of truth to it. Experts were planning to analyze strands of his hair to verify his account. It took more than a year before al-Masri was able to break national news. In between, how many extra-judicial abductions have been allowed to take place?

And the recent attention paid to the U.S. use of Napalm, and their use of White Phosphor as a chemical weapon? DN reported such incidences from the very first day the U.S. assault began.

Why KRCC? Because local community radio station is our great hope, and our first impediment.

By now it is widely accepted that FOX and the network media are mouthpieces for corporate moneyed interests. People of education turn to NPR and the NYT for example for what they believe is the balanced picture. But it’s not, and critical thinkers are beginning to see that the media has been playing a good cop bad cop psych-op routine. One side of the media plays the good cop, with its supposed liberal bias, but ultimately has the same agenda as its partner.

The local community looks to KRCC as a trusted advocate of objective news. But a growing number who supplement their news from the internet and from the Indy see that NPR really doesn’t cut it anymore. Have you heard NPR advancing the “Christmas” vs “holiday” war-on-Christmas canard? Elsewhere this story has been exposed as a concoction of the far right, but NPR is dutifully giving it legs.

Why go to the president of CC? Because KRCC station manager Mario Valdes has repeatedly rebuked everyone’s requests. Community members have been after him for years and his reply has been the same. Mr. Valdes has even slandered the effort by categorizing it as a small minority who want a political bias on KRCC. No one is asking for bias, just objectivity. And the number of people who’ve made this request has not been small. And it’s always been growing.

Plenty of public radio stations have adopted DN and can provide wonderful testimonies. They testify that DN beats out Morning Edition and All Things Considered in popularity. In some cases DN is their leading fund-raiser. While it might be hard right now to mount a large rally in front of the station to advocate for this change, it’s clear that if KRCC carried DN, and then threatened to take it away, crowds would protest en mass.

What next? Give station manager Mario Valdes the chance to argue for what values he stands when he opposes DEMOCRACY NOW. Let’s hear beyond the arguments which NPR advances to try to stem their eroding control over their affiliates. NPR has always fought the intrusion of a spoiler like DN in their line-up because it significantly hampers their editorial discretion.

Let’s schedule a townhall meeting, a public debate. To make it interesting public viewing, let’s make it a tag team debate. If Mr. Valdes is so concerned that Colorado Springs is such an uneducated community, too easily put off by issues of social justice and human rights, let’s cater to his mythical plebeian audience. The debate can be tag team, open to all, WWF rules!

Mr. Valdes will then get to see just how small is the group of DN advocates. As we’ll see how many people share Mr Valdes’ opinion against more objectivity on KRCC. Mr Valdes may bring the support and sympathy of many listeners, but how many will stand up next to him to argue against freedom of the press, Democracy Now’s many prestigious journalism awards, and the growing movement to reclaim the airwaves for the people?

Reprinted from MyKRCC.org