Tag Archives: Crawford

If Camp OUT NOW won’t end the US military corporate empire, will you?

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POTA - Peace Of The Action
In 2005 Cindy Sheehan staked her tent in Crawford TX until President Bush would deign to meet with her; she didn’t pack it up until she had launched an antiwar movement. From there Sheehan met with world leaders, challenged Nancy Pelosi at the polls, and made herself ubiquitous wherever antiwar was raged. This time Sheehan is laying siege to the White House and she’s not going to let up until Obama calls off his dogs of war. Will it work? It should.

George Bush could have halted the grieving mother’s momentum if he’d heard her out. This time no beer summit is going to pass for Obama’s promised change. Sheehan has already been arrested in front of the White House, the new president has already snubbed her on Martha’s Vineyard. Didn’t hear about it? The media can pretend none of this is happening unless Camp OUT NOW reaches critical mass. You should join in. Sheehan’s promising no less than the crumbling of the US military corporate empire. Can it happen? It won’t happen without you.

Shoe Thrower tortured into apologizing

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According to the BBC, whose parent Corporation, the British Crown, still has a few dogs in this fight:
 
Perhaps they, like the soldiers who voted down the P. (romise) O.(f) (more) W.(ar) Bush MeatPuppet Candidate who took his POW POW POW POW Torture Victim status and translated it into a much closer than really should have been Ass-whoopin’ on November 5, perhaps they too realize that their own comrades will inevitably suffer from the backlash, vengeance and just in general reaping of the whirlwind caused by a war of SO CALLED “Liberation” where one of the Former Prisoners of l’Ancien Regime is now being held without counsel, beaten and tortured not only by “cops” Trained and Funded by our “freedom loving” military, but by Actual Members Of The AMERICAN Military as well.

Because he’s being held at a USAF Base hospital.

Thus, it’s no longer the Puppet UnterFuhrer Dictatorship of Iraq who are holding him incommunicado, (save for a statement they forced him to make begging forgiveness for his “CRIME”) But Our OWN Beloved United States Air Force.

John McCain, who is championed by the Same Right Wing Torture Freak Serial Killer and Rapist George Bush, and ALL of his minions, Yes, O My Brothers, The Coward From Crawford and all his cronies,

John McCain who was famous for being tortured in the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam where he was being held for his War Crimes of bombing civilians in a country against which the United States had never declared war… and insists that similar confessions and apologies HE made for his actual murders were forced under duress…

Yes, O My Brothers, THAT McCain, is thunderously silent on the issue of a man who faces 3 times the total sentence he served in Hanoi, to be tortured daily by American Trained Experts every day for 15 YEARS,

For the “crime” of insulting George Walker Bitch Bush.

Even though he Himself rode the POW! POW! POW! Express to fame and Political Fortune that was really undeserved by any of his own actions or accomplishments.

The evidence suggests he didn’t really get shot down, but because he was a Spectacularly Bad pilot merely crashed Yet Another very expensive American Public Property airplane.

While recreating (a quarter of a century beforehand) the Terror Attack of 9/11.

George Bitch (as opposed to McCain who is merely George’s Bitch) is characteristically making himself look like a Hero in the incident, or at least to himself and his dwindling circle of Admirers.

See Ann Wright in action or at the PPJPC

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DNC arrest-bushCOLORADO SPRINGS- The PPJPC is collecting money to bring noted antiwar activist Ann Wright to Colorado Springs. They’re hoping to have her speak for a fundraiser. I’ve had a chance to meet the retired colonel/diplomat in person a number of times. You can too, with no fund-raising necessary. Go to an action.

The first time I met Wright was in Crawford Texas when a delegation from Colorado Springs joined Cindy Sheehan’s encampment outside George Bush’s ranch. Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin were the primary organizers behind Sheehan’s “Camp Casey” PR coup. When our group convened our own Camp Casey at Nevada Avenue and Dale Street, Wright was our liaison to the continued national effort.

Most recently we ran into Wright at the DNC in August. Ann Wright brought the white faceless masks to the Denver demonstrations. She spoke at the rallies and participated in several marches. Even now, whether the issue is closing Guantanamo or saying no to the Fed, you’ll see Wright’s squad with their masks, representing the faceless victims of America’s destructive imperialism.

While I look forward to Ann Wright’s upcoming visit, I think it is unfortunate that local energy for activism be dissipated with an in-house lecture. What would Wright rather see us doing? Hopefully she can illuminate the hole into which the PPJPC is burying its head. Perhaps a study of her successes can show that a nonviolent ethos need not limit one’s actions to the avoidance of confrontation.

Do we commit genocide for Blood Sport or as a Wildlife Management Tool?

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COLORADO COLLEGE- I didn’t get to see yesterday’s CC lecture, HUNTING: BLOOD SPORT OR WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT TOOL?
I was keenly interested to hear the moral arguments behind playing god over the animal kingdom. It’s easy to justify regulating wild populations no longer held in equilibrium by natural factors. Would it be unlikely not to feel called to play gamekeeper to Earth’s human scourge as well?

State of the Rockies Project 2008-2009 Wild Rockies Speaker Series brings Kent Ingram, former president and current board member of the Colorado Wildlife Federation, and Dave Crawford, former executive director of the Rocky Mountain Animal Defense, to discuss their positions on the role of hunting as a means of wildlife management.

Is it for fun, for the preservation of life on Earth, or both?

If it sounds too good to be true

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Human Growth Hormone…it probably is.
 
Jamaica’s Usain Bolt won both the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints in world record time, something that hasn’t been done in 32 years. The Jamaican women, led by Shelly-Ann Fraser, swept the 100-meter race. Today another Jamaican woman, Veronica Campbell-Brown won the 200 meter sprint. A single country winning gold in all four sprints hasn’t happened since the USA did it in 1988.

All this metal begs the question, what the hell is going on with the Jamaican runners?

I’m much too sweet to have a taste for sour grapes, but it seems likely that the Jamaican sprinters are doping. Their current coach’s association with Trevor Graham — a Jamaican silver medalist in 1988 and coach of Beijing silver medalist Shawn Crawford — who recently received a lifetime ban from the sport for helping athletes obtain performance enhancing drugs, further fuels suspicion.

Of course, the Jamaican Track Federation vehemently denies the doping charges pointing out that the athletes have been tested and retested and, according to team doctor, Herb Elliott, remain “ready at any time at any hour to be tested.”

Sounds convincing…NOT. The dopers are always body lengths ahead of the U.S. Anti-Doping agency. It makes no difference how many times you test if you’re not looking for what they’re taking.

There is a Jamaican saying likkle likkle mek nuff nuff. Loosely translated it means “a whole lot of a little bit amounts to a whole lot.” Or, more simply, it all adds up.

Yep, to a whole lot of gold.

Betrayed by the at-peace community

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With “malice,” is the word the CS Indy chose. Oh boy. For our out-of-town readers, the PPJPC dirty laundry has reached the printed news. It certainly is embarrassing, but probably too, about time. I’ve spent the last two years playing politely, leaving unresolved issues behind closed doors, painting optimistic pictures reflecting where I hoped the PPJPC could be. After the latest unfortunate escalation, I listened to entreaties to keep the developments between ourselves. Now why would it fall to me to keep a lid on somebody else’s indiscretions, without so much as an apology or expression of consideration from colleagues? No, thank you.

In fact, the response has been to try to impugn my integrity. Bring that one on.

I was sent into the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission with a mission, to discover why it appeared so dysfunctional. Participation was slacking and the office appeared to be dropping the ball. Why? I discovered a staff very determined to subvert all activities, period. In the guise of handy excuses. I’ve written plenty about outright insubordination, about refusal to rally membership, about foot-dragging with publishing, websites and fund-raising. To someone experienced with effective organizations it was obvious, to others steeped in social affinity groups, perhaps not so.

What I didn’t observe was that a cadre of members are quite satisfied to leave it that way. Now, from some of the more active people, I have become dismayed to discover the PPJPC doesn’t represent the Colorado Springs peace community, it represents the at-peace community.

Since my participation in Crawford Texas with Cindy Sheehan, through our Camp Casey encampment here, I saw that the PPJPC would not fully support the growing popularity of antiwar sentiment. The group takes credit for whatever happens, but won’t provide assistance. Now they’re actually hurting other efforts by playing the nonviolence card, implying that everyone else is not nonviolent enough. I defy anyone to tell me that I am not nonviolent. I’ll knock their metaphysical block right off their sagging shoulders!

Indeed, anger is considered violent, speech is considered violent. In a silent monastery I’d agree. And I underestimated the contemplative garden this group has commissioned for itself with the PPJPC. However, they are prepared to use every violent means of untruth, manipulation, shaming, and emotional extortion to protect their private prayer club.

I’m happy to leave it to them. I won’t fall again for pleas that their efforts need more and younger blood. They’re not prepared to open the doors to energetic people with higher expectations.

They claim to be the only game in town when it comes to standing up against war. That’s how they solicit donations. I think they ought to confess their game is spectator solitaire. Then there will be enough said.

Toons stencil history of iconic film stills

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Stenciled film stills
Can you identify the iconic images collected on these stencils? Larger views of each section are reproduced below. Answers at the bottom.

Stenciled film stills

A clue, the stills are in chronological order, going across starting at the lower left.

Stenciled film stills

Stenciled film stills

Lune, Vampyres, Buster Keaton, Lon Chaney, Chaplin, Valentino, Lugosi, King Kong, Frankenstein, WC Fields, Oz, Dietrich, ?, Shirley Temple,

M, Mae West, Gone With the Wind, Groucho, ?, Astaire & Rogers, Garbo, Errol Flynn, Laurel & Hardy, Betty Grable, Maurice Chevalier, ?, Jane Russel, Cary Grant & Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford,

Gary Cooper, Ten Commandments, Singing in the Rain, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly, ?, Katherine Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Spencer Tracy, Audrey Hepburn, ?, Some Like it Hot, Yul Brynner, James Dean, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf,

Cool Hand Luke, Psycho, Clockwork Orange, 2001, Berman, Strangelove, ?, Bonnie & Clyde, Nutty Professor, On the Waterfront, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, Lawrence of Arabia, Bergman, Shaft, Josey Wales, Mrs. Robinson,

Harold & Maude, Bruce Lee, Cabaret, ?, Eraserhead, Aguirre Wrath of God, Woddy Allen, Jaws, Bowie, Pacino, Mad Max, Star Wars, Taxi Driver, Rocky, Rocky Horror, ?,

Yoda, ET, ?, Blade Runner, The Shining, ?, Bruce Willis, Good Morning Vietnam, Divine, ?, Blue Velvet, River Pheonix, Color Purple, ?, Terminator, Tommy,

Hanks, Hannibal, Thelma & Louise, Edward Scissorhands, Run Lola Run, Gary Oldman, Pulp Fiction, Godzilla, Witness, Morgan Freeman, Color of Money, Kwaidan, ?, ?, O Brother Where Art Thou, ?,

The Rosa Parks Lone Rider Theory

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Rosa Parks photographed after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, posed with newspaper reporter“Rosa Parks did so act on her own!” I’m faced with this repudiation yet again, as J’s high school class revisits the civil rights movement. Their reading list includes Howard Zinn, but still the lesson plan is determined to press home the Parks as lone rider theory.

It makes a heroic story, to tell of lone brave Parks (she’s even painted as elderly, are you kidding me?), riding home from a tiring day at work, so tired that she becomes tired of being told to go to the back of the bus. She stands her ground, an example to us all, and changes history.

Yes it is inspiring, yes it feels empowering. But IS it empowering? Does it empower you to stand up to injustice in the face of harsh, legal if also physical, consequence? Have you yet? You’re no Rosa Parks I could confidently guess, and it’s not your fault.

Do you doubt that there haven’t been countless upstarts, individuals railing against repressive authority, who’ve spoken their piece, made their gesture, only to be humbled by arrest, jail, judges, fines, and the ridicule of the community? It happens all the time. They are marginalized, broken, and ultimately worn down.

Let me describe another kind of heroism. Working for civil rights activists as a stenographer, being in on the discussions about who would make the strongest test case, and picking the right moment mindful of the preparations needed to mobilize colleagues to rally to your defense; thus committing your act of civil disobedience with ready support. Is that any less heroic? I’d suggest it takes more bravery because you know you are launching a political act that will have legs. And it will require more from you than just anger or being tired.

Cindy Sheehan didn’t just march down to Crawford Texas and pitch her lone tent. She consulted with an incredible network of organizers to conceive the plan, Code Pink maven Medea Benjamin among them

Rosa Parks and the bus she rode in on launched a key maneuver for the civil rights movement, and that’s certainly not a lesson the establishment wants to teach its children. Teach them that history is made by individuals, unique, gifted iconoclasts, with whom you’d have to have delusions of grandeur to identify. “You Sir, are no Kennedy,” or Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks. It’s the monarchist belief that only special people are endowed to rule. No need for commoners to concern themselves, the aptitude for nobility is hereditary.

Don’t teach children that to change anything you have to take on the establishment with its own weapons. Idealistic youth don’t want to hear that you have to fight politicians with politics.

You don’t have to become the system to defeat it, but you have to inhabit the system and understand that it operates with the mechanisms of human nature. You must play the system, and no one, absolutely no one, has ever done it alone. Not even Eve.

Was Rosa Parks an iPod-wearing rebel-without-a-cause? Not hardly.

President Bush wiretapping warrantless

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My spell checker informs me the word is unwarranted. Forgive my Crawford-Kennebunkport pidgin, I’m loving the intented-less poetic justice. Bush’s wiretapping is warrantless.

For law enforcement to search a house, to otherwise contravene a citizen’s protection from unwarranted search or seizure, it must be given a search warrant. That is to say, you must seek a judge’s agreement that such action is warranted. Often this consent is merely a rubber stamp, but the procedure does inhibit swat teams from advancing over citizens like an invading army.

Likewise for wiretapping, intelligence agents can eavesdrop neither pell-mell nor wholesale. They are restricted to poking into private affairs for which they’ve shown a judge they would have probably cause to do so.

To discuss President Bush’s NSA spying activities as needing no warrant is to expose a delightful single-entendre. Warrantless? Yes they are. Unwarranted. Without warrant or cause. Of no merit, legally. No justification, certainly.

Bush’s wiretaps are: Not reasonable or right, uncalled-for, unjustifiable, unreasonable.

Bush’s wiretaps are: Incapable of being justified or explained, indefensible, insupportable, unjustifiable, unwarrantable.

Bush’s wiretaps are: Without a basis in reason or fact, baseless, groundless, idle, unfounded.

Bush’s wiretaps are: Lacking justification or authorization, undue, unjustified.

Salazar, Allard and Lamborn all wimping out…

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On the issue of Chimpeachment… Lamborn and Allard I can understand, they have to live in the same (american Taliban) party as Bush.

Lamborn thanks me for contacting his orifice oops I mean Office.. Allard gives me some bullshit about “we have checks and balances in our government and that has kept us free”… well, DUH! Allard, YOU ARE the “checks and balances” Dummy! But it’s like, you know, you ain’t been checking nor balancing anything!

The way you spend our future, I get the feeling you can’t “balance” a “check”book.

Salazar has at least expressed concern, but feels helpless because Pelosi isn’t making the first move…

All three of you, WAKE UP and smell the power.

You allegedly REPRESENT Colorado… THE single most important strategic area in America. The middle of the North American Continent, dudes…

That means, dummies, that there’s nothing you have to do to “earn” Federal dollars coming to Colorado. We don’t get highway or military or development grants or other funds for any “good behavior” on our part, beyond just not threatening secession…

The Penta-Goners aren’t going to cut out their intestines to spite their belly buttons. They KNOW which side of their bagel is buttered. How many mangled metaphors do I have to throw out there before you get the hint?

This area, these people, are so important to the Feds that if you told Pelosi to start Chimpeachment procedures tonight, tomorrow morning it would be back ON the table.

Now, I know that there are people employed by all three of your offices who have no other job than to read Local Political weblogs, in an effort to stay informed.

Well, Consider Yourselves Informed… And Start Doing Something.

Don’t be scared, hiding behind the lame-ass excuses like you need to make sure Colorado gets our slice of the Budget Pie. There would be no less Federal Money coming in if you walked up to the President and his cabinet and the Penta-Goners and told them to line up and take turns kissing our left testicles. In fact, they would probably throw MORE money at us in order to bribe you into getting back in line.

You have a Mandate to represent, you have the power to represent that Mandate, we the people, yeah, US, use that power. Don’t keep punking out on us.

Grow a set. You don’t seem to realize just how disgusting it is to watch you guys suck up to the Coward from Crawford.

Your putrid cowardice smells worse than Monument Creek on a hot day.

John Paul Second, the sequel…

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Catch the Easter Morning Mass ? I bet the NeoCons are real sad about this… hee hee hee…
They have been anxiously awaiting a Casus Belli and Jus ad Bellum from him, something that they never got from JP2.

Without those 2 pronouncements, basically which would make it not a sin for a Catholic to kill somebody in a war, Catholic soldiers would have to go to confession every time they do.

You know, when Hannity was babbling about Ratzinger having effectively stopped a “Marxist takeover” of the Vatican, by writing a pastoral letter denouncing Liberation Theology, he was pronouncing “a death knell for Liberalism in the Catholic Church” and all the NeoCon pundits were howling for joy because they thought (or at least said, sometimes they say things they don’t really mean in their heart of hearts) that a “Conservative” pope had been elected.

In a case of long term memory kicking in, they were crowing the same way when JP2 got elected… because JP2 was opposed to the Soviet Bloc.

Also, Liberation Theology is the way the Catholic Church justifies the existence of the United States as a Legitimate Government…

Guess there is no joy in Mudville tonight, or Crawford either.

This makes Ratzinger’s second Urbi et Orbis Easter Mass, and he shows no sign of being a “tame” Pope.
_________________
Last night, I stayed up all night wondering where the Sun had gone….
and then, suddenly, it dawned on me…

DG3K, Saddam and New Years Eve

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As you might remember, Dead Guy 2K was a Texan. DG3K was also. There is a lot of significance to that, to me at least. While Justin, 22, Specialist, of Spring Texas was being killed Mr Bush was having our own Cindy arrested AGAIN. In Crawford.

At the ranch where he pretends to be a commoner.

An old term for that would be “gentleman farmer”. Somebody who does farming when and if the urge strikes him, … sort of like a hobby.

Oh yeah, I kind of noticed the coincidence (you know our Gubmint would of course never ever lie to us or anything like that) between the rapidly (then) approaching DG3K Before New Year’s event and the sudden hurry-up-and-hang-Saddam event.

But the latter would not and could not have been any kind of diversion to take our eyes off of the former, right?

I can’t really pretend to cry for Saddam, he was after all just another torture freak in the pay of Our Leaders until he decided to go independent on them.

But killing him made a martyr out of him. If they had let him rot in jail for the rest of his life, it wouldn’t have taken much longer, he was after all nearly 70 years old, and he would have been just another old prisoner dying a slightly accelerated natural death.

Instead he has become a rallying point.

They are dumber than a box of dirt.

Oh, Lord, not Kumbaya!

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Campfire songsMy muse is upset because everyone is making fun of Kumbaya.
 
Relax, Kumbaya is safe. The story you read in the Gazette, Oh Lord, not Kumbaya, syndicated from the Dallas Morning Herald, is a rather underhanded loaded question. You know the classic example: “When did you stop beating your wife?” Whether you never stopped or never started, the load is delivered, you do. (But you don’t.)

The DMH article asked “How did Kumbaya become such a joke?” and then lists instances of the joke being made: A GOP ad, a Christian Science Monitor quip. They are able to find an early instance in an obscure 80’s comedy Volunteers spoofing the Peace Corps. It seems to me SNL has made fun of everything, that wouldn’t make the ridicule universal.

I was tipped off when my friend paraphrased the article as having said Kumbaya was an “international joke.” What international? The rest of the world isn’t making fun of our spirituals, certainly not our peaceniks. The lambast is purely English-speaking and it’s coming from corporate mouthpieces who want to ridicule any tools of grassroots community efforts.

Television has no interest in sing-a-long songs. People singing together and not looking at the TV doesn’t serve them at all. But for people communing together, a melody and lyric like Kumbaya is very powerful, especially because everybody knows it already. When protestors assembled with Cindy Sheehan last year in Crawford, we sang Kumbaya among others. We wound up singing all the patriotic songs too because they were the only ones we all knew.

And so the media is determined to keep the heat on hippies and idealists, religious or not, by making fun of them, and concluding that the derision is universal. The press laughs with each other’s jokes and then report the humor to be statistically unanimous.

The Dallas reporter asked several etymologists “why did Kumbaya become an idiom for idiocy?” And none of the etymologists knew. Maybe that’s a tip off it isn’t.

Hopefully one day the press will stop trying to paint people who hope for peace and goodwill to all mankind as idiots.

Sheehan power

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Cindy Sheehan has no peer in the world. She can travel to any country and be received by their governments as a dignitary. Few celebrities or politicians can expect such treatment, and when they do, their entitlement comes from being plugged into the establishment.
 
Cindy Sheehan’s power comes from the people. It comes from our belief that an outsider could make a difference in the turn of events. The American media could easily have ignored Cindy Sheehan’s stand in Crawford Texas, but Sheehan had captured the public’s fascination. Why? Because she reflected the public’s idealism. As long as the ordinary people of the world believe that there exists someone who could call President Bush to the carpet, Cindy Sheehan will be imbued with her power. Who other than one improbable woman could face off the man who holds the fate of the world in his hands?

This Easter Cindy Sheehan is returning to Crawford Texas to lay siege one more time to President Bush in his lair. Since initiating her movement in August last year, Sheehan has participated in diverse actions, including a Thanksgiving reprise in Crawford which led only to several prompt arrests. The media has learned that as public attention wanes, it can ignore or temper their enthousiasm for Cindy Sheehan when it wants to. Again, Sheehan’s power comes only from us.

Perhaps it is again time to rally to Sheehan’s side. Maybe joining Sheehan’s vigil in Crawford for Easter can once more focus the world’s hope that the peace movement can plant itself before George Bush’s eyes.

We can rally in large numbers all over the world, but because the media can typify the effort as lacking cohesion, it can certainly pretend that the peace movement is peopled by malcontents who offer no alternative.

Cindy Sheehan offers a real alternative, and I think she has hit on an ideal strategy. Not just withdrawal from Iraq, but an appeal to Bush’s conscience. He may have one.