Tag Archives: Cuts

Landmarks in memoriam

Posted on by
1

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.

America’s Colombian friends

Posted on by
2

Horrrible testimony is coming out daily in Colombia about the American government’s Colombian friends, the Paramilitary death squads.

All of Colombia is following the continual unfolding of new scandal about the Colombian government and military’s deep connections with the paramilitaries. Check out the video some even though it is in Spanish. Your tax monies went to help make these atrocities happen, so don’t hide your eyes and ears away. Take a look.

America made this level of total criminality possible by funding the Colombian military for decades now. The techniques used by the death squads organized by the Colombian military rival the worst crimes of the Japanese and the Nazis during WW2. Still, our US corporate media keeps it all quite hidden away from the American public, and most Americans still continue to think that the US government is only there fighting drugs, if they think about Colombia at all.
…………
from ‘El Tiempo’ below which is the New York Times of Colombia….
…………
…Villalba assures that for the cutting up learning they used peasants who brought up together during the occupations of neighboring towns. “They were older people taken on trucks, alive, tied”, he described. The victims arrived to the estate on topped trucks. They were taken down with their hands tied and moved to a room, where they remained locked for several days, waiting for the training to start.

Then the “bravery instruction” came up: people were separated in four or five groups “and there they were cut into pieces”, Villalba told during the deposition. “The instructor told me: ‘You stand up here and secures the one who cuts’. Every time a town was occupied and someone is going to be cut, the ones doing that job must be provided with security”.

Men and women were taken out the rooms on their underwear. Still with their hands tied, they were taken to the place where the instructor awaited to start the first recommendations: “The instructions were to take off their arms, their head, to cut them alive. They came out crying and asked us not to hurt them, [they said] they had a family”.

Villalba describes the process: “The people were opened from the chest to the belly to take out the guts, the innards. Their legs, their arms, their heads were ripped off, with a machete or a knife. The rest, their remains, [were taken out] by hand. We, who were on instruction, took out the intestines”.

The training was compulsory, according to him, to “test [their] courage and learn how to disappear people”. During the month and a half Francisco Villalba says he was in the course, he saw cutting instructions three times. “They chose the students to participate. Once, one of them refused to do it. ‘Doble cero’ [a paramilitary chief] stood up and told him: ‘Come here, I can do it’. Then he ordered to cut him up. They made me to cut one girl’s arm. She was already taken her head and one leg out. She asked them not to do it, because she had two children”.

The bodies were taken to common graves at the same place, La 35, where it is estimated 400 people were buried….

much more, including video of the undercovering of the 10,000 PLUS bodies at El Tiempo.

Judging a Bush by its cover

Posted on by
1

Self-negating peoplehood
If I were to ask you to imagine a car load of war-supporting teenagers, you could picture them, can’t you?

If I were to describe a man who pulled over and got out of his car to shout from across the street that he supported our right to say what we were saying –thanks to our soldiers in Iraq fighting for our freedoms, you could picture that guy, couldn’t you?

Imagine a pickup truck bed full of pro-war males –no, this didn’t happen– jumping up and down, shouting and pumping their arms, but you know what they would look like don’t you?

It’s the pro-war look. Not just a lack-of-flair, conformity thing, the look actually seems genetic or familial tradition. Bad haircuts, ill-fitting clothes, pudge, stiff necks, shiny complexions, eyes deep set reflecting someone with nothing upon which focus if they tried to meditate, their only private moments shared with the TV or the loo or their private parts. You can see on their foreheads the neon “vacancy” sign, or a flashing Don’t Walk signal.
A Denver counter-protester at a 2004 anti-Bush rallyOafs -maybe that describes them. Not un-smart, not mean per se, not undeserving of their mother’s love, or sympathy. Really, they’re not unlike dogs. They do what they’re told, follow their food source unconditionally, bark at strangers because they’re nervous, pee on what they claim to be theirs, and shit on the carpet when they want attention.

Dumb smirks. You can spot Bush supporters before they open their mouths. If the American Right has a uniform, it’s eugenics.

Don’t tell me we can’t judge these books by their covers.

The Path to 9 11

Posted on by
2

In defense of ABC’s docudrama The Path to 9/11. Near the beginning, when the terrorists were taking responsibility for the 1993 WTC bombing, “Ramzi Youssef – Palestinian Terrorist” explained why they had done it: because of America’s military and economic support of Israel.

The subject of Israel and Palestine never came up again, and never came up at all on Ted Koppel’s counter-ABC-straw-man The Price of Security.

We’ve got our boot on Palestine’s windpipe, they’re flailing their arms hoping to dislodge us, and we declare a war on arm flailing. Our media runs through what options America has to be safe from arm-flailing without looking at our boots to let American citizens consider how we might tread the earth with more humanity.

The US and Israel, it’s hard to say who is the master of whom, are actively killing Palestinians in a genocidal program every bit as calculated as the Holocaust or the extermination of the Native Americans. The US supported the recent slaughter of Lebanese peoples, also considered by the international community as genocide.

The US accuses Syria or Iran of backing Hizb’Allah. Those links are sketchy compared to our sending weapons and aid to Israel and other false authorities in the Middle East. When Israel was stepping up its bombing Lebanon in advance of the nearing ceasefire, we had to speed our resupply of Cluster Bombs lest Israel run out of time to use them. The US arms and defends the self-proclaimed kings and sultans who amass great wealth from the sale of their countries’ oil while at the same time subjecting their peoples to abject poverty. Bin Laden opposed our propping up of the Saudis. Youssef decried our support of Israel in Palestine. Arabs have cause to reject US strong arm policies in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and of course Iraq. Muslims have very good reasons to reject US policy in Afghanistan, Indoneasia and the Philippines.

The least ABC could do in its mockudrama was to set the scene with the Muslim extremists’ motives, and that was it. Even though the rest of the program was re-edited because of the criticism, there followed closely law enforcement characters endlessly lamenting they needed authority for warrantless searches, domestic eavesdropping and inter-departmental information sharing. Filipino police were depicted heroically for not waiting for warrants, female border agents were lauded for using their intuitive -read racial- profiling, suggestions were made of an FBI coverup, even that Clinton’s people were helping Osama.

The irrationality-mongering was so egregious it would take forever to enumerate. The good news is that the Stephen Bochco style shaky camera, the endlessly tight closeups, the jump cuts unto incongruous details lacking context, and the frenetic action going every direction, serve really like an alarm bell going off next to your ear. It’s not conducive to critical thinking, but it’s also painfully and obviously contrived.

I draw one fundamental conclusion. The 9/11 truth seekers have been right all along. We must diffuse the 9/11 lie because the establishment yahoos, both Republican and Democrats, plan to ride this vile deception as long as they can.

By comparison, Ted Koppel’s sombre contemplative piece was full of verbal obfuscation. Koppel began his report with “by now every adult in America knows what happened on 9/11.” What an innocuous way to brush aside the fact that what happened is known, yes, and disputed! His language got no clearer as the program progressed. Lots of “clearly” this, when of course it very clearly could be unclear.

Koppel asked critical questions of such criminals as the author of the latest definition of torture and the commander of Gitmo who declined to admit that detainees had ever been tortured, but Koppel let Bush cabinet officials off with softballs and setups. Koppel let Tom Ridge appear thoughtful as to hold a mirror to himself asking what America is about, he let effete Senator Hays tell everyone that nuclear bombs can be made from items purchased at Home Depot, and Koppel let an NSA software developer appear pro-civil liberties by rejecting racial-profiling. His solution? Eavesdrop on everybody.

By assuming the role of white knight, Ted Koppel is really an effective mouthpiece for the Time-Warner machine, a major player in upholding corporate dominance. What do you think of his “point well taken” technique? As if his smilingly elusive subjects have just trumped him with something other than a quacking canard!

The good news about Koppel on Discovery is that we got a close look at the Bush operatives. They are in charge, yes, and they benefit from being presented by a charming, deep voiced newsman, but didn’t you recognize Larry, Moe and Curly right down to the haircuts? These guys are dopes! In morals, self-reflection and speech. It makes me giddy to contemplate because it’s not going to take much thinking power to take them down. Call me gullible, call me idealistic. It’ll take effort, determination and sacrifice, but it won’t take nucular-chemical-rocket science.

Colorado Springs IQ ranking

Posted on by
Reply

This weekend’s Gazette reported that Colorado Springs ranked 16th among America’s brainiest cities.
 
Although that may not be saying much in light of the US intelligence quotient these days, I still find the story hard to believe.

Other indicators: driving aptitude
According to local traffic systems professionals, the traffic lights at Colorado Springs intersections are adjusted by CDOT to a very slow rate. This setting provides for longer yellow lights in general as well as a longer gap between stop and go. They do not call this a remedial measure, but it is the lapse from when one direction is given red to when the perpendicular direction is given green, basically the space of time during which both directions sit simultaneously before a red light. Engineers set the timing according to local driving proficiency. Perhaps it’s just me linking that factor to IQ.

Colorado Springs level of idiocy is reflected in other local regulatory agencies. Although the area receives considerable revenue from Pikes Peak or Bust tourism, residents oversee everyday the ongoing destruction of their mountain view, their single natural resource.

Visual reflex impairment
The Snake Canyon Quarry continues to deepen and widen, within everyone’s focal range of their famous single peak. The Springs even has an older depleted mine, a similarly shaved mountain a couple foothills north which is tersely called “the scar.” It’s supposed to be a reminder of what we don’t want to do again. But Snake Canyon continues to dust our furniture and pit our windshields yet we refuse to seek our simple aggregate elsewhere. Other cities don’t have mountains to appropriate to sand their streets in the winter. They have to dig discrete pits at the outskirts of town instead. Apparently we don’t mind looking at our open pits. It’s more expensive to dig than it is to shave.

Likewise, El Paso is the only county in Colorado which permits building on mountain ridgetops. Ridgetop homes create erosion problems for everyone beneath, from the silting of the creeks to landslides to flash floods to lost vegetation. And it spoils the Pikes Peak viewshed. Within plain sight.

Foresight
Colorado Springs residents have also accepted recent cuts to their parks services. Park toilet facilities have been boarded or demolished and replaced with Port-a-let plastic outhouses because they’re cheaper to maintain. So are latrine trenches, but would we abide them? Well, maybe.

City officials have also decided they cannot afford to maintain the boulevard medians. They are selling the opportunity to local businesses in exchange for a posting “maintained by” advertisement. This at the same time the city utility overpays its executives and installs televisions in their elevators.

Impaired empathy
Colorado Springs has demonstrated its simplemindedness to the nation at large. We’re famous for our idiocy, though your judgement might depend on your politics. Our city was the epicenter of the Amendment Two debacle. This was where religious extremists attempted to deprive homosexuals of their right to minority protection. The measure was overturned in state court, but it got its healthy start here.

We are home to Dobson’s child spanking doctrine, Ted Haggard’s military-theocracy incubator, and multiple christian fundamentalist publishing houses. Anyone can open these books or tune into the TV broadcasts to sample our inanity. Again I’m equating inanity to IQ.

Cuckoldry
Colorado Springs is also staunchly Republican. We excuse this to mean Conservative, but Bush’s run of things in DC has put the lie to that claim. Colorado Springs’ Republican representatives have supported the most cockeye, transparently thieving policies that our corporate lobbyists have concocted. Colorado Springs voters are dumb, perhaps the percent that vote are not the percent winning accolades for being brainy.

To be accurate, I should admit that by “brainiest,” the Gazette meant the most educated. They were citing a CNN Money Magazine study based on census records which ranked cities of over 250,000 by the percentage of their populations which held Bachelors Degrees. Maybe this doesn’t indict Colorado Springs exactly. Maybe this says something more about the accreditation of our colleges, I’d guess the Colorado party schools. Go in dumb, come out dumb too. Of that, Colorado Springs is proof.

Space Symposium protest 2006 part 3

Posted on by
Reply

Tennis courts in the shadow of golf balls
Day 3: Wednesday
Was it because I hadn’t had any non-violence training? Is that why everyone jumped in to enforce a stand down from my assailant?

Our protest was just getting started, I was holding half of a banner in one hand and passing out fliers with the other when a very angry man zeroed right in. Maybe it was the bright green peace sign. He was jogging along Lake Circle and he had not even passed us. He shouted “I know people who died for you” and before I could answer, though I must not have looked sufficiently repentent, he repeated himself while leaping to clutch my collar and push against me to I don’t know where. I had time only to ask him if he knew that he was committing assault before the Police officers peeled him off and led him away for a discussion.

I regret not having requested that he be allowed to state his piece, minus the physical aggression, but instead we simply instructed the officers that there would be no need to press charges. I didn’t see it but eventually he must have jogged off. Our banner read BEWARE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning.

I am a non-violent person, even a pacifist, though perhaps I am not much of a verbal pacifist. I had no intention of matching this guy’s blows, but I had every intention to stand up to being pushed.

I would have liked to call him on his much mistaken, sentimentalist, flag-hugging, bullying world view. Jogging in the Broadmoor area, this red-shorted, military-coifed assailant had probably commanded some soldiers who had been killed. I do mourn their loss. But it sounds like he should have thrown his life into the ring instead of beating his breast about the sacrifice made by others. Who knows how voluntarily their lives were offered? It always amazes me to hear military commanders brag about the casualty rate faced by their units. When ships sink, we expect captains to go down with the ship. Why? Because we expect them to save the men for which they were responsible or die trying.

Am I being harsh? I didn’t try to knock him down. That’s what we’re protesting: people who are knocking others down, and calling it “defending our freedom.”

Day 4: Thursday.
The Broadmoor had the police explain that we would not be permitted to walk in the bicycle path as we had tried two days before. So this time we brought bikes. I got to the protest late, at nine am instead of eight, just as several of our participants had to be shuttled to the airport. So I was left to peddle my bike up and down Lake Circle alone. If ever I have felt like a big dweeb, this was it. And it got on the news.

There was too much wind to trail a banner. I had selected WILL YOUR CHILDREN SURVIVE YOUR WORK? Instead I waved a large peace pirate flag. The peace sign with crossbones beneath it. A peace sign Jolly Roger. Or symbol for poison. Either way it’s a message the war makers do not want to hear. If there was a symbol for what sunshine represents to vampires, maybe that would be appropriate too.

Our protest of the SPACE SYMPOSIUM had everything to do with the fact that space is being militarized out of sight of the American public. How can there be oversight in a democracy if the citizens aren’t told what is going on?

Each day we would see schoolbus-loads of kids parading through the symposium. The event is billed as something much more benign. But did we see any scientists? I doubt it. We only saw men with military haircuts, in uniform and out. I should say that I did see the odd Brit, and they often gave us a closely held thumbs up!

The flag I waved today was to demonstrate that the message of peace has been relegated to renegades. What a perfect example at the Broadmoor! The hotel had closed its sidewalks to keep our protest from being seen from the Convention Center windows. We had to use the bike paths in order to give our message visibility.

So I pedaled up the designated bike lane on one side and down the bike lane on the other. I had to navigate past hotel employees and delegates who were sometimes skirting the security cordons themselves. I had to steer around the security chief’s pickup as he alternated between following me around, or parking and calling out to me each time I would pass. He was counting my laps, starting at zero arbitrarily. At one point, having reached to ten, he held both hands out the window as if to signal to someone that he’d counted ten. I looked but couldn’t see who was supposed to be watching him. Every so often policemen would appear to loiter near to where I would pass, but they would only nod in greeting.

I stayed until past the lunch hour surge out of the center. A friend has informed me that the bicycle act was on the local KKTV news. “Broadmoor protester nearly arrested,” but I didn’t see their camera. Perhaps they were filming through a window in the center. I was busy catching the eye of the conventiongoers on the street. There were smiles and thumbs up, but mostly the attendees rushed past. There was also a “enjoy your freedom there buddy.” As if these very-well-paid guys in suits want to be paid credit for our freedom too. “Freedom can be hard work, actually” I told them.

Space Symposium protest 2006 part 2

Posted on by
Reply

N-8 silo revisited
Day 1: Monday
On Monday we stood, nearly two dozen of us at the corner of Lake and Lake Circle, we sang our song to an Oscar Meyer melody, we held banners, we blew our whistles and we handed out our baloney sanwiches. And nearly got arrested.

The Broadmoor had cordoned off the majority of the sidewalk in front of their new Convention Center. Our protest was relegated to only the corner. True, it was a very visible corner, and we could offer flyers to nearly everyone walking to the Convention Center from the Broadmoor Hotel. But we thought we could accomplish a little more if we paraded our banners more visibly.

Dave Therault noted that all the Harris security personel were bunched up around us. Dave proposed a plan to excercise their legs a little. He suggested that he and I parade a banner along Lake Circle, walking in the marked bike lane adjacent to where the Broadmoor had blocked off our pedestrian sidewalk. Our banner would then be seen by the attendees inside the center, not just those milling about the entrance. Our banner read STAR WARS RESEARCH: A WELFARE SYSTEM FOR TECHNOLOGY.

Sure enough, as soon as we began we heard the security radios squalk. “Stop them” was the gist of the messages. A nearby guard told us to stop but we looked at him and asked why, while still moving forward. He responded with a smile. Each time we passed somebody with a radio, we could hear the supervisor ask why they were not containing us.

When we returned from our first pass, we added another person to our parade and another banner. It was a Henry Ford quote: TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF WAR & WE’LL HAVE PEACE TOMORROW. This time more security officers joined us. When we returned we noted that they were now quite spread out.

On our third pass, the head of security came down himself. He approached us from the street, simply to tell us, in no uncertain terms and not calmly or with civility, to get back to where they were permitting us to stand. We answered that we didn’t work for him, actually and would proceed how we pleased. He repeated his command and threatened to call the cops and have us taken away. Certainly everything accelerated from there.

Suddenly we were surrounded by a half dozen policemen. They listened and interjected in calm terms that we were on Broadmoor property and had to do what the man said. We argued public thoroughfare, pedestrian right-of-way, to no avail. Dave diffused the confrontation, I assumed my role as hothead.

I wonder, I know why we are so vociferous in our condemnation of the military complex. What is it that drives their enthousiasm to stop us? We’re holding banners. They are killing babies, ruining lives and subjugating unsuspecting masses. We’re holding banners. Who should be the more indignant?

2.
On the way out, walking into the Broadmoor neighborhood to retrieve one of our cars, I encountered a soldier walking the other way. He’d just parked his car perhaps and we crossed paths on this tree lined street. He wore a full dress uniform, lots of medals and a beret, and he carried himself with informal dignity. I was wearing a bright green t-shirt enblazoned with a large peace sign and my Camp Casey cap. I was carrying several rolled banners over my shoulder and walked like I was returning from the front line.

The soldier and I nodded to each other and smiled. I couldn’t help but feel we had communicated a solidarity. He has been doing his job, I have been doing mine, both on the periphery of those making the decisions. The war mongers aren’t the soldiers. The war mongers are the guys in suits, sporting golf tans. Our common adversaries. And boy are there a lot of them. Three more symposium days to go.

Day 2: Tuesday
In conjunction with the Space Symposium protest at the Broadmoor, CITIZENS FOR PEACE IN SPACE held a screening on Monday night in the WES room at Colorado College. We watched the new documentary CONVICTION, about the three Dominican sisters who served almost four years in Federal Prison for protesting at a Minuteman missile silo in 2002. It had screened the day before in Denver to an audience of 350. The director and producer were on hand to answer questions, as were sisters Ardeth, Carol and Jackie. On Tueday night CONVICTION was scheduled to screen again in Greeley, so CPIS decided to make a day trip out of the event and provide an entourage for the sisters.

On the way of course Bill scheduled protest actions at Lockeed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Buckley AFB and Minuteman silo N-8, the site of the sisters’ 2002 Plowshare action.

Noteworthy perhaps was the degree to which preparations were made in advance of our arrival. Even Aurora Community College, where we planned to park and disperse ourselves to three of the defense contractors in Aurora, was ready for us. Bill had mentioned receiving several telephone inquiries from the various police departments, they had been checking CSAction for details of our plans. When we arrived at each location, we found barriers had been installed at the entrance of every parking lot with a minimum of a half dozen security personel standing about. I cannot say they were there to greet us, because they were not. They stood off to the side, or backed up when we approached. They were keeping a healthy no-man zone between us. At Raytheon there were even people posted on the roof to watch us.

At Buckley Airforce Base we were read a letter of greeting from the security officer that sounded like our Miranda rights, although it was full of cautionary advisories should we consider trying to force our way past the security booth. Our only intentions had been to conduct a rally and listen to what several experts could tell us about the activities conducted at Buckley, particularly having to do with those huge golf balls. I wondered if the security detail which contained us had sufficient clearance to be hearing such information.

Here is perhaps why protesters have to expect NSA surveillance. Because we learn too damn much. If the military doesn’t trust its own officers with classified information, they certainly don’t trust us to keep it secret. And we’re willing to let anyone overhear us, maybe that could be a genuine national security risk. In this case, we spoke about NSA/Defense Department complicity in the presence of Buckley AFB part-time security guard contractors.

The highlight of the day was of course Minuteman silo N-8, where the sisters held a press conference to reporters from Denver and Greeley. It was an emotional event and hard to describe. Many of us had never stood so near to a weapon of mass destruction. In this case, mass-mass-destruction, many-many times more powerful than the bombs unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This missile carries payloads for thirty separate destinations. In light of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Minuteman missile’s purpose is obsolete. Strategically it can now serve only an offensive purpose. Technically its existence violates the non-proliferation treaties to which our nation is signatory. N-8 presents a very, very grave danger to humankind’s survival. It is not a toy.

We drove Northeast from Greely to reach N-8. We probably could have found a nearer missile if we wanted. There are 49 missile sites in Colorado, out of 500 sites nation-wide.

While we conducted our action, wrapping the gate with CRIME SCENE tape, marking the site with a poster designating it as a WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION, and an EVICTION NOTICE, a black helicopter circled. Apparently within just minutes of our leaving, several matte black SUVs arrived and removed our decorations.

Tennis courts in the shadow of golf balls
Day 3: Wednesday
Was it because I hadn’t had any non-violence training? Is that why everyone jumped in to enforce a stand down from my assailant?

Our protest was just getting started, I was holding half of a banner in one hand and passing out fliers with the other when a very angry man zeroed right in. Maybe it was the bright green peace sign. He was jogging along Lake Circle and he had not even passed us. He shouted “I know people who died for you” and before I could answer, though I must not have looked sufficiently repentent, he repeated himself while leaping to clutch my collar and push against me to I don’t know where. I had time only to ask him if he knew that he was committing assault before the Police officers peeled him off and led him away for a discussion.

I regret not having requested that he be allowed to state his piece, minus the physical aggression, but instead we simply instructed the officers that there would be no need to press charges. I didn’t see it but eventually he must have jogged off. Our banner read BEWARE THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous warning.

I am a non-violent person, even a pacifist, though perhaps I am not much of a verbal pacifist. I had no intention of matching this guy’s blows, but I had every intention to stand up to being pushed.

I would have liked to call him on his much mistaken, sentimentalist, flag-hugging, bullying world view. Jogging in the Broadmoor area, this red-shorted, military-coifed assailant had probably commanded some soldiers who had been killed. I do mourn their loss. But it sounds like he should have thrown his life into the ring instead of beating his breast about the sacrifice made by others. Who knows how voluntarily their lives were offered? It always amazes me to hear military commanders brag about the casualty rate faced by their units. When ships sink, we expect captains to go down with the ship. Why? Because we expect them to save the men for which they were responsible or die trying.

Am I being harsh? I didn’t try to knock him down. That’s what we’re protesting: people who are knocking others down, and calling it “defending our freedom.”

Day 4: Thursday.
The Broadmoor had the police explain that we would not be permitted to walk in the bicycle path as we had tried two days before. So this time we brought bikes. I got to the protest late, at nine am instead of eight, just as several of our participants had to be shuttled to the airport. So I was left to peddle my bike up and down Lake Circle alone. If ever I have felt like a big dweeb, this was it. And it got on the news.

There was too much wind to trail a banner. I had selected WILL YOUR CHILDREN SURVIVE YOUR WORK? Instead I waved a large peace pirate flag. The peace sign with crossbones beneath it. A peace sign Jolly Roger. Or symbol for poison. Either way it’s a message the war makers do not want to hear. If there was a symbol for what sunshine represents to vampires, maybe that would be appropriate too.

Our protest of the SPACE SYMPOSIUM had everything to do with the fact that space is being militarized out of sight of the American public. How can there be oversight in a democracy if the citizens aren’t told what is going on?

Each day we would see schoolbus-loads of kids parading through the symposium. The event is billed as something much more benign. But did we see any scientists? I doubt it. We only saw men with military haircuts, in uniform and out. I should say that I did see the odd Brit, and they often gave us a closely held thumbs up!

The flag I waved today was to demonstrate that the message of peace has been relegated to renegades. What a perfect example at the Broadmoor! The hotel had closed its sidewalks to keep our protest from being seen from the Convention Center windows. We had to use the bike paths in order to give our message visibility.

So I pedaled up the designated bike lane on one side and down the bike lane on the other. I had to navigate past hotel employees and delegates who were sometimes skirting the security cordons themselves. I had to steer around the security chief’s pickup as he alternated between following me around, or parking and calling out to me each time I would pass. He was counting my laps, starting at zero arbitrarily. At one point, having reached to ten, he held both hands out the window as if to signal to someone that he’d counted ten. I looked but couldn’t see who was supposed to be watching him. Every so often policemen would appear to loiter near to where I would pass, but they would only nod in greeting.

I stayed until past the lunch hour surge out of the center. A friend has informed me that the bicycle act was on the local KKTV news. “Broadmoor protester nearly arrested,” but I didn’t see their camera. Perhaps they were filming through a window in the center. I was busy catching the eye of the conventiongoers on the street. There were smiles and thumbs up, but mostly the attendees rushed past. There was also a “enjoy your freedom there buddy.” As if these very-well-paid guys in suits want to be paid credit for our freedom too. “Freedom can be hard work, actually” I told them.

Prizefight fixed

Posted on by
Reply

Autist-in-chief snickering
We are watching a prizefight. Bush is swaggering and staggering around with his arms in the air having declared himself winner before the bell has rung, as he’s done through every round. This time he’s looking deliriously vulnerable. He’s got the typical bad guy aura of a smug WWWF villain. He could be in a wheelchair and the crowd would cheer to see him clobbered.

We are yelling at the top of our lungs for Bush’s opponent, any opponent, to knock him down! A child could do it! Go up there and push him over with the pinkie finger of your left hand! Now! Get in there you bum! Do it! Impeach! Censure! Ask him a tough question!

But his opponent won’t touch him. Won’t even get in the ring. Won’t even look us in the eye. You bum! Worse, the opponent won’t let anyone else get into the ring either. It’s becoming clear that we are dealing with a ringer who’s being paid not just to lose, but to keep other challengers out of the ring. This bum’s job is to ensure that Bush comes out on top no matter what. This bum is on the same payroll as the rampaging little tantrum.

Let’s not forget that as terrible as the fight has been to watch, everything’s going swimmingly for those who are paying the bills. The Iraq war has paid off handsomely. Katrina relief a windfall. Tax cuts for the rich a wet dream. The promoters could not have imagined such success. Their little dictator is stomping roughshod around the ring and the Democrats are pulling their punches, doing a remarkable job making it look difficult to take a swing at Bush the autist-in-chief. The bums!

Colorado Springs -1, Salazar 0

Posted on by
1

Well this is a fine developement for Colorado Springs. Arguably the highest profile progressive elected to a local post, city councilman and vice-mayor Richard Skorman, has resigned his position to become the regional liason for Senator Ken Salazar.
 
The announcement was made the same day that Salazar cast his vote with the majority to renew the Patriot Act. The same month that Salazar stood up to say he would not support a democratic effort to filibuster the Aleto nomination. The same year that Salazar voted for a budget which included draconian cuts to social services.

None of this is out of character for Colorado’s Ken Salazar. He began this term by endorsing the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General. Salazar has proven to be a foe of nearly every democratic issue. Now Colorado Springs has sacrificed a progressive voice to Salazar’s misguided moves.

Admittedly, Richard Skorman has behaved more like a centrist since he cut off his ponytail. Of course it was hard to know whether Skorman’s ineffectiveness on the city council was due more to the fact that the five other members where all part of the wacky right.

Will Skorman serve to catch Senator Salazar’s ear and realign him to the best interests of the Senator’s constituents, or will Skorman’s function be to ameliorate and apologize for Senator Salazar’s wacky rightist ways?

It’s already widely postulated that most democrats serve only to render the Neocon agenda more palatable to an incredulous American public. I think Richard Skorman is going to be playing that role.

How to tell the media is lying, the deficit

Posted on by
Reply

Pie chart.
Since Bush has been in office, a half trillion dollars was added to our nation’s deficit. How much of that was due to our disastrous and costly war? A third. How much for our social welfare, including for Katrina? A sixth.

That leaves half, more precisely 48%. Where did that half of the additional deficit come from? It came from the TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH. Half. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the tax cuts, experts say we could be running a surplus.

Those figures come from the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, if you’d like to check them.

The deficit is one of the biggest misrepresentations ever perpetrated by our media. What is it? A debt we’re passing on to our children and grandchildren? Yes, but hardly just that.

Think of it in terms of your credit card bill. The balance keeps getting bigger, you watch that balance, and perhaps you fantasize that maybe you’ll just never pay it off, so who cares.

But then you look at the interest you’re paying. You look at the payment you have to make every month just to pay that interest, then your stomach feels sick. You resolve to pay off the balance so that you don’t have to keep paying that interest. You may have bought an appliance with that credit, but the interest buys you nothing.

Does the credit card company care whether you pay off the balance or not? Not at all. As long as you owe the balance, they get to collect your interest. You could owe forever as far as they care.

The deficit is like that balance. Sure we don’t have to pay the balance, but we certainly pay the interest. Big financial institutions love to keep America in debt because they collect the interest. The more debt the better.

That’s the wickedness of the tax cuts for the rich. We give money to the rich, only to have to borrow a quarter trillion more to do it, which just means more interest we have to pay to the same rich people who got the tax cuts.

That’s like borrowing a hundred dollars from your friend, to give to him for whatever odd reason, maybe you think he’ll jump-start the economy with it, except now you owe him a hundred dollars, plus ten percent interest. In the end, he gets the one hundred, (he’ll get his one hundred back eventually), plus he gets ten dollars a year until you pay him back in full. Sweet deal, some friend.

And that guy owns the media. He has no interest in the media spelling out for you what an unfortunately bad deal you just made. You gave him a tax cut, and borrowed from him to do it. With interest.