Tag Archives: Democracy

What Does Democracy Look Like? Not likely the Old Testament Thank You

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I attended Occupy Denver’s forum “What Does Democracy Look Like?” this weekend to hear activist scholars of considerable repute throw in their two cents. The first day was a splendid gathering, except where a curated discussion of intentional community lapsed into theology. Yes, a distillation of mostly white reform literature (Fanon was dismissed as wayward) yielded three steps for The Way Forward: Egypt, Exodus and the Promised Land. Yep.

By which he meant: 1) Recognize your enslavement, 2) have the courage to leave all for an uncertain fate in the desert, and 3) seek/develop/discover your own promised land.

Even as metaphor it’s embarassing. Enlightened salvation from Old Testament mythology? No thank you, and for that matter, up yours! Unfortunately the language I used was less restrained, but his religious offensiveness had been compounding. He’d begun his presentation admonishing listeners that transformation begins with the self and so he’d already unmasked himself as spiritual. Worse, a monotheist.

Egypt: I’ll come back to “systems of oppression” in a moment.

The Exodus: a myth, it didn’t happen, even Hebrew scholars now agree with the historical and archeological records.

As to the Promised Land: that was a real estate scheme to backdate a deed, offered as divinely conceived proof of landlordship. The same title is being waived around to dispossess Palestinians today.

But really, isn’t the exodus-to-promised-land malarkey at the very foundation of Western Civilization’s expansion problem?! Are we really all entitled to virgin land? As if earth hasn’t been continuously and fully inhabited since before agrarian civilization, before monotheism was conceived to impose inequity, and justify slave-wages, interest and rent. The craddle of exploitation, that was Egypt.

But can we run from Egypt? The remedy staring us in the face, from which common men are deliberatly destracted, conspiring to emancipate Egypt, is to rid ourselves of the oppressor sociopaths. In practical terms understood more clearly by the better educated before us, we must strangle Egypt’s kings with the entrails of its priests.

I don’t care how academic your garb, when you tell your flock to reapply themselves to the sacred, and your “sacred” is biblical, supposing to transcend nature, you’re a priest.

Thank you WDDLL organizers but I do not go to church and I resent when devious means are employed to bring it to me. Actually those priests are the worst, they’re missionaries! If we’ve learned one thing as we discuss mankind’s break from his mille millenia of sustainable existance, resist the colonizer. Conquored peoples ourselves, we can only wish that indigenous peoples could have given Western missionaries the reception they deserved, and it’s no less true today: fire.

Alas as a result I heard a number of attendees today praise their faith. To each his own, but unhelpful. If you have to evangelize you’re a liability because nonsense is infectuous, especially as education levels recede. Can others entrust you with the battleplan while you commune with the adversary?

There’s a wonderful scene in AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, Werner Herzog’s dramatic depiction of conquistadors wreaking havoc in the Amazon. Following a coup among the greedy Spaniards, the wife of the abruptly deposed leader appeals to the mission’s priest, as her last resort to restore order. The priest, her ally only moments before, turns on her thus: “Her ladyship must know that the church always stands on the side of the strong.”

World Press Freedom Day is cover for US sponsored voices of destabilization

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Remember the jokes-on-them cautionary tale about admen trying to sell the Chevy NOVA in Latin America, oblivious that “no va” means “doesn’t go?” in Spanish. You’d think Capitalism’s missionaries would know their “freedom” brand has already been unmasked. Translated it means “World Bank Compliant Fascist State” whose media is embed only. How ironic that capitalism in democracy’s clothing is heralding World Press Freedom Day. I suppose Russia and Iran are held as examples where the press isn’t free, although RT and PRESSTV are by far more reliable sources of news than anything in the “free” world. I most appreciated WPFD for the light it brought on its international supporters, bloggers who I might not have immediately known were sock puppets for western tentacles. Here’s someone in Colombia who depends “in great part on international co-operation” to fund her work.

More bilingual protest chants: Obama, Pendejo, Close Gitmo Now You Weirdo!

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Must we say please? “OBAMA, PENDEJO, POR FAVOR CLOSE GITMO!” When the chants on your march are multilingual, even in Colorado some people need the Spanish translated for them. Do you know what “Obama, Escucha, Estamos en la lucha” means? Is it true, we’re prepared to fight? This is irrelevant bluster from the mouths of SEIU organizers, paid to rally volunteers in spite of the futility, probably only if futility is guaranteed actually. Otherwise they’re Obama supporters, who assure everyone “This is what democracy looks like” and promise victory through electoral politics. Here’s a popular one: “El pueblo, Unido, Jamas sera vencido!” Really? Shout it with conviction all you want, it doesn’t make success inevitable. For English speakers who don’t drink the Koolaid that’s : The people, Kept busy, Run circles til they’re dizzy.

Gun Control for weapons makers not users, for war mongers not hillbillies

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I’m really not big on this call for gun control, mostly because it means to further restrict individual liberties, and especially because the outcry is a media induced hysteria of disreputable provenance, aimed at America’s violence junkies instead of its dealers. Really? Is Going Postal the result of a citizenry not having laws enough to control itself? US prisons reflect a conflicting diagnosis.

In tragic synchronicity with the Sandy Hook school shooting which prompted US public calls for gun control, a knife-wielding madman in China assailed twenty schoolchildren with no resulting fatalities, giving rise to perhaps the first time the non-Mongol West has ever thought it glimpsed greener pastures over the Great Wall.

My takeaway from Bowling for Columbine was not “Gun Control Now!” but the toxic volatility of America’s culture of fear-of-violence-mongering and its gun-ho idolatry. Michael Moore called for a stepping up to our responsibilities, not a surrender to dumbassedness. I hold our national arrested adolescence to be a character flaw of pioneer, frontier provincialism, an adaptation of the civilian contractor settlers conscripted for the Westward Expansion, shock troops of the Enlightenment which became the onslaught of industrial capitalism.

Americans are hicks –we celebrate it– who define our personal space with armed borders. For us it’s bombs not education, simplistic fraternal evangelism over scientific sibling-hood, our pretended easy camaraderie really armed detente: trust but verify. Because of course, American frontierism, yet unable to see itself as invasive, from Columbus to Manila Bay, has been imperial for as long as “Yankee” has been a pejorative; Americans blissfully, Disneyfically unaware.

America’s gun problem isn’t just domestic, it’s export. For gun control I’d like to see a ban on production, not consumption. Unlike drugs whose source is organic, the manufacture of weapons is a centralized racket, easily constricted and regulated. The “Gun Show Loophole” is a stop gap for small fry; let’s muzzle the beast itself. And if you think reining in the weapons industry is improbably Herculean, why-ever do you think now is the time for Hercules to dispense with his Second Amendment protection?

Just because the Right to Bear Arms has come to exclude bazookas or drones, doesn’t mean its intent was not to protect our democracy from authoritarianism. If anyone had construed the Second Amendment as a mere hunting license, Theodore Roosevelt’s national parks would have been seen as encroachments on our revolution-conferred sovereign’s right to poach.

Are Americans thinking that democracy is lost because we can’t have bazookas — that the Second Amendment is inapplicable because the high courts adjudge the masses incapable of self-governance? The “well regulated militia” has surely gone the way of the Home Guard or Neighborhood Watch Committee, as our civic nature moved from social to anti, but it doesn’t diminish the need to have minute-men insurgents to counter would-be tyrants. Obviously we’re not talking about Minute Men privateers to whom police departments can outsource xenophobic vigilantism. If Occupy Wall Street proved anything, it lifted the fog on America’s militarized police state. Public gun ownership may be the only incentive law enforcement has to knock before entering American households.

Can you doubt it’s going to take armed resistance to overthrow Mammon? The world is teetering on uprising and already we’re seeing a stalemate on the streets, between unarmed protester and paramilitary police, a draw which upholds the power imbalance between cries for justice versus patronizing injustice. Is leading by nonviolent example going to overcome the sociopaths squeezing their underlings for blood? I’m not saying that hopes for a nonviolent transformation are misplaced, but these disciples of revolutionary pacifism espouse the same religious dogma that always shackled, never delivered, common man. Factoring sociopaths into the norm of “human nature” has been forever holding back aspirations for a harmonious social construct.

Going Postal in China is demonstrably less fatal, owing to China’s mentally imbalanced having resource only to knives. How utopian to imagine a disarmed populace, those greener pastures being a hellhole of forced interned labor. As an open air prison environmental death camp, Gaza’s got nothing on China.

Opposition forces kill US Ambassador Chris Stevens, America In Libya’s No. 1

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Maybe it could have happened to a more deserving operative, but that’s splitting hairs. Obviously we can’t call the late ambassador Chris Stevens the “mastermind” of the US covert destabilization of Libya. However, he was Our Man in Benghazi, essentially the NO. 1 in charge of the state-terrorist cell poised to exploit the rolling “Arab Spring” for the forces of capitalist neo-democracy, let’s call it AMERICA IN LIBYA. Stevens organized and armed the US-sponsored rebels who exploited the pan-Arab protests to foment unrest, then civil war, then NATO intervention, against the West’s nemesis Muammar Gaddafi. Remember how Gaddafi was unceremoniously deposed? Captured, tormented, then shot most likely by a CIA-contracted assassin? Where was the humanitarian outcry against that sanctioned barbarity?
 
How undignified of Westerners to decry the killing of Ambassador Stevens, legally, in the field of battle, by opposition fighters in Libya, on this rare occasion when they got their man. Actually four: the ambassador, a military attache, and two Americans whose identities the USG won’t reveal, I’m thinking mercenaries. The USG is speculating that the rocket attack was planned, and by none other than al-Qaeda, because it’s unlikely the Libyans who stormed the US consulate in Benghazi brought impromptu grenade launchers. Funny, Gaddafi had the same nagging complaint about his supposed “protesters.”
 
Everyone is condemning this killing, even President Obama vows to exact “justice”. But by his own definition, this was justice meted by Libyans, perhaps even some of the allies we’d mobilized to remove Gaddafi. Whereas Obama’s “justice” means retaliatory air strikes and death squads against unnamed, unproven adversaries, immolating their homes, families and friends.

How much does Occupy not believe in elections? Enough to boycott them?

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US Election is election fraudPundits, even friendlies, are infecting the Occupy Movement with direction-waylaying cynicism, so I’ll tell you what I think Occupy should do next. Never mind the usual grievances, leave those to existing advocacy groups, although they do benefit from Occu-proding obviously. No matter what you think Occupy Wall Street’s core issue was, by definition OWS asserted our system of governance was broken, our regime is not responsive, not representative, and immovable by the conventional permitted mechanisms. So right now, which bankrupt democratic mechanism is being paraded before us, taunting a debunking from Occupy? We’ve been paying it lip service already: the fraud of our electoral process. Isn’t it time Occupy said DON’T VOTE? Don’t dignify Election 2012 with your buy-in, undignify it with a vote of no confidence. I don’t mean merely not vote, let’s Get Out The No Vote! Now wouldn’t that separate the men from the Dems!

MoveOn and the 99% Foundation et al, have been co-opting OWS numbers already, herding Occupy’s newly activated citizenry back into the Obama fold. Apparently there’s still hope to be squeezed, that Barack Obama isn’t the people’s nemesis he pretends to be in office.

If we threaten to occupy Obama’s vote, the Dems will roar! They’ll accuse us of ensuring the GOP villain’s win. They’ll be positively shrill, can you imagine? Occupy will go from a nostalgically eulogized Prague Spring, to People’s Enemy Number One, a national threat, inestimably unpatriotic, and suddenly more relevant than anyone’s ever dared admit. Our unoccupied friends will go from politely avoiding talking politics around us to actively begging us to reconsider.

Anyway, how are we going to explain our demonstrations at the RNC and DNC? We protest because the people are given no real choices. We protest because elections are a sham. Do we believe it ourselves? Think of fellow occupiers who’d earlier agreed that elections are mere show. Was all that talk polite patronizing? The inefficacy of voting is in fact a huge contention, and not one of those partisan niceties upon which we can agree to disagree. The illusion of Democracy is WHY WE OCCUPY. Our government is broken, the entire electoral system is election fraud. The presidential race is just a bold Kabuki show-stopper to please the crowd. Maybe Occupy can make it a real show stopper.

Wanna occupy? Sorry Colorado Springs but your Wall Street is the military, yes the pointy end of our oppressors’ stick.

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Nobody likes to draw the short straw, but isn’t that already our lot living in Colorado Springs? Yeah, it’s easy to protest Wall Street from the safety of a provincial backwater, our city even backed us with a permit, but is that really grabbing the imperial bull by the horns? The Occupy Movement has spotlighted how the world’s 99% are oppressed by the ruling elite. It made more clear how true democracy is undermined by their military-industrial-corporate-banking complex. Now, doesn’t a major chunk of that alliance operate right where we live? Think. It ain’t banking or industry, and the corporations here orbit around the headliner of that lineup, the military, our city’s dominant export. Yes, criticizing the military in a military town is not popular. Do you think the Wall Street protesters were a welcome sight to Manhattan’s bankers? You can call to “End the Fed” online, or protest anything in the world from a digital soapbox, but a public demonstration is limited to what’s in your local vicinity, especially if you mean to OCCUPY IT. Look on this as a curse or a blessing: The Zuccotti Park activists get to target sharkskin-suited traders, we’re up against men with guns. But what are you going to do, cheerlead the OWS front in NY, or hold up your end of the fight?

Ron Paul is a hopey change bubble for white people, this time let’s burst it

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RPtard – An American voter who’s peeing himself silly at the prospect of Ron Paul snatching the democracy movement for the Fascists, but who shortly will be rolled into the Republican Party like every other Teabag Libertarian antisocial supremacist before him.

Colorado Springs Occupy saved from the haters, Occudrama: the Final Act

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He bragged at GA about how he’d personally mobilized tonight’s contingent to descend upon Occupy Colorado Springs to depose its leadership, but did Agent Dumb really think someone who’d sworn to destroy OCS, another who’d stolen the first Facebook group, another who’d tried to sabotage OCS actions, another who’s snitched to both the press and FBI, and another who’d betrayed each and every occupier, would be entrusted to decide the fate of OCS? Agent’s sidekick Wolf, who’d swiped the FB group, kept hissing “make everyone admin, make everyone admin.” But when Agent Dumb pushed forward with a proposal it was this: “Dissolve every element of Occupy, its website, Facebook group, and all its infrastructure.” Seriously?
 
He felt disenfranchised by the probationary terms to which he was being held, but basically Agent Dumbass’s renewed interest in Occupy was only because he wanted to kill it. The hater tag-team could not have, of course, because OCS actions go on, headless. At least now the insurgent chatter should lessen, now we can recruit real occupiers, free of those who wanted to wrestle control so they could call the shots from online, never having to attend a thing, and making sure to prevent OCS from scheduling meaningful actions. Been there, done that. Occupy Colorado Springs LIVES!

Was it heavy handed to rain probation slips on their anti-occupy parade? It came as quite a shock that mob rule wasn’t the rule with Occupy. I think the most important message sent is that you can’t overwhelm a meeting with greater numbers and declare yourself in charge. That’s war, not democracy. Occupy Colorado Springs is much greater than the members who attend its meetings. There’s nothing undemocratic about telling would-be usurpers to bugger off. Occupy Pueblo fell to a similar attack. They let some newbies in and lights out.
The most important message

Tea Party soldiers attempt military coup of OCS, want Occupy to be more like occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan

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ONLY IN COLORADO SPRINGS! (SPOILER: OCCUDRAMA ALERT)–
Not satisfied with heckling the OCS antiwar rally on Saturday, some “berserkers” from Fort Carson’s 4/4 2/12 regiment thought they’d march on the Occupy events committee meeting Monday and vote to make OCS more like their occupation stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, more pro-killer and all. Or vote OCS out of existence. Cute, as they pretend to uphold everybody’s freedom, etc. Apparently the soldiers were following the directions of Right Wing Youtube slackupier Agent Snuffleupagus Doubt, who promised to reopen his faux-occupy website for their coup, as if maintaining the fake OCS Facebook group wasn’t anti-occupy enough. True to idiotic form, Doubt’s plan was to overwhelm the democratic nature of OCS, forgetting to caution his winged monkeys about embarrassing mechanisms which protect OWS groups from malicious disruptions, many of his troops face disciplinary probation, for starters. But for Agent Duh it’s enough to videotape a flash-blob declaring itself king of OCS, and it’s done. Emboldened by this virtual occupy, next Mastermind Duh will probably scheme to send Republican operatives to crash the Democratic Caucuses, vote them all Republican, and steal their delegates for Ron Paul! What a plan!

BTW Commander Dumbass, how can someone who hasn’t attended Occupy meetings in months, someone who has publicly declared himself on repeated occasions to have left Occupy, and someone who has often acted in league with public attackers of Occupy, PRETEND to tell people what are its bylaws? Critics of democracy movements accuse proponents of advocating mob rule, and so you’ve confused democracy for your own caricature? I suppose you think if the minister of First Prez wanted to convert Occupy, he could march enough of his flock down to Acacia and vote OCS into his denomination. That logic may wash with Ft Carson boys, and your Youtube viewership, but it’s not going to cut it with real people. Are you kidding me with your inanity?

Abajo y a la Izquierda esta el Corazon

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OCCUPY COLO. SPRINGS will be occupying the 3rd UCCS OWS symposium this Wednesday to challenge the straw man argument that Latinos are underrepresented in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Nationwide, OWS may be white and middle class, but in the context of the outcry for global democracy, isn’t OWS a bandwagon cargo cult of the Global South?

Ft Carson conducts pro forma town hall to clear way for environmental impact of proposed helicopter brigade

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Occupy Colorado Springs protest at Crowne Plaza Hotel, Jan 26, 2012
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Ft Carson’s environmental PR team held what’s called a “draft Environmental Assessment,” prerequisite to their addition of a Combat Aviation Brigade to America’s “Best Hometown in the Army”. Except for a car-dealer and realtor giving their attaboys, the citizens comment section weighed solidly AGAINST expansion of war-making and war-training. In true pro forma, Garrison Commander McLaughlin shrugged off the opposition, stating that public input would be answered while the army proceeded as planned. And that’s where Occupy will have something to say.

The fundamental message from OCCUPY WALL STREET, and from the global movement at large, is that it’s the people who are in charge. Whatever corrupted system may have wielded the power to bring the world to the brink of chaos, the authority must be returned to the people. OCCUPY makes clear the people do not have to sit idly by while their rulers make decisions against their interests. OCCUPY reminds us the people will have a say in their own destiny.

An army hearing, about what it plans to do, in defiance of public outcry, is nothing that self-respecting citizens have to take sitting down. They didn’t, citizens came from as far as the Southeastern plains to present their testimonials, but after the citizen comment period ended, the holders of the meeting made certain to conclude that the Ft Carson expansion was advancing regardless. This inhospitalty even after almost uninterrupted patriotic fawning over Ft Carson’s soldiers and the role they play defending our liberty.

While everyone falls all over themselves to THANK A SOLDIER, let’s not confuse respect for deference. America is not ruled by a military junta. The Department of Defense is not our governing body. For all his authority and swagger, this camp commander does not overrule us citizens. WE are the boss of the army. We are his CHAIN OF COMMAND. When the people of Colorado Springs, the people of Colorado, or the people of the United States express our will, it’s the army’s role to say “SIR, YES SIR.”

I’m deeply troubled by an officer of the military who pretends that his fellow citizens are but a temporary impediment to his military plans. When a room full of citizens tells this commander that they don’t want helicopters over their airspace, I expect him to take heed. To do otherwise is purely insubordination of his superiors. All this patriotic militarism may be going to his head. This is a soldier after all, sworn to protect our constitution and America, meaning its people. DO YOU HEAR ME SOLDIER?

If you think I sound disrespectful, let me inform you that I’m a veteran too, of ANTIWAR actions. One of which involved a soldier of higher rank than this one, running up to me as I silently held a sign, and attacking me with his fists, knocking me over. CSPD policemen had to pull him off. I did not press charges, but I could have. That was not only assault. An officer of his stature knows it was worse than that: it was an attack on his chain-of-command. What incalculable gall, to presume to treat me as a subordinate upon whom he could visit his accustomed violence. On a citizen!

And that’s what’s got me worried, about where all this soldier-worship leads. Only a couple weeks ago, at a weekly sidewalk peace bannering, a fellow activist was approached by a soldier and sucker-punched in the face, right out of the blue, while his wife cheered from their car. Are you kidding me? This deference to soldiers has got to stop.

These are soldiers, and we’re right to thank them. Theirs is a thankless task. Well not thankless, they ask, and are given unending thanks. But theirs is a task no one wants, to have to dehumanize yourself, be made to kill, maim, torture, rape, often it turns out, exactly under orders. We’ve learned that soldiers are sometimes commanded to kill everyone in a 360 degree radius. “Free Fire Zones” mean to kill every living thing in sight. We learn too that pissing on your dead victims is taught as a coping mechanism, to dehumanize your adversary so as to suffer less PTSD and less guilt. And we’ve learned that the military has no followup plan to reintegrate their soldier-monsters to a life post-service. Homeless vets from Vietnam onward are a testimony to the incompatibility of war service in horror zones to a return to normal civilian life. When the army creates killer-thugs, it means to dispose of them in further war zones, it means for them to re-up, or die prematurely from DU exposure. Yes, soldiers are to be thanked, but kept at arm’s length, like Fukushima heroes, radioactive. By design, their duty rendered them untouchable, to them eternal thanks and goodbye, unless you are prepared to weather the propensity to antisocial violence and domestic abuse the veterans of fragile countenance bring back with them. Certainly we cannot elevate the more hardened professional killers, who know only means foul and heartless, to positions of authority above citizens.

It irks me to no end to be goaded by this camp commander, who after hearing the public speak, admonished us in the end that our protestations will amount to nothing. How dare he, this insubordinate would-be coup leader?

Shall OCCUPY remind you, America is ruled by its people. This is a Democracy. WE THE PEOPLE are in charge!

Yes it may look right now like the suits are in charge, the men behind you, patting your back, the men with businesses who profit from war-making. In other cultures they are known as war profiteers, and in other periods of history they are executed. Who should profit by war? Well another aspect about OCCUPY is that these business vultures have been put on notice their time has come. No sustainable model of global democracy has room for predatory warmongers who keep wanting to pull their fortunes from war.

The people will be in charge of this nation, not the military or its business enablers. And when the people say enough, it’s going to be the military’s place to do the people’s will. If the people say no helicopters, or not in my airspace, or stop with your immoral wars, the army better stop its posturing, or find itself in the brig. Thank you soldier, but stand down. When the people tell you to stand down soldier, you had better do it, on the double.

For my part I will not decline to press charges a second time against military careerists who overstep their authority. And I will not again brook one iota of insubordination from someone sworn to serve this country. We American citizens are in charge of what’s done in our name. Do you hear me soldier? Sir, Yes Sir? Wise move soldier.

Occupiers can learn from Anarchists

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Here’s one of the more popular pamphlets distributed at Occupy Colorado Springs, courtesy of the DABC. DEAR OCCUPIERS: A LETTER FROM ANARCHISTS
 
Support and solidarity! We’re inspired by the occupations on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country. Finally, people are taking to the streets again! The momentum around these actions has the potential to reinvigorate protest and resistance in this country. We hope these occupations will increase both in numbers and in substance, and we’ll do our best to contribute to that.
 
Why should you listen to us? In short, because we’ve been at this a long time already. We’ve spent decades struggling against capitalism, organizing occupations, and making decisions by consensus. If this new movement doesn’t learn from the mistakes of previous ones, we run the risk of repeating them. We’ve summarized some of our hard-won lessons here.

Occupation is nothing new. The land we stand on is already occupied territory. The United States was founded upon the extermination of indigenous peoples and the colonization of their land, not to mention centuries of slavery and exploitation. For a counter-occupation to be meaningful, it has to begin from this history. Better yet, it should embrace the history of resistance extending from indigenous self-defense and slave revolts through the various workers’ and anti-war movements right up to the recent anti-globalization movement.

The “99%” is not one social body, but many. Some occupiers have presented a narrative in which the “99%” is characterized as a homogenous mass. The faces intended to represent “ordinary people” often look suspiciously like the predominantly white, law-abiding middle-class citizens we’re used to seeing on television programs, even though such people make up a minority of the general population.

It’s a mistake to whitewash over our diversity. Not everyone is waking up to the injustices of capitalism for the first time now; some populations have been targeted by the power structure for years or generations. Middle-class workers who are just now losing their social standing can learn a lot from those who have been on the receiving end of injustice for much longer.

The problem isn’t just a few “bad apples.” The crisis is not the result of the selfishness of a few investment bankers; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that rewards cutthroat competition at every level of society. Capitalism is not a static way of life but a dynamic process that consumes everything, transforming the world into profit and wreckage. Now that everything has been fed into the fire, the system is collapsing, leaving even its former beneficiaries out in the cold. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism—to go back to the gold standard, for example; not only is that impossible, those earlier stages didn’t benefit the “99%” either. To get out of this mess, we’ll have to rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.

Police can’t be trusted. They may be “ordinary workers,” but their job is to protect the interests of the ruling class. As long as they remain employed as police, we can’t count on them, however friendly they might act. Occupiers who don’t know this already will learn it firsthand as soon as they threaten the imbalances of wealth and power our society is based on. Anyone who insists that the police exist to protect and serve the common people has probably lived a privileged life, and an obedient one.

Don’t fetishize obedience to the law. Laws serve to protect the privileges of the wealthy and powerful; obeying them is not necessarily morally right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal. The Nazis had laws too. We have to develop the strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of the laws.

To have a diversity of participants, a movement must make space for a diversity of tactics. It’s controlling and self-important to think you know how everyone should act in pursuit of a better world. Denouncing others only equips the authorities to delegitimize, divide, and destroy the movement as a whole. Criticism and debate propel a movement forward, but power grabs cripple it. The goal should not be to compel everyone to adopt one set of tactics, but to discover how different approaches can be mutually beneficial.

Don’t assume those who break the law or confront police are agents provocateurs. A lot of people have good reason to be angry. Not everyone is resigned to legalistic pacifism; some people still remember how to stand up for themselves. Police violence isn’t just meant to provoke us, it’s meant to hurt and scare us into inaction. In this context, self-defense is essential.

Assuming that those at the front of clashes with the authorities are somehow in league with the authorities is not only illogical—it delegitimizes the spirit it takes to challenge the status quo, and dismisses the courage of those who are prepared to do so. This allegation is typical of privileged people who have been taught to trust the authorities and fear everyone who disobeys them.

No government—that is to say, no centralized power—will ever willingly put the needs of common people before the needs of the powerful. It’s naïve to hope for this. The center of gravity in this movement has to be our freedom and autonomy, and the mutual aid that can sustain those—not the desire for an “accountable” centralized power. No such thing has ever existed; even in 1789, the revolutionaries presided over a “democracy” with slaves, not to mention rich and poor.

That means the important thing is not just to make demands upon our rulers, but to build up the power to realize our demands ourselves. If we do this effectively, the powerful will have to take our demands seriously, if only in order to try to keep our attention and allegiance. We attain leverage by developing our own strength.

Likewise, countless past movements learned the hard way that establishing their own bureaucracy, however “democratic,” only undermined their original goals. We shouldn’t invest new leaders with authority, nor even new decision-making structures; we should find ways to defend and extend our freedom, while abolishing the inequalities that have been forced on us.

The occupations will thrive on the actions we take. We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices.

Thanks for reading and scheming and acting.

May your every dream come true.

Occupy chants

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OCCUPIED DENVER- So we got a little bored with Saturday’s march, the white-bread marchers being kept to three chants, (99%, Democracy & Our Streets). Parade marshals insisted procession not overtake a fat woman in a wheelchair, preventing the march from stretching out and disrupting any more than two blocks at a time, effectively handicapping the march! For respite we got some giggles by greeting some third story well-wishers with this variant: “OUT OF THE WINDOW, INTO THE STREET!” Absent on Saturday were anti-imperialists to mix it up, which prompted me to inventory chants to remember to bring to the next events.

Ain’t no power like the power of the people
’cause the power of the people don’t stop! –Say what?

Si, se puede! (Because “Yes we can!” is now Obama’s)

WE ARE the ninety-nine percent, (and so are)
YOU ARE the ninety-nine percent, (and so are)

Show me what Democracy looks like.
This is what Democracy looks like!

Off of the sidewalk into the street!

Stop watching, start marching!

Whose streets?!
Our streets!

Hey Wall Street, it’s not a pretty picture
The poor get poorer and the rich get richer

The POLICE ARE the army of the rich.

More anti-police:

From Denver to Greece, Fuck the Police!

Oink oink bang bang, everyday the same old thang.

One bullet, one pig. One bullet one pig.

All in

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When i first set out to write this blog i had no intention of writing about geopolitics, or anything any bigger than my own little world, or to develop any sort of readership at all, let alone to kick up international interest. Who knew? Since the time i started, Adbuster’s Occupy movement has overtaken the whole world and i’ve become a part of it, along with apparently millions of fellow humans dissatisfied with aspects of the concentric and overlapping political systems that govern and control the minutiae of our daily lives. Occupy has struck a chord that resonates well beyond what seems to have been its original intent as well.

Adbuster asserts in its campaign web-page opener that, “we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy,” speaking, one assumes of U.S. democracy, even though Adbusters is a Canadian publication founded by Kalle Lasn, an Estonian. Adbusters itself claims to be a, “global network of culture jammers and creatives,” and that their Occupy is, “[i]nspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas.” One should note that Adbusters is a non-profit organization with aspirations and effect well beyond the confines of the magazine at its core.

Many of my dear intrepid friends struggle mightily with the unavoidable nature of the movement in which we all participate. Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS), has garnered a fair amount of attention both because of its early acquisition of a city permit to camp on the sidewalk, and for its fragmentary infighting. Strong personalities have clashed fairly spectacularly for what scale we’re dealing with here, and precisely the same arguments are on display at Occupy web-pages all over the U.S., as well as abroad. Here, many patriotic, nationally oriented players have concentrated on addressing the U.S. Constitution and the influence of corporate interests in Washington, D.C. politics. Others have been caught up in causes of personal concern as the “focus” of the overall movement has grown more and more diffuse. The bickering and difficulty in reaching consensus has been frustrating but, i suggest, not unhealthy or out of place.

Adbusters, following ques from the Middle East and Spain, deliberately set off a “leaderless” movement, and has fastidiously avoided taking hold of any sort of control of what has developed since, refusing even media interviews for fear of exercising undue influence. Occupy remains a leaderless movement. Various groups and individuals have issued lists of demands; the one linked there, “is representative of those participating on this [particular ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Facebook] page.” We Occupiers have much common ground, which has served well to bring us all together, and will continue to serve as we gather to discuss and bicker over issues and particulars. There is plenty to differentiate amongst us as well, on individual and other categorical bases, but we have recognized, more or less, an essential humanity that has us willing to stand in freezing temperatures if we live in the northern hemisphere, and subject ourselves to the slow, often painful process of learning to live together.

Some among us, as we have seen right here in Colorado Springs, are very uncomfortable indeed with the amorphous nature of the Movement. We have seen splintering, censorship wars, general Assemblies that devolve into shouting matches, and the development of personal animosities. These phenomena are repeated on a grander scale throughout the Movement while observers gloat over the imminent dissolution of Occupy unity. Neither we Occupiers nor the Movement’s detractors ought to be misled by these birth pains. Our situation as humans, or for that matter any other creature inhabitant of the Earth has been rendered fully untenable by humans competing for dominance. The upheaval we engage from our Colorado Springs street corner, or from squares in Manchester, Belgrade, Cairo, and etc. is the natural response of rats in a corner. Were it not for the fact that we humans indeed possess reasoning capacity beyond a rat’s we really would be screwed. Fortune, or Divine providence, or evolution, or whatever mechanism or mechanisms turn(s) out to be true has granted us the tools that, utilized with empathy at every turn may–just may–allow us to work our way out of the massive pickle in which we’ve put ourselves. Nothing about this will be easy, quick, or for most, especially comfortable.

The Movement is leaderless. This is an existential fact. No matter how strenuously individuals attempt to grab hold of reigns, or to turn them over to others, there is no authority behind the Movement other than the profound spiritual authority of its essential Idea. The financial disparities that we have focused on here in the U.S. are real, and the supra-national bodies that control our government with full directive power are the same bodies that separate people from power in every nation on Earth. Each issue that has arisen into the Movement’s overall consciousness, from derivative markets, to marijuana law, to camping on public property is part and parcel of the whole thing, which itself amounts to such a gigantic, lumpen juggernaut that we have a hard time gathering our thoughts around the whole thing at once. We must.

Many U.S. citizens, including some prominent in and around OCS, have expressed insistent nationalism. Muslims and Christians around the world have pushed religions agendas. Nationalism is by no means confined to the U.S.A. Our corporate, non-personal enemy and its personal, human operators are Global already, and use these divisions to our detriment! At a Colorado College faculty panel yesterday, much ado was made of income disparities and market finagling by Wall Street financiers. We can isolate our minds all we want, but we can not eliminate the fact that Wall Street, Fleet Street, Singapore, Hong Kong, the House of Saud, whatever, whatever, are already one indivisible entity, operating in opposition to any concern for overall humanity or household priorities for any of us as inhabitants of the planet, including the natural requirements of the controllers. The Idea of competition and profit has acquired an independent life of its own and has prevented even those at the top of the unwieldy pyramid from living lives connected to the most valuable prizes of all, which we humans have recognized throughout our history and recorded in odes, songs, and literature to be transcendent of politics and possessions. The statistics cited by those college economists, and the many Occupiers that mention them in speeches and lists of demands are quite real, and Americans might note that Kurdish, Nepali, and Palestinian Occupiers, for example, skew the stats we’ve been flailing our arms about here even further, and that “First World” exploitation is a very large part of this discussion, indeed.

There can be little doubt that the “Wall Street” entities in control of our various governments have planned for and directed events toward a “New World Order” for decades, if not centuries. Lots of justifiably paranoid conspiracy watchers all over the planet have done their best to alert their fellows to this alarming and unacceptable development for as long as it has been in the mix. The Vatican, a power with negative credibility in its adherence to its own doctrine, has offered itself up as a potential controller of a global banking scheme. Currently entrenched power-brokers will absolutely without question attempt to co-opt and control the current Movement. We humans are not interested in more of the same bullshit, plus the added benefit of still more bullshit! We occupiers are fully Sovereign, each in his or her own right. We are leaderless by design, which is the natural development of the abject failure of our leaders, and in fact of the failure of the very foundation of our interaction amongst ourselves that has developed without much direction for at least the 10,000 year span during which we have written about it. Those who resist this fact will find little more than inversely correlated discomfort in their resistance. One can deny the nature of a rhinoceros till one’s dying day, but the beast remains a rhinoceros, and the denier’s last day may well come on the day he encounters a rhinoceros.

Sovereign consensus building is not democracy. It’s something we humans have never attempted on the scale we Occupiers are attempting now. Broad-scale cooperation as a foundation is against an established competitive approach that we have fallen into by default for a long, long time. Voting one another into submission will not work, simply because we have let the cat out of the bag. We noble individuals are learning a brand-new thing, like it or not, because a rhinoceros has smashed the freakin’ house down. I, for one will not abandon the Liberty of my own Sovereignty, no matter who votes what, nor will i abandon the respect i hold for each other Sovereign in the entire mix. I recognize the differences between whatever groups or persons are in the whole wide world. Categorical observations are real, so far as they go; but i won;t be bound by them. I won’t be forced to fight against the 1% simply because i am a member of the 99%. Rather i will be fighting with every fiber of my being for the 100% of us who will ALL be trampled by the rhinoceros, in pretty danged short order, unless we ALL relinquish our insistence on control, avarice, and irresponsibility of all stripes.

Each of us has a part to play, a purpose to serve. Never abandon what you know. Work hard at open discussion. Don’t be embarrassed by frustrating moments or attempt to hide your own humanity. Withdraw for a moment if you need to to prevent overboiling passions. We’re all in this together. Be patient Brothers and Sisters; this is gonna hurt some….

OWS List of Demands:
www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=157161391040462
Adbusters:
www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet
NPR:
www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141526467/exploring-occupy-wall-streets-adbuster-origins
Middle Eastern origins:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/09/libya-egypt-syria-yemen-live-updates
Acampadas:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13466977

“United For Global Change” is Madison Ave dilution of “Global Democracy” cry. Oct 15 not for Obameaningless change

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15 Octubre, Global Democracy, now subverted to United For Global ChangeUNITED FOR GLOBAL CHANGE certainly smacks of the meaningless slogan that swept President Hope to power. My guess is that this is Advertizer Omnicom’s contract PR redesign to subvert the worldwide Global Democracy movement sparked by Spain’s Indignant rebels and the Arab Spring. Original promotional materials called for GLOBAL DEMOCRACY, which meant something obviously, but might confuse Americans who think their illusion of democracy is enough, spread via Pax Americana. Global “Change” is a straw man open to pundits critical of unspecific demands, “Democracy” less so.

Omnicom is just a guess, they’re the outfit who saved McDonalds’ skin with “I’m lovin it” and who was contracted by the USG to sell Obama’s Wars to the international public. I forgot who won all the Addy in 2008 for the ad campaign of the year, brand “Obama.”

United For Global ChangeInternational demonstrations scheduled for October 15th are more than protests in solidarity for Occupy Wall Street in NYC. OCT15 is a call for DEMOCRACIA REAL YA, which I’m sorry, doesn’t translate to REAL *CHANGE* NOW! What’s change anymore but an Obamaesque meaningless platitude? Dispiriting is the infusion they’ve intended.

“United for Global Change?” Yeah, I don’t think so. First it’s hard to swallow that “change” translates more universally than “democracy.” Second, President Obama’s neo-grassroots orgs are obviously trying to seed anticipation of 2012 with a meme of international support. We Are Change, Be the Change, Democrats For Change, Democratic Change, Change That Works, Change Happens –whatever. In your dreams Democratic party. The world isn’t taking to the street to settle for an Obama Nothing Revolution.

Wanna bet that this Global Change job was commissioned by something akin to Change International, funded by a USAID affiliate, dispersing funds meant to promote CIA-styled Democratic Astroturf pro-US counterrevolutionaries in regions not yet sufficiently subservient to US multinational extraction industries?

So what if an establishment vanguard has succeeded in rebranding OCT 15 for placebo consumption. By all means please join the marches Saturday, regardless your unlike-minded companions. The vocabulary will be mixed, the media is already preparing headlines using the approved slogan makeover, but fear not, the rest of the world is marching for real Democracy and everyone knows it.

NY #OccupyWallStreet protest is going to be this generation’s Woodstock. Are you going to miss it?

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If you can’t bum a ride to New York City, you are going to miss out, it’s plain as that. But you can make the revolution happen where you are. The Egyptian victory in Tahrir Square wasn’t achieved without simultaneous demos in Alexandria and Suez, etc. The earliest heavy casualties actually happened outside Cairo. In the Colorado capitol, a nascent #OccupyDenver is building steam. President Obama is making a campaign stop in Denver on Tuesday at Lincoln High School at Evans and Federal. That will be an excellent chance to force the media to break its blackout against the anti-capitalist uprising. What’s there to say to President Obama? Nothing right? He’s shown he answers only to Wall Street. But the message to the TV coverage of Obama, and to the people of Denver can be: Why is the bank-owned corporate media not telling you about #OccupyWallStreet? Reclaim our democracy from the bankers.
 
Colorado Springs is gaga for warmongers, bigots, Zionists and conservative educational campuses. The local Intelligence Quotient doesn’t rise to the level of critical thinking, which is a heartbreaking trait in its youth. But there is an ongoing effort to aid #OccupyWallStreet’s visibility. It’s held on the noon hour, at Tejon and Colorado Ave downtown, at the Booz Allen Hamilton Building, where area war profiteers laugh all the way to the investment banks across the hall, passing by the local FBI office, btw. Our protest doesn’t have the music, mahem & hijinks of NYC Liberty Plaza, but none of the beatings either. Come a few minutes late and you get to pass reserve cops hiding out of our view in the alleys around the critical intersection, in case the bankers want their critics squashed. Possible messaging: DON’T LET BANKERS FORECLOSE ON DEMOCRACY, OCCUPY WALL STREET NOW!
 
WALL STREET BANKS ARE STEALING YOUR HOME, HEALTH, RETIREMENT, STANDARD OF LIVING, & WORLD RESOURCES. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET –LOOK IT UP.

Angela Merkel il culone intrombabile

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But Silvio Berlusconi might alternatively have used “strutto culo inchiavabile” to describe any other Euro usury kapo, like himself, or his mates Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron who paid a surprise visit to Tripoli yesterday to herald the victory of Neoliberal World Bank “Democracy” over Libyan sovereignty –or was it to say thanks in advance for the oil? News of Berlusconi’s wiretapped indiscretion via Twitter offered what online translators would not reveal, how to say “unf*ckable” in the languages of your upstream: infollable, onneukbare… his choice of words remain as yet censored in the German press. Wouldn’t it be curious to learn which cultures have no word for the concept? I’d have thought that would be American.

Will occupying the streets Sept 17, Oct 6 and 15 precipitate an American Fall?

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“American Fall” would be a pun, yes. A pan-Arabian-like Spring causing the US anti-democracy to tumble, being the objective. The English riots have put a dark spin on what might be Middle America’s reception to popular uprising, but mark the dates, because the brass ring nears whether you have the courage or not, and you won’t have the stomach for the alternative.
 
You’ve probably already sensed the buzz about #SEPT17, campus groups across the country have been bypassing the conventional chaperones to coordinate OCCUPY WALL STREET. Can they do it? Not without your help, and that doesn’t mean switching your phone service or knocking on doors to Get Out The Vote.

Donate, organize or help with the logistics. If you’ve the temerity, attend in person. At the very least, you’ll have your expenses reimbursed when the city settles your civil suit against them for false arrest. New York City already budgeted for the insurance policy that will pay the legal settlements for the probably now textbook law enforcement practice of kettling inconvenient protests. Or, thinking positively, you may just witness history. To make history you have to make it. Don’t leave it up to the Little Red Hen if you want a piece.

Next up is #OCT6, although the day varies regionally. The date marks the 10th anniversary of the Afghan invasion, but social justice groups of all stripes are throwing their sundry complaints unto one banner and have organized marches nationwide. Of course the nationals aims to SEIZE DC, where activists will converge on Freedom Square, English for “Tahrir Square”, with plans to camp there until the people’s voice is heard. DC has passed ordinances against overnight protests, but Freedom Square may be cut some slack for being off the National Mall. It’s a smaller public space which lies on the diagonal between the White House and the Capitol Building, abreast of General Tecumseh Sherman’s horse actually.

The determination to reclaim American Democracy with an action in DC hopes to recreate Madison Wisconsin on the Potomac, with the same grassroots support for a broad set of issues to which both parties have shown themselves unresponsive.

A successful DC foothold will get real traction being closely followed by an international call for a worldwide uprising. #OCT15 is being spearheaded by Spain’s movement for GLOBAL DEMOCRACY. Will it dilute regional efforts to have actions running concurrently, or will synchronized demonstrations overwhelm our transnational overseers? We can wait and see, or we can give it our best shot.

Here are more graphics in support of the kickoff September 17. Borrowing from Tunisia and Egypt, and before that Chicago 1968, it’s US Days of Rage.

In the course of a single spring we’ve seen massive demonstrations which provoked governments to interrupt cellphone service, shut down internet access, and answer protestors with direct gunfire. To what extreme will the USG be driven? What rights remain inviolate in the US? Not communication. Activist cellphones were blocked on the BART in San Francisco to thwart protests against police brutality.

Chicago G8 protest planners offer city guarantees of usual ineffectual actions

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Organizers meeting today to plan against next year’s G8 summit in Chicago hit the ground running –backward. On Friday a spokesperson for one of the coalition partners offered this assurance to the Chicago Tribune: “Our goal is a legal, permitted, family friendly march where people can come and have their voices heard in a safe environment.” Interesting. The objective of successful past anti-globalization protests has been no less than to shut the undemocratic summits down.

Nine months out, it appears activism’s old guard is determined to blunt all real resistance welling in American youth. The Tribune found another normalizing voice from UNAC which disavowed any recourse but nonviolence. WTF? It’s one thing not to encourage violence, another to promise to “back off from any violence.”

Hello? Activists with broken spirits need to STFD and STFU. Let younger, hotter heads give you a lesson in courage and purpose. If you are over thirty, hold yourselves among the fucks responsible for this mess. Who are you to deny the young their righteous rage?

As elder activists, precisely what wisdom is it you think you can impart? Have you stopped one war? Slowed imperialism? Ended nukes? Saved the whales? Halted global warming? Attended to anything but the erosion of democracy, the social safety net and the environment? Your exalted nonviolence neither delivered India from class exploitation nor ended racism in America. Stick with fundraising, educating, inspiring others, drawing your peers into social networking; lead, but not by edict, and not by a consensus dominated by your peers. Put your dogma aside for the young leaders, let them make their own mistakes. I hope you will at least admit they can’t fail more miserably than you.

At Sunday’s meeting, the United National Antiwar Committee spokesman acquitted himself when confronted by a young gentleman representing an anarchist entity. Committee member Ashley Smith’s full quote had been: “We will not be the ones to initiate or perpetrate any violence.” And: “We will back off from any violence.” But when pressed at the meeting, he explained that organizers hoped the event would be safe for families, but that younger militants could exercise their freedoms like anybody else. I paraphrase.

I’ll qualify my criticism by pointing out that a number of the organizers were personal victims of recent FBI home invasions, so they are fully justified in having to distance themselves from being interpreted as advocating violence. An additional challenge is presented by an adversarial corporate press determined to squeeze whatever soundbite it wants to discredit or hobble protest.

Of course I’d prefer activists recused themselves from addressing the subject of violence/nonviolence, instead of alienating potential allies by being deliberately exclusionary. And by potential allies, I mean the only allies that will get the movement anywhere, the NEXT GENERATION, because who else are you expecting?

Springs congressman Doug Lamborn tells citizens he answers to private propertied constituents not to public

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Congressman Doug Lamborn's office at 1272 Kelly Johnson Way doesn't permit protesting
COLORADO SPRINGS- Local citizens have had plenty to protest with Congressman Doug “Obama is a Tar-Baby” Lamborn, so now the Tea Party bigot has put up a sign, NO PROTESTING. Lamborn declined to meet with community leaders from the NAACP on Monday, or Move-On organizers on Wednesday. Are you in Colorado Congressional District Five? Well, you may neither SOLICIT a meeting with your government representative, nor LOITER hoping to wait him out. Politicians like Lamborn who want to shove undemocratic corrupt legislation down people’s throats, and spout deeply offensive racist rhetoric out of sheer stupidity, have to hide where constituents can’t reach them.

Congressman Lamborn office park with AECom and other weapons industry swine
Situating your office where your constituents can’t reach you reminds me of former Senator Allard’s office in the Plaza of the Rockies, where security guards forbid entry to anyone who didn’t look investment-banker friendly.

The plaza complex is now the Booz Allen Hamilton building, the world’s largest weapons industry firms, chaired by James Woolsey and his wife, one of the Colorado College trustees. You’ll note that one of Lamborn’s neighbors is AECOM, another giant war profiteer.

At least Allard chose an office which was centrally located, only a block from Congressman Hefley. Doug Lamborn’s office is situated in an industrial office park where no one can hear you scream.

So is isolating yourself from you constituents now standard MO for legislative office-holders? Not really. Representative government is hardly where you want to take a stand against a public’s right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Especially someone espousing to be a patriot for the Tea Party.

Actually, if Lamborn wants to assert that his corporate representation gig is “private property,” I’d say the crafty bugger is right.

Congressman Lamborn says NO SOLICITING, NO PROTESTING, NO LOITERING
No shirt, no shoes? No representation.

American caesars who want to cross the Rubicon with a Rubicon need a map

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I just came across one of these in a parking lot yesterday, apparently the Jeep Rubicon has been out for a few years. This uber-alles thrillcraft sort of defines America’s sorry state of cultural illiteracy, wouldn’t you say? Julius Caesar didn’t violate Rome’s Posse Comitatus prohibition riding IN A Rubicon. Bad-ass as you wanna be, if your Rubicon is like the average off-road vehicle, it will never leave the pavement. Your Rubicon logo is just to remind one and all that you could cross it, if you knew where it was. The sorrier irony is that Caesar’s defiant act militarized the empire’s civil society and curtailed its democracy.

Wisconsin election close, but no cigar, if there was a cigar

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The recall defeat in Wisconsin brings to mind Emma Goldman’s famous adage: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
Now we’ll never know if a Democrat majority in Madison would have behaved any different than a herd of Republicans. I doubt it. Activists are patting themselves on the back for their partial success, saying the effort was worth it, which is the usual consolation for losers, and ignores the fact that many of Wisconsin’s present Democratic Party legislators already betray their constituents. Here’s another quote, by a Japanese engineering professor I had in college who used to say in broken English: “You build bridge. It fall down. No partial credit.” Imagine what he’d have thought of a bridge to nowhere.

Mr Smith goes to #FuckYouWashington

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The netizens are revolting. On the eve of US “austerity measures” the Twitterverse is crowdsourcing its ire against the de facto seat of world government. The unprintable hashtag won’t trend on social networks — it’s alleged, even as momentum builds like a movie title mashup. Typical sentiment: FuckYouWashington for putting profit above people. The laundry list of injustices is staggering and as a political party platform, it’s writing itself. What is democracy but crowdsourced grievances in search of redress? As tweeters hurry to open external floodgates, it’s going to be interesting to see which if any of the social networks decide to unleash its participants from the censorship which constrains the profanity they want to share. #FuckYouWashington for your mass murder, inhumanity, enslavement, penury and usury and then telling me this hashtag is profane.