Who is this El Paso Sheriffs undercover infiltrator provocateur? We don’t care!

Posted on October 25, 2017 by Eric Verlo

COLO. SPRINGS– Lawyers for the city are fighting defense team efforts to expose who, how, when and why local law enforcement agencies infiltrated a campus political activist group. The 2017 undercover operation was revealed in CSPD bodycam videos, but city courthouse lawyers and judges are preventing the evidence from being made public.

Alerted to the October 17 evidentiary hearing meant to shed light on the bodycam video, journalists and news crews instead witnessed stonewalling by city attorneys but made to look like a disorganized defense. They saw municipal Judge Kristen Hoffecker blame the defendants for not submitting to a sham proceding, when the judge should have confessed that the defense’s subpoenas had not been honored.

Today the city learned that our defense team went around them and served the subpoenas directly, requiring the responsible law agency parties to testify as witnesses at an evidentiary hearing on November 3. Now the city wants to use a November 1 status hearing to quash the subpoenas.

What’s the big deal? The city asserts the confidential identity of its undercovers is a stake. That is of course the least of it.

The city’s own evidence against the defendants, accused of marching in the street on March 26, 2017, documents police officers deciding to issue tickets. What’s clear from the video is that the police issued tickets, not to cite wrongdoers, nor to halt law-breaking, but to 1) “identify everyone”, 2) arrest an undercover agent, and 3) disperse a lawful assembly. It’s all on tape.

When defendants first grasped what they were seeing on the bodycam video, they brought it to the attention of the various municipal court judges who take turns directing the daily court matters. Asked to produce the written reports generated by the officers on the video but missing from the discovery evidence, the judges declined. Asked to subpoena the officers involved, the judges declined. After each defendant’s pro se arguments were rebuffed, one motions hearing after the other, the defendants sought legal help. Actually Judge Hayden Kane II did eventually grant a hearing to look into the video, but he told us he’d already watched it in private and was not inclined to find it relevant, so defendants were not encouraged that his opinion would change.

In the meantime civil rights lawyers were highly interested in the police activity documented by the video. They submitted 20 pages of argument for the dismissal of charges against the defendants, citing outrageous police misconduct in violation of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 23. They requested that the sheriff, the police chief, the commander of CSPD intelligence, and others named and unnamed, be subpoenaed to testify at an evidentiary hearing on October 17. That didn’t happen, as everyone saw. The subpoenas didn’t even go out.

The October 17 hearing misfire was simply the latest of months of attempts by the defendants to bring this story to light.

This time around the city wasn’t given the chance to sit on the subpoenas, they’ve been served directly. On November 1, will Judge Hoffecker invalidate the subpoenas two days before the witnesses are compelled to appear? The question reporters can ask is should she?

The city’s argument will be that the police undercover operation, however illegal, does not have anything to do with the guilt or innocence of the socialists charged with marching in the street. Outrageous police misconduct is a matter for federal court, that’s true. But have a look at the video. Notice that the first marcher fingered for arrest, the only one assigned an arrest team, was the undercover “Mark Jackson.” When the police shouted their warning that all who remained in front of City Hall would be issued citations, their only unequivocable target was Jackson.

Without the motive of arresting Jackson, whether it was to provoke the crowd or to embed their infiltrator, and until the order “LT wants everyone identified”, the police weren’t going to make any arrests. What does that say about the supposed guilt of the accused?

The police had already told the socialists “you’re free to carry on with your rally so long as you don’t step back unto the street.”

What the socialists were doing on March 26 was the essence of protected speech. But senior officers not on the scene had a crime of their own up their sleeves, and they needed an arrest or two to set it into motion.

Should we get to the bottom of this story, or let the city pretend it didn’t happen until the defendants get to turn the tables in federal court?

One presumes that undercover agents are only performing the intelligence function of surveillance, monitoring protest activity for hints of criminal behavior. At worse, we call them agent provocateurs, trying to encourage illegality, and believe that everyday nonviolent activists should know better than to be entrapped into illegal acts.

But undercover officers are much more disruptive than that. Undercovers sow dischord and mistrust among strangers who’ve come together to advocate for a common cause. Infiltrators pit activists against each other and confound organizers with sabotage. They volunteer for responsibilities then drop the ball. They complicate discussions with irrelevant, impractical, or illegal suggestions. When their ideas are rejected they express frustration by demeaning their fellow participants for being unmotivated. When “Mark Jackson” was found out, and it took many weeks for everyone to become convinced he was an undercover, he berated everyone for every personal failing in the book. He accused individuals of paranoia, ineptitude, or lacking courage. “Get back to me when you decide you want to DO SOMETHING” were his parting words.

Police infiltration harms every citizen effort to organize. The Code of Federal Regulations mandates that police agencies have suspicion of real crime before embedding infiltrators.

If CSPD or the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office or the Department of Homeland Security or the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has proof of a crime brewing among the Colorado Springs Socialists, wouldn’t we all benefit to know about it? We would if their motive is truly crime prevention.

The real identities of “Mark Jackson” and his partner “Aimee Walter” doesn’t matter at all. Who they work for is paramount. Are they “with the Sheriffs” or contracted or embedded from another agency? As the video shows, Jackson’s jittery hyperactive behavior while detained in the cruiser doesn’t give one much confidence about who law enforcement is entrusting with a loaded weapon in a crowd they hope to be inciting to riot.

The city’s determination to quash the question of whether or not such evidence exists points to police malfeasance, not the Socialists’.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Colorado Springs police infiltration operations against social justice activism should be brought to heel sooner rather than later.

OCTOBER 27 UPDATE:
According to Judge Hoffecker’s order: November 1st at 2:30pm will be the city’s next chance to quash the subpoenas. If they do not succeed, the evidentiary hearing is scheduled for November 3rd at 8:15am.

Radiolab episode on jury nullification is less bothered by state abuse of power than public desperation to fight back.

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Eric Verlo

It should come as no surprise that public radio’s RADIOLAB would take government’s side against the growing grassroots effort to awaken citizens to the repressed potential of jury nullification. Any attention to the subject helps inform ordinary jurors of the power they have to stand up to the regular abuses of our judicial system. The benefit is tempered of course when liberal gatekeepers lean in with theatrics to fearmonger about anarchistic challenges to law and order and security. That’s exactly what Radiolab achieved though given plenty of material with which to have taken a more honest tack. Their program “Null and Void” aired May 12 and painted nullifiers as irrational extremists, giving a pass to the judges who purge juries and break the law by having nullifiers arrested.

I had high hopes when contacted by a producer for Radiolab in March. Our federal injunction protecting Denver jury nullification outreach efforts against an order by the Second Judicial District’s Chief Judge Michael Martinez was coming to trial in April. I imagined reporters would be sympathetic to our predicted success making our injunction permanent and the similar likeliness of our prevailing on contempt charges in a hearing which was to follow. I faciliated Radiolab’s access to Mark Iannicelli, who Denver arrested in violation of our injunction, and whose dismissed charges of felony tampering continue to be appealed by our legal adversaries. Thus far it’s a simple story of hoisting a chief justice on his own petard, using the justice system against itself, in defense of the people’s historical power as jurors.

Heicklen
But Radiolab had an alternate narrative in mind. Their story would center on a jury nullification champion who they could characterize as coming off the rails, the celebrated frequent arrestee Julian Heicklen. Septegenarian Heicklen became tired of judges warning him of arrest, despite his continued legal victories. By November 2016, Heicklen issued a manifesto of sorts, asking for armed backup to preempt a judge from making good on his renewed threat to arrest him. Heicklen posted this warning online and called it to everyone’s attention. Presumably it’s what drew Radiolab’s attention. Heicklen had put it out there, hoping to spark a John Brown-esque conflagration, I’d call it a bluff, meant to curtail the court’s continued abuse of power. It’s obvious from Heicklan’s hyperbole. I attach the significant excerpt in the notes below.

Radiolab didn’t reference this tract, nor mention their and the court’s foreknowledge of it. As they interviewed Heicklen, they asked him about his cause and even brought him to tears as he explained his distress about the injustice of the system, which continues to reinforce inequity and deny jurors their prerogative to step in its way. Then Radiolab prodded Heicklen to explain what he anticipated would happen when he showed up at the courthouse in defiance of the judge’s threat. On cue, Heicklen repeated his entreaty that supporters show up with guns to enforce his right to pass out fliers and avert the judge’s illegal threat to arrest him.

Many of us might share the elderly activist’s frustration with being habitually arrested then exhonerated, each time without apparent progress being made. Radiolab’s pretend reaction was to cue ominous silence, let the pin drop, cue indignant alarm, ostracize Heicklen, cue a spontaneous meting of Radiolab minds to elect to call the cops on Heicklen lest law enforcement personnel be shot.

Radiolab didn’t call the Chief Judge Frederick J. Lauten to question the irregularity of his repeating an illegal threat. How absolutely insane for a judge, already proven to be in the wrong, to keep asserting his authority to have a citizen falsely arrested?

When Heicklen showed up to the courthouse, with a friend, both without weapons of any kind, and without the backup support of “Tyranny Fighters” he’d hoped to mobilize, Heicklen was arrested for the more serious charges involving threats.

Radiolab may or may to have exacerbated Heicklen’s arrest. They certainly took credit for it, which is the least they could do for having exploited Heicklen as their straw man extremist.

Because Radiolab makes little effort to conceal their liberal bourgeois elitism. FIJA, the Fully Informed Jury Association was founded, according to Radiolab, in a Montana “bunghole”, which they qualify, they are entitled to call Helena, the capitol of Montana, because one of the show’s producers is from Montana.

Wolverine
You might ask, what’s Wolverine got to do with this? Anyone who’s read Ariel Dorfman knows better than to bring superheroes into political discourse. Radiolab didn’t know how better to distinguish between a citizen’s right, as proscribed by the Bill of Rights, and a power, something grown from common law. Whatever, they’re wrong. Juries are guaranteed by the sixth amendment, now commonly understood to be “a jury of your peers.”

Radiolab never uses that phrase, it’s too everyman. But they do riff ad nauseum on Wolverine, who’s a superhero with superpowers, namely CLAWS, which for Radiolab described this aberrant power that jury nullification advocates are promoting. The public as beast, and mutant power threatening elitists like a werewolf’s claws. Someone adds, as a further irrelevance, that Wolverine’s real superpower is regenerative, the power to heal but nevermind. They say that, and it’s the only trivia that actually does apply to jury nullification. Radiolab autistic savants.

They recorded Mark Iannicelli in front of the Denver courthouse, that was our single consolation!

It’s no surprise that Radiolab takes the government’s side against the public’s growing inclination to “burn it down.” Radiolab got great quotes from Mark, but chose to demonize other jury nullification pamphleteers who were so frustrated with being arrested that wanted to deter future arrests with guns.

By the show’s end, the white privileged NPR broadcasters feel more comfortable with the law in the hands of “unelected, white” judges over inexpert jurors described as “twelve random jerk-offs from the street.” They’re taking about your constitutionally protected jury of your peers.

Hopefully listeners will glean the great information offered by this piece and nullify Radiolabs’s privileged condescension.

NOTES:
1. Julian Heicklen’s post of November 24:

Hi Tyranny Fighters:

Orlando Courthouse: I plan to be at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, FL distributing Fully Informed Jury information from 10:30 am – 1:30 pm, unless arrested earlier, on Monday-Wednesday, December 5-8, 2016. All of you are invited (urged) to join me. Bring your guns. I have requested protection from the Florida Militia, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Governor of Florida. None of them responded to my requests. Copies of the letters to the Department of Homeland Security and the governor were sent to the Clerk of the Orange County Court and to you in my previous report.

I have not received replies from any of these people. However I have received a letter from Frederick J. Lauten, Chief Judge, Ninth Judicial Cicuit of Georgia. Here is his letter:

Dear Mr. Heicklen:

A copy of your letter to Rick Scott dated October 13, 2016, was given to me. In your letter, you stateit is your intent to “distribute flyers regarding the duties of jurors and witnesses at criminal trials” at the Orange County Courthouse during th first week of December.” This letter is a reminder that such conduct continues to be proscribed on courthouse grounds under Administrative Order 2011-03 which governs expressive conduct taward summoned jurors. Enclosed is a copy of Adminiustrative Order 2011-03 for your perusal.

As you know, this Administrative Order is constituional as the Fifth District Court of appeal had “no difficulry upholding Administrative Order No. 2011–03 as reasonable, viewpoint neutral regulation….” Schmidter & Heicklen v. State, 103 So. 3d 2663,270 (Fla. 5th DCA 2012)(a copy of which is enclosed). This Court, as well as the Orange Cpounty Sheriff, qill enforce the provisions of Admionistrative Order No. 2011-03 to ensure the fair and orderly conduct of jury trials and to prevent dissruptions or interference with that basic right.

Based on the Administrative Order’s continuing validity, you may wish to reconsider your intended course of action and find alternative means in which to disseminate your message. If you intend on distributing materials to jurors, you will be issued a trespass notice and if you then remain on courthouse grounds, you could be arrested for trespass.

Sincerely,

Frederick J. Lauten

Chief Judge

____________________________________

Unfortunately there seems to be a disagreement between the Florida court and the United States Federal Court. I was one of the appellants in the Florida case. The decision was based on lies and incorrect information introduced by the state attorneys. The judges should have know this, since I carefully pointed out the errors, but they did not care. They had made up their minds before hearing the case.

Previously I was arrested 5 times for distributing this literature at the the U. S. District Court in Manhattan, NY. I was arrested and charged with jury tampering. After 17 months of trial, Judge Kimba Wood declared that distributing this literature was not jury tampering because I did not discuss any case with a juror sitting on that trial. She dismissed my case. Her decision is at: http://constitution.org/jury/pj/10-cr-01154-KMW_order.pdf This decision was published in many journals. The NY Times publication is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/nyregion/indictment-against-julian-heicklen-jury-nullification-advocate-is-dismissed.html

Other publications can be found at: http://search.myway.com/search/GGmain.jhtml?p2=%5EC73%5Exdm007%5ETTAB02%5Eus&ptb=304CD70B-562C-491B-9E0F-EEEA96D81532&n=782b17fd&ind=&tpr=hpsb&trs=wtt&cn=us&ln=en&si=CJSjz-LK7s4CFdgQgQodEmkJvA&brwsid=343148da-648b-46c2-8171-a9e312ac5776&searchfor=Jury%20nullification%20case%20of%20Julian%20Heicklen&st=tab

I was invited to Harvard University Law School to give a lecture on my case. Also I have been informed that my case is being taught to all students at Yale Law School. Presumably it is being taught elsewhere as well.

Currently I distribute the same flyers at both state and federal courthouses around the country. None of them arrest me. Three of these courthouses are state courthouses. They are in Fort Lauderdale, Fl; Pittsburgh, PA (last week); and Newark, NJ. The federal courthouses this year have been in Fort Lauderdale, FL; Newark, NJ; Manhattan, NY; Palo Alto, CA; Pittsburgh, PA (last week) and San Jose, CA; The state courthouses do not approach me. The federal courthouse Homeland Security officers at federal courts all threatened to arrest me until I told them to check it with a judge. They did, and none of them made an arrest.

December 5, 2016 will be a critical day in the history of the United States. I will appear at the Orange County Courthouse, 425 N. Orange Avenue, Orlando, FL and distribute “Nullification by Jury” flyers on the public sidewalk leading from the parking lot to the courthouse. I am asking all Tyranny fighters and anyone else to join me armed with loaded guns to shoot any courthouse employee or officer of the court (i.e. guards, Orlando police, State police, Sheriffs, or lawyers) that approach within 15 feet of me. One of 4 things can happen:

Neither the court personnel, the Tyranny Fighters, nor the press will appear. That will be the smoothest, but dullest, situation.

The Court officers only will appear and arrest me.

The Tyranny Fighters only will appear and protect me.

Both the Court officers and the Tyranny Fighters will appear. The gun battle for the return of a free country with a democratic republic will occur.

I am irrelevant. The future of the United States will be determined by the others or by you. Either we will continue the route to the gas chambers as described in the attached document, or we shall backtrack to a democratic republic. In either case I will have died by then.

The choice is yours—Julian

Colo. Springs police disperse March 26 anti-imperialism rally because it was easier than listening to socialists

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Eric Verlo

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- Local socialists assembled at City Hall on Sunday to “March Against Imperialism”. After a brief march and an half-hour rally while encircled by CSPD, the socialists were informed they were “free to carry on with their assembly” but whoever lingered would be issued a citation for having been in the street. Making no distinction for who had and who hadn’t, the police began handcuffing participants and the couple dozen others quickly dispersed. Five socialists were issued citations for “pedestrian in the highway” and “failure to disperse” while another was arrested and detained for failing to show an ID while filming the police. That person was taken to the downtown police station and held until officers finally informed her of the charges for which she was being cited, after which she identified herself. Throughout her detainment, multiple officers kept up a harassment of questions, refusing her requests that she contact her lawyer. CSPD never issued an order to disperse, a fact that is borne out by witness video. But in effect that is what the officers accomplished. They threatened the legal assembly with citations, for failure to disperse!

It made a funny scene. Around thirty self-declared socialists, blockaded by eight sometimes more CSPD cruisers, in a standoff that lasted until the police lost their patience. Socialists spoke against imperialism, the police officers being their main audience that quiet Sunday downtown. Immediately as the march had ended the police had announced that anyone stepping back into the street would be arrested, and so no one did. But a half-hour of speeches proved too much for the officers to bear and so they interjected again, this time to discuss the problem they had with what had happened earlier. We told those officers they were of course free to discuss such matters individually with whoever they considered a person of interest, BUT AFTERWARD, because they were otherwise interrupting our legal assembly. But the officers persisted in their interruption, deciding after the fact what charges to bring, regardless that they’d forgotten to provide the evidence to back them up. “See you in court” they laughed! We’ve heard that before.

On a serious note. What happened Sunday could have a chilling effect on the nascent kick-ass Colorado Springs Socialists. Unwarranted police attention is an unhappy tradition for socialist organizers, from anarchists to trade unions. Sunday’s denouement confirms all their parents’ worst worries, the folly of declaring yourself to be a socialist in a regressive backwater like Colorado Springs. People were arrested? Handcuffed?! Now you’re on a police watch list! I remember my father’s alarm when he learned his college sophmore had a subscription to Mother Jones Magazine.

Fun as it was, Sunday’s event was essentially uneventful: no altercations, no property damage, not even rhetoric to threaten infrastructure. Minus any media attention, or much of an audience at all on a sleepy Sunday evening, these socialists were determined to parade their dissent where and how those around could see, and reaped more law enforcement than the circumstances required.

While you might say the outcome was predictable, it needn’t have been. Students from the wealthier Colorado College have free range on downtown streets, protesting racism or election outcomes on the street without arrests or citations. Every full moon CC students ride the length of downtown’s main street on bike, skate or skateboard, without even police escort. Sunday’s fledgeling socialist organization is a student club of the UCCS campus. UCCS is more working class, for many a commuter campus, and obviously isn’t shown any deference by city administrators.

Compared to the liberal arts curriculum of Colorado College. UCCS is considered more conservative. UCCS hosts business and military related classes. It even has a Brazil-esque Department of Homeland Security -um- Department. So I think it’s all the more admirable that UCCS has spawned a bonafide socialist group that dwarfs even their school’s Young Republican franchise. I’ve no doubt those socialists I met on Sunday will not be cowed by CSPD’s preemptive aggressions. Hopefully their more timid members will take heart.

Public protests are regularly given use of the streets, which like parks are considered traditional free speech zones. The Tea Party and Occupy took to the streets of Colorado Springs without incurring arrests. More recently people have marched for Black Lives Matter and for solidarity with Native Americans fighting oil pipelines. These have produced zero arrests.

In the meantime it will be important to debrief on what happened and unify the legal strategies. All defendants face the traffic offense of being a pedestrian on the highway [sic] and the misdemeanor of failure to disperse, no doubt tacked on to be a droppable charge as fodder for plea bargains. The recalcitrant videographer faces an added charge of misdemeanor interference for failing to produce her ID. They give her no extra credit for providing a pretext for interrogation because she wouldn’t say zilch without a lawyer present, except to explain where and when they were violating her rights. It used to be that cops had to read us our rights.

Police can issue all the tickets they want when there’s probable cause. They can’t threaten to issue tickets for the solitary purpose of disbanding a legal assembly. In the end, the only socialists who got citations were punished not for being in the street but for standing their ground in front of City Hall.

Four Occupy tormentors unmasked

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Eric Verlo

Occupy Colo. Springs held a NO WAR ON IRAN demo today, counter- protested by some soldiers who think any antiwar criticism of their mission fails to Support The Troops. (Horrifyingly curious don’t you think, that US soldiers would already consider war with Iran as their mission?!) Joining them it turned out, were four of OCS’s sneakiest saboteurs. I got them with one camera click! From right to ultra-right: Raven Martinez aka Briaunna Webbing aka Occupy Csprings, Michael Clifton aka Agent of Doubt, Ian Carman aka “Father” Ian, and Ryan Butler aka Ry King aka Lone Wolf.

My policy until now was not to dignify any of these Facebook twits with attention, but their rumor campaign against OCS has become so virulent and untrue, and their misdeeds are now tipping the balance. Today the entire intersection had to bear personal megaphone taunts, but I’ll say that the final straw was yesterday when I learned of misinformation they attempted to spread to the local news. Occupy CS’s hand was forced in issuing a public statement about accused-arsonist Kyle Lawrence, because someone asserted Kyle had joined a violent group that had sprung up in OCS. Uh, let’s get to the bottom of that one, shall we?

WARNING: OCCUDRAMA AHEAD. All of it boring, but these creeps need to crawl back under their mouse pads. Ignoring them hasn’t worked, and even though they crave attention, I’ll give that a try.

Exhibit A

At far right is RYAN BUTLER aka Lucky Dog, aka Lone Wolf. When he disrupted OCS GAs he went by “Ry King”.

The secretive Ryan Butler is half of the Clifton/Butler nerd team that hijacked the “Occupy Colorado Springs” Facebook Open Group. It’s got about 400 members, doesn’t represent Occupy at all, and is maintained as a launchpad for Tea Party occu-haters under the pretext of “free speech” as decided by its unlisted admins Ryan & Michael. The open group was originally created by authentic occupier Amber Hagen, who in her idealism let all participant have admin privileges. When Amber discovered that haters among the admins kept wrecking the page, she began to delete them. Michael Clifton once recounted at a meeting how he and Ryan scrambled over Skype to keep Amber from shutting them out. They hurriedly deleted Amber’s admin access, thus exiling her from her own group. This was the act that inspired Raven Martinez to do the same with the OCS Facebook community page, in all fairness I should say, to prevent others from doing it to her.

Ryan’s claim to fame in OCS came from a failed coup to share the spokesmanship monopoly held by occupothead Jason Warf, but I digress.

Ryan had to step away from OCS after legal trouble from a drunken poker game gone awry, which he tried to blame on authentic occupy vet RTG. Ryan has a criminal record of domestic violence and wears a gun in his home in violation of having lost his permit to carry. That much is not disputed. But Ryan refutes RTG’s version of the event: that Ryan pistol-whipped his ex-girlfriend, which enraged RTG and the two fought, trashing the house. Both face assault charges and Ryan’s ex has filed her usual plea to the court to dismiss any notion that Ryan abused her. Instead we are to believe Ryan tried to defend himself with a vice-grips laying about (leaves a strike pattern similar to a gun maybe), accidentally striking his ex.

I’ll add that my perspective doesn’t come from hearing RTG’s testimony, but rather from eavesdropping on private IMs sent by Ryan as he deliberated what to say by way of damage control. Anyway.

Entirely relevant here however is Ryan Butler’s favorite bragging right, his secret Fight Club-inspired “PLAN-B” CLUB (First rule of Plan-B, you don’t talk about Plan B, snore). Apparently “Plan B” is for Amendment Two fans who want an alternate plan “when the revolution fails.” Was this the pro-violence group to which Michael Clifton alluded in TV interviews? It had nothing to do with Occupy, didn’t come from Occupy, and if its membership is limited to Ryan’s friends, I’m guessing that pares it down to two: he and Clifton. Thus Clifton’s statement about his disassociation from proponents of violence was also facetious, because the above photo was taken upon their arrival at the counter-protest, they came together.

But how absolutely scurrilous to attempt to tarnish OCS with the suggestion that occupy was the breeding ground of their pro-gun Amendment Two fantasy life?!

Exhibit B

Occupying more than the center of this photo is Michael Clifton, self-appointed videographer of the local occupy, known on Youtube and DIY newsites as “Agent of Doubt”.

Michael Clifton was a very early supporter of OCS, donating water and food as he documented its progress on Youtube, each segment introduced in his best impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock, minus the wit, or substance. Let’s say Clifton’s motives started out good, what would lead him last week to step forward and break the story about arsonist Kyle having a history with OCS, packaging his videos for best consumption by the local media?

Of course the answer is simple, and we’ve seen it before. Apparently 15-minutes of personal soundbite, TV attention converted to Youtube views, trumps any consideration for possible negative blowback for the movement. Clifton actually keeps distancing himself from OCS every time he alleges to speak authoritatively as an insider. It’s laughable if it wasn’t damnable, because this time the oaf said he quit when OCS members began to plan illegal strategies. Whaaat? –leaving listeners to infer that arson was among the strategies. What kind of tomfoolery insinuation is that?

Not surprisingly, once more Clifton is defending himself against accusations of being an informer or provocateur. I make no such charge. He’s an idiot. What can you do, Colorado Springs is full of them. Am I being too harsh? Read on.

In an earlier episode in front of City Council, Clifton famously declared himself an outsider to OCS so that he could take all the credit for a –he-thought– brilliant bit of investigative deduction regarding CSPD’s billing of man hours charged for policing OCS. Our friend had videotaped an OCS march you see, and noticed there weren’t any police officers in sight, ergo, the billings must have been fraudulent, yes, ignoring the possibility the cops were plain-clothed, or observing from a perimeter, or on call, etc. So like a flat-earther who draws conclusions based on only what he can see, our intrepid Sherlock declares the CSPD guilty of fraud, and… marches straight into the local office of the FBI to make the charge! The FBI, he reports, were only too happy to accept all his video footage into evidence!

This might point to Clifton’s real reason to declare he was not part of Occupy, because a GA consensus would have vetoed his FBI idea. OCS had recently endorsed a no-snitch policy, not on anyone, not even the city, and let’s face it, not least of all I’m guessing, TO the FBI.

Thus, however unwittingly, let’s call it witlessly, Clifton is an FBI informant in the very technical sense, isn’t he?

To put a fine point on it: everyone who’s participated in OCS activities recorded by Agent of Doubt Clifton, is now on record at the FBI, in not just the lossy Youtube segments available online, but the original hi-def digital sequences, in their entirety.

And while Agent Dork has been a stalwart companion to Occupy, if only for the videos which he converts into ad-views whose revenue he “contributes” to the Occupy movement by funding his own efforts to “promote” it, so far the sum of his efforts has been to give law enforcement and the local media evidence to build a case against Occupy. Thanks a ton Agent Dork. From here onward, your camera aught to record everyone giving you the finger!

Exhibit C

I was tempted because of his sign to give Father Ian Carman a pass. Who’s to say a Department of Homeland Security employee shouldn’t consider himself part of the 99%? But after successive absences from GAs, then hiding among the haters, it might be time to take a close look at this very disruptive occupier.

Divisive behavior can be very subtle, so I’ll cut to the quick on Father Ian. He revealed to us that he worked for DHS because he wanted to explain that he had access to confidential files on certain occupiers, one of whom, supposedly a veteran, still had a very high security clearance, indicating he was likely still active duty, or perhaps in the intelligence service. Father Ian was asserting this about our high profile occupy star JWS, effectively trying to snitchjacket JWS. Come down on that whichever way you like.

Exhibit D

Raven Martinez writes on Facebook under the identity of her daughter, or the occunonymous Facebook user “Occupy Csprings”. Once a formidable OCS volunteer, Raven suddenly became my own personal raving critic. It’s been suggested that her fury bears the air of a woman scorned — I’ll delve into that further down, if I feel like it.

As reported above, the Tea Party mutiny of Amber’s Facebook OCS open group is what inspired Raven to hijack the OCS Facebook COMMUNITY PAGE. Raven might have done it with the best intentions, but did it utterly undemocratically and to everyone’s chagrin and condemnation. Here’s what happened.

Embattled by internal struggle against the very identity of mothership Occupy Wall Street, the OCS GA had adopted the moderating policy implemented by the New York OWS to thwart vanguards and saboteurs, but the Springs admins at that time were refusing to implement them. Admins were continuing to post political endorsements, conspiracy theories and statements critical of fellow occupiers. Further protocols were adopted by OCS to require admins to use their initials to identify who was responsible. Again this was ignored, and now many of the admins were refusing to attend the GAs.

One day Raven noticed important posts being deleted and snide comments being made about OCS protest actions, all being done by an admin who would not reveal his/her identity, and worst of all, in the name of Occupy Colorado Springs. An admin herself, Raven made the clever move of temporarily deleting all the other admin users on the chance that this one might be stupid enough to reveal himself by complaining about his suddenly lost access. The idiot took the bait, and turned out to be none other than OCS-permit-holder and self-important-leader Hossein Momsforpot. For shit. Well this left Raven with a dilemma. Who was going to believe that Hoss was anti-OWS? More critically, who among the admins she had deleted, could she reinstate without the risk that Hoss would convince them to reinstate his admin status with which he could then delete Raven? This was the lesson Raven had gleaned from the hijack perpetrated by Wolf & Agent Duh.

I neglected to mention that the earlier hijack was accomplished anonymously, with Ryan pretending that sole admin status was held by “his dog”. So with her hijack, Raven added her own innovation, Raven loudly proclaimed that she’d been shut out too! She planned to claim that her eventual “reinstatement” was the result of an omniscient AnonymousTM hacker who’d intervened for the betterment of the movement.

Raven’s problem was that I had just the day before publicly refused an admin appointment, and when she cavalierly let suspicions fall on occupier PJ, he promptly deleted himself. Funny story, no?

Well, although a number of very earnest admins felt slighted, oddly enough things worked out for the better after Raven’s purge because all the internal occuhating stopped, and a number of the admins who felt pushed out ultimately outed themselves as Ron Paul enthusiasts, conspiracy nuts, or single-issue MMJ addicts. In reality, no one was ejected from OCS, but having lost their control over the Facebook page, they chose to make kissoff statements and move on.

So Raven was able to coax PJ and me to share the admin responsibilities with her, and it’s a good thing too, because when Raven eventually turned against the broader OWS mission, she’ll say it was because of my personal agenda, Raven went and DELETED the Facebook page. She thought she’d done it, but Facebook has safeguards fortunately, PJ and I were alerted and able to save the 3,300 member page from oblivion.

And the rest is history in the making. Three of us administrate the community page now, we trust each other and our dedication to the values and goals of the original Wall Street occupiers, and the Facebook likes continue to rise.

Is that enough about Raven? Yes it is. She’s doing her best to vilify and destroy our efforts, but that’s as much as I want to say about her.

What the hell. Each of these four unsavory characters knows that I could say far more than I’ve divulged here. I’m already embarrassed enough to talk about them as I did, good grief. The personal attacks on me are based on nothing that I hadn’t written about on NMT, yet they persist via email and phone calls to everyone they can reach. Well, here’s my shot across the bow.

PPJPC drops justice & peace in favor of Judas kiss & Participatory militarism

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Eric Verlo

You don’t care what our neighborhood Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission has gotten its leash tangled around –I shouldn’t– but the latest is just too funny. FIRST, in November they sponsored an Israel-BDS protest to boycott a local Ahava outlet and promptly got two participants arrested. Wrongly of course, but the police were awaiting them with a letter fashioned for the occasion by the City Attorney giving the CSPD authority to drive the activists from the private property. Although planning had been kept on the QT, do you think the reception might have been due to monthly confabs which the PPJPC executive director keeps with city law enforcement? Later in debriefing, the director pronounced his incredulity that the “new policy” hadn’t been spelled out to him at the last meeting. So what kinds of things do the PPJPC & CSPD discuss? SECOND, just as the PPJPC fell for the Save Darfur intervention-as-peacemaking faketivism, then zipped it for Obama’s false hopetivism, now the pitiful dupes call their Muslim-Jewish-Christian “Evening in Jerusalem” gathering a THREE CUPS OF TEA PARTY! Would this be in deference to Greg Mortenson‘s Western Empire [school] building enterprise? That puts the PPJPC in the company of the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, Mortenson’s biggest boosters. The next chance I get I will ask known J&P’ers I promise you — who are the Idiot Iscariots taking this tack? The PPJPC is soliciting donations from earnest yous and mes in the name of peace and justice, to advocate for forfeiting civil liberties and 3CoT’s participatory militarism.

On the AHAVA arrests, do we know who tipped off the cops? Not really, but we know the city’s actions didn’t spring from the media press releases which went out the day before. How much lead time do you figure is required to solicit a written policy from the city attorney’s office? Who had that kind of foresight?

The official word was that the “new policy” delineating which shopping centers might be major enough to be considered public spaces, and which were only average-sized neighborhood no-free-speech zones, was drafted to preempt populist petitioner Doug Bruce from assailing shoppers at will. But he prevailed against the trespassing charges pressed against him by Costco didn’t he. So that pretext doesn’t wash, and by no stretch of the law would a Costco parking lot be considered public.

There is already legal precedence for shopping centers not being considered the new town squares, and the state of Colorado has already put freedom-seekers aspiring to assemble in malls that they must abide by individual mall rules of conduct. At Chapel Hills mall is means, by permit, one at a time, no more than one day per quarter, no handouts, and a moratorium on all social causes over the holiday shopping period.

So a city-wide policy penned by their counsel giving explicit authority for police to remove activists from private property would seem redundant and by its intentional breadth, unconstitutional. But it gives cops-on-the-beat ground not to vacillate.

However CSPD learned about the J&P plans, wouldn’t it seem a crippling limitation to be meeting with the police on a regular basis to give them a heads up about any events that might concern them?

Keep in mind, the PPJPC executive director is avowedly protest-averse. He’s stated he doesn’t see the value to public demonstrations, and they certainly disrupt his ongoing strategy to ingratiate himself and his non-profit into the fabric of local conformist NGOs.

In the case of the Ahava boycott, though the protest was organized by a subcommittee of the PPJPC, toward the press the activists were told to identify themselves only as Middle East Peace Project. That was the PPJPC wouldn’t be tainted by any negativity which the action might draw. You’d think that choosing to distance yourself from motivated peace activists would be justification enough to pretend not knowing of their plans when the police are chatting you up for clues.

What good does it serve organizers if a parent organization is going to maintain plausible deniability but at the same time is helping law enforcement keep tabs on your plans.

There was nothing illegal about the plan to picket the Ahava store. There was nothing illegal about assembling on a shopping center parking lot which is open to the public. There is no need to alert the local police if the only result is that they will finagle a ruling by which you are prevented from exercising your constitutional guaranteed rights.

In Tennessee, ACLU = Terrorists

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Eric Verlo

The Memphis Homeland Security fusion center has a map listing the Tennessee ACLU as a “Terrorist Event.” Compound that with what a ranking senator (R-AL) has called the “ACLU DNA.” It goes beyond semantics when the label of terrorist means by executive order suspects can be detained without charges, indefinitely and without an enforceable standard of human rights. Think twice about those giving credence to Vice President Biden’s categorization of Wikileaks as more terrorism than journalism. On the lighter dark side, the CIA has set up a Wikileaks Task Force (WTF), prompting comedian Andy Borowitz to suggest the more apt Stop Terrorists From Uniting (STFU).

Census 2010: a Snapshot of America or mugshot?

Posted on April 2, 2010 by Eric Verlo

The publicized inducement for participating in the census is to improve government representation and equalize disbursements. Apparently up until now chiefly corporations have been counted. Badaboom. Which explains why tax collection pretends to gain nothing from the census. Nor homeland security, nor domestic surveillance. What utter hogwash. My favorite census fluff piece portrayed a census-taker donning snowshoes to reach Vermont residents living off the grid. How pray tell will a census grid assert to help them? As for our concerns for the urban poor, social service organizations already know full well their number by their need, a Federal census only facilitates predatory access to them.

Though barred by law from using the census info, does it matter to whom the government give it? Will public outcry be for or against revelations it’s been given to ICE, complete with GPS coordinates for all the addresses? What public figure is going to argue that tax cheats should be protected from discovery? Ultimately state security will trump the libertarian pleas for personal privacy. This census is meant to dovetail with NSA records, pure and simple, and provides very little not already known. It is prison role-call, meant to be a reminder of the state’s control.

Look at the 2010 CENSUS brochure cover. Not very obscurely, it’s a finger print.

For every action there is an equal and opposite media distraction

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Eric Verlo

Instead of reading reports about how noted academic Gabriel Kuhn was prevented from joining his US book tour because he found himself on the NO FLY LIST for being a scholar of anarchism, you are hearing about 2-FAT-2-FLY cult director Kevin Smith and his weighty issues with Southwest Airlines. Instead of attending DC hearings about gross criminal malfeasance at Blackwater (currently masquerading as licensed-to-kill Xe), the media is giving us smoke-and-mirrors with the Toyota congressional hearing. Although no mere media distraction, the attack on Toyota is an economic-hit-piece if ever there was.

Had accounts escaped you of untold numbers of fatalities of runaway Toyotas? You’d think we were talking overturned Corvairs, or exploding Pintos, awful corporate secrets about the horrendous risks of driving Toyotas. Those pointing the finger at the Japanese car giant are saying the problem is bigger than floor mats and sticky pedals. They hint at electronic problems, without mentioning that like many automobile components, the accelerator mechanisms are manufactured by a third party supplier, whose assembly is not exclusively for Toyota. The same part is supplied to General Motors vehicles as well. No mention of that.

Is this PR attack against Toyota motivated by Japan’s lagging support for the US wars, or simply a grab at their market share by the current administration which finds itself managing the majority of the nation’s automobile industry?

Gabriel Kuhn has been declined permission to enter the US based entirely on the inflammatory nature of his writing. He’s visited American campuses many times before, even under the Bush administration. What’s happened that the US Department of Homeland Security has now determined Kuhn to be a threat to national security? Does this policy presage restrictions we could see applied to internet publishing? We know ideas can be dangerous weapons, are we prepared to be disarmed?

New ICE building is half windowless

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Eric Verlo

As reported by the Gazette on Nov 30, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security has opened an office in Colorado Springs in the Pueblo Bank and Trust Building. The implication is of a lonely field office to monitor the busy I-25 corridor, but the Nation Magazine is reporting that ICE locations nationwide are being used as unmarked and unmonitored detention facilities for undisclosed detainees. I can’t vouch for ours. Anyone up for a photo field trip? Bring your papers.

According to the Gazette, the office has been a pet pork project of Congressman Doug Lamborn. Their description of the new facilities:

The downtown office in Colorado Springs is the ninth ICE office in Colorado and houses several cubicles and conference rooms as well as a cache of secure rooms to be used for interviews, confidential paperwork and holding weapons.

Detentions have been until now subcontracted with El Paso County. Currently the county holds approximately 150 detainees for ICE.

Did you catch this choice segment of the story? County Commissioner Jim Bensberg apparently confuses “to have a chilling effect” with crime deterrence:

“The presence of the federal office will have a chilling effect on a wide variety of activities,” he said, without elaborating.

“There were days I thought this would never happen,” he said. “If I had a tail right now, I’d be wagging it.”

Three meals away from revolution

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Eric Verlo

The phrase is oft quoted, but no one knows who originated it –or, even if it’s true. It could just be an old pharah’s wives tale. But Obama buys it: from the people who brought you hope.gov we’ve now come to ready.gov. Where the White House assures you there is no need to fear coming plagues and pestilence so long as you “Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed.” and be sure to have food for three days.

Is it three meals or nine? Is the consequence anarchy or revolution? The “truism” is commonly sited as being an old Russian expression, but it’s so pithy, others guess it has a literary source like Dumas. A contemporary scholar placed it back much further:

The Romans believed that civilization is never more than three meals away from anarchy.

Of course, when Stalin or Trotsky are thought to have said it, the dire consequence for civilization is revolution. Which is where the saying catches the popular imagination. Internet sleuths are eager to credit the wisdom to a BBC situation comedy. “[Arnold] Rimmer said it in Red Dwarf.” Although two decades before, Science Fiction authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote in Lucifer’s Hammer, that civilization is “only three meals removed from savagery.”

Doubtless in earlier times, you ate well if you could rely on one solid meal every day, which no doubt holds true for the majority of the world still. In the developed nations of course, we cannot see ourselves subsisting on less than three.

The makers of the documentary King Corn interviewed Senator Chuck Grassley about America’s food supply, which is where the expression piqued my interest. Grassley explained: “A society is always nine meals away from a revolution. If you have people going without food for three days and there are enough of them out there, they will revolt.”

Like the “300 pound gorilla” which has now become 900lbs, the units have indexed with man’s inflated prosperity, likewise the vicarious sense that salvation from inequity might come by revolution. A better educated Briton is thought to have coined the nine meals abstraction. At the height of last year’s food crisis, it was recalled that Lord Cameron of Dillington, in his capacity of head of the UK’s Countryside Agency, coined version 2.0 “nine meals from anarchy.”

The distinction between anarchy and revolution was noted by Fredick Upham Adams in 1896, unearthed by Wikiquotes, who speculated on the veracity of the concept:

…I realize that the spirit of liberty does not exist in hungry men. People talked about a day coming when the people would become so hungry and desperate that they would rise in a revolution and sweep all before them. Such a day will never come. Hungry men may fight, but it will be for a bone—not for liberty. The perpetuity of liberty rests with those who eat three square meals a day.

Of course, Maslow would later quantify this with his hierarchy of needs, but I think modern man clings to the revolutionary idyll over anarchy because it gives him imaginary elbow room to believe right could prevail over the totalitarian misrule of the state. For the common man, it grants him reprieve from the likelihood that Orwell was correct to imagine that the future of mankind will be a soldier’s foot on your face forever. For the affluent, thoughts of a revolutionary cleansing assuage their guilt.

But Obama’s crew appears to be taking no chances. They’ve unveiled a website at www.ready.gov which expands on George W. Bush’s plastic and duct tape. Actually, the plastic and duct tape are still there, but at the top Obama wants us to be sure to get our three squares, for three days.

Ready
Prepare. Plan. Stay Informed.

EMERGENCY SUPPLY LIST

Recommended Items to Include in a Basic Emergency Supply Kit:

– Water, one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation
– Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
– Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert and extra batteries for both
– Flashlight and extra batteries
– First aid kit
– Whistle to signal for help
– Dust mask, to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
– Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
– Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
– Can opener for food (if kit contains canned food)
– Local maps
– Cell phone with chargers

Additional Items to Consider Adding to an Emergency Supply Kit:

– Prescription medications and glasses
– Infant formula and diapers
– Pet food and extra water for your pet
– Important family documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records in a waterproof, portable container
– Cash or traveler’s checks and change
– Emergency reference material such as a first aid book or information from http://www.ready.gov
– Sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person. Consider additional bedding if you live in a cold-weather climate.
– Complete change of clothing including a long sleeved shirt, long pants and sturdy shoes. Consider additional clothing if you live in a cold-weather climate.
– Household chlorine bleach and medicine dropper – When diluted nine parts water to one part bleach, bleach can be used as a disinfectant. Or in an emergency, you can use it to treat water by using 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach per gallon of water. Do not use scented, color safe or bleaches with added cleaners.
– Fire Extinguisher
– Matches in a waterproof container
– Feminine supplies and personal hygiene items
– Mess kits, paper cups, plates and plastic utensils, paper towels
– Paper and pencil
– Books, games, puzzles or other activities for children

Through its Ready Campaign, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security educates and empowers Americans to take some simple steps to prepare for and respond to potential emergencies, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Ready asks individuals to do three key things: get an emergency supply kit, make a family emergency plan, and be informed about the different types of emergencies that could occur and their appropriate responses.

All Americans should have some basic supplies on hand in order to survive for at least three days if an emergency occurs. Following is a listing of some basic items that every emergency supply kit should include. However, it is important that individuals review this list and consider where they live and the unique needs of their family in order to create an emergency supply kit that will meet these needs. Individuals should also consider having at least two emergency supply kits, one full kit at home and smaller portable kits in their workplace, vehicle or other places they spend time.

Illegal Alien costume has a Green Card

Posted on October 18, 2009 by Eric Verlo

It’s called the Illegal Alien Costume, available at Target, Walmart, et al. And look– he’s tendering a Green Card! That means he’s overqualified to work the night shift cleaning super center floors. Immigrant rights activists are calling for the retailers to pull the costumes. No human being is illegal, certainly not #1 enemy of the state, which most Americans associate the Gitmo jumpsuit. Halloween party planners say, lighten up! Political Correctness goes too far to ask us to show sensitivity for the thousands of undocumented workers being rounded up by ICE, incarcerated indefinitely in privately operated Wackenhut detention centers, who may or may not be wearing orange Guantanamo prison garb. When Abu Ghraib type snapshots emerge from these DHS funded facilities, next year’s Halloween xenophobic gag may be for adults only.

Najibullah Zazi sets bad example

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Eric Verlo

Terrorism person of interest Najibullah Zazi has a lesson to teach fellow Coloradans. Don’t talk to the FBI. Zazi has declined a fourth consecutive day of interviews with FBI investigators. Now the Denver resident is being arrested, not to face charges of terrorism, but accusations of lying to investigators. If Zazi had referred the federal agents to the Bill of Rights, they and the media would have nothing with which to defame him.

Department for Homeland Slaughters

Posted on April 4, 2009 by Tony Logan

Freddy Krueger Today, Barack Obama announced that he was changing the name of the US Department of Homeland Insecurity to the Department for Homeland Slaughters. The impetus for this initiative came about due to today’s terrorist weather alerting that Three police officers have just been killed by a gunman in Pittsburgh – the second mass shooting in the US in 24 hours.

In a related matter, Barack Obama says that he will increase the military and policing budgets yet more to help fund more breeding grounds for this All American violence. Thus the name of this Federal Agency, originally called the US Department of Homeland Stupidity, continues to devolve.

Colorado Springs government and police continue to lie about their raids on the Homeless

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Tony Logan

liars myers HOMELAND INSECURITY REPORT- The CS police, under the direction of Police Cap Ricky ‘Liars’ Myers, are continuing to fudge and pretend their innocence about their raids and harassment against the Homeless population in the city, on behalf of the Business Community which simply hates these unfortunate people. They want them all gone but can’t find a way to get it done without attracting public attention. So they have to play all sorts of mind games using the local press as conduit for their song and dance.

‘The cleanups first received negative publicity last fall after homeless advocates charged the monthly sweeps include improper searches and that personal belongings are routinely tossed out. The ACLU contends the cleanups violate the Fourth Amendment and the Colorado Constitution. ….. In bullet-point fashion, ACLU staff attorney Taylor Pendergrass describes its findings after it “interviewed dozens of persons who claimed to have had private property seized and destroyed by CSPD and KCSB.” Among them is that the cleanups were typically unannounced and conducted when homeless people were away from their camps and couldn’t protect their belongings. “Numerous different CSPD officers have been involved in seizing and destroying property, but many interviewees consistently identified CSPD Officer’s Olav Chaney and Tracey (sic) Fox,” Pendergrass wrote in the letter.’

Taken from ACLU: Cops look into sweeps at camps

Colorado Springs city government once again says it will end police raids on Homeless camps

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Tony Logan

COLORADO SPRINGS- Yesterday the CS municipal government, under the threat of an ongoing lawsuit, once again declared that it would end police raids on the Homeless. KKTV reports the following- ‘The Colorado Springs City Council voted in favor Tuesday on a plan to help the city’s homeless. The plan is being called the 10-Year Blueprint To Serve Every Homeless Citizen in the Pikes Peak Region. Tuesday’s vote follows the Council’s approval on Monday to adopt a new plan that includes giving homeless residents advanced warning of cleanups and using mental health workers to communicate with them during the sweeps. City officials placed a moratorium on homeless camp cleanups this fall after homeless advocates threatened to sue the city.’

Yes, well this 10 year city plan follows a previous 5 year city plan to supposedly end homelessness in the city, and that certainly did not occur. Actually, it is mandated that the city file a ‘plan’ such as this to be able to receive certain Federal monies, and the rhetoric is totally empty of any real meaning other than to latch onto those funds.

Many Homeless in the city say that the city has not actually ended these raids, but has merely made them more clandestine. Further, they say their biggest fear is not even these police raids, but the fact that there have been multiple sever beatings of the Homeless within city limits. The Homeless fear not only violent crime directed against them, but they also fear the lack of any significant police protection against these crimes. So the issues for the Homeless in the community is more than just one of police raids.

Further, the Homeless continue to complain of any lack of access to most social programs set up. This complaint is entirely in line with previous media reports of waits of over one month to get food stamps in the city area, and the inability to get through on the state’s initial line to file for Unemployment Benefits, which we wrote about just last week on this blog.

Luckily, the weather has been rather mild this Winter so that is the one silver lining these days for the local area Homeless population. The city does seem insistent on trying to harass the Homeless in this city to the max, but to just do it undercover. One note about the city government… was that the only city councilman to step out and meet with the people gathered outside the city meeting in protest against these city police raids was Councilman Jerry Heimlicher. Good for him! The mayor, Lionel Rivera tried to walk on by unnoticed. Si, Senor! Good thing the lawsuit remains on file at this point. These are slick people.

Throwing a shoe at Bush was not enough- Dubya and Cheney need to be tortured for National Security reasons

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Tony Logan

waterboarding
It seems to me that the wrong guy is being tortured right now, pre-Christmas.

I’m talking about the Iraqi reporter who threw the shoe at America’s smirking Clown President, George W. Bush. Why is he being tortured and not the clown named Dubya?

We all know, thanks to Dick Cheney, that torture is a useful ‘tool’ for pricks like Dick Cheney. It simply gives them a sense of worth. But let’s face it, these two, Dick and Dubya, endangered US National Security for eight years, and are hiding away in secret many more of their acts of international terrorism, many of which continue to endanger the American people ourselves. It looks to me that torture is just the right thing to do to obtain this vital information from these two criminals, and possibly stop yet more subversion from taking place even after they leave their criminal posts as head mafiosos.

Let’s face it, it would not take much to break down the clown Dubya’s resistance. He squeal like a pig if even the slightest pressure is applied to his nuts. Think of the amount of much needed information that could be obtained about his still hidden collaborators and their roles in spreading terrorism world wide. They’re still active you know, and America needs this information to stop yet more acts of terrorism from being committed by the US government in the days ahead.

Sure, I know! Squeezing Dubya’s nuts is an objectionable and dirty thing to do. Under normal circumstances it would be morally wrong to do it, but today National Security is at the stake. So let’s light the fire, squeeze the nuts, and get this useful information out of Dick and Dubya. It’s the right thing to do. Our country needs this information!

If they do not squeal after their nuts are squeezed (hard to imagine happening from pigs like them), then crush the nuts and light the fire around the stake! That’ll get them talking. Oh! And buy the way, this is not really torture at all, but just some rough handling, that’s all. But why do these criminals think that they have a right to be coddled?

Free Iraq! Free the Iraqi shoe thrower! Jail Bush, and go to work on him! It’s a National Security issue and we all need to write tot he Department of Homeland Security and demand that this information being obtained from Dubya and Dick… By any means necessary… it’s the pragmatic American way!

Papieren Bitte? Just your shoes please

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Most people can easily conjure the cinematic image of Gestapo officers blocking train passengers, demanding “Your papers please.” That such a scene could ever develop in America, haunts citizens opposed to national identity cards or embedded microchips. But with modern surveillance methods as pervasive as cellphones, perhaps today’s state security services have less need to verify who we are. I’ll assert the US Department of Homeland Security is charged more with making Americans feel the heavy boot print of authoritarianism.

I think that in the wake of 9/11, this nation has indeed mobilized a “papers please” law enforcement policy.

The proof is there in black and white in the Patriot Act; you can see it in the Civil Liberties-free zone which immigration officers have been empowered to enforce to 100 miles inland from our borders; and you can see it at our airports. Last night’s 60-Minutes questioned the punitive aspects of the TSA measures to which today’s airline passengers are subjected. Less surprisingly, CBS also suggested their probable ineffectiveness.

Having just paid a holiday visit to DIA, I was inclined to see more. Yes, this is another holiday post.

Credit where credit is due? It’s no coincidence this is about shoes.

Papieren Bitte
First, I’d like to deconstruct the film mythology, which originated in wartime, from Hollywood Home Front propaganda meant to demonize the Hun. Certainly the trench-coated SS officer, or leather-jacketed Gestapo detective, asking for your documents, cut a villainous figure. But they were, in reality, as out of the ordinary as today’s FBI or CIA agents. Have you ever happened upon a one of those?

More often by far, during WWII, the job of asking for a traveler’s “Legitimacion” was assigned to the gendarmes of the occupied countries, or to the collaborators who’d been deputized. These were ordinary constables and men who otherwise were unfit to serve in combat. Old frumps, maligned and bitter. If you can picture the run-of-the-mill TSA troll, you see where I’m going.

Public Transportation
Where travelers a half-century ago were taking trains, today the public city-to-city lattice is airborne. Today we queue for planes, not trains. And instead of producing our “papers” –I should say, IN ADDITION to producing our papers– we are required to remove our shoes, all sorts of articles, submit to searches, and refrain from carrying certain items, in order to thread the needle that allows us access to public travel. I’m not sure if today’s security screening isn’t the equivalent of the depiction of the 40s silver-screen.

Before you argue that I’m being alarmist, please consider that most Germans during the war, indeed the overwhelming majority of citizens of occupied Europe, had little to fear by being asked for their documents. You or I are not insurgents on the lam, nor aspiring bomb-throwers. We do not fear being sent to Guantanamo.

Indeed, you might remember, the movie heroes who sweated the Nazi checkpoints were always resistance fighters, saboteurs, or escaped Allied prisoners. Today, ask yourself how an enemy of the USA would fare trying to use an airport. If you have become aware now that our US Homeland does not show reticence to torture, or disappear, persons of interest, would modern airport security be any less a terrifying prospect for people who may not be in lockstep with the ever rogue-ideology of the current global administrators?

And so, what was the main purpose of policemen monitoring the trains of occupied Europe? To prevent illegal travel, or to deter the thought of sedition? Both. But those were the days of imperfect intelligence.

Today, we know that even the 9/11 hijackers were tracked well in advance of their boarding at Boston Airport. Since then, we know that intelligence agency Fusion Centers also parse the surveillance data of persons of mere tangential interest. We know that the NSA records all phone calls. We know the telecoms are doing something for which they are very insistent about receiving preemptory immunity.

Potential terrorists/hijackers have everybody on their tail.

The TSA fat bastards are for the rest of us.

Airport Fear-mongering
Do you remember the days when you could linger as you dropped off your loved ones at the airport? You could wait with them, or you could meet them as they walked off the plane. Now you are greeted by concrete barriers at the curb, you can’t help anyone with their bags. America’s airports have become high security zones, unwelcoming to all.

Permit me to interject the observation that there has not been a single domestic airport attack to justify the draconian measures which have impacted American tranquility. We abide being yelled at, for absolutely no reason except the scare-phrase “Remember 9/11.” Remember the Maine? Remember Pearl Harbor? Japanese Internment Camps anyone?

If you are the traveler, you have to strip yourself of dignity before a thick-necked tin-pot. Now airports are even replacing the metal detectors with X-ray gateways. You are required to raise your arms for a virtual strip search, where digital images of your nakedness are reviewed by the airport security. Official TSA statements explain that these digital records go no further than their desks.

You can choose to believe that, or believe that all our faces are being blurred, or that our corresponding identities are not matched with the images.

(A digression on the subject of intelligence files:
Meanwhile, consider that the NSA is recording ALL satellite borne phone calls. International and domestic. They get around the “wire-tapping” restrictions by addressing it as “packet collecting.” To their devices, it’s an altogether new technology, thereby unencumbered by civil right legislation protection.

Our imaginations cannot fathom how spooks can listen to all the world’s satellite calls, but their imaginations know that someday the software will be developed to accomplish that task. Won’t they be kicking themselves later if they hadn’t stored as much as they could of our conversations BEFORE anyone suspected all telephones were eavesdropped upon?

-By the way, did you miss the memo that every cellphone is capable of being an eavesdropping device, even when it’s not engaged in a phone call? Would it be beyond the pale to imagine that if a near infinite number of calls are recorded, another near infinite amount of off-line talk is being aggregated in addition? If you can store more on your iPod than you can read in 100 lifetimes, supercomputer storage can probably lap your imagination by 100 to the 100th, I’m just thinking.)

Respect Authority
Well look at me, I’m only underlining where the DHS is happy to have us all place emphasis. FEAR. The security at today’s airports won’t keep box cutters off of airplanes, but it will keep a citizenry from daydreams of dissent.

So much ado,
And not enough DO? You already know what to do. Respect authority? Disrespect false authority! Take a lead from Comrade al-Zairi, you too can make it about the shoes.

We’ve all of us, you know it, mouthed to ourselves the defiant retort, rehearsed for if and when that imaginary Nazi hits us up for our papers: “Papers? I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”

From LA, I remember a variant which Hispanics directed at La Migra. They wished.

Anyone WITH papers can defy authority with the full confidence that comes from “I am an American” impunity. But can undocumented immigrants say it? Can Middle-Eastern-looking gentlemen say it? Not hardly.

YOU CAN.

My brave little fantasy insurgent, why not offer that rebel yell to the TSA? Tell them you don’t need to remove your stinkin’ shoes! (Double- entendre unintended.) They won’t let you on the plane, but that’s where beloved Capitalism provides your audience.

Put your courage where your mouth is
Let the airlines hear your rebel yell. “We don’t need your stinkin’ airplane!” If they don’t remove the Beirut decor concrete barriers, if they don’t send the TSA mini tyrants packing, if they don’t let you travel with toiletries of your damn choosing, you’re not going to take their stinkin’ flights.

If they’re not going to let you park up close to the terminal, where you used to be able to park but now those spaces are let out to valet parking outfits, you’re not going to visit their airport. Period.

Is there anywhere that you need to go in a hurry, besides out of the country for a long, long spell?

Drive, it’s still free
If you’re going to stick around, boycott the airlines. Use your car.

As has been demonstrated at Arizona checkpoints –as seen on YouTube– a car and a video camera can get you anywhere unmolested. If you are stopped at an DHS “immigration” checkpoint, you hold the upper hand. You can persist in being let to pass without answering a single question. If they detain you, you have a lawsuit. In your car, you can say with impunity still “I don’t need to show you no stinkin’ papers!”

Obama Pueblo Colorado rally illustrated

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Eric Verlo

PUEBLO, COLO- Here are pictures of Saturday’s Obama campaign rally in Pueblo, which his family wedged in between appearances the same day in Nevada and Missouri. Our peace contingent positioned early at the rally entrance on Main and C Street and greeted absolutely every of the over 25K attendees, from the Orange Pass-holders to the public whose line extended over the horizon.

We stood near a facilitator who barked this instruction to folks who’d arrived to the entrance from the wrong direction, with very likely an unconscious lack of warmth, “Obama welcomes you! [Go to the] back of the line!” Another volunteer warned attendees to please remove their campaign pins, empty their pockets of change, and leave their cell-phones and cameras on for the security inspection. These lines offered us a great opportunity to add our own admonitions. Don’t let them take your voice, for example. In addition to forbidding bags and non-disposable water bottles, participants were forbidden to bring signs.

Department of Homeland Security officers wore their strange black gloves.

A group of anti-abortion protesters managed to sneak through the preliminary security cordons and were summarily ousted. It was tempting to weigh in on what of course should have been their right to political expression in a public area, regardless their extremist views, except that they make such creepy bedfellows. Angry white idiots demonstrating against women’s rights. Even the woman who held the Catholic Vote sign was not a Catholic.

Wherever the anti-abortion “bad change” white guys next attempted to raise their signs, Obama volunteers blocked their visibility with pro-Obama placards. The Obama enthusiasts even borrowed our PLEASE OBAMA NO MORE WAR poster for the purpose. If you count the rally holders themselves as protesters of the current administration. The anti-abortion disruptors would be the counter-demonstrators, as would we. Which means the counter-counter-demonstrators used our counter-demonstration poster, and the who’s who gets cloudy.

The Pueblo police force were in constant communication with each other.

Tony brought a Halloween costume to represent another disenfranchised minority.

The DHS officer pictured in the middle accosted me immediately after I took this photograph. He threatened me with arrest if I did not put down my camera. If I was neither coming nor going, he forbid me from documenting the security area in the interest of protecting the country from terrorism.

We walked around the perimeter of the secured area in order to reach our car. This is the view we had of the press recording the rally.

This is the main stage from which the Democratic candidates were speaking.

Attempting to cross Union Street, north of the Historic District, our crossing was blocked by a security detail amidst a scene so quiet it seemed to be anticipating an important arrival.

Sure enough, within minutes the Obama motorcade arrived. Michelle Obama waved to everyone as their vehicle passed.

The SUVs disgorged their passengers. Secret Service agents exited from every door.

The liberal University of Nebraska is encouraging terrorist threats against Americans

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Tony Logan

nebraska-huskers Let’s see… Terrorist threats are made against an American and the University of Nebraska bends under the pressure of the terrorists? The American Department of Homeland Security doesn’t act either. What’s going on here? Why are these liberal hotbeds, like in Lincoln, Nebraska at the big liberal university there, being allowed to derail the War on Terrorism? Go figure? University of Nebraska-Lincoln Disinvites William Ayers After Death Threats, Financial Pressure What would John McCain do?

Joseph –I am a Zionist– Biden’s love affair with pigs wearing lipstick

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Tony Logan

CopObama and running mate Joe “I am a Zionist” Biden are big fans of hiring even more cops, funding even more militarization of the US, and exporting that military policing mindset to around the pigs-in-love globe to the torturers that the US government constantly allies itself with. Yes, Joe Biden wants to hire another 50,000 PLUS extra pigs in the US as the following excerpt from his web site illustrates…

‘Funding 50,000 Cops and 1,000 FBI Agents: In the 1990s, the Biden Crime Bill added 100,000 cops to America’s streets. As a result, murder and violent crime rates went down eight years in a row. George Bush’s cuts to the program have put America at risk and crime rates are back on the rise. Joe Biden wants to put 50,000 more cops on the street and add 1,000 more FBI agents to address the rise in crime and threats of terrorism.’

For full scope of Biden’s love affair with lipsticked pigs see his Homeland Security No priority is higher than America’s safety snoutings.

And the pigs love the Democratic Party. The love affair is mutual! MSNBC reports that POLICE ORGANIZATIONS BACK OBAMA-BIDEN. Now isn’t that lovely?

The last thing our country needs is yet more funding for prisons, military, pigs, and their weaponry. Joe Biden and Obama don’t think that though, and in the National Porcine Employment Homeland Security Department, they can certainly more than hold their own with the McCain-Palin nutters. Beware!

DHS and AIPAC implant fear cancer CELL, a house of horrors in Denver museum circuit (Photos) (Spoiler)

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Eric Verlo

DENVER, COLORADO- Just in time for this year’s 9/11 commemoration, and in the spirit of deepening America’s public commitment to the self- described endless Global War On Terror, comes THE CELL, a permanent museum exhibit to keep US citizens vigilant to the treat of terrorism. The DHS has provided funds to AIPAC and erstwhile Jewish lobbyists to build this display at the Mizel Museum next to the Denver Art Museum. You might well ask, WHAT are Israeli/Jewish interests doing fanning the flames of the so-called GWOT?

From ML:

collaborators are Rand, MIPT, Lawson Terrorism Information Center, AIC, Melanie Pearlman, regional director of AIPAC, Toby Dershowitz, Courtney Green (Mizel’s daughter) Mark Dubowitz, David Grey, Michael Inlander, Jonathan Schanzer, David Heyman, Brian Michael Jenkins, spook, mercenary, and false flag agent with Kroll Associates, who was in charge of WTC security and hired John O’Neill, who fingered the US ambassador to Yemen in the USS Cole bombing, and who was killed on 9/11, and Clifford May, of the RMN, NY Times, Committee on the Present Danger, and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, ngo CIA fronts.

The CELL is an acronym for Center for Empowered Living and Learning, but in a political world where a reference to “lipstick” is automatically taken to refer to the Ugly American fundamentalist/ bigot/ corrupt/ simpleton/ sow running for GOP VP, the word “cell” is incredibly unsubtle. It’s the dreaded “sleeper cell” of dormant terrorists, meant to allude to the malignant cancer cell poised to spread until its host is dead. Fighting cancer of course means excising every single trace of an inclination of a tumor. While “cell” also describes a small organization, it has another definition certainly inconvenient to our would-be DHS fear-mongering jailers.

It’s a prison cell to which we confine ourselves for the sake of “security.” This hysterical fear spreads like a cancer throughout our nation, seeded by 9/11 and apparently folks who think we need regular inoculations of fear cells.

The display at the CELL is called ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE: UNDERSTANDING THE THREAT OF TERRORISM. It teaches people to join Neighborhood Watch programs, etc, and to keep in touch with the Department of Homeland Security.

When FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was encouraging Americans to overcome their fear. Like a parent’s bedside advice: there’s no bogeyman in the closet, it’s all in your head. How far have we fallen when our own leaders pervert FDR’s axiom to mean the only thing you have to fear is terror (fear itself). Never mind what you have to fear, just fear.

What then do AIPAC and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have to do with scaring Americans into serving the GWOT? Does Israel think that unless Americans are reminded to fear Islam, they might begin to question white man’s incursion into the Middle East? Are Israel’s atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon likely to come into question unless the American public is kept mesmerized by Muslim Terror?

To refer to terrorism as an ideology is already an adolescent fallacy. The term is even inappropriate to isolate a particular means of warfare. Terrorism may be a tactic, but you cannot differentiate between suicide bombers and aerial bombing, between beheadings and extra-judicial preemptive assassination, between kidnappings and extraordinary rendition and torture.

We’re making a visit to THE CELL today, by coincidence on 9/11.
I can’t wait to see how an entire exhibit is going to riff on the never forget always remember TO FEAR illogic. A little knowledge can plant the seed of fear, sufficient knowledge can weed it out.

UPDATE:
The good news is that THE CELL looks like a low-rent Sharper Image meets espionage store. What is the graphic on the front door, a sniper’s crosshairs? All the windows are mirrored except where neon text is scrolling cautionary warnings. In other windows silhouettes of crowds huddle together beneath illuminated shards of falling structures. Another window glamorizes rack after rack of data processing electronics.

The main logo (photo at top of article) features a map of the world overlaid on a fingerprint. I had to laugh at the forced acronym. Center for Empowered Living and Learning. Isn’t to “Live and Learn” an expression for wisdom gained by experience, basically at the expense of mistakes made?

Most distressing however was to see this sign, an indication that the C.E.L.L. is not a temporary exhibit but an integral component of the Denver museum-scape. Does fear-mongering propaganda belong in the CULTURAL COMPLEX? Between Art, History and Library, a House of Horrors?

WE GO INSIDE!
The visitor brochure explains that THE C.E.L.L. exhibit SHATTERED LIVES is “designed to encourage critical thinking.” But a step through its doors proves it intends everything but. With a patronizing audacity beyond Orwell, these A.G.E.N.T.S. lurk with sensory trauma to infect your personal American idyll with fear.

To my mind, they’re Alarmist Goons Elevating a Nonsensical Terrorism Scare.

Picture-taking is forbidden beyond the lobby doors, but after the collage assemblage in the atrium, there’s nothing to photograph. The ticketed portion of the ride consists of crooked halls filled simply with video screens, projections, and blurbs of text on the walls; self-described “sophisticated multimedia techniques.” Monitors and kiosks are peppered throughout in multiples, as if the installation were anticipating subway-strength traffic making a beeline through; or large school groups with no freedom to move laterally.

Of course, the omniscient repetition also indoctrinates us subliminally. The TV news clips sample a half dozen terrorism incidents, Munich, Lockerbie, Nairobi, et EL AL. Remote voices accompany still photos of bloodied carnage. Amidst the intonations of observers and analysts ring two repeated motifs: JFK’s mocking condemnation of terrorists, and Edmund Burke’s admonition “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Someone can’t resist that adage. I wonder if it’s true.

PUTS YOU AT THE SCENE
Before I relate the plenty creepy details, I’ll jump straight to the orchestration’s third movement. Perhaps someone else can compare the programming of THE CELL according to known indoctrination stratagems. I’ll call the third chamber the climax. Automatically-timed doors enforce a six-minute collective “immersion.” Signs warn away anyone with a weak heart, etc, although I didn’t see an alternate passage around. Neither do the doors allow anyone to pass quickly through. They release the previous group before locking to entrap the next.

( S P O I L E R – A L E R T )
Inside, a video-surround chamber simulates a camera obscura viewpoint, first we’re at a summer fair in Denver’s Civic Center Park, then outside the DAM, then a sunny morning on the 16th Street Mall. The movement of bystanders and passersby around us sometimes slows or accelerates. Until SUDDENLY –OF COURSE– we’re at the epicenter of a FURIOUS EXPLOSION and our mid-west urban tranquility is engulfed in fire. Soon enough, floating in the flames come images of urban battlefields, destruction and carnage. Eventually we can recognize the iconic photographs of Pan Am Flight 103, and the rescue of embassy employees in Kenya, about which we were just reminded in the previous chamber. Then we’re treated to a large text message which reminds us that a terrorist attack can strike “anyone, anytime, anywhere,” and we’re released into an antechamber of analysis.

Actually, claustrophobes might want to know that every segment of THE CELL is time-released. But there will be intrusive control elements to offend everyone.

PERSONALIZED ID
For starters, the entrance fee is $8, or $6 to Coloradans. Can you think of why the cost of admission would be more expensive for out-of-state visitors? I can’t. But the discount means patrons must show their ID to buy a ticket. The clerk issues a computer receipt.

Along with your ticket you get a magnetic passcard which you’re instructed to use at progressive kiosks along your route. You swipe your card to gain access to biographical information about a particular victim of terror. The first row of kiosks will reveal a first page of info, a later pod will reveal a second page, etc. No matter which kiosk, your card will only access a single bio, meaning passcards are keyed to the visitor. Mine brought up a middle aged professor whose life was shattered by terrorism. Perhaps a younger visitor would be given a passcard corresponding to a like-aged victim of “Shattered Lives.” Learning, as their own immersion into THE CELL progressed, how their adopted personage fared in THEIR brush with terrorism.

INDOCTRINATION
Let’s see. First chamber: Kennedy, Burke and multimedia barrage. Second chamber: news clips, kiosks with bio part one. Third chamber: BOOM. Fourth chamber: Rand Corporation analysts, so-called experts sitting beneath bookshelves of law books. Dershowitz and the usual talking heads that you see as FOX advisers. One important meme is the accusation that the internet is increasingly being used as a propaganda tool of the Islamists. Websites, blogs, chat rooms are suspect. Trust only the credentialed media apparently…

Two of videos in the last chamber are timed so that you have to watch one, then the other. They include snippets of the videos available at the interactive displays, in case you had chosen not to watch them. There are numerous clips from Islamic television which purport to demonstrate how Muslim children are being indoctrinated against the west.

PHOTOGRAPHS:
Here is what greets us at the entrance of THE CELL, before we even get to the exhibit. First, flashing images of violence and victims. Next, a collage of the FACES OF TERROR. Already we are able to recognize faces from the video sequences on the first wall. (Are there so few victims of terrorism? Or are the show’s makers deliberately limiting the selection of iconic fear-triggers?)

Faces of fear. Isn’t that what “terror” means? We can project ourselves in those images. Faces forever fearful.

Next a map with cross-hairs roaming at seemingly random locations “anywhere.” The text explains that acts of terrorism began in the latter 20th century, and apparently EL AL airline was its principle early target.

What young scholar’s essay does not begin with a “definition?” In this case the word, even more typically, is “for various political, social and cultural reasons” defies definition. How extraordinary! (It reminds me of the www.thecell.org website, which by any standard is written for under-sophisticated readers.)

Here’s the exhibit’s theme, SHATTERED LIVES, adjacent the reception desk ticket counter. The wall is papered with names, resembling the black marble of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, probably these are names from the WTC.

I was directed to take no pictures of the main installation, but I pulled my camera out again right before the exit door.

There I found Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper thanking everyone for visiting the C.E.L.L. and urging us to become active eyes and ears against the terrorist threat.

Of course, could there be any official statement about 9/11 without ex New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighing in? Etc, etc, and so it goes.

But I loved one of the parting shots, TV footage of Giuliani at Ground Zero in 2001 showed him wearing a mask. There’s the brave mayor making a quick round of handshakes, with workers notably not wearing any protection. Every one of those workers is now most famously dead, or suffering respiratory ailments in NYC hospices. While Giuliani still tramps around as 911 hero.

Police Liaison is double-edged handcuff

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Eric Verlo

Large demonstrations such as planned at the DNC invite a basic need for crowd management. From any standpoint there is an inherent requirement to involve officer friendly. Pardon my sophomoric wonder about how this can be done with sufficient prudence.

The term Police Liaison is self-explanatory. In the context of an organized public demonstration, police liaisons channel communication between organizers and law enforcement commanders. If crowd behavior diverts from what was permitted, liaisons are the last chance for diplomacy before an escalation of violence.

This can serve both sides. A crowd could be steered away from trouble, in particular if someone has been tasked with the responsibility for their actions. As well, police over-reaction can be countermanded if police leaders are alerted to their subordinates’ misbehavior.

In a perfect scenario, liaisons facilitate a smooth, legal public action. But what if events develop imperfectly? i wonder what vulnerabilities are created by having named liaisons.

At minimum, liaisons have been personally introduced to police and vice versa. They are given the police commander’s telephone number, and likewise the police are able to contact the liaisons. But in what further ways does having the liaison telephone numbers benefit the police?

It’s not hard to imagine that a police department could justify getting permission to conduct surveillance on those contact numbers. The liaisons are self-avowed protest organizers, aiming only to conduct fully legal activities, activities which they’ll fully admit however are often out of their control. They should have no objections to serving as extra eyes for law enforcement, whose expressed interest is providing a safe secure environment for all. A FISA court would be hard pressed to oppose such preventive oversight. The liaisons have as much as volunteered. Surveillance could consist of monitoring phone calls, passive bugging of all activities within earshot of the discretely activated phone units, or of course, GPS tracking of liaison movements. Why not? It’s for the security of all concerned.

Alternately, and let’s presume the police department would only do this if crowd actions were heading south, the police could elect to round up the liaisons in a preemptory arrest, to severe what they perceive to be the leadership from the crowd of followers. Such a preemptive move could also be decided merely from early plan-making overheard from the eavesdropping.

It could be presumed that law enforcement is already monitoring the phones of activists whom they consider to be persons of interest. But those activists who volunteer to be police liaisons in effect offer up their responsibility for their compatriots’ actions. They represent themselves as authority sufficient to try to steer protests from trouble. Liaisons as much as formalize their participation in the outcomes that eventually develop.

Should some terrible illegal act be committed, be it real or a frame-up, have the liaisons bound themselves to subsequent conspiracy charges that an investigation would trace in order to declare guilty parties? Imagine if such acts were terrible enough to warrant calling the organizing body a terrorist entity. Would the formalized police liaisons be considered its de facto signatories? Whoever would imagine that peaceful protesters exercising their right to assemble to petition their government for redress of their grievances should fall under the scrutiny of the Department of Homeland Security?

Cop torturing by taser gets a little out of hand down South

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Tony Logan

Yes, once again it is the State of Louisiana, which is the state the whole country has fallen into in actuality. Cop torture by taser gets yet more bad press, but cops like to torture at times, and here in Colorado Springs these cops have tasers, too. Dead Black Man Was Tasered Nine Times by White Cop

I mean you might have not even heard about this story, what with the press having to spend so much time talking about Commander-in-Chief-Wannabe Obama’s tour of the war lands? Why do Americans not protest these tortures by cops using taser? This is what the thugs at the top call ‘Homeland Security’? It seems like we’re getting National Insecurity worse than Obama Bin Laden ever could have delivered.

And let’s face it, being Black has gotten much more dangerous lately in this country not less. Blacks just don’t have as much money, poverty is a crime, and crime gets you tortured by cop tasers here in America the Beautiful. Let’s register these Black people by way of the criminal injustice system. Put a brand on them why not?

Baron ‘Scooter’ Pikes you had a bad attitude! See what you done? Now Taser International PR will have to work overtime to help the National Security State ‘protect life’, trademark impending.

Snappy music on the site there, Dudes. So let’s go torture! Got any more spare Black folk to electrocute? Long live the South! The KKK lives on! Ain’t that sweet? Department of Homeland Security? What a damn joke… What a Frankenstein this country is on tasers.

American government’s love affair with bunkers and walls

Posted on July 14, 2008 by Tony Logan

Birds eye view of our Navy
Check this out! An actual building in San Diego accidentally built by the Pentagon that looks like the Nazi swastika! The Navy is now spending over $600,000 to change the appearance of their building!

Everywhere one looks, American government is building bunkers and walls! All though out Baghdad, the Pentagon is building bunkers and walls. In the West Bank, Israel and the Pentagon together are building bunkers and walls. On our southern border with Mexico, YES you guessed it, America is building bunkers and walls.

Do we think for one split second that the rest of the world hasn’t noticed that America is about bunkers and walls these days? All the sugary sweet talk in the world is not going to hide that fact away from the world. When one drives by an American embassy anywhere in the world one sees bunkers and walls. When one drives down the road in much of America, one sees bunkers and walls (prisons). Oh Sweet Land of Liberty…. Hardly!

Yes, America is now an imprisoning nation, land of bunkers and walls. Do you live in a gated community? Probably not, since you would not be likely to be reading this commentary if you were into that sick mindset. But many, if not in fact the majority of us, live behind bunkers and walls.

Bunkers and walls need regulations, lots of them. They need tickets, passports, and papers to go with this order. They need guns, barbed wire, and tasers. They need dope, lots of it, because bunkers and walls are shall we say it? … they are depressing. Bunkers and walls need uniforms, officials, and lawyers, though not to enforce the law but to break it.

Once it was parking lots, shopping malls, and interstate freeways. Today, it is more bunkers and walls. United We Stand. Divided We Fall. We are falling with bunkers and walls. Bunkers and walls is what brought elites, other than our own, down before, simply because most people hate bunkers and walls.

American government has a love affair with bunkers and walls.

Can you help us identify this “activist?”

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Eric Verlo

incognito If you have any helpful information about the identity of this Neighbor Wilson, please contact us immediately. We are particularly interested in his whereabouts and identity before 2006. Your email replies will be kept in the strictest confidence.

These pictures were taken at the 2008 Broadmoor protest, which is distinguished from other actions because here activists come into face to face contact with defense industry people and the intelligence community. On this mild overcast morning, do you notice anyone else wearing sunglasses? Is he hoping not to run into an old colleague? Or a previous target?

The age of the internet means it’s a lot harder to plop an infiltrator into an activists group because suspicious folk can Google for provenance. You’d have to say you came out of a monastery to explain your lack of record of past activities. In Colorado Springs, it’s suspected that THE NAVIGATORS and YOUNG LIFE, among others, are used to launder US intelligence operatives into the population at large.

Here’s an opportunity to test the new waters which the internet presents for the Witness Protection Program and other government embedding techniques. Let’s pass around a picture far and wide and see what previous identities come to light.

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