Israel’s Targeted Assassinations leading to renewed Lebanese Civil War

‘Targeted Assassinations’ have become an integral part of official US policy and official Israel policy. Nowhere is this illustrated more than with Israel’s constant running after Hamas leaders to try to sniper them out. By sniper though, often times this means dropping bombs or shelling neighborhoods and murdering entire families of innocent people, and not just firing away at a single person using a rifle with scope attached.

The US leadership likes this Israeli Jewish terrorist mode so much, that it is now using the same tactic in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, and with the exact same consequences. As we have come to see, ‘collateral damage’ is often quite high. It should be clear, that what the Israeli and US governments refer to as targeted assassination’ in reality is nothing more than terrorism. It’s another semantics game like the Right also plays with the meaning of what constitutes torture. When the Right Wing US and Israeli governments do it, it supposedly does not constitute torture, or so say their apologists.

So what does this have to do with Lebanon? It is quite simple really. When state terrorism (targeted assassinations) becomes official policy, the victims almost always reply in kind. They too start targeting the leaders of the Right for ‘targeted assassinations’. Both sides, Right and Left, then usually enter into a prolonged sort of ‘dirty war’, where both sides employ terrorism against each other’s leaderships. Yesterday, Israel murdered Hamas leaders in Gaza, and today, Hezbollah murders a US-Israel allied, Christian Lebanese leader, Perre Gemayel. And as pointed out previously, this situation is actually being fomented and inflamed by the deployment of United Nations troops into Lebanon in order to save Israel from any consequences from beginning a bombing attack on Iran.

The European’s tolerance for Israel’s policy of ‘targeted assassination’ of Arab leaders it doesn’t want to deal with, PLUS the allowing of the US to turn UN ‘peacekeepers’ into agents of Bush’s foregin policy is throwing fuel onto the regionalization of the Iraq and Afghan fiascoes. The US government seems intent on turning the entire ME oil producing region into a zone of anarchy and chaos, where eventual control can ultimately only fall into Pentagon hands. It is a policy to drench in blood this entire area of the world in order to grab the energy supplies out of the ensuing chaos.

The United Nations preps the way in Lebanon for US/ Israeli war on Iran

Once again, like with Haiti, the UN is acting as just another arm of the Pentagon. In Haiti, the Bush Adminstration toppled the popular government of Aristide, and then moved UN troops in as occupation force in support of the group of US installed thugs. Now in Lebanon, once again the UN is being used as US spearhead for Bush’s foreign policy of aggression against yet 2 other countries, Iran and Syria.

The 15,000 UN troops that are being set up in Lebanon are not being sent there to protect Lebanon from attack by Israel. It is a little late for that, is it not? Quite the contrary. They are being deployed so as to neutralize a front where Iran and Syria, with their Lebanese Hezbollah allies, could resist military attack from Israel and the US, and try to strike back at Israel for bombing them. The UN, is effectively now just another NATO/ Pentagon/ Israeli military army in operation on the Lebanese regional front.

By this deployment, the UN is also actually fomenting and fueling new flareups of civil war within Lebanon. Kofi Annan, despite all his sweet talk, is basically making himself nothing more than a paid whore for George Bush, and paving the way for an new US-Israeli war, this time against against Iran and Syria. And Lebanon be damned.

It is unfortunate that the US and European antiwar communities still have so many delusions about the United Nations. There is nothing united about the world’s nations, and the UN ‘peace keeping units’ are now a totally captured body of troops being used by the US in its plan to reorganize its colonial control over the Middle East and world oil supplies. NATO in Afghanistan, Pentagon in Iraq, UN as ‘buffer’ in Lebanon, and Israel free to attack Iran on behalf of its US master. It’s a bad situation for those looking for a peaceful world and an end to this continual bloodshed. Don’t count on the UN ‘peacekeepers’ anymore. They are part of the problem, not any solution to it.

Afghanistan, where cowardly US military is deliberately murdering children

Every week now, it seems that the US puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is ‘investigating’ another tragic ‘accidental bombing of civilians. He demands that these ‘accidents’ stop. But these are not accidents, and Karzai knows this well, as every other Afghan must now know it well, too. An accident occurs once or twice, but an intentional strategy of targeting civilians becomes constant, as have become the US bombings of Afghan civilians in the more remote regions of that country.
 
The strategy is ‘to destroy the sea that the guerrilla fighter must swim in’, as it was once explained in the Vietnam War era, years ago. In short, the quickest, easiest way to combat the enemy, is simply to target his wife and family, including the kids. So the cowardly US-led NATO army of occupation in Afghanistan, is systematically doing that instead of engaging the enemy on the ground, where politically dangerous casualties might occur. Bomb the Afghan women and children in their homes from up high, if there is even the remotest military resistance to US forces in their general neighborhood.

This is the same strategy that the US government formerly used in SE Asia, some 35 to 45 years previously. It is the same strategy that the NAZIs used when they pushed into East Europe against the Russians during the Second World War. In their pathway, they razed to the ground villages, towns, and even entire cities. It is even the same strategy that Mafia gangsters use against their opponents. It is the same strategy that the US fed Colombian death squads use, too. They go into villages with chain saws, and cut people up before their own family members. Basically, this is government sponsored terrorism against civilians, and the US is committing internationally recognized war crimes by targeting civilians instead of the armed combatants they face. The strategy, is to target the families of combatants, and not those who might actually be able to inflict return casualties upon the invading and occupying, barbarian armed forces.

see Hamid Karzai orders investigation

We expect this cowardice from the cowardly US military commanders and chiefs, like Dubya and Dick Cheney, Donald and Alberto, who all get great glee out of torturing US-held POWs. And we expect it from the US grunts, too. They mainly just want to get out alive, and don’t much care who gets hurt, as long as it is not themselves. Innocent children bombed as they play, or as they sleep? Well who cares? Not the uniformed soldier cowards, nor their leaders. They are much like the Israeli troops, another cowardly group of soldiers, that distributed hundreds of thousands of cluster bombes in the last 3 days of their Lebanon vacation. Early Christmas for the children? Well the uniformed forces of occupying armies don’t care. They are simply cowards who want to get back home whole, and they will follow cowardly orders, from cowardly leaders.

But what of the press? The press barely even reports Afghanistan these days to US readers. And when they do, they cowardly hide away the nature of what they are reporting on. To the US press, the Afghanistan fighting is a NATO conflict, and they will report whole articles without even once using the letters, ‘US’ or ‘USA’! Let’s keep our jobs, and let’s keep the whole Afghanistan issue away from the American public, who are too cowardly to actually think about what they are doing to that poor country.

And what about the US peaceniks’? They are cowardly, too. 99% of them vote for the Democratic Party, and talking about Afghanistan is too embarrasing to the top party hacks. So, shhhhhh….. Keep quiet. The recent AFSC tour of their ‘Eyes Wide Open’ exhibit was basically a ‘Mouths Tightly Closed’ exhibit of their AFSC political cowardice when it comes to Afghanistan. They should remember and be ashamed of this, when the Quaker leaders are inside the voter booths pushing the levers for the Democratic Party candidates. They could have put boots out for the US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But they didn’t. They could have placed out shoes of Afghani civilians killed by US and allied troops, but they didn’t.

But the other liberal peaceniks from the other liberal churches are equally as cowardly. When was the last time one saw a sign saying, Get Out of Afghanistan Now? All the talk is of Iraq instead. The liberal megawebsite, commondreams, carries bumperstickers calling for Get out of Iraq, No war with Iran, and even No War with Syria. But Get Out of Afghanistan? Not a chance! More political cowardness. It would push the Democratic Party hacks too hard. Yet our country is now deliberately bombing civilian children in that country, and doing it routinely, too.

It is political cowardice to bomb huts full of empoverished women and children noncombatants, rather than fight on the ground below against the men. But that’s what an imperialist army is full of. They are full of cowards who want to kill people like they are playing some video game back in the suburbs at home. But it, too, is cowardly for the US Peace Movement not to demand that our government get its troops out of Afghanistan with the same force we demand it get out of Iraq. We are betraying the children of that country, who are being slaughtered down like cattle. Yes, we have a cowardly antiwar movement in the US that wants only to concentrate on ‘Iraq’, and getting their cowardly Democratic Party leaders elected to office once again. Let’s hope that liberals can grow some backbone, and start opposing this war, too. Otherwise, the peace crowd is just as bad as ‘our troops’, who mainly want to kill from afar and from up high, with no possilbe repercussions to their cowardly, uniformed selves. Those that don’t mind killing innocent children, just so that they can claim a high ‘enemy’ body count.

Religious Bigotry, Nationalism, and Racism

Religious Bigotry, Nationalism, and Racism are the core ingredients of patriotism worldwide. Oh, I know, some will say that Peace is Patriotic, and other such liberal claptrap. But we all know what Patriotism really means; it means my religion before all others, my country before all others, my race before all others.

Got to thinking about this while writing the last commentaries about that certain racist Colorado Springs State rep dissing Hispanics, and the blown away Fort Carson trained snipers coming back in bags from Iraq.

Got to thinking about this at the last city council meeting, where all assembled are forced into prayer and a pledge of allegiance before the city council meeting can be allowed to begin. It is a loyalty oath where it is demanded of one that we show our patriotism. But I’m not a patriot, and proud of that, too, and do not think that I will participate in standing up next time I go to this government function. I will opt out instead. Instead, I don’t think that the home team is special, nor that the home religion is special, nor that the White race of European background is better than others. I don’t like patriots. I’m not one myself, and with good reason.

Judging Decision 2006

I was once a trainee in a work group, where my brash behavior caught the ire of the team. “Don’t you realize Eric that each of us has a voice on your evaluation? Aren’t you worried that your insufficient reverence (I’m paraphrasing) will reflect in each of our assessments?” Everybody stared at me across the conference table. They were high level engineers and each was smiling.

“Well I said, hoping to obscure my fool-hardiness with diplomacy, “I’m not concerned with your evaluations actually.” This was the diplomacy of speaking frankly. ” I’m on the management fast-track program. I’ve already been evaluated, I’m here because the company saw my potential. I believe that administrators are going to look at your observations in terms of whether you recognize the qualities they already like. It will be a test of your management potential more than anything.” Two weeks later, and I can’t say I wasn’t sweating it, my evaluation was filled with unrestrained praise.

I relate this story, of course because I come out fabulous, but too because I’m thinking of the upcoming elections.

If the American public reelects the GOP, reconstitutes in effect the party of lies, corruption, war-profiteering, racketeering, election-fixing, treason, war crimes, and pedophilia, it’s going to reflect on the American voter.

Someone in Europe is going to have to put together a website to answer our “sorry everybody” with “No, we’re sorry, you ignorant, ignoble fools!”

White Mountain

Hitch your horse to this manservantWhite Mountain met its match last night, at their homecoming football game. The idea usually is to pick an opponent to beat at your homecoming festivities. Later you might visit a fellow school on their homecoming weekend and lose to them in return. But “South,” the underprivileged shoe-in with half the athletic department and budget, would not play ball. And that was the good news.

There was a distinct home advantage, the bigger, better lit bleachers, the multiple cheerleading squads, the band, the fireworks, everything uphill and upwind from the diminutive visitors stands. But the Indians got whooped by the visiting Pueblo South Colts, and maybe expected it. It felt like a surprise to most, and it was pretty dark out there. Add to that the anonymity of shiny football helmets under high school stadium lights, but if you looked closely you could tell it was darker on the south side of the field. The Pueblo South High School players were black and hispanic.

White Mountain gets its name because there are no children of color there. Well, there are the occasional adopted black children, and the whitish black children of privilege, but few others. Cheyenne Mountain is very very white. Nothing wrong with that, it’s an affluent neighborhood and welcomes all who can afford to be there.

But at the base of Cheyenne Mountain is a racism more overt and the children of White Mountain pass it everyday. Cheyenne Mountain Resort is a terribly exclusive country club with amazingly expensive membership fees and golf tee fees. And all the attendants there are black. It’s the Pullman porter valet concept with plantation era uniforms. They look like lawn jockey figurines. Thin black people in pure white clothes. Smiling black faces, happy to be there. Nothing illegal about the hiring standard, here’s how it works:

Cheyenne Mountain Resorts applies for an immigration waiver to hire international workers. They claim the jobs which resorts offer cannot be filled by the local labor force. The pay’s not enough, the career prospects are not enough, and true enough, the local populace is not enough either. Too fat maybe, poor work ethic, have social problems perhaps, and locals have their own transport to bring or fetch complications for the resort. Locals bring too much financial baggage to the table.

On the other hand, imported laborers are housed at company apartments. They’re shuttled to and from work. When they’ve finished their three month stint they are sent home. Deliriously uncomplicated and cheap. Cheyenne Mountain Resorts does its hiring in Jamaica. Know any white people in Jamaica? Well, they don’t appear to sign up to work across the sea, away from their home and family, on a rich man’s plantation.

The Broadmoor takes advantage of the same immigrant labor waiver to staff its hotel and restaurant, except they hire exclusively in Eastern Europe. I’m not sure that’s not racist to another extreme. The slavic labor force is the least expensive in the world, in the world of white people. There are no colored peoples there.

The immigrant labor waiver is an unfair means for local employers to escape contributing to a sustainable and healthy local community. It’s a foreign aid program of sorts, but at the expense of what could be local jobs. And when it’s racially segregated, it’s ugly. I plan to ask around if White Mountain prefers its golf jockeys all black. If they can’t say it with a straight face, they should stop it.

This isn’t about racism, it’s about economic justice. If we want to believe in the notion that the American dream is available to people of all shades and heritage, we must not teach our children that racial differences dictate social status.

America’s Pirates

No, this is not about ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, but about Microsoft and WalMart instead. Every year Forbes Magazine does its glowing presentation about the super-rich who rule us that really should be better called ‘Pirates of The United States of America’. Replace Johnny Depp with Bill Gates, perhaps, and have a great flick! Actually, a lot of liberal Democratic Party romantics already really seem to find him sexy, and if they flutter over Al Gore’s movie then certainly Bill Gates as pirate would be a blockbuster for them, if made into film. And YES go figure about some liberals’ personal taste? Throw in Hillary with Bill for yet more romance amongst the pirate super-rich. And the Democratic Party faithful will swoon.

So the gist of Forbes summary this year is that the top 400 people with big bucks gained another $120 billion over the last year. Yes, all through hard work. That gives these worthy pirates a total value of 1 and 1/4 triillion dollars. It broke my slide rule just calculating all that dough. Where did it come from, Folks? So hard to guess, ain’t it?

Hint, hint, hint, for the really thick. It came from theft. You got your pocket picked and still don’t know it! What could you do with an extra 1 and 1/4 trillion dollars those top 400 US pirates grabbed overall? And shoot, that’s not even talking about any Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, or dark seedy Arab pirates! How many pirates do you think the world’s poor can support? The Mexican poor support quite a few all alone, including ones’ called Hank, and another called Slim! And no doubt, America will turn out yet more next year.

Attention, All Pirates. Neiman Marcus’s Christmas catalog will be out soon! I hear there is even a yacht made out of solid diamonds for sale. How can it float, but it’s quite a sight to see? I love that catalog!

Little shit

picture 
 
Speaking of shit. Is it time to resurrect a prank played on our president when he visited Europe in 2003?
 
Before Bush paid his visit, clever Belgians and French took little party favor flags in Bush’s image and stuck them into the nearest available sidewalk tributes to his image.

You can do this too, or bring your own, to set around wherever Bush is travelling in his campaign against opposition voices.
 
It’s not feces-slinging, or calling our president names like war criminal, or idiot, or corrupt autist-maniac who steals from the poor to give to the rich. This is not like addressing Bush as the chimp-in-chief. It’s based solely on his misbehavior and his unseemly and uncaring motives. Even his mother would have to admit it’s a little bit true.

Israelites go home

Baja JudeaAdmittedly this is a picture of Tel Aviv residents protesting their nation’s militant actions against Lebanon and gathering to offer a prayer for peace.
 
On another level, is it also a picture of fair-skinned westerners on a Middle Eastern beach who’ve overstayed their welcome?
 
Maybe it’s time to close Club Med Judea.

Americans descend upon Baja Mexico all the time, we don’t try to annex it. Or Costa Rica, or Belize. There’s nothing wrong with vacationing in the tropics, but is it fair to emigrate there, declare it your own, and ask the world to protect you from the anger of the people who you sent packing?

Let American and European Jews have their promised land, as promised vacation land. Visit and sunbathe all you want, then go home. This idea that white man should colonize Arabia is so 19th century. Colonization doesn’t work, and we have no right.

Nowhere was this more obvious than South Africa, where white colonizers held themselves as superior to the natives, imposing apartheid to force the indigenous populations to keep to their own neighborhoods.

Can there ever be peace in the Holy Land? Of course there can. Return Israel to its rightful owners. Let Jew, Muslim and Christian live together in a secular state. Will there always be sectarian violence? Perhaps, we’re seeing it elsewhere between Muslims. Sectarian problems will have to be worked out between neighbors. It’s clear the answer was not to give the whole ball of wax to one religion. Especially not the white one.

Israel promises to retaliate 10 to 1

Civilian victims of Israeli retaliationIn the days when Hitler occupied Europe, the Nazis had a problem with insurgency. At that time it was called the resistance. Resistance fighters, usually ordinary civilians, conducted espionage, acts of sabotage and executions of collaborators or Germans when they could.

Out of frustration, and to deter further acts, the Nazis promised retaliatory measures against the occupied population. Ten citizens from that town, for example, would be shot for every act of sabotage. Sometimes it was fifty. On the Russian front the ratio was even higher. There the insurgents were called partisans.

We witnessed a vivid example in the film Schindler’s List. In concentration camps, the Nazis would punish infractions by lining up prisoners and shooting every tenth man. A friend of mine in Colorado Springs, a camp survivor recently deceased, escaped several of those line-ups before he was traded to Britain for a German officer in a prisoner exchange.

Collective punishment is illegal under the conventions of war. It’s illegal because it is inhumane and unfair. Perhaps you remember back in your schooldays, feeling it was unfair when your coach ordered you to do fifty pushups because of the failings of the weakest team member. But the coach was trying to build your body, not kill you.

The collective punishment strategy didn’t work for the Nazis, not even in the name of protecting the homeland.

Perhaps because of the universal condemnation of collective punishment, our domestic media is not reporting a recent declaration by Israel, regarding its actions against Hizb’Allah in Lebanon. The world is aflame with indignation and the world is calling for an immediate cease-fire.

What is the world hearing that we are not? Two days ago, they heard the Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff General Dan Halutz promise to destroy ten buildings for each rocket. Specifically, Israel will destroy ten residential multi-level buildings in southern Beirut, for every Katyusha rocket that lands on Haifa. Google the headline and see the story that isn’t playing here.

Sept 11 – America Reaps What It Sows!

By Black Liberation Army prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim.

U.S. International Warfare Initiates World War III Human Rights During Wartime
By Jalil A. Muntaqim

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism. Similarly, it was witnessed how the people of Iraq rallied in support of their President, Saddam Hussein, after the U.S. bombed to death 250,000 Iraqis, and continued devastation of that country with collateral damage of 1 million dead women and children. Hence, people rallying in support of their government and representatives is a common phenomenon when a country is attacked by an outsider. The U.S. has been foremost in the world extending foreign policy of free-market economy, to the extent of undermining other countries cultures and ideologies expressed as their way of life. Such conflicts inevitably positions the U.S. as the centerpiece, the bulls-eye for international political dissent, as indicated by demonstrations against the U.S. controlled IMF, WTO and World Bank conferences. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum. The people that carried out the attacks were not blind followers or robots with an irrational hatred of the U.S. peoples. Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam.

There are essentially three primary world ideologies or world views: the capitalist free-market economy/democracy; the socialist production economy; and Islamic theocratic government, of which has been in competition for many decades. However, in the last 20 years the socialist economies has been severely subverted and co-opted by free-market economies, the ideals of American style democracy. This isolated, for the most part, Islamic theocratic ideology and system of government as the principle target of the U.S. in its quest for world hegemony. This reality of competing world views and economies is further complicated due to religious underpinning of beliefs that motivates actions, especially as they are expressed by U.S. and Western European christianity and Israel zionist judaism in opposition to Islam. From the struggles of the Crusades to the present confrontation, the struggle for ideological supremacy reigns, as the faithful continue to proselytize in the name of the Supreme Being.

When geopolitics are combined with religious fervor in the character of nationalist identity and patriotism, rational and logical thinking is shoved aside as matters of the moment takes historical precedents. It has often been said that “Truth Crush to the Earth Will Rise Again”. Since truth is relative to ones belief, can it be safely said that America has reaped what it has sowed? The American truth of capitalist christian democracy and its imperialist hegemonic aspirations has crushed both socialist and Islamic world views. It has extended its avaricious tentacles as the world police and economic harbinger of all that is beneficent, in stark denial of its history as a purveyor of genocides, slavery and colonial violence.

The U.S. was the first to use biological-germ warfare on people when it distributed blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans; it has refused to apologize for Afrikan slavery acknowledging it engaged in a crime against humanity requiring reparations; it is the first and only country to use the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intern thousands of Japanese and Italians in this country; it used carpet bombing and defoliates against the peoples of Vietnam; it has initiated embargoes, coup d’etats and assassinations against those it opposes, while propping-up right-wing military dictators; as well as continued military bombing of Vieques. In essence, the U.S. governments hegemonic goals has created the ire of millions of people throughout the world. While domestically, racial profiling, police killing and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has eroded patriotic sentiments in opposition to white supremacy.

As America weeps and laments its loss, the public find itself joining the torn ranks of those whose heartaches beat opposing U.S. greed and international profiteering. The American public acquiesce to U.S. international folly has cause them to feel the economic pains of those who live daily in poverty. Indeed, Americans should brace for years of economic uncertainty, where the American ideal of freedom and liberty will resemble plight of those who live under the right-wing dictatorships the U.S. has supported. The tyranny suffered by others in the world as a result of U.S. imperialism, has come full circle to visit this country with the wrath of the U.S. own mechanization. Since the U.S. taught and trained right-wing military dictators in the School of the Americas, including the CIA training of Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan proxy war against the Russians, it will be this same kind of terrorist activist that will be unleashed on American soil, as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz stated after the assassination of John Kennedy, a matter of the chicken coming home to roost. Therefore, American civil liberties and human rights are being garrotted by the yoke of the right-wing in the name of national security. The legalization of U.S. fascism was initiated with the war against political dissent (Cointelpro); the war against organized crime (RICO laws); the war against illegal drugs (plethora of drug laws) and now culminating in the war against terrorism with the American Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce and Office of Home Security, further extending police, FBI and CIA powers to undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently stated that the U.S. need to create a new language in defining how to combat terrorism. This Orwellian propaganda in the media espouses the U.S. is venturing in a new type of warfare to defend the American way of life. However, what this double-speak propagates as a long-term and sustained initiative against terrorism is essentially a way of embellishing and enlarging U.S. counter-insurgency activity it has been engaged in since the advent of the Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and Navy Seals. The U.S. has been involved in counter-insurgency activity in Afrika, Latin America and Asia for decades. But due to the September 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil, the government has seized the opportunity to offensively pursue left-wing revolutionaries and Muslim insurgents throughout the world. This U.S. military action extends and substantiates its position as the international police.

Since the establishment of the Trilateral Commission that initiated the process for the development of one world government, the U.S. has broaden its capacity to impose and enforce its will on oppressed peoples globally. The FBI and CIA has been operating in Europe, Afrika, Asia and Latin America establishing the long arm of U.S. law and order. Its bases of operations have conducted surveillance, investigations to arrest, prosecute or neutralize left-wing revolutionaries or Muslim insurgents. As the U.S. consolidates its political and economic influence throughout the world, it will seek to protect its overall hegemonic imperialist goals. After the Gulf War, and the air (bombing) campaign in Yugoslavia, the U.S. has employed its military might to ensure its foreign policy are achieved.

Because NATO has evolved into a European military entity that Russia is seeking to join, today, the U.S. has positioned itself beyond the mission of NATO. The U.S. now concentrates its military might in opposing Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.) and those the U.S. deem as rogue nations (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). The new military initiatives will be directed to towards Southeast Asia as the secondary target, as it continues to direct the Middle East conflict to preserve its oil investments and zionist interest. As the U.S. expand its imperialist military mission, as seen with committing military troops in Uzbekistan to also protect oil interest in the Caspian Sea, it has sought to redefine itself by targeting what it identify as the terrorist thereat wherever in the world it might exist. Hence, with the employment of conventional warfare combined with counter-insurgency tactical activities, the U.S. has pronounced itself as the military guardian of the world.

Although, the U.S. states its actions are in its self-interest, in terms of what is euphemistically defined as defending the free world, the truth of the matter is this action is a prelude to evolving one world government with the U.S. as its governing authority. Once the Peoples Republic of China becomes a full member of the WTO, and North Korea and Vietnam has been compromised, with Russia becoming an ally of NATO, the U.S. political-military influence in the world will be consolidated. The U.S. geopolitical strategy is not confined to the present crisis in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and targeting Osama bin Laden as the world’s nemesis. Rather, the U.S. strategy is to preserve its capacity to establish one world government as originally envisioned by the Trilateral Commission.

Nonetheless, there are some serious obstacles to this hegemonic goal, of which the world of fundamentalist Islam has become the principle target. Here, it should be noted that Islam condemns suicide or the mass killings of women, children and non-combatant males. Yet, the U.S., Israel, western Europe, Russia, India and China all view Islam as the enemy. Although, there are over 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, the current alliance of economic interest headed by the U.S., are united to vanquish what they consider the growing menace of fundamentalist Islam. It is with this understanding of U.S. geopolitics one is able to comprehend why the U.S. has redefine its military mission, as opposition to globalization and U.S. imperialism metamorph into a political struggle without borders or territorial imperatives.

The ideological struggle between capitalist free-market economy and Islamic theocratic determinates has exploded into an international conflagration of insurgency with the potential of initiating World War III. The Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the world has the potential to test the U.S. military, political and economic resolve as the world’s leader and authority of an one world government. With over 1.2 billion adherents, Islam has become a formidable foe to contend with for ideological supremacy in the world’s geopolitics. Even without discussing the religious (moral and ethics) aspects that motivates the geopolitics of Islam in opposition to U.S. imperialist hegemony, the call for Jihad/Holy War against the U.S. presents a serious threat that could precipitate WW-III. Therefore, the U.S. find it necessary to redefine its military mission, develop new language to codify warfare and legitimize its international political and economic purpose. Yet, many of the world’s oppressed peoples’ have already experienced U.S. military counter-insurgency tactics (Ethiopia, Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, etc.), including parts of the Islamic world. No matter how or why the U.S. attempts to persuade Americans that it is entering a new type of warfare, in reality it is more of the same, only extending the military arena to further protect its authority to establish one world government.

However, the U.S. is not the homogeneous country that people are deluded into believing exist. Rather, the U.S. has been held together due its ability to exploit the world’s resources and distribute (unequally) the profits amongst its citizens with its culture of conspicuous consumption. But, the recent attack on the U.S., and its aftermath may very well lead to the untangling and unraveling of the U.S. fabric as has been witnessed with the USSR and Yugoslavia. In understanding this true history of U.S. imperialism, outside and within its borders, essentially tells a story of why U.S. imperialism has been and will continue to be attacked.

Ultimately, the U.S. will eventually find itself at war with itself, as the ideology of a free democratic society will be found to be a big lie. This is especially disconcerting as greater restrictions on civil and human rights are made into law eroding the First and Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As during the Vietnam conflict, internal contradictions of racism, poverty and inequality will be exacerbated as a result of the U.S. military campaign and domestic undermining of civil and human rights. It is expected that strife in America will eventually become violent dissolving any semblance of the illusion of America the Beautiful. In anticipation of U.S. progressive activist opposing this claimed war against terrorism, the federal government will pass new laws to severely restrict protest, demonstrations and dissent. In the ’60s, U.S. progressive activists evolved the slogan “Bring the War Home!” – the question is what will be the slogan this time, now that the war has been brought home?

Free the Land!!

Not only Darwin’s nightmare

Darwins NightmareWhen he introduced the screening of his documentary at UCCS on Wednesday, Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper told us that for the five years he had worked on the project, DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE had been his nightmare. Sauper predicted that in two hours, after we’d seen it, the story would become our nightmare.
 
The film was billed as a tale of fish, men and guns. The American release poster features only fish heads. It was about all three, and about just one as well.

I have no qualms about spoiling the story for you because this film is not available in the U.S. The copy we saw did not even have English subtitles. They’re having difficulty finding distribution because Darwin’s Nightmare is worse than an unhappy story, it portends ill for us all.

That it was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary, losing to The March of the Penguins, has meant that Darwin’s Nightmare will enjoy some success. Sauper is happy that he did not win the top award because the higher visibility would mean he could no longer make such an incidiary film.

He could certainly not have made this one. Sauper had to smuggle himself unto cargo planes, into foreboding factories, slums, houses of prostitution and some places for which no description is suitably odious, to tell a story that no one wanted told.

The fish tale begins with the Nile Perch, introduced by scientists into lake Victoria many years back. Like so many other foreign species introduced by man into otherwise balanced ecosystems, the Nile Perch has proved itself a voracious predator and today all the biodiversity of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, is gone. No more other fish, no more anything else. Now the water is no longer getting aerated, so the perch are dying. And without prey, the perch are feeding on their own young. The lake could soon end up a sink hole.

Sauper’s film is a parable. Top preditors can out-eat their supply, even devour their own. Is this film about fish and men?

There’s more to the fish tale. Once Lake Victoria was filling with oversized perch, factories grew on the banks to process the fish fillets and ship them to Europe. The fish became too expensive for the locals to eat. Now the fishermen themselves can only afford to eat fish heads.

All the perch fillets are sold to Europe, in return for guns to fuel the incessant warfare in the Congo. Ordinary westerners can wonder: where do war torn regions get their endless supplies of guns? Westerners who are gun manufacturers know where they come from, and precisely how many have been shipped and where. This was the deadly secret that Sauper uncovered: the same planes used to bring in UN relief supplies brought guns as well. The fish denied to the local malnurished population are being sold to buy guns.

There’s more of course. The kids are sniffing glue, a byproduct of the packaging process. Widows become prostitutes. People lives are foreshortened by working among the decaying fish skeletons being rendered for subhuman consumption, and of course, the entire population is being decimated by AIDS. We forget about that one. And the church is still preaching against the use of condoms.

We learn that when a fisherman finds himself too weak to work, he must hasten to the village of his birth so that he may be buried there. The price of transportation, once he is dead, goes way up.

We learn that when a fisherman dies, his wife has little choice but to become a prostitute. Unleashing the HIV cycle again.

We see a fish factory supervisor who has a fake stuffed fish on a plaque. Flick a switch on the back and his tail moves to a recording of “Don’t worry be happy.”

We learn what feeding time looks like among street children. Someone rustles up a pot, someone rustles up some gruel, they cook it and the moment someone’s guard is down, everyone reaches into the pot with both hands. Those caught without a handful are left to chase and beat those that who aren’t able to gobble their catch with sufficient haste.

Hauper explained in his notes that this tale of the developed world cannibalizing on the undeveloped world could be told anywhere. If it wasn’t fish in Africa, it is bananas in Central America, it is tea or coffee or sugar anywhere. It’s a tale of indegenous peoples not being allowed even a subsistence on their own bountiful lands. It’s a tale of Europeans or Americans who require the resources of the poor to sustain their unseemly standards of living.

I don’t know if bananas would tell the tale of a obscenely large unatural predator that’s feeding on everything and will eventually asphyxiate itself.

Mad Cow is here

Ground cow disease
A third U.S. cow has now been found to have Mad Cow Disease. The refrain remains the same. Have no fear, no part of this infected cow ever found its way into the food supply.
 
Great. But where did that cow come from? Specifically, where did that cow get its BSE? Does it grow on trees? Does it generate itself spontaneously?

No, it is hereditary. Or it is aquired through the ingestion of infected animal parts. In this case they are saying that the animal was old enough to have been fed infected animals before such rendered parts were banned. Maybe. First of all that is to admit that the feeding of rendered mammals to other herbivors was risky behavior, something they have resisted admitting, and second, there’s nothing to say that this third cow got BSE previous to the feed restriction.

What we do know is that the American system of testing only a sampling of livestock is still woefully inadequate compared to everywhere else in the world. When some American ranchers offered to do a more stringent testing themselves in order for their beef to qualify for the japanese market, the U.S. government forbid the ranchers to do it.

It’s as if FDA officials are very nervous that wider tests will find that Mad Cow Desease is prevalent in this country.

In Britain and in Europe, every single cow is tested for BSE. In the U.S. we test less than 1%. In fact, the FDA recently increased the scope of its tests twentyfold, still under 1% of all cattle slaughtered, and as a result discovered BSE in this third cow. Now they want to scale the tests back again because, well, better to let them explain it. Makes sense right? The FDA is not nervous for the American people obviously, they’re nervous for the meat industry.

Meanwhile, let’s find out what those FDA officials are feeding their children.

How to tell the media is lying to you, healthcare

How do you know you are not hearing the straight scoop from the media? Health care.
 
How many industrialized nations are there? Twenty-five or so? And our nation is among them. We don’t have the highest standard of living, nor the second highest, but we’re up there. We’re talking compared to Europe, Britain, Scandinavia, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

How many of those nations have virtually free health care for their people? A few? Several? No. We’re talking all of them. Well, all but one. All but the US.

Yet U.S. health care is the most expensive to provide. It costs a greater portion of our GDP, by twice as much, compared to the next most costly.

Many Americans presume that in exchange, our health care is far superior to that of any other nation. This may be true for the ultra-rich who can afford to fly to see specialists whenever they want. Although, recent studies have shown that in several fields our specialists are no longer pre-eminent.

For the rest of us, reliant on HMOs, or medical care audited by insurance companies, health care is not so great. Most of us cannot see a doctor of our choice, nor make a reasonably timely appointment, nor certainly get a house call. This is not even to mention the millions of Americans who are not insured at all.

The World Health Organization has ranked nations in order of the quality and effectiveness of their health care systems. The U. S. ranked 37th.

That’s not even among the developed nations is it? Our system costs twice as much, one third of which goes to insurance costs, and we rank 37th, just below Costa Rica. Fifteen below Colombia by the way.

Why aren’t you hearing about this in the mainstream media? Because the insurance companies are big advertisers on the mainstream media. Insurance companies make 30% off of American health care bills right now. They don’t want to hear any flowery talk of socialized medicine. Insurance companies insist we call that option a “single payer system,” and they demonize the idea as big government. Yes, bigger government, and in exchange, predatory insurance behemoths gone.

Strength in numbers

Mohommed bombheadTwo German newspaper have joined a leading French newspaper in reprinting the controversial Danish caricatures of Islam’s prophet Mohammed. They are acting in solidarity with the Danish paper whose actions provoked an international boycott of Danish products. This is how collective action is supposed to work. Speak out, and if you’re threatened, be joined by another voice and then another, until there would be too many voices to silence.

Isn’t it interesting that the U.S. is speaking out against the unified actions of the Europeans? Perhaps it is not surprising that American fundamentalists are coming to the defense of Islamic fundamentalists.

A survey of Newspapers shows that Western voices are dismissive of the notion that the cartoons should be found so offensive. Muslim papers demand apology yet do not condone the violence. Perhaps surprising to many, Palestinian papers are calling for moderation among Muslims.

I worry that this entire tempest is going to be used to show the volatility of Islam. This will be fuel for the argument that Iran must under no circumstance be allowed to have nukes.

2-8 UPDATE
The Americans and British are now accusing Iran and Syria of inciting the violence. Meanwhile a French paper is printing additional provocative cartoons.

Now the Islamic voices are labeling this provocation as Zionist. An Iranian paper is retaliating by soliciting contributions from cartoonist to lampoon the greatest -and perhaps only- Western taboo, the Holocaust. While I deplore this escalation, the cartoons should prove interesting. They certainly have hit on a taboo which the West cannot countenance.

Since the Enlightenment I think to the western mind freedom of expression is revered. We can tolerate our Jesus depicted as a bald transvestite. We can burn our flag, even piss on it. We have no image that is sacrosanct, except the victims of the Holocaust.

It will be interesting to see if Europeans or Americans can get a dose of what it feels like to be injured by a cartoon. Can you even imagine making fun of a Holocaust victim?

When Anne Frank is depicted at the wheel of a bulldozer, crushing Palestinian children, even maybe unwittingly (hopefully), then we’re probably going to see escalation.

Ahmadinejad and Hamas not denying Holocaust

Iranian president
No one is suggesting that the Holocaust didn’t happen, or that six million Jews weren’t killed by the Nazis. The mythology surrounding the Holocaust has to do with its aftermath: how the murder of six million Jews became justification for the creation of a Jewish state on land which belonged altogether to someone else.
 
That is the mythology about the Holocaust which natives of the Middle East would like the rest of us to contemplate.

Western media seems intent on perpetuating a distortion of the Muslim position. So intent are they to avoid questioning the legitimacy of Zionism that anyone who does is painted as a “Holocaust denier.”

No one is denying the Holocaust! And no one is calling for killing any more Jews! “Wiping Israel off the map” is a truncated translation of what the Muslim voices have expressed. It does not mean “off the face of the earth” or “eradicate” or “exterminate.”

Right to exist
Hamas is often described as not believing in Israel’s right to exist. It sounds so unreasonable. Everyone has a right to exist. But Israel is not a person, it’s an entity. Try this on for size. Does Jewish occupied Palestine have a right to exist? Did French occupied Algeria have a “right to exist?”

Algeria had a right to exist, and the French there had every right to exist, as a minority. And as we’ve seen with all former colonies, the majority population has an inclination to rise against its upper class oppressors. The west has of course the inclination to try to prop up those embattled regimes.

Israel was a nation created in 1949, carved out of the land of the Palestinians to make a home for European Jews. Israel is regarded by many as a last example of colonialism. White settlers laying claim to the lands of another people.

Now the Israelis are erecting a wall to separate themselves from the darker skinned Arabs. It’s an apartheid wall, and we’ve seen apartheid before. The Boers of Dutch ancestry no longer rule South Africa because the world wouldn’t stand for it.

Israelis have as much right to exist as anyone, as the Boers for example, but they don’t have a divine right to exist on the backs of their native brothers.

Apartheir wall   Israelis call it a “fence.” To construct it required demolishing entire Palestinian neighborhoods, often separating Palestinian farmers from their fields and orchards.
 
 

Off the map
When the Iranian president says he would like to wipe Israel off the map, he’s not saying he wishes to kill anyone. He didn’t say he wants to see Israel wiped off the face of the earth, he’s saying he’d like to see Israel off the map OF THE MIDDLE EAST!

Ahmadinejad even suggested that Israel relocate itself to Europe. If Europeans feel so bad about the Holocaust which they inflicted upon the Jews, why shouldn’t it fall to Europe to offer up some of its real estate for a Jewish homeland?

Ahmadinejad, like many Muslims, doesn’t see that it was Europe or America’s place to bequeath Ancient Judea to the present day Jews, a land which for the last two thousand years has belonged to non-Jews and went by the name of Palestine.

We all came from Africa. Does that give us a right to resettle it without regard to who’s already living there? Should someone resurrect Babylon, Alexander’s Greater Macedonia, or the Holy Roman Empire?

Hamas, and the PLO before it, speak of driving this foreign intruder from Palestinian land. The Muslims scattered the Israelites into Europe two thousand years ago. Now interlopers have brought them back and Hamas has pledged to drive them out again.

Imagine if America chose to return its Puritans whence they came, to England, where they weren’t terribly popular the first time. Perhaps the English would vow to expel the kill-joys once again to the New World.

As unreasonable as it was to redraw international borders to recreate a Promised Land, so too might it be unreasonable to undo the land grab of 1949. Perhaps the most pragmatic course of action would be to insist the Israelis and the Palestinians cohabit the promised land. They can govern themselves democratically and the chips will fall where they may. This age of enlightened democracy should have little patience for dogmatic racism and religious prejudice, from either side.

The world should be able to look upon these religious squabbles with impartiality. Although it seems Israelis are plenty worried that the secular west may not always grant Jewish fundamentalism more deference than its Islamic rivals. Therein lies the importance in not denying the Holocaust.

Holocaust myth
What peoples, among victims of genocide, have ever been granted their own ancient Promised Land as a redress for the genocide? None. Is this because the Holocaust was such a unique genocide? Indeed, to be labeled a Holocaust denier you merely have to be denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust.

When Iran president Ahmadinejad says that he wants to examine the myth of the Holocaust, he is threatening to challenge the prevailing Zionist interpretation.

Ward Churchill got in trouble with the Zionists because he wanted to compare the genocide of Native Americans to the Holocaust. He makes the case mainly because the policy of extermination conducted against the original inhabitants of the Americas is still denied, and as a result extensions of the policies persist.

I think the argument to prove Churchill’s point leads in an altogether different direction. This is because the Jewish extermination was not an act of imperialism against an weaker people.

The genocide against the Native Americans was like the systematic extermination of indigenous peoples everywhere: Australia’s aborigines, Indonesia’s Ache and Timorese. It is also the age-old mechanics of one people conquering another, like the genocide by the Turkish of the Armenians, and the recent actions of the Sudanese Arabs against their blacks.

The genocide against the Jews was class warfare upward. It belonged in a category like the Soviet and Chinese against their bourgeois and intellectuals, like the Khmer Rouge genocide of the urban Cambodians most of whom were ethnic Chinese, like the Hutu slaughtering of the Tutsies, like the traditional and recurring pogroms against Jews. It’s hard to say that even the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t after the usury profits of the Jews.

Thus antisemitism is less unique than its name implies, and resembles very much Marx’s class warfare where the proletariat is trying to come out from under its oppressors, or perceived oppressors.

The Holocaust is touted as religious genocide, hence the rationale for redress which honors their biggest religious wish: return to their Promised Land.

The Zionist count on the west’s continued support of that religious goal. They need an independent Israel with a homogeneous Jewish religion. They know that if they were to be integrated with the region’s present-day peoples, as a Jewish minority among Palestinians, they stand a good chance of being voted off the island.

So here are America and modern Europe, standing in support of a dogmatic religious group. It does not play well with others, and it insists in fact that it be segregated from everyone else, even as it usurps the land of others, and occupies adjacent lands under the pretext of its national security.

I have no doubt that victims of the Holocaust would themselves be shocked and shamed at the crimes that Israel is committing in their name against the peoples of Palestine.

Why America and Europe should side in religious solidarity with Jewish fundamentalists without sympathy for the Islamic fundamentalists is the consequence of believing a myth.

Federal investigations, American innocence

U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzales has just called for another Justice Department investigation. This time they want to know what government official leaked the story that President Bush has been conducting illegal surveillance upon U.S. citizens without the proper warrants.
 
Does this recall the investigation prompted by the revelation that our CIA has been using secret prisons in Europe to detain people illegally? They’re against European law and against American law. But Gonzales wanted to know the same thing: who told.
 
Soviet era prisonKiejkuty- a Soviet era prison in Poland, revealed to be one of the “black sites,” the secret network of CIA prisons for keeping ghost detainees from domestic scrutiny.

Remember the indignant reaction in 2004 to the suggestion that America was operating “gulags?”

Illegal activity on the part of the president. Illegal activity on the part of the CIA. Where is the investigation into the members of this government who failed to leak these stories?

Not only are there laws which protect whistleblowers, there are laws which punish people who keep mum about wrong-doings which they’ve witnessed. Is Alberto Gonzales interested in any of those laws?

Perhaps Gonzales authored another position paper advising Bush administration officials that they needn’t worry themselves with notions of personal responsibility in this the shiny age of Neocon omnipotence.

Need for warrants
President Bush claims that he ordered this domestic spying to protect our nation against terrorists. Since the warrants he would have needed are practically rubber stamped anyway, why would he need to act without having obtained them, in accordance to the law?

A leader elected in a democracy is not supposed to be able to declare all by himself who is an enemy of the state, just as a police commissioner is not supposed to be able to pick on whatever neighboor’s household he wishes. That’s what judicial review is for. “Got a warrant?” We all know our right. It’s in the Constitution. We put it there.

Freedom of Information Act requests have shown that Bush’s surveillance extends beyond looking for Taliban suicidal hijacker suspects. Perhaps Bush feared that the judicial oversight which comes with having to apply for a warrant might preclude those other categories. That’s what the oversight is for, to prevent a dictator from usurping a democracy.

Because someone is a particular religion is not a probable cause which would justify spying on them. No, George, because someone is protesting for peace, this is not a cause to spy on them.

A judicial review board trying to uphold the constitution will not issue a warrant because someone is blowing the whistle on a major energy company, or because they are making a competitive bid against Halliburton, or trying to organize a union against Wal-mart, or trying to expose the Bush family financial ties, or challenging Tom Delay’s redistricting. Those are not illegal activities and thus do not justify law-enforcement attention.

And what are you trying to learn from eavesdropping? What they are up to? What they are up to is generally known, that’s how you became worried about them in the first place.

Instead, are you looking for a vice, or a family secret, or some vulnerability which you can exploit, either through blackmail, coercion, brute force, or by sudden secret unconstitutional detention, to stop their activities which you say are a threat to your America?

The 911 Reichtag Fire

In 1933 someone set fire to the Reichstag, the historic German Parliament Building. Hitler seized on the occasion to incite in the German population a fear of terrorists and foreign agents, and trumped up his case for the preemptive invasion of Eastern Europe.
 
To prevent further acts of terrorism, Hitler curtailed civil rights and created the first concentration camp at Dachau. Predating the extermination camps by a half dozen years, Dachau began as an internment camp for political foes and other “enemies of the state.” Many Germans felt that the Reichstag fire was a Nazi deception, set deliberately to further Nazi goals.

2001 brought the American People their 9-11, with similar doubt as to how it came to happen. Americans were also given their Dachau at Guantanamo Bay, a prison camp absent every American notion of civil right. Americans soon became responsible as well for waging a preemptive war on Iraq based on trumped up charges of WMDs, and American atrocities at Mazar-i-Sharif and Fallujah, which beg comparison to the Nazi taking of Czechoslovakia, and Nazi acts at Babi Yar and Lidice.

To compare American to Nazis may seem like a profound trivialization of the horror of the Holocaust. There is no evil greater than that which perpetrated the Holocaust. But the Final Solution didn’t start until 1940. The U.S. Neocons are comparatively early in their game.

History has now confirmed that it was the Nazis themselves who started the Reichstag fire. They set the fire at night, while no one was in the building. Not a single life was lost. Not very Nazi-like. Someday history will reveal the truth about who perpetrated the events of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center. Time will eventually have to overcome this administration’s persistent efforts to thwart investigation and accountability.

IF the Neocons in the U. S. administration, either by negligence or malice, did allow or facilitate or instigate or perpetrate this ugly tragedy, if they did this, what can they have yet in store for the American people?

(Reprinted ArmchairCommando.)

Who’s a war criminal?

War Criminal t-shirtGeorge W. is a war criminal, Dick Cheney is a war criminal, Colin Powell is a war criminal, every last White House staffer is a war criminal, nearly every Congress member is a war criminal, every mainstream media pundit is a war criminal, and YOU are a war criminal for permitting their illegal war in your name. “Not in our name” you decry? Did you stop it?

No one in the world could have stopped the American onslaught except the American people. No one on the other side of our tanks and our missiles can stop the American military machine. Neither their sovereign borders nor their laws can protect them from falling into our gunsights. Only the American people have recourse through their constitution to bring an aggressive rogue government to heel.

After the last election, thousands of American contributed photos of themselves to a website offering their apologies to the rest of the world. “We’re sorry” was the theme. Many of them added “we did what we could.”

A European website quickly emerged with thousands of world citizens turning up in photographs of their own to say “apology accepted.” That was very gracious of them. Do Americans have any idea what it will really take to stop this administration? When will we really be able to say we did our best?

You can purchase WAR CRIMINAL t-shirts at the IraqWarMemorial.info website.

Bigger jails or bigger hearts

Nearly half a million people are now behind bars in the United States for nonviolent drug law violations, which is more than all of Western Europe — with a larger population — incarcerates for everything!

Our country also has the most religious denominations and has one of the highest rates for church attendance outside of the Muslim world.

What is wrong with this picture?

In the late 1980s the University of Colorado sponsored a survey seeking public opinion regarding building more prisons as a safety measure. The majority of respondents did not think more prisons would make them feel safer.

Many who reported they would feel safer with more prisons were employees or families of the police, sheriff and corrections departments. A conclusion could be that those working in criminal justice fields may have the most reasons to be fearful.

Are they afraid of traffic violators or DUI offenders, many of whom fill our jails, or is the fear predominately about nonviolent inmates who, upon release, may become violent?

Another conclusion could be one expressed by a local deputy sheriff who, several years ago, made this quip at a County Task Force meeting on Alternatives to Incarceration: “We are the only ones with job security around here!”

My El Paso County Criminal Justice education began at those meetings, where I learned:

· Various groups were protecting their turf and were adverse to using alternatives if someone else was providing them.

· No one in the task force seemed to know if there were any local use of electronic monitoring.

· Illegal drug use and mandatory minimum sentences were the main reasons prison expansion was accelerating.

This year my experience as a representative on the Justice Advisory Council has reinforced earlier observations.

I have also learned there is an overcrowding situation because of increased numbers of women behind bars (many for drug-related offenses), unfortunately indicating more children become social service statistics and likely future juvenile detainees.

There is general agreement, at least in one subcommittee, that jail alternatives such as PR bond release and electronic monitoring, along with behavioral and addiction counseling, could be utilized to a much greater degree for nonviolent offenders. Such modalities have proven successful and very cost effective in other jurisdictions.

And judges need to be better informed about available sentencing alternatives.

Common sense dictates that other solutions be tried if the $40 billion we have been spending annually in the United States to solve the drug problem remains unsuccessful. We need to stop protecting and enhancing a system that has failed over and over again.

It is time to bring about change. To do so, we must all become informed about city and county budgets and the percentage of our tax dollars being spent on criminal justice issues compared to quality of life matters that provide the following:

Health and wellness assistance for those unable to afford health insurance; free recreational opportunities in public parks and trails for residents and visitors; public transit to help our youth, elderly and disabled get to these important destinations and to help ex-inmates get to their jobs; and places to park and connect with a bus, lessening roadway congestion.

We must request the media provide complete and unbiased local government information in a timely fashion.

We must contact county commissioners as well as City Council members, giving them our perspectives on issues and ideas for solutions while demanding accountability.

We also need to contact our federal and state General Assembly members and seek changes to legislation that has contributed to our problems instead of improving the health, safety and welfare of all.

Finally, we must examine our own motivations toward and involvement with the less fortunate in our community and resolve to assist small groups and agencies that are helping people help themselves.

(Printed in YOUR TURN, THE INDEPENDENT, December 19, 2002)

Toons is discovered by Business Journal

Here’s a very nice article about the unique film collection at TOONS.
Reprinted from The Colorado Springs Business Journal:

‘Oasis’ for the offbeat
By BOZENA WELBORNE, Editorial Intern

Most people, when they think of Toons — if they’ve heard of the store at all — will envision a graffiti-ridden former gas station-turned-store on Nevada Avenue. Its location and its ambience make it a likely hangout for the Colorado College students in its vicinity.

But it’s much more than that. Toons actually draws much of its clientele from “working, commuting students from UCCS or other community colleges, as well as students who come by during the holidays,” said Eric Verlo, the founder of the music, video and vintage items store.

The store has an eclectic collection of videos, used albums and CDs, vintage posters and collectibles that run the gamut from “clairvoyant,” heat-sensitive gummy fish (the cheapest item in the store at 25 cents, and very popular with those CC students) to $2,000 vintage jukeboxes (the most expensive item and the least likely to be sold, Verlo says).

Most of the used goods come directly from the closets and attics of the Colorado Springs community. Generally, Toons will purchase used items at 50 percent of their original price, though it may vary according to the quality of the item or how many copies of the item Toons has in stock.

Toons’ owner is especially proud of the store’s diverse video collection, with 4,700 titles and maintains they are not merely hard-to-find videos, but videos the average person has “probably never even heard of.” What the store can’t make up in number, it makes up in the sheer diversity of its collection. There is also a very strong Eastern European film collection, as well as the obligatory French films.

Verlo emphasizes the highly academic nature of a portion of the collection, maintaining that many of the films are chosen specifically because of their sociopolitical or cultural significance.

Because the store carries such a diverse assortment of items diverging from the mainstream, Verlo is hard-pressed to identify any competitors. The most likely candidates would be Media Play, Best Buy and Blockbuster Video. Verlo says those retailers are just beginning to realize the potential of catering to the non-mainstream market, of “introducing people to new things,” and may increasingly compete directly with Toons.

Few people know that there are actually two Toons stores, one at 802 N. Nevada Ave., but also a less well-known store at 3163 W. Colorado Ave. The latter, actually called the Bookman, opened first in 1990, while the Nevada Avenue location opened at the site of an old gas station in 1993, in a conscious effort to drift away from the typical strip-mall-feel evident at many stores.

Verlo came up with the idea of opening such a store while visiting his retired parents in Colorado Springs. Verlo started contemplating what he would do after his own retirement and, considering his passion for books, decided that he would like to own a bookstore and thus, the initial idea of Toons was formed. Verlo’s unique life has also had an influence on the eclectic nature of the store. Verlo is a graduate of UCLA who has lived in France and the Philippines, and has traveled extensively.

Verlo estimates startup costs fell somewhere in the $10,000 range. Since the idea of the store was a gradual development, the inventory itself was gradually collected without a specific vision. So, the cost of accumulating the inventory wound up being more expensive. Today, Verlo knows that probably was not the best way to purchase the store’s inventory, but the method is responsible for the store’s unique, museum-like feel. He emphasizes that the store’s existence is not really driven as much by a profit motive as it is by the idea of creating a collection of unusual items to intrigue and be enjoyed by the entire community. Toons is still pretty much breaking even with any excess profit immediately re-invested into enlarging the diversity of the store’s wares. This accentuates the fact that it is really a labor of love on Verlo’s part, as well as that of the staff.

Although it expanded to the Nevada Avenue store in 1993, Toons is now branching out onto the Internet with its own Web site at http://www.toonsmusic.com. The store’s staff created and maintains the site.

Ironically, Colorado Springs’ growth has not benefited Toons. Verlo said most of the growth has been at the outskirts of the city. Because of this, he says, fewer people come downtown, where the store is located.

Currently, Toons is trying to attract a more upscale, older clientele at the Nevada Avenue store and has consequently sectioned off a portion of the store, hoping to appeal to this new client base. Jitterbuzz.com, a top Washington D.C.-based Web site for swing and lindy hop aficionados, called the section “the largest swing selection of any record store in town (Colorado Springs).” Verlo hopes the store’s new setup offers some variety, while allowing the older and younger generations to choose whether to interact or keep to themselves.

Verlo believes that Toons’ ultimate legacy for the Colorado Springs community is its very existence. It provides the city with an oasis of non-mainstream ideas. Verlo advises those who seek success or at least contentment in the business arena to “do what (they) want in life,” as he did in creating Toons.